Moose in the hood

This was the view from the top of our driveway this morning (zoomed to max):














He/she let us get a little closer:
















I'll spare you the third shot of a blurry butt.

Ice too

Last night we had dinner with a couple visiting scientists and they expressed interest in visiting the ice park. I hadn't been either this year and was curious to see it in its new home (just a mile from the old place). There might be fewer entries than in years past, but there was still some very nice work - and not much sign of melt yet.

These are from the single block entries. It started off with a sea creature theme:
































The feathers were in amazing shape for almost a month after the judging. The raven is sitting on a nifty 3-D object.

















I took this picture because we've been listening to the Dark Tower series - it has free-standing doors.



















Next is the multiblock category:










































This won the multiblock first prize - just amazing (the photo doesn't do justice to the hedgehog):

Snow and a guest

First of all, we have a guest who is staying for three weeks:


















She's pretty fun and not too skittish:













About ten days ago we got a bunch of snow. One evening, we shoved at least 12 inches of light fluffy powder. In the morning, we shoveled another 8 inches:














This view of the road is artificially darkened so you can see the tire tracks of some neighbors who went by before the plow did:















We had to leave before the plow came as well - we just followed the tracks and were lucky enough not to meet anyone before we came to some maintained roads. The snow on all the trees was really pretty:














But then the wind came up...

In past years, we shoveled a path clear to the wood pile along the left side of the house. This year, we gave up and are going around the long way:































That day we rode out the tracks, we were in the Subaru, no problem. Then this past Monday we took it to the shop for a gas filling problem - air wasn't venting to make room for the incoming gasoline. They still have the Subaru, so we've been driving the Mazda - we've gotten stuck going up our driveway and by the mailboxes. Have shovel, will dig.

The wind has been doing amazing things with the snow, making these little overhanging shelves:

sun and snow

I wanted to try that snow picture again. Here you might see two drifts across the road due to the opening that is our driveway:











Rob has since gone out with the shovel and reduced them a bit.

The other surprise is that we had sun coming into the house this past weekend!!
















Of course, winter sun can sometimes be associated with clear cold nights. We didn't go far on Saturday what with -50 F at the airport and dense ice fog in town. Then we went to town on Sunday and no one came to our class - even though we had to go. We almost hit a moose coming home after dark.

drifting snow

The picture in the last post is from a few weeks ago. We've just had a long string of cold weather. Now it's a bit warmer, but blowing like you wouldn't believe! Here's a drift by the front door:

















And a drift by the garage door:

















Venturing outside, there's a drift by the yarn shed:















I tried to enhance the contrast some, but it's still tough to see. What we get at the top of the driveway is drifting across the road:














It comes from this big opening in the trees along the road:















Again, do not drive beyond the orange flags! That way lies madness (or at least cursing):














View of that front door drift from the other side:

















Note that the snow is well packed and supports my weight (mostly).

It's winter!

It's been cold around here. In the new house, we can regulate the humidity, so it's more humid than the old house this time of year. It leads to dampness in some places:

















This is the door from the garage to the outdoors.

In other news, I was in Anchorage last week and got to see Denali on the way home. I was supposed to be flying home after dark, but a friend was on the same flight - he thought - until he realized he'd book his return for July 20. So he called the airline to arrange an earlier flight.

Resistance is Futile! Our Inverter has been re-assimilated!

Renewable energy system update!  The new monitoring system is up and running.  We can control whether the inverter is on or off.  At present, we can turn the inverter off on demand and it will automatically turn the power back on when the battery bank is nearly depleted.  We now need to look into extending this time period by using a separate battery bank and small inverter.  Being able to control the inverter electronically is a big step forward.

The next piece is adding more logic to the system.  A piece of critical logic is to have the system turn the inverter back on when it detects that the temperature of the house reaches a critical level.  The (below) graphic shows a green line that is closer to ZERO amps.  Instead of burning 4 to 6 amps continuously, we can make the system idle so it is only using 0.3 to 0.5 amps.

Using the ability to turn the system off, it looks like we can go to running the generator every third day instead of every second day.  Say, we need to run the generator from Oct to Feb (appox. 151 days).  Every 2nd day would be 75 generator runs times 10 run hours or 750 engine hours.  Every third day is 50 generator runs or 500 engine hours.  Good deal!

Here is a curious device for those with wood stoves and are off grid.  How about powering some lights from your wood stove?  Up to 13.9V at 30 Watts?  I've not tested this yet, but here is a link:
http://www.tegpower.com/pro1.htm.