Thread: Cold weather

That was a big bite Eskimo! [emoji1]
Seriously though, nice work on your sustainable energy setup!

Simon

The really crazy part is to run LED house lighting. They suck so little power to light the rooms I'm in in the evening, the inverter display
registers no significant draw! CF lights don't start well in the cold = by the time I'm done in that room, those stupid bulbs haven't even warmed up>>>garbage.
Plus, the LEDs are pointed in the direction of value, they don't spray useless light all over the house.

I need more deep cycle batteries = that's where I store the juice, that's where I get the juice to feed the inverter.
Friend of mine has 12 x 12VDC Caterpillar batteries. How I wish.

Canberra can be a bit cool in the winter and every Sunday I spend 11 hours selling Ugg Boots and slippers etc in a huge unheated, cold, drafty concrete floored ex bus garage.

Customers and other stall holders are amazed that I don't wear Ugg boots myself as their feet are freezing

$12.50 insoles - Clark thin closed cell foam with a sheepskin upper layer sewn to it

Makes any shoe into the bottom half of an Ugg boot

Magic

Neil

Originally Posted by brontehls

Canberra can be a bit cool in the winter and every Sunday I spend 11 hours selling Ugg Boots and slippers etc in a huge unheated, cold, drafty concrete floored ex bus garage.

luxury!

I have driving snow blasting in at me with gale forced winds through a gaping hole in the roof at 3am while I'm on my lathe. The tea turns to a solid chunk of ice in mere minutes.

There is only dirt on the floor and it's so cold I've seen the wood fire freeze solid!

My rags are so thin I can almost see through them and as for shoes! Bah! I use old burlap sacks and a bit of electrical wire to hold them on!

Pure luxury!

Originally Posted by simonl

That was a big bite Eskimo! [emoji1]


Simon

it was meant to be a swipe at our now defunct carbon tax....obviously, it didnt go across that way tho...lol

Originally Posted by Evanism

luxury!

I have driving snow blasting in at me with gale forced winds through a gaping hole in the roof at 3am while I'm on my lathe. The tea turns to a solid chunk of ice in mere minutes.

There is only dirt on the floor and it's so cold I've seen the wood fire freeze solid!

My rags are so thin I can almost see through them and as for shoes! Bah! I use old burlap sacks and a bit of electrical wire to hold them on!

Pure luxury!

And I suppose that when you go out to milk the cows, you break the milk off in sticks?

Alan...

My dad grew up on a farm just outside the capital city of Regina, Saskatchewan. Winter blizzards of -30C and 3 days still happened when I was a kid.
Anyway, they had rope handlines from the house to all of the livestock buildings. If you lost your sense of direction, they'd find you in the spring when the snow melted.

I don't mind the snowy winters in this mountain village. Several heliski companies fly out of here. McBride was voted the top snowmobile destination in North America so those people are here by the hundreds and big spenders, too. 300km groomed XC & snowmobile trails and some warming cabins but I'm sure they're nothing like the Cleve Cole Hut up on the Bogong High Plains (did that in winter). My workshop is the room next to the kitchen where the wood stove runs 24/7 so it's 17C or better = my wood carving season.

Originally Posted by Evanism

luxury!

I have driving snow blasting in at me with gale forced winds through a gaping hole in the roof at 3am while I'm on my lathe. The tea turns to a solid chunk of ice in mere minutes.

There is only dirt on the floor and it's so cold I've seen the wood fire freeze solid!

My rags are so thin I can almost see through them and as for shoes! Bah! I use old burlap sacks and a bit of electrical wire to hold them on!

Pure luxury!

Isn't that a Monty Python sketch?

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

Not a freakin' chance. I'm carbon ZERO = what the trees take out, I replace. I run solar power. We run gigawatts of hydroelectric power. Not a particularly steep carbon footprint when compared with a country full of methane-pharting cattle and coal-fired electical supply. Not to say you don't do better and the tax breaks ought to be fantastic. However, BIG OIL does not want your government to give you the chance. Step up to the wicket. What are you waiting for? Stuph them.

Big oil doesn't run the coal fired power stations in this country and it doesn't own alot of farms so why blame them for this country's backwards approach to green energy? At one stage BP (an oil company) was the leading supplier of PV systems. Why not direct the barbs at the foreign companies that own a majority of our energy utilities?

A large part of the problem is the lack of financial incentive to install environmentally friendly technologies such as PV systems, battery based domestic power systems, waste water treatment systems etc...and that comes down primarily to a government with a lack of foresight and the power of utility companies in this country to simply up their rates to maintain their profit margin as soon as they start losing customers who take up the new technologies.

I'm about to build a new house and Id love to install a huge PV system, a battery based domestic power system and grey water treatment system....BUT it's just not financially viable. The pay back periods on all these systems is just far too long. Even running the house on rain water will barely break even over the expected life of the tanks. Ill instal a PV system that just meets my day time consumption and the house will run on rain water...but that's all I'll be doing.

We ran our house on 2 x 5000 gallon rainwater tanks for 20 odd years, no real problems apart from buying 5 odd truckloads of water (approx 2000 gal each) during severe droughts.

Then a new estate was developed nearby and town water was part of the developers requirement. Didn't bother me - Wrong - council said it went past my boundary, therefore they had supplied it and I had to pay the supply fees whether I connected or not.

In other words check out the fine print if you are thinking of going off the grid for water.