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2021-2022 Winter weather thread for non-Texans

Parliament

By Parliament
in Daily Texan

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 103148

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

Less than a year after we moved out to our cabin they built a cell tower about 4 miles from us.  We don't have electricity or plumbing, but we can stream and browse what ever we want.  The generator keeps devices charged.

Ever give any thought to using renewable power of some sort to charge your stuff?  A solar panel or two (yeah, I know, it varies wildly over the course of the year as to how much it can really generate)?  A small wind turbine?  Always seemed to me that in terms of putting juice into your house to charge batteries and whatnot, things like that could do the job, as you can store the energy in batteries and battery banks.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 103148

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1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:


I never gave much thought to a wood stove until we stayed in a cabin in Montana. We started a fire in the wood stove in the living room before bed. Our room was 2 bedrooms down from it. Around 2AM it was so fucking hot I had to open a window and let in some 10 degree air. I couldn’t believe how much heat that thing put out.

Yeah, my limited experience with them is that they are quite effective.  Was just curious about what real-world experience with them in extreme conditions was like.

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davidg

davidg 4015

Posted
Posted
Ever give any thought to using renewable power of some sort to charge your stuff?  A solar panel or two (yeah, I know, it varies wildly over the course of the year as to how much it can really generate)?  A small wind turbine?  Always seemed to me that in terms of putting juice into your house to charge batteries and whatnot, things like that could do the job, as you can store the energy in batteries and battery banks.

600w of solar panels, 300ah @ 24V of battery and a 2kw inverter/charger would probably take care of almost all of his power needs. Still need to use a small generator when the panels snow/ice up but would be ok during most of the summer.

What do you do for water moose? Do you have a well or collect from a spring or public source?
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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Ever give any thought to using renewable power of some sort to charge your stuff?  A solar panel or two (yeah, I know, it varies wildly over the course of the year as to how much it can really generate)?  A small wind turbine?  Always seemed to me that in terms of putting juice into your house to charge batteries and whatnot, things like that could do the job, as you can store the energy in batteries and battery banks.

 

17 minutes ago, davidg said:


600w of solar panels, 300ah @ 24V of battery and a 2kw inverter/charger would probably take care of almost all of his power needs. Still need to use a small generator when the panels snow/ice up but would be ok during most of the summer.

What do you do for water moose? Do you have a well or collect from a spring or public source?

Where we live gets hardly any wind, so a wind turbine is just not worth it.  We've toyed with installing a battery system with an inverter, but stuff like that is probably around twice the price up here as you would pay for it in the lower 48.  The biggest drawback to a battery system for us is the space it would occupy in the cabin.  We realistically only have about 350 sq ft of living space when you take out the footprint of the woodstove and the clearance it needs around it.  We utilize basically every inch of it already.  That leaves solar panels, which are great in the summer when it's light all the time.  But right now we get less than 5 hours of daylight a day.  We're gaining light now, but 24 hours of daylight is still a ways away.  We'd have to run the genny to charge the battery bank up any way.

We've got 5 battery packs that I take to work and charge on a rotation.  That usually gets her iPad and blue tooth speaker charged for the week.  On the weekends we have to run the genny to charge things up.  We run the genny every morning because we are insufferable coffee snobs and I have to have my Nespresso before I head to work.

We get our drinking water from a local restaurant/bar.  They have a coin op dispenser that dishes out 5 gallons for a quarter.  We haul it in those blue Coleman water cubes.  We have 7 of those, so when everything is full we have 35 gallons.  We melt snow on the woodstove for humidity and dishwashing water.  We usually only have to fill drinking water once a week in the winter.

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

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2 hours ago, Parliament said:

You and your wife alone in a phone booth all winter.  I presume you screw alot.

 

ETA

And post pics.  Not of the screwing.  Pics of your house.

We do.  What else is there to do at 30 below with 3 hours of daylight.

I will try and find some pics of the cabin to post.  I'd take some tonight when I get home, but it's dark all the time.

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davidg

davidg 4015

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Posted
Here are some random pics
987569B7-7C88-4B83-A748-C11521A37A55.thumb.jpeg.8a1cd09a6e66ea3c0a41fc88ad6e1c1d.jpeg[/url]


Chemistry, huh?

That YouTube channel has some videos early on about their solar system. Batteries located in a vented, insulated box outside and inverter/charger inside. If you aren’t running a well pump, you would have very little power needs.
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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, davidg said:

 


Chemistry, huh?

That YouTube channel has some videos early on about their solar system. Batteries located in a vented, insulated box outside and inverter/charger inside. If you aren’t running a well pump, you would have very little power needs.

 

Biology minor

i’ll check it out. Thanks. 

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

Posted
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2 hours ago, Parliament said:

So is living that way common there? Or are you guys a buncha weirdos?

Quite a few of us live dry in Denali. We are one of the few who don’t have electricity. Probably a couple hundred if us or so. Electricity is the game changer, but it’s expensive to get. Our cabin is 28 to 30 poles away from getting electrified, but it costs $6000 per pole. 

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

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4 hours ago, Hate said:

Kind of sounds like how us Texans lived last February and it sucked.  We only had to do it for 5 days.  I'm not really sure how anyone handles that for years at a time.

We’re set up to deal with it and have spent years perfecting our system. It’s what works for us. You can’t expect to know what to do and how to deal with it in 5 days. The only thing you can do is learn from your mistakes and be better/more prepared next time. 
 

