Good Mooorningggg Otowi!

We woke to a small amount of snow, the second measureable snow of the season...  The last having *just* melted off yesterday in our indian summers lasting until Solstice!

I've been burning fires hot for a month now, trying to keep the heat-mass of the house "up" and for the most part it has worked.   I burned about a half cord of wood left from last year(s) and procured another cord just last week.   It might be enough to squeek by on, but the wood was not ideal.   I hit this every year, whomever I try to get wood from promises things but delivers different.   The hardest part is getting consistently small pieces for the cookstove.   When they advertise 14"-16" I usually get a LOT of 16-20"
and even some >20", often in large diameters.   Most of it fits in the medium sized stove, all of it fits in the big stove in the sunroom but very little of it fits in the cookstove which is what we use most often. 

The sunroom has been doing well for having *still* been unfiinished.  I got all the storm windows repaired *only* to have two of the upper-deck exterior windows break.... leaving me with two of those single-paned!    One of the two bancos is in but the brick floor is not, the space is almost as insulated as it is going to ever be, and it is still a tad leaky...      So far, I've fired the stove in there maybe a dozen times, one or two, rarely three charges of wood.... and it is maintaining roughly 40-80 degrees which is suitable for the plants (Agave, Aloe, Elephant Ear) and probably ideal for some winter greens if I can ever be bothered.

Over the summer we had a mother bear and cub in the Bosque, a consequence of the fires in the mountains... the Pueblo Ranger caught Suzy out walking in the arroyos and ran her off... making it very difficult to walk the dog (twice?) daily as she seems to need.  It feels unfortunate, as we would rather be "just good neighbors" than unwelcome trespassers.   We've kept watch over their fences, roads, cows, horses and even a few teens from the pueblo wandering to the bosque with rifles... nothing extravagant, but we thought we were being good neighbors... calling in with unusual activity... I even hopped the back fence with boots, gloves, shovel to help one of the members maintain/watch a fire he had going in his fields...  I think he had it under control, but I also think he welcomed the company and the potential help.   But...

Solstice is nigh.  This Thursday at 5:30 AM it would seem... all downhill from there!

and Of Course (again)

I am totally remiss.   Today was the last heating day of the winter.

Actually today was the day I turned off the active Solar...  the 8'x12' section of hot air panels facing south (right into our now giant cottonwood) which pump heat into a rock-bed under the floor of our house.  I don't have a precise number on how much heat they provide to the house but I'd roughly guess half of our BTUs come in that way.   It tends to run for a few hours in the morning and a few in the afternoon when the big tree is not shading it completely. 

It still dips below freezing most every night and may for another month or more, but the  days, when sunny are in the 60's and the solar gain is high.   

I did some significant pruning on the tree's lower branches which might allow good sun in during the coldest months, when the sun is very low...     Fall and Spring are not as important in any case.  The new Sunroom will definitely pick up the added exposure right away.  The sunroom was dried in, 90% sealed and 50% insulated for the cold months.   It was dropping below freeze inside during the colder nights, sometimes even if I ran the woodstove.  Of course half the windows didn't have their double panes (snap-in-storms that were broken, now repaired), and half the ceiling insulation was not in, many of the cracks not sealed well, and the floor is dirt, not the heat-absorbing, higher specific-heat brick floor  and bancos planned.  For the moment it was merely a big insulator for the south side... in place of the R20 wall is probably the equivalent of an R100 buffer.   The heat-flywheel effect will be fairly important, especially if we have the courage to let it get hot in there in the Autumn, rather than follow our summer instincts to keep it as cool as possible!

We haven't burned wood for maybe a month, or maybe only once or twice.  I fire up the cookstove with a few days worth of trash (mostly junk-mail) on a cold morning and the warmth from that is often welcome in at least two ways!  We burned maybe 1.5 cords of wood this winter, compared to 2-2.5 normally.  Part is a mild winter, but some is the sunroom I'm sure.   And extra, large, convenient, airtight stove in the sunroom will make it easier to pump heat into the house "on-demand" and when the sun is not out, but also an opportunity to burn more wood.  The branches I pruned might yield as much as 1/4 cord...  again, a double bargain from the sun.   At $150/cord purchased, I don't mind a $300-$500 winter heating bill.   I plan to build some flues through the bancos/floor/etc.  to capture/re-radiate some of that heat, to add to the flywheel effect.  I might even couple in the solar heat system somehow... to pump that heat into the floor rock-bed.   It is, like life, all a big experiment.

Panorama from AutoStitch