Coldest day of the year here. I know we have nothing to complain about compared to you Northern folks, but this is about enough for me. Off to thaw some frozen pipes…
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You’ve got me beat Chris. 7F is my coldest so far. Now we are headed back up to maybe some 40’s. I’d do a happy dance but I’m afraid I might break something.
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Good Morning All
Having used up finally the very last FINALLY of this bugs nesting, partially rotten; held too long cottonwood by the end of November
in the December holiday month I had treated the wife with very dry clean Douglas Fir trunk wood
the picture deceives as there was actually three, ~4 foot high rows in the front of the truck, 8 feet across. An honest true cord measure.
Middle of January and it is mostly used up now
So here-on-now she gets a mix of the dry shown scrap dimensional wood now lengths cut with my new Milwaukee Hackzall. And some needs more drying; last Octobers windfall and was years on the ground laying stuff that had been September’s rained wetted
Be enough of these mixed for through about mid-March.
So any dogs drying and nights warming fires after that late March though May will have to come from this old deck tear off pile getting some sun then moderate surface layers drying
Plus a few hundred pounds of old books
Plus some pitch filled sap-down early winter cut fir branches getting cleaned up cut reduced down
We can; and have done this, learning just how much drying can be done in-house by crib stacked ahead 24 hours worth up-close to the wood stove. Have to hands monitor carefully for wood drying; then heating up. A feel thing. It gets lighter.
As related to using wood to make electricity only the in-truck kept-dry woods would have been useable in most guys gasifiers systems I’ve seen and operated.
So my goal for years has promoting woodgas-engine-genrator SYSTEMS to make electicity that would use ALL waste heats to be able to pre-dry and use any of these woods as input fuels. The wet woods woodstoving expriences “maths” say this is very possible.
I have long maintained that any wood-into-electricy dreaming has to begin with the real year around available wood. Otherwise at best you will be forced to decide; heat the house; or make electricity. Driving on this valuable pre-dried, conditioned wood, will be forced to take a distant third priority.
You want all of these done easy with summers sun dried down woods then you must become an unflagging eager Beaver. And have a very big woodshed - WayneK. Or become a wood stashing Squirrel.
Ha! J.O.'s; Tone’s and a few others home pictures shows these found realities.
Steve Unruh
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This seems like a waste (to burn books, that is) but I’m sure you are only heating with books of little or no value. I have seen more than a few times a truck from a charity shop at the local recycling/trash centre every time dumping among other things around 20 moving boxes of books that I guess noone wants to buy even priced at 50c - $1 so you might as well get a warmer house with it. I do that too, everything paper/cardboard goes in the boiler to give us some use for it instead of paying fuel to deliver burnable trash that will heat the nearest city.
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That is bikini weather! Just don’t tell us you broke your Speedo. 
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Char and I did a 15mile brrrrap today. I rolled my sled off a cliff and had to monitor my heart rate. It was good exercise, but I really am to old for the hill climb/ cliff jump.
The lake is not even frozen yet.
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Well if you want to feel like a kid again, you can get a Snurfer. 
Sorry I just saw a blip on it on the History channel. I had forgotten the name of the thing. I couldn’t stay on it… It was developed by Sherman Poppen in Muskegon, then Jake Burton Carpenter added binding to hold your feet to the board and made it wider, and that is now called the snowboard.
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Winter is easy when your stove runs on woodgas 
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Like this?
We’re running the driest wood I’ve ever burned this year. Greenhouse firewood is fantastic.
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Can you tell we feed our Quail?
Easy bird to trap for a food source, if SHTF. I will hopefully have some wild Turkeys to raise next spring and then let to run wild. My bees are all bundle up in their hives a few came out the other day when the sun was shining and the temperatures got up to 50°f three days ago.
Come on Spring we are waiting for you to come back.
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As Monty Python used to say, and now for something completely different. Today it’s 92F, 33C and down at the beach it’s quite busy. Could use a little cooling from up north.
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Not quite 33c here but close!
I wish… thats the greenhouse. Still the most pleasant semi outside thing now, with all the snow and cold… god l hate snow. Have l mentioned that before?
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Yes, you did. Would it help if you had some toys like Bruce?
Wow, such a ride is on my list. Never did that.
And
If you really want to monitor, try the lake before it is frozen. I dont want to rush you 
Sounds familiar, I cant keep up with the boys anymore too.
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And this one is on my list too. I have a unused bundle 1/2 inch pipe. Would that hold? No snowload expected. At least no more then 3 inch.
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you need 12kmh per 100kg (5mph per 150lbs) and you won’t sink on a snowmobile in open water.
Pushing it up a hill when it is stuck is a LOT more work and you can approach heart attack exhaustion. you have to get off it, hold the throttle and push it. They added reverse to snowmobiles for a reason, so you can back up and take another run at it, but that doesn’t always work out that well either.
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Pretty flimsy Joep. You would be better off using the pipe to build a geodesic dome.
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You are the dome promotor, and I understand why. I dont allow myself to think that way before I finish my woodgas project. Thanks, domes are really interesting
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This is the last Dome I built Joep. 44 years ago. 32 foot diameter. Built completely by myself. I strung a cable high line between some trees and hoisted the panels up until I could bolt them together. Not sure how I pulled it off alone and doubt I could ever do it again even if I were young. Too stupid and stubborn to not succeed then.
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All conditions offer up opportunities if you look for them. Takes the successive days of plus-2 inches (51mm) of raining to show this.
Here with the ground saturations of raining in November and December I can now see my front yard sloping and drainage Y shaping around the front of the house.
We need to add some real top soil back to the non-drainage-out areas that were in the past machine scraped away, piled-filled to make the blackyard and garden areas less sloping flats:
If I would fill just easy all across overall I would then just force rains water, and snows melts drainages directly under the house.
Ha! Ha! Engineering the way of the Ancients. Using water leveling, and flows. Don’t need no laser transit. Eyeballs; a brain; colored pencils and graph paper.
S.U.
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Some people think inside the box, some people think outside the box, and Tom thinks inside the geodesic dome.
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