It is about to get cold here....very cold. Not record-inducing cold...the record for cold in this area was the day I was born, more than thirty years ago. The incoming never-seen-in-twenty-years cold snap? Well, it's not quite there yet--I can actually remember it being this cold before.
So what do I do during cold weather like this? Mostly I stay inside. It's not always possible; people have jobs and livestock to care for, but in this case I am very, very lucky. The worst part of the snow and cold snaps are on my days off this week, so I can curl up inside and stay warm and safe.
Here are a few things my family and I did to prepare for this snow and cold snap.
1.) I filled my woodbox as full as I could possibly get it when they started forecasting snow a few days ago. My wood is stacked outside under a tarp, which keeps off most of the rain, but not all of the moisture. Bringing it in early gives it a chance to dry in the heated area of the house. I also have plenty of other firemakings on hand...paper, kindling, and some homemade firestarters. If they had called for ice with this storm, I would have stacked as much wood as I could on the small porch off my sliding glass doors (a few steps from the woodbox), and covered it with another tarp to protect it from the weather. Walking up and down icy steps carrying firewood is just a recipe for disaster if you're as clumsy as I am.
2.) I am not actually burning firewood atm, and I don't plan to do so unless the power goes out. Why? First off, I have a fireplace, not a wood-burning stove. It goes through a lot of wood. My fireplace is very small, but it does have an electric fan that blows the heat into the house instead of letting it all going up the chimney. I only have about two weeks of continuous-fire wood cut and split, and it can be hard to get more wood here in January and February. It's an hour-long drive to the land where we get wood, and it can be tricky in bad weather. Also the fireplace tends to heat the house up enough to keep the furnace from turning on, but it doesn't heat the whole house, only the central portion. I want to keep regular doses of heat going to my pipes in this much cold.
It's there if I need it, and part of me really wants the comfort of a nice crackling fire today. The rest of me has lived through busted pipes in the winter, and doesn't want to do it again.
Speaking of pipes...
3.) I will turn my sinks on tonight before I go to bed, just enough to barely drip. All of my water pipes are insulated, and most of them are heat-taped. That said, I live in a home that sits on piers instead of a foundation, and they're all above ground. Before there was siding on the house, they would still freeze in weather as low as ten degrees. They haven't frozen since then, but still. Busted pipes in this much cold? A nightmare. I will collect the water in big bowls and pots and use it to fill humidifiers in the morning and water my house plants. As part of my general emergency plans, we also have about a dozen gallons of water stashed in various places in case the pipes do freeze and we're out of water for a while.
4.) Windows. I have fairly nice windows, but they're almost fifteen years old, and getting drafty. I have all my blinds pulled, curtains drawn, and blankets draped over the curtain rods on windows that I know are particularly drafty or facing the direction the wind is coming from. It doesn't look pretty, but it helps. One of my planned projects for this year is to buy a roll of mylar-coated bubble-wrap insulation and make frames for the windows..something I can just set in and out of the windows in extreme heat and cold.
5.) Animals. I have no livestock atm to care for, which I am extremely thankful for atm. I do, however, have two barn cats, and the barn is not exactly the most weatherproof building there is. My outdoor cats have a decent sized box for them to curl up in, lined with a few layers of the mylar insulation and with a heated pet bed in the bottom. The bed doesn't get very hot all, but it does provide some warmth the cat doesn't have to provide itself. They also have 24/7 access to two different heated water sources, and I know for a fact that they can and have gotten under the house to sit on the heat-taped water pipes and snuggle up in the insulation there. I've put a large amount of dry cat food in their house, so they can eat free-choice out of the wind, and during the extreme cold I also feed them soft food (a can split between the two of them) twice a day. If I think they need it, I will give it to them three times.
While there is a lot more I could do (and probably should) this is what I managed with the time, supplies, and funds I had on hand. I'm secure that my family has enough food, water, and heat to weather out this storm, and for that I'm very grateful.
Coming soon...goals for 2014, craft projects, and garden planning!
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