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Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

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Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#201

Post by citrin_ru »

boringg wrote: post #169
yokoprime wrote: post #25

> In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power might go off. This is understandable Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I don’t think I’ve experienced any power interruption of over 1 hour in winter ever, and it’s been at least 5 years since the last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.

This article is a bit painful to read. It should be lessons from living in the remote wildnerness in winter. Pretty much all those problems are relative to rural infrastructure and poor home building. If you live in an area with heavy snow load you want an A-frame roof to de-load the roof (for example see: Tahoe, CA ~ 500-800" snow a year).

A-frame houses are not efficient in terms of space inside and thermal properties (both because of low volume to surface ratio). It's sufficient to have 40-45° root pitch to avoid snow accumulation.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#202

Post by gwbas1c »

> If you’re short on kindling, sufficient cardboard CAN be used to light a big log on fire.

Fatwood (on Amazon) is amazing for this kind of stuff. It's much easier to start up a wood stove with a few sticks of it than "sufficient cardboard".

(Que the holier-than-thou folks who admonish anyone who has a wood stove.)

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#203

Post by boringg »

citrin_ru wrote: post #201
boringg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is a bit painful to read. It should be lessons from living in the remote wildnerness in winter. Pretty much all those problems are relative to rural infrastructure and poor home building. If you live in an area with heavy snow load you want an A-frame roof to de-load the roof (for example see: Tahoe, CA ~ 500-800" snow a year).

A-frame houses are not efficient in terms of space inside and thermal properties (both because of low volume to surface ratio). It's sufficient to have 40-45° root pitch to avoid snow accumulation.

Depends what you are optimizing for -- roof collapse in a high snow load local or the level of efficiency for thermal properties. You can drive for high efficiency of your thermal properties but when your roof collapses those efficiencies are meaningless.

Home design is a game of engineering tradeoffs with the occasional new technology to improve things or lower costs.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#204

Post by ghc »

ghaff wrote: post #191
ghc wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

living in New England, I have also never heard of this and I don't think it's understandable at all. Trees are pruned around power lines for a reason .

Live in ex-urban MA and it’s not common but have had a couple of multi-day power outages in both winter and summer over the decades I’ve lived here. Don’t remember the details of the summer outage but the winter one was a massive ice storm.

Sure, but that's not the same as losing power during the first snowstorm every year. The massive ice storm was back in 2010 IIRC.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#205

Post by newsclues »

dlcarrier wrote: post #59
brettgriffin wrote: post #4

Put winter tires on your vehicles. I'm surprised by the number of people who tool around in snow and ice in 'all season' tires. Also, that writing tone is obnoxious.

I'm in the foothills in Northern California, and I've never met anyone here that changes their ties out for winter. When there's chain controls, they'll let you through if you have winter rated tires, including all-season, and all-wheel drive, otherwise you need chains. Everyone I know who drives a lot in the snow gets a vehicle with all-wheel drive and everyone else carries chains. (really they're cables, on a small…

No, the rubber compound in winter tires are vastly superior to all seasons on snow/ice, it helps you actually control the vehicle.

I’ve shoveled meters of snowfall this year, our roads are just packed down snow, no pavement.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#206

Post by gwbas1c »

standarditem wrote: post #186

The other way to flush a toilet without running water is to fill the tank of the toilet with water, then flush it normally.

I have to 2nd this.

It's significantly easier. I used to do this in the CA drought where I would fill a bucket when waiting for the shower / sink to get hot, and then use the bucket to fill the toilet after I flushed it.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#207

Post by nancyminusone »

yokoprime wrote: post #25

> In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power might go off. This is understandable Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I don’t think I’ve experienced any power interruption of over 1 hour in winter ever, and it’s been at least 5 years since the last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.

Rural-ish Michigan here. It doesn't happen most years, and almost never in winter, but it can. It seems to happen a lot less than when I was a kid.

Regardless, "my power never goes out" isn't a great plan for what to do if your power goes out. Ask Texas, they once thought the same.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#208

Post by triceratops »

dlcarrier wrote: post #59
brettgriffin wrote: post #4

Put winter tires on your vehicles. I'm surprised by the number of people who tool around in snow and ice in 'all season' tires. Also, that writing tone is obnoxious.

I'm in the foothills in Northern California, and I've never met anyone here that changes their ties out for winter. When there's chain controls, they'll let you through if you have winter rated tires, including all-season, and all-wheel drive, otherwise you need chains. Everyone I know who drives a lot in the snow gets a vehicle with all-wheel drive and everyone else carries chains. (really they're cables, on a small…

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/12/01/all-wheel-drive-d...

FTA:

"If anyone gets an AWD vehicle “for safety” but uses it with all-season tires, they have performed a Consumer Sucka Fail. A front wheel drive vehicle with snow tires would have more grip.

According to this Consumer Reports test (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXjzYbpt9Ow) on snow tires vs. AWD, the tires were by far the most important factor. And only 12% of AWD vehicle owners bothered to put snow tires on their vehicle, meaning 88% of all-wheel-drive vehicle purchases were wasted, because the drivers could have achieved better performance at lower cost in a front-wheeler with snow tires."

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#209

Post by UltraSane »

boringg wrote: post #203
citrin_ru wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A-frame houses are not efficient in terms of space inside and thermal properties (both because of low volume to surface ratio). It's sufficient to have 40-45° root pitch to avoid snow accumulation.

Depends what you are optimizing for -- roof collapse in a high snow load local or the level of efficiency for thermal properties. You can drive for high efficiency of your thermal properties but when your roof collapses those efficiencies are meaningless. Home design is a game of engineering tradeoffs with the occasional new technology to improve things or lower costs.

An A-frame is a overkill solution to snow load when you can just make a shallower roof stronger.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#210

Post by throwaway173738 »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #74
yokoprime wrote: post #25

> In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power might go off. This is understandable Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I don’t think I’ve experienced any power interruption of over 1 hour in winter ever, and it’s been at least 5 years since the last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.

Article should be called Lessons you learn living in a place where it regularly snows but with terrible infrastructure and seemingly no societal preparedness for said regular snow

In other words most of the US outside of a major metro area. I’ve lived various places in Western Washington and the advice about generators and food and batteries and heat ring true everywhere more than an hour away from Seattle or Tacoma

I would add that you should have a backup plan for preparing any holiday meal using a camping stove because the power could go out an hour into roasting a turkey. In fact don’t invite anyone over unless you’ve confirmed ahead of time that they don’t mind sleeping in the same room, together with your family, in front of the wood stove. This could happen even on a clear day. Don’t rely on the electricity in the winter ever.

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