My mom lives in Abilene. She said it got to -3 there. She was out of power for a week. It was a trip telling her what to do to stay warm. She was clueless. 

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Schulz2.0

Schulz2.0 28616

Posted
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10 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, my limited experience with them is that they are quite effective.  Was just curious about what real-world experience with them in extreme conditions was like.

When my wife and I lived outside of Saratoga Springs, NY we used our wood stove pretty frequently to heat our house. It was a house from the late 1800s (so the insulation sucked) and it usually got into the single digits at night. I would normally use a box fan on low to help transfer heat, but you don't need any electricity otherwise. They're fairly simple to use. I liked it.

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Shoxthemonkey

Shoxthemonkey 1972

Posted
Posted

This weather has been as strange as any I can remember. I played golf in shorts and a tee shirt yesterday. Today the high will be in the low 20's and the winds are gusting to 30-35. We'll be back in the 50's for the weekend. Crazy shit.

After seeing @mooseoutfront pictures, I feel pretty comfy with our situation.

 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 103148

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Part of me TOTALLY would love to live the mooseoutfront way for a year or two.  Don't think my wife would be too excited about it, though.

Another question I have about all the game you shoot and meat you store -- where?  In a freezer?  I mean, it's not below freezing all the time, so if you just leave it in outside storage, it may go bad.  But if you use a freezer, how is it powered?

Also......bathing......how do y'all do that?  I mean, if you're each going into someplace to work, maybe they have showers there, so that would solve it, but I'm curious.

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

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2 hours ago, Hate said:

Is that a picture of your "cabin"?  It looks more like a "tarp house". I'm not judging or criticizing, but I am trying to understand how anyone could survive the temps you see in a tarp tent.

No, that's a wall tent.  That is a buddy's moose camp.  A guy he took out hunting with him got that pic of the tent and the Northern lights in the sky.  They go after trophy moose.  His moose camp is about a 50 mile wheeler ride from the highway.  And it's a tough ride.  They usually go out to camp and hunt for 2 to 3 weeks at a time.  I try for little guys.  It's only my wife and I, so we don't need that much meat.  Plus the smaller guys taste better.  The antlers I'm holding in that pic upthread is the biggest moose I've ever shot, a 46 1/4" spread.  Trophy moose start at 60".  The biggest moose I've ever seen taken had a 73" spread.  That thing was fucking huge.  Each hind quarter weighed almost 300 pounds.

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Part of me TOTALLY would love to live the mooseoutfront way for a year or two.  Don't think my wife would be too excited about it, though.

Another question I have about all the game you shoot and meat you store -- where?  In a freezer?  I mean, it's not below freezing all the time, so if you just leave it in outside storage, it may go bad.  But if you use a freezer, how is it powered?

Also......bathing......how do y'all do that?  I mean, if you're each going into someplace to work, maybe they have showers there, so that would solve it, but I'm curious.

Our good friend and basically mentor up here has electricity.  We have two chest deep freezers plugged in at his house.  He lived for 20 years like we do, but then he started getting old and built a place off the highway with electricity and indoor plumbing.  He is the best woodsman I've ever been around.  I've learned a shit ton from him.  I'm extremely fortunate he is in my life.

I'm also fortunate that my job has shower and laundry facilities that are available for me to use.  So that part is easy for me.  My wife usually bathes at the cabin out of a small washtub.  She has her system down to the point that she can wash her hair and bathe in less than 3 gallons of water.  But she's a tiny little thing at 5'2".  I'm a pretty big guy at 6'5".  I have bathed at home, but it's a cluster fuck for me.

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mooseoutfront

mooseoutfront 3615

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8 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Is that where you masturbate?

Fuck no.

I've lived with my wife in a 400 square foot cabin for 10 years.  There is no such thing as privacy or shame.  If she's not willing to help, I wank it while lying next to her in bed.  She'll even pass me a tissue when it's clean up time.

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12691

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Posted

Well shit, there is a REAL winter weather thread.

 

Glad to share my Winchester (Boston suburb) and NorthEast Kingdom (our mountain fixer upper) experiences with people that know what the cold is really about. Not sure I can hit the temps moose is hitting, and our mountain place is much more ski house than cabin.

The mountain place has been a recent add since we haven't had any travel expenses the last few years for obvious reasons. We got it for the view out the back.

 

JY_hId6A.thumb.jpeg.1ecb088ca61b956814d27dfadb6baf17.jpeg

 

I've set up a weather station there after the new year to see just how bad it gets there. We were there over the long MLK weekend, it barely got above 10 during that weekend.

https://ambientweather.net/dashboard/c7afcbe6295f06b62e280d9444609f9f

 

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Al_4_ISU

Al_4_ISU 12199

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Well shit, there is a REAL winter weather thread.

 

Glad to share my Winchester (Boston suburb) and NorthEast Kingdom (our mountain fixer upper) experiences with people that know what the cold is really about. Not sure I can hit the temps moose is hitting, and our mountain place is much more ski house than cabin.

The mountain place has been a recent add since we haven't had any travel expenses the last few years for obvious reasons. We got it for the view out the back.

 

JY_hId6A.thumb.jpeg.1ecb088ca61b956814d27dfadb6baf17.jpeg

 

I've set up a weather station there after the new year to see just how bad it gets there. We were there over the long MLK weekend, it barely got above 10 during that weekend.

https://ambientweather.net/dashboard/c7afcbe6295f06b62e280d9444609f9f

 

Looks beautiful.  I assume that's somewhere in the northern Appalachians.  Adirondacks?  Whites?

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