Coping with Snow

[syo***]

Here's the corner from the main driveway...all the neighbors yards are just as full of snow and the driveway itself has almost become a one-lane street now as there are huge snowbanks on either side.

Say, Dee...
Is that ladder leading to the second floor there in case you can't get out the front door? At first I conceived of this question as a joke and then it seemed to me that might be it's purpose after all (considering all that snow).

[deeaa*]

Yes full log built houses are made here as well, but not just with the log except for summer houses, usually there's a foot of insulation to boot. My summer house is built of solid logs a foot thick but you can't really stay there in winter as it has no other insulation than wood and only twin plated windows too. Wood is what we have plenty of here indeed, I myself probably own a thousand pines and spruces, birches and such...impossible to count of course. How many trees are there in a couple of hectares of woods? I've no idea.

My house was made in 53' and it's been renovated, and it's built of wood - not solids - but there's nearly dozen layers of wood and insulation; from inside it goes like : gypsum sheet, moisture seal (aluminum sheet), wood plank layer, 4 inch wood bars every two feet with the gap in between filled with sawdust, another layer of wood planks, a ventilation gap, a third layer of thicker planks (about an inch thick, then another 4x4 support stucture now layered with 4 inches of glass fibre insulation, then a thick kind of woollen type but hard windbreaker layer, then a wood wall with an air gap, then the outer wall.

For electricity, including heating, my bill is about $3200 per annum, but I also use wood to burn for which I spend ~300 more per year. Somewhere around 25.000 KW/h I believe off the top of my head for electricity, and the biggest bulk of it is of course heating...so I'd say three grand a year is a good estimate for heating costs.

[deeaa*]

Hehe, nope it's just the mandatory fire escape ladder.

[kiteman]

Hehe, nope it's just the mandatory fire escape ladder.

Either that or your daughter can sneak out and elope.

[kidsmoke*]

Diggin' the Peugeot, too. Use to be lots of those around back in the day. Haven't been imported to the US for, I don't know....25 years??

Still, all that snow gives you a reason to head outdoors, Chicago gets very little, comparatively, so there's nothing to do for 5 months....

I'm guessing you have a pretty good machine to help with your efforts.

[deeaa*]

Peugeots are quite popular here; they aren't hugely expensive and come in a big variety of roomy sizes for the price. Moreover they are very good drivers and don't rust at all thanks to being galvanized. Very sensible trusty cars, if not exuding class or germanic ruggedness. Divide opinions, I guess.

Being French many people complain they've got lots of small nuisances and electrical issues; I myself don't think they have any more than others, but thanks to some people sneering at any other than German-made etc cars, or some who will only buy a Toyota...anyway Peugeots are quite reasonably priced used. Not as cheap as the other 'Baguettes' like Citroen and Renault, but still pretty affordable.

As for the daughter thing - good thing I haven't any :-) but I myself did use them ladders from my room countless summer nights in my early teens to slip out when I was supposed to be sleeping...(I've lived in this house since I was seven years old or so)

[Robert****]

Here's what our streets looks like right now.

We got 54 cm of snow in 2 days.

[deeaa*]

Here's what our streets looks like right now.

We got 54 cm of snow in 2 days.

Could be shot from our street in the spring when it's starting to melt (road seems pretty melted).

[sunvalleylaw]

Beautiful picture deeaa! I love all the snow covered trees. As you know, we have a winter wonderland over here, but it is more high desert with skinny pine and fir trees as opposed to the big forests I grew up with in the Cascades.

We need some new snow too. We started out well, but have been dry for a few weeks now. We need that jet stream to re-set itself and stop dumping on all those eastern cities that don't really want or need it.

[marnold***]

Actually, if you want to see snow, go up to the Keweenaw peninsula in Michigan's upper peninsula. Because it juts out into Lake Superior, it just gets nailed with lake-effect snow. Michigan Tech keeps track of the annual snowfall. If you go back, just about every decade has one year with 300+ inches. Perhaps not coincidentally, the vast majority of people up there are of Finnish descent.

If you go up to Houghton (where Tech is) or Calumet you will find a lot of homes with doors on the second floor that go to nowhere. It looks very odd in the summer, but that is the only way to get out in the winter. A good friend of mine went to Tech. He said that one of the big things to do in the winter is to jump out the third floor windows of the dorms. Normally that would be suicidal, but in the winter there's plenty of snow to catch you.

By way of comparison, Green Bay has had a couple of record snowfall years recently, with totals of ~87 inches. Average is roughly 47 inches. "Frozen tundra" indeed.

[Tig***]

70 degrees F and partly cloudy today.... What snow?