It has been really cold the last few weeks, but now it is warming up, which means fresh snow. However, that also means snow work needs to be done, though it wasn't too bad today because it was pretty light snow still. But the weather is getting warmer, which means a lot of this is going to melt and turn into ice and sludge, and it isn't going to be pleasant. I will have to go and buy some gravel to sprinkle over the ground so we don't go ass over tit.
Our terrace looks pretty though.
By tomorrow, there will be squirrel footprints crisscrossing the snow, as the little fellas lives up in our eaves. They have been there for a couple years already, and they move in after the swifts have vacated at the end of the summer, and out again when they return in the late spring.
As said, it has been cold and I mentioned last week that our heating kept going out. Well, the fuse it is on kept burning through and I had to replace it every day and a half, and then reset the heating and other appliances and blah blah. So we called the heating installers (since we have had problems with it for five years already) and they sent out an electrician. He discovered that the original installers had put far too much running through the same circuits, so he had to spend a couple hours separating them out. Hopefully now, it isn't going to burn the fuse again.
If it does, they will keep coming until it is fixed.
We have had so many issues with our heating system which was meant to be easy and hassle-free. If we could go back in time, we would have spent the extra 15K (32K all up) and gone with thermal heating. It would have been far cheaper overall, as the cost of energy has skyrocketed, and especially when very cold, we have to use a lot of electricity still. If we win the lottery, I will make the change and scrap what we have.
Otherwise, we are stuck with it for 25 years.
By then though, perhaps we will be able to get district heating powered by small nuclear reactors, as they are starting to go into development and testing in the next few years here. Until there is a better alternative, I am all for more nuclear energy, especially if it can be done in simpler, safer, smaller scale ways.
Ideally, we will invent something even better.
If only we stopped spending on killing each other.
Unfortunately, humans are a shonky bunch of people, with many who would claim to be "good", just as bad as the worst. But of course, we can always find ways to justify our behaviour, no matter how inauthentic and disingenuous it may be. Like the people who have a silver cross around their neck, whilst scamming, stealing, defrauding and killing people for a little bit of money. Because if these kinds of people will be dishonest for so little, just imagine what some will do for a lot.
So no, I don't expect much valuable innovation that makes the world a significantly better place in the next few years, or decades. More likely we will keep descending down into the abyss until the fires of hell will keep me warm at night, and I won't have to worry about any kind of heating system.
Fingers crossed.
Taraz
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Oh man i hear you anout the snow. As a matter of fact, i am sitiing in my curation chair looking out at it and procrastinating heeding out deal with the snowblower. -13 and windy too so this wont be fun.
Most heating here is natural gas central furnaces and i have been lucky so far. The prospect of these same morons living next to me with a nuclear generator they will inadvertently crater the neighbourhood with foolishness doesn’t excite me. I almost can’t see past the time of the orange shit stain and his party of idiotic supervillians leg alone that much further into the future. The way innovation is funded by the rich and governments see themselves as businesses rather than servers of the people, not too much hope in people-helping innovation at this point.
Ah well procrastination over and time to throw snow. Thanks for the excuse to linger a few more minutes.
That is quite a pile! We are expecting more like that next week. So far, we've had it easy :)
I hear you on the supervillains, but villains are gonna villain regardless it seems.
One day there will be clean energy invented. It will likely be discovered just as the last person alive, takes their last breath.
Enjoy the hard labor!
[cue silent screaming]
Hopefully that's fixed that problem, ergh!
Owch x_x did you have the money at the time? J and I (and now eldest since he's been old enough to decide that he wanted to start contributing to these types of discussions more) have been debacling switching to solar which J is deadset against because reasons and eldest and I have some reservations about because of their less-than-stellar composition and manufacturing processes (better if you get the German ones but they are also more expensive) but at the same time everyone we directly know (statistically insignificant sample size which seems to be part of a statistically significant sample size) is saving heaps and heaps off their electricity bills (to the point that one of the friends who has solar power and a battery bank was complaining about having to pay slightly less than we normally do because the company that installed their inverter screwed up so they had to use grid for a while til it got fixed). J is trying to argue that the extra cost of getting them installed doesn't work out in the long run but one of the friends with solar panels has contradicted this.
Good luck with the lottery XD
Good luck with that one too! That's more arguments I've had with J because I don't like the byproducts of nuclear reactors but thorium reactors seem a lot better and I don't know how wrong you can go on stable continents (I mean if Japan can manage...).
They probably deserve it because "they" have something that "we" want and they're not giving it to us for free like they're supposed to or "we" don't like how "they" are living their lives so they have to be forced to accept that ours is the Good and Right and True way for their own good 🙄
Nah I reckon we will, it'll just head in all the stupid directions either first (like AI) or eventually (like social media), and even then they're still useful for things that they're useful for.. Only because even if getting screamed down and drowned out by selfish gits with no imagination and a paralysing phobia of change, there are still people who want to get things done.
