What a rush!

[altivo]

Well, the good news is the heat pump system is working again. All it took was adding some water to the geothermal loop and bringing the pressure back up. The tech says he maintains another installation like ours and it needs a water transfusion about once every three years. This is the first time we've had to do ours, and it was installed eight years ago. Water does escape from apparently closed systems, I know. I have to top up my waterbed mattress a couple of times a year. It has no apparent leaks, but still loses water slowly somehow.

Today's weather here in Illinois has been altogether remarkable. This morning we had temperatures in the 52°F range. By about 1:00 pm fog was forming, and it got very dense. Then about 2:45 the fog disappeared in a matter of seconds and the thermometer began to drop. In just 15 minutes it was down to 38°F. At 3:00 we had a brief but heavy shower of cold rain. By 4:00 pm the temperature was down to freezing and still dropping.

In the course of the afternoon, in the state of Illinois alone, we had a tornado watch, a severe thunderstorm warning, a wind chill advisory, a blizzard warning, a winter storm warning, a flood warning, a high wind advisory, and just about everything else possible except for a severe heat warning and an earthquake. When I left work at 5:00 pm, the temperature was well below freezing, my windshield had an eighth of an inch of ice that needed scraping, and the road surfaces were becoming dangerously slick as the moisture from earlier in the afternoon froze.

We now have very light snow falling and howling winds that are probably gusting to 50 mph or more. And it's getting really cold. The predicted low for tonight is -2°F. That's a drop of over 50 degrees F. in an eight hour period. I've restarted the woodstove because even working at full efficiency our heat pump requires assistance at that low a temperature. Tomorrow is supposed to be bitter cold, but by the weekend we'll be above freezing again. This roller coaster stuff is not typical, believe me. I don't remember ever seeing anything like it, and the largest temperature drop in a short time that I've ever experienced was still less than 30 degrees.

Comments

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

When I came home from physical therapy, it was white-out conditions.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Apparently the snow part of it all split, with one mass going north into Wisconsin and the other branching off toward the more southerly suburbs, so we didn't get any. That seems to happen much more frequently than would seem logical, as if there were a mountain out near Rockford around which it had to divide, leaving us in the shadow as it were.

We've had only a very light dusting of snow, but the wind and cold is fierce enough. It's -4F as I write.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Yesterday here it was in the upper 30s (and had been in the 40s over the weekend) but that later dropped rather rapidly and Jay noted the barometer reading low and falling. It was well below freezing last night, and with wind enough to be noticed here where wind is plenty common. This morning it started out plenty cold and the forecast high was revised downward a few times. One web site even listed it at first as 9 F followed by a down arrow and finally settled at 7 F when the temperature got that high. It's -6 F here as I write and I know it's cold out not just from that, but also from the furnace kicking into "high gear." That's where it uses more of the burner(s) and a higher fan setting. When not this cold out I don't notice the lower fan setting nearly as much.

And things are supposed to warm up (for MN Winter values of warm, low 20s F) this weekend. But tonight it's supposed to drop to -17 F. The wind has slacked off back down to something more normal, though still quite unpleasant at these temperatures.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I did notice that MN was in the "purple" on the colored temperature map well before we were projected to get it. It was actually colder here at the end of last week than it is right now, but the wind was worse last night so the wind chill made it seem the coldest we've been all year.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Hooray for heat! I wonder if water vapor can seep out through connectors and seals? One would think so. I looked at ground-source heat pumps when I was having this house built, but it was going to be an extra $10,000.

That's some weird wacky weather you're having out there X.X

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I guess water vapor does find ways to escape. I dunno what the actual pressure and temperature gets to be in that loop. It really works great in the summer when we want the air conditioning, hardly shows anything on the electric bill at all. We're probably pushing the system to its limits with this kind of cold, but that's why we have a woodstove as well. It includes a conventional electric forced air heating system as a backup, but as I've noted that's so expensive to run when it's cold like this that we try to keep it from activating.

Yes, $10,000 was about what it cost to install this, largely due to the cost of drilling the wells for the heat transfer, but after eight years I can say that it was probably worth it. We've only had two repairs, both minor, and the cost of heating even with the wood for the stove added in is far less than our immediate neighbors spend. We accidentally saw an electric bill for the neighbors on one side this fall and it was over a thousand dollars for one month. Ours is rarely over $300 and usually around $200.

Of course I could yearn for the days when I lived in Lansing, Michigan and my monthly electric bills were about $12. I wonder if their utopian system has been wrecked yet. Probably. (The local electric power grid was owned and operated by a city department as a non-profit, and it actually worked.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well that made me go look. The Board of Water and Light still provides electricity, water, and steam to Lansing area residents. I'm sure the rates have gone up, but I'll bet they are much lower than commercial rates. The steam thing is particularly interesting. Ever since the service was chartered by a public vote in 1885, they have piped the excess steam from the generator plant to nearby homes and businesses. I never lived within the region where that was possible, though it extends for a couple of miles from the actual power plant. I had a friend who was "in the zone" and his house had steam radiators even though he had no boiler. He received a monthly "steam bill" that was ridiculously cheap, like $2.50. Of course by that time the cost of the physical installation had long been amortized, the cost of the actual waste steam was zero, and the bills were just paying for repairs and maintenance on the distribution system.

Like the cable cars in San Francisco, Lansing's utility system is a working artifact of a different age, one that continues to function well even though no one would ever consider building such a thing today.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

We started getting some serious wind here around 2am.

BBQ tossed. Stuff on deck....err....missing? Sadie, panicking. Building, creaking like an old ship.

Sleep? Forget it.

*yawn*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It was roaring here by 10 pm but this morning everything is clear and sunny. Not much wind, thank goodness, because the temperature is -4F. That's cold enough without the wind.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Glad you got your system up!

As for the weather, well, I commiserate.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, we're glad too. It's working much better on the heating cycle than it has ever before, I think, so it may not have been set quite right to begin with. Not to say we don't still need the woodstove with the outside temperature lingering around zero, but this is an improvement.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of weather!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've seen some complex weather situations before but that was the biggest mess I've ever seen in one fairly small area at the same time.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Look out your window and what do you spy?
Rain falling out of a sunshiny sky!
It's changing to hail-stones that weigh half a ton
With seven live frogs hopping out of each one
It's not Armageddon, stop wailing of sin
It's only the Gods at wine-tasting again!

So drink, drink to Charlie Fort's memory
Marvelous doings and marvelous sights
Drink, drink: we may as well join them
The Gods are not crazy, they're higher than kites!

(An excerpt from one of my favorite filks by one Leslie Fish.)

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*snickers and flattens his ears*

Leslie Fish writes clever lyrics, but isn't musical to my ears at all. Now maybe you could do it justice.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah - Leslie herself admits her voice is anything but angelic, but as you say she certainly write good lyrics, and we can hardly fault her enthusiasm :)

I've done that one as a duet with a bass singer, and it was lots of fun.

I've got LOTS more Fish music and some of other writers (including my own) and will gladly sing for you when we finally get to meet.

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Thats a lot of warnings in one day O.O, I must say this geothermal cooling and heating sounds very interesting, I'm surprised they don't do it more here.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's not very popular here either. Two reasons: it costs a lot more for the initial installation, and you need enough space for the heat exchange wells. It's probably not suitable for small urban or suburban plots.

There's also an issue with building codes in some places I think. Those are often written to deliberately stop people from doing anything unusual.