First daffodil of spring - 2014

[elagache]

Dear WeatherCat fans suffering from too much 

With an arctic blast engulfing most of the United States, I thought lots of WeatherCat users might need a bit of encouragement that spring will actually arrive someday.  The drought has been hard on even the daffodils.  Normally they bloom sooner than this.  However, the first of the mini-daffodils bloomed yesterday and I snapped some photos this morning:







Hope that sends some hope that the  will return to your part of the world!

Cheers, Edouard 

[Steve]

Edouard,

What a pretty day, and than you for that encouragement!

I just brought all the freezable liquids in from the garage. We usually never need to do this, but it is currently 4˚ and dropping rapidly, with wind chill of -15˚. That's about a typical winter, but it is supposed to drop another 10-15˚.

All you mid-westerners stay warm!
Steve

[ELO]

It was -5?F here in Breckenridge this morning, but what's a little chill when this is the view out the window!



Rick.

[elagache]

Dear Steve, Rick and WeatherCat fans,

Definitely looking plenty cold in your respective corners of the world.  Glad the photos gave you a little hope!

We are still headed for a drought hell here in California.  However since it isn't raining, I took advantage of the nice weather to put another 57 miles on my trusty wagon.  Alas, I must report that I was a bit cold!  The new air conditioner works fine.  Alas, there is a silly solenoid valve that is cutting off the flow of hot coolant to the heater core.  So there I am, a big-block engine at about 180˚F and in the cabin I'm cold!!

Hopefully that will bring you a quick chuckle anyway! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[Steve]

We reached a record low temperature of -11.2˚ here at my station. CLE NWS reported a low of -11.0, which broke a 130 year old record for Jan 6-7 of -9˚. My wind chill readings bottomed out at -35˚, although that wasn't during the windiest part of the day. Combining the earlier wind with the overnight low would have been -43˚.

We have electric heat with a heat pump. Working its heart out, the best it could maintain was a temperature of 65˚ inside. At least we didn't lose electric or gas like several surrounding communities! Our wood burning fire place insert has been going non-stop for eight days now. We usually only light it 4-6 times a winter. I'm about out of wood.

Cars started after some coaxing, and the only problem so far was a frozen kitchen sink drain late yesterday, so we're waging dishes in the bathtub. We are on a slab, and the drain goes down the west outside wall (prevailing wind direction) and under the slab. I'm about to try cleaning it out with a cable machine.

[elagache]

Dear Steve and WeatherCat frozen Americans, 

Thanks for sharing your struggles.  Definitely an eye-opener!  I had heard that heat-pumps were really the "answer" for people in the Midwest and East Coast.  Clearly you need to get one with enough capacity to cope with the worst you can expect and whoever installed your pump never expected this extreme cold.

Hang in there you all.  Let's all hope for a change toward a more normal winter!!

Cheers, Edouard

[Steve]

Edouard,

Heat pumps are great down to about 20-30˚ where they start to lose efficiency. Below that, the systems rely almost entirely on secondary heat. Ours happens to be an oddity, an all-in-one unit that uses electric heat strips. There is nothing inside my house. The unit looks like a rooftop unit, with ductwork going into the house. So in the winter, it takes my 70˚ inside air, pumps it through the wall via insulated ducts to the heat pump. There it tries to heat it with the primary heat pump, and if it can't uses the heat strips. These are three 1500 watt toaster-like elements that the air passes through on its way back to the house.

As you might imagine, heat loss due to the insulation of the ducts and the unit itself is considerable but unavoidable. On top of that, our house was built when electricity was cheap, so the builder did the bare minimum insulation. That's why it struggles to keep the house warm. 80-90% of the year, the heat pump works great.

[elagache]

Hi Steve and frigid WeatherCat Midwesterners,

Heat pumps are great down to about 20-30˚ where they start to lose efficiency. Below that, the systems rely almost entirely on secondary heat. Ours happens to be an oddity, an all-in-one unit that uses electric heat strips. There is nothing inside my house. The unit looks like a rooftop unit, with ductwork going into the house. So in the winter, it takes my 70˚ inside air, pumps it through the wall via insulated ducts to the heat pump. There it tries to heat it with the primary heat pump, and if it can't uses the heat strips. These are three 1500 watt toaster-like elements that the air passes through on its way back to the house.

I hadn't realized that.  I had heard from my Dad that heat pumps were supposed to go a long way toward making heating bills in cold locations more manageable, but I hadn't realized that you needed a composite system with a secondary heater for extreme cold.  Thinking about the thermodynamics, trying to extract heat when the temperature is below zero F, that's going to take a lot of heat-exchanger surface area!

As you might imagine, heat loss due to the insulation of the ducts and the unit itself is considerable but unavoidable. On top of that, our house was built when electricity was cheap, so the builder did the bare minimum insulation. That's why it struggles to keep the house warm. 80-90% of the year, the heat pump works great.

Definitely most unfortunate for you and your wife, my sympathies.

All this does leave a small puzzle in my mind - why aren't heat pumps more popular in California where the amount of heating required is a lot less and air-conditioning is almost mandatory?  I suspect the answer is that electricity has never been very inexpensive since probably the post World War II building boom.  With natural gas comparatively inexpensive and high-efficiency heaters using relatively little of it, heaters win out over heat pumps.

Cheers, Edouard