Preparation for Winter V

(Picture from here.)

A wonderful Thanksgiving. A gallon of Marvinwine (which I'll talk about one day when I blog about my father-in-law). Bottling Old Freezer "White"-- the first batch of the 150 pounds of grapes that were in the freezer. I mentioned that here. And, with the long weekend, more preparation for winter. Someday winter will come. Then, I'll be happy I've done all of this prep.

Well, I have heat in the shop now. I installed the pellet stove as I talked about here. It works pretty good. There's a smell associated with it I'm not too crazy about. Since the smell occurs after it heats up, I think it's some oil burning off the unit. What I might do is crank it up and let it burn for a couple of hours. So far I've only burned it an hour here or an hour there. I think I'll also put on an extra foot or too of chimney. It meets code but I think the extra draft will do me better.

We also started to seal up the house for the winter.

In winters past, we've usually sealed up the windows with the shrink wrap stuff. (See here.) It's not that expensive and saves a fair amount of money. We usually burn about one tank of oil a winter. I'm hoping for less this year.

But I don't like putting up the film and taking it down every year. It's wasteful. We have a few windows we've just left it up and the film seems to last a long time.

So this year I built a frame out of strapping and then insulated around the edge with weatherseal. (See here.) The result came out pretty well. There were a couple of tricks to it. For example, I had underestimated the amount of force the shrink wrap puts on the frame. This made the frame bow so I needed a brace in the middle to keep it straight. The additional cost/window was the cost of the strapping (3 pieces, about $5 bucks), a set of angle braces ($3) and the foam ($2). So about $8/window. However, that was for one. I can probably stretch out the strapping and foam across multiple windows. I'm estimating about $5/window over all. Given that a a single window is about $3.40, it needs to last about two years in order to break even. Of course, that doesn't count the electricity and aggravation of installation. In addition, if the shrink wrap stuff goes, I'll just add more shrink wrap. The frame is more or less permanent.

Not sure how to store the frames for the summer, though. But that's next year's problem.
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Wall of Idiots
Science and Media Disinformation
Climate change denial

Links of Interest
Ancient bristlecone pines
Alfred Russel Wallace's collection
Rings around the earth
Mice that resist age related hearing loss
Connection between suffocation and terror
New species galore
Ecobenefits of Organic Wine
Tramp stars
Ten views of earth, moon, and Mars
Hearing with the skin
Cassini flyby of Enceladus

DIY
Apple Cider
Corn Bread
Cheesecake
Quick trifle
Cider donuts
Godzilla Sparkleball
Tile pictures
Ping Pong Ball Lights
Homemade Christmas Gifts
Christmas ornaments and here
Christmas Crafts
Gift wrapping ideas