Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Thanks a lot. Now I've got to find me something to eat.

AlanM wrote:You guys really have no room to complain.
I'm a moderator on an extremely large forum with people and moderators world wide.
Some of the moderators have NEVER in their (admittedly short compared to me) lives and at least one just today said that at their location in Estonia the high temperature was -28 °C ( 0 °F) and she said it'll get much colder.
The moderator in Kuching, Malaysia can't even conceive of the winter problems of the moderators in Quebec City, Canada and Sweden.

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OK, I know what you're talking about with folks who have no concept of winter. We rented an apartment to a lady from India a couple of years ago. Smart lady, too; she's got a PhD in biochemistry. Works at a demonstration plant that's making methanol from sawdust and other biomass. Last winter during the coldest spell we had (temperature hovered around zero for a week or 10 days), she had decided to go back to India to visit relatives. We have several tenants from India, all of whom work at the same place; and one prominent common trait is that they are very frugal when energy use is concerned. None of them ever use air conditioning and all of them complain about the cost of heating. So this lady turned her heat pump COMPLETELY OFF and left for 3 weeks. Upon her return, she called me at about 6PM on a Sunday night right at the end of that deep freeze to tell me she had had the heat back on for AT LEAST 30 minutes but her apartment hadn't gotten warm; and that by the way she didn't seem to have any water. When she told me what she'd done I told her that the heat pump would take quite a bit longer than 30 minutes to warm her apartment up from below freezing, but that I was sure that when they did, she'd have more damned water than she knew what to do with. And so she did. Had to send her to a hotel and completely re-plumb the place as well as do extensive drywall repairs. Even though her lease bore a conspicuous warning that the tenant must take care to protect the premises from freeze damage during cold weather, this highly educated, highly intelligent, very responsible, very nice lady blithely set both me and her up for an expensive weather-related disaster. The reason? She just had no concept of freezing weather and what it could do.

But as far as me having no right to complain about extreme weather for my locality because other people live in placed with more extreme weather, I ain't buying that. If it's outside the normal range of my experience and tolerance, I insist upon my absolute right to bitch about it. I'm human.

Dorm, ain't heard a thing you said after you talked "fried jawmeat."

Making soup beans this weekend. And Indians (Dot not feather) are PECULIAR bunch! Love the conversations, and the culture, but they make my tight jewness feel like I'm chuckin' $20 bills walking down main street.

Reverenddel wrote: And Indians (Dot not feather)

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That's priceless!

dorminWS wrote:

Reverenddel wrote: And Indians (Dot not feather)

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That's priceless!

I had to read that 4 times to figure it out.....great description.

Jack Frost can jump in a lake of fire. Hot hot fire.

I drove through 300 miles of freezing fog in the mountains, night before last. The road was slick as eel shhhnot. Fog was dense. The ice built up thick on my antennas. Killed my brand new K40 whip (glad I still had my Firestik antenna! )

And, to add to the excitement, most of those miles were in free range territory. That means that it would have been considered normal, locally speaking, had there been cows in the road. Cows. 1600lb creatures that will total a truck. Thank God the cows were, apparently, somewhere else.

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Even free range cows find shelter in those conditions.

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Heat pumps can't keep up with this. House is down to 55. And the fan on top of the pump is making ugly groaning noises. Not bad enough to malfunction but loud enough to have kept me awake all night. I'll be a zombie all day today and tonight doesn't look any better.

Fortunately, it appears to be easy to fix although the part is expensive.

FiremanBob wrote:Heat pumps can't keep up with this. House is down to 55. And the fan on top of the pump is making ugly groaning noises. Not bad enough to malfunction but loud enough to have kept me awake all night. I'll be a zombie all day today and tonight doesn't look any better.

Fortunately, it appears to be easy to fix although the part is expensive.

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It should have emergency resistance heat coils that actually feels like warmer heat because it puts out hotter air but costs a bloody fortune that kicks in when it's this cold. At least ours do.

Yes, it does cost a fortune. We are avoiding that step.

FiremanBob wrote:Yes, it does cost a fortune. We are avoiding that step.

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Unfortunately, it can't be avoided out here. Basically, you can only have a heat pump part of the time for 2-3 months of the year. This would be a good place for those geothermal ones, except it's hard to get deep enough in this sandstone.

The rental we live in is all electric. Heat pump, lights, deep well pump, everything.
A couple of winters ago power was out for 3 and a half days.
I became a human burrito. Wrapped in three comforters.
Had to sleep most of the time because I live in the basement with few windows so even reading was problematic.

That is why we keep a small propane heater around just in case of disaster like that.

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Around noon, I was able to remove the top of the HP and clean/lube the fan shaft with dry Teflon lube. The unit has worked smoothly and quietly ever since.

The bearing is meant to be greased, so this lube job may not last very long, but it sure is nice to have a silent, free-spinning fan again. We'll sleep well tonight for the first time all week.

At least tomorrow will be warm enough for the motorcycle.