Kinda. We had a renovation budget, but if we spent it on heating, we would have not been able to renovate half our living area :D
@galenkp has solar, so perhaps he might have a view.
I would like to get one of those cool solar rooves - come on lottery...
No earthquakes of significance in Finland. It is about as stable as it gets.
You are right. Perhaps we will get some decent innovation. But again, not sure how much will make life better :)
Get that lottery win, make it big, I need some stuff too!
That would be pretty epic. I would only be able to use it effectively on one side of our house though as we have shade trees XD I don't think you have that particular problem though :) At least not yet? Will your trees get bigger?
ps I think a lot of innovation is going to be incremental for a while.
Well at 4.7°c i m shivering. Many people like to visit the hill station in India to enjoy the snowfall, but noone ever bothered to understand the life of local people who thrive in such hatch climate. In some snowy areas, people carry a mini coal stove under their coat, to keep themselves warm. Not sure how they deal at home. I m sure they do not have the centralized heating module at home. It would be interesting to explore their lifestyle too someday. 😉
You should go and check it out. Spend a few weeks with them and see what it is like. My be a pretty good experience!
I would love to, it is on my to do list. understanding the basic lifestyle of them in harsh winter is always a learning curve.
I remember you had problems with your heating system the other year. I thought they fixed it in the end after waiting a long time for parts?
We don't get snow here as we're by the sea, so I envy people when they have a beautiful snow covered garden, like your terrace, it looks so enchanting.
Yes. We thought they fixed it too! So did they!
It does look nice with a fresh layer of snow here and it can be a bit of fun, as long as it is cold enough to not melt. It is warmer now and this weekend coming, so it won't look great for long. Come visit :)
Well, don't give up hope, you might still win the lottery and fix your home's heating system. Or all crypto goes to the moon--almost the same as winning the lottery.
Well, you often say that the past cannot be the basis for a perfect prediction of what the future might be like. Neither does the present, nor common sense. So I am gonna say that hope will come for mankind. We will make a U-turn from all our destructive behaviours and get our planet fixed so much the earth would look like paradise. It looks quite very unlikely, to say the least, but remember very unlikely things happen all the time.
It seems even less likely!
I hope you are right. I think the world could do with a positive change of pace. The current downward trajectory is eroding me away.
We have not had snow this year yet. Our daughter even asked about it and I said let's hope for some time this month or February. Some winters we don't get snow at all...
I had a quote for geothermal, but it just doesn't make sense here even when I lived on the lake where you could just run it off the lake. The costs are too prohibitive compared to the simple natural gas powered equipment.
I thought Seattle would get snow pretty early.
They don't do gas here for heating or cooking. It is electric, geo, air-water heat exchange (what I have), and old places might still use wood a fair bit also.
No we don't have snow here, the temperature average in winter is 5 Celsius with a lot of rain... I have Geranium flowers flowering in our pots outside right now.
I've been a big fan of SMRs for a few years now as well. I got some new boots for winter a bit ago, but I haven't been able to wear them yet. I've gotta keep an eye on the snow load with our new canopy if we ever get some more significant accumulation.
Yep I know. There is potential in them and like all things, they might get smaller and smaller until they are sitting in our homes.
Ah yeah. We have to be careful with the dog, as the snow slides off our roof.
I'm still holding out hope for fusion, but I know that is probably still a long way off. If they can make current models safe and easily sustainable with a small footprint, I could see more local grids. There are still a lot of regulations and other things to work through. For now I just hold stock in one of the companies and hope they come out at the top of the pack!
It's -20 degrees Celsius this morning. A frosty winter is beautiful, but for many, it means extra heating costs. I pay $20 a month for heating, and I'm lucky I haven't had any heating problems for 30 years.
That is pretty cold! I love it when all the trees are white.
In the winter, we pay about 400€
€400 a month ?!! 😱😥
Yeah. Pretty crazy, eh? Old house, large, expensive electricity.
The idea of heating the district using nuclear reactors is not bad. Sometimes we also feel so cold here that it feels like we are sitting on a hot stove with a pot on it. I hope you will be able to use a good quality room heater for your family in the future.
Hopefully you don't sit on the pot.
Agree, it is really annoying when things that should be easy end up causing constant problems. I hope the electrician's work will finally fix those issues.
Hopefully I don't have to change more fuses :)
The transition from pretty snow to ice and sludge is the absolute worst part of winter.Five years of dealing with a bad heating install sounds like a nightmare, especially in that kind of cold
Yeah, I had the slop on the ground. Then the other bad part is when it refreezes, and is just a sheet of ice.
My favorite author's book: [Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Sun-Clear Statement 4/41
Thanks.