COLD

It reminds me of the Game of Thrones: "Winter is Coming". With what seems to be increased frequency of blizzards I pray that this is not the new norm, if so I'm moving to Florida!

I am in Missouri, going to hopefully start some fieldwork tomorrow afternoon.

It is -2 according to my truck thermometer. The wind chill is about -15, according to the radio.

I have never been in weather this cold. My truck is running horribly. I hope it is just this cold weather. It was running just fine Saturday, when I changed the oil, and serviced everything. It was about 50 or so then, though.

Be careful out there everybody.

Hope all of you east of the Mississippi River are enjoying what rolled through here last night and today. Our overnight low was about 10 below with a wind chill in the minus twenties. High today might have made 10, but maybe not. Currently sitting at minus nine. Not much wind tonight. Yesterday was gusts in the middle 30's and prolonged in the upper 20's. Made for some terribly wicked wind chills.

Homeless people in Atlanta better have found a home tonight. Imagine the homeless in Chicago with wind chills below minus 50.

Currently 8 in Atlanta and 12 in my town (60 miles south of Atlanta). Add a 10mph wind and the usual humidity and it makes me very glad I will be working inside today!

right after I posted that, I realized that the heat was not working in my house. It went off about 9:30 PM. I have geothermal, two separate units, a 5 ton for the basement and main floor, and a 3 ton for the two upstairs bedrooms and my office (four zones). Always worked fine. Each unit has a bank of auxiliary heaters and a bank of emergency heaters (electric resistance), but these only come on when I try to raise the temperature too fast. I always leave the first floor (where the master bedroom is) at 70°, so these never come on for that.

Anyway, nothing works, not the compressors nor the electric resistance circuits. No tripped breakers. My house is super insulated, the basement and first floor outside walls are insulated concrete forms (ICF), 2.5" of styrofoam, then 8" of concrete, and another 2.5" of styrofoam on the other side, upstairs is blown-in about 12" thick.

So, I decided to move down to the basement, where we have two bedrooms usually used by guests, and use electric space heaters. Comfortable down there all night. I just got up, and the main floor is 58°, office (on second floor) is 50°. -8° outside.

The system has an outside temperature sensor, I believe that somehow it was programmed to shut down below a certain temperature. But, no way should the backup heat have shut down as well. I think they may have programmed it incorrectly. This is the coldest it has ever been since we moved in.

Just waiting for the HVAC people to open at 8 AM.

>
> Just waiting for the HVAC people to open at 8 AM.

I'd be getting the best techs personal cell phone number and stock his favorite brand of beer if I were you!

Only -9 here in NEPA and -28 windchill

J

We're having a heat wave here - 2° and very little wind.

Also, John - sent you a couple of emails.

Stay warm.

Where are you at jeffE? I live in NEPA and work for the Borough of State College. It was definitely cold this morning as my 1 hour commute took a toll on my vehicle (wind was blowing so hard on I-80 that the inside of my windows were icing up).

I'm in Mansfield, Tioga County. It's funny we are really not NEPA, NCPA, NWPA, but more like NNM(iddle)PA.

Jeff

I did a lot of work in Mansfield for the Oil and Gas development. I was HRI's surveyor, a construction contractor. I laid out over 50 gas pads for construction for Shell Oil and Gas. I live in Williamsport so I'm pretty close. Are you in the gas field as well?

WOW!! We are at a balmy 16°. After reading all of the above, I feel absolutely toasty!! It's just that it's NOT supposed to be 16° in Mississippi. EVER!! Must be all this Global Warming? :clap:

Another NEPA guy checking in. -7 w/ -29 wind chill here at the moment.

Since it is geothermal, there is really only one guy there who knows the system (and he is learning as he goes along). Not a whole lot of geothermal residential installations around here. I talked to him, he is of course running all around on service calls, but he is calling carrier for help. There is only one common component between the systems, and that is the Outside Air Temperature (OAT) sensor, everything else is separate. So, he agrees with me that it must be something to do with the OAT. Unless somehow both outside loops froze up? But they are a mixture of water and glycerol, so it should not freeze. I am not sure what the mixture is, but i would hope they made it so that it would never freeze.

Up until now the system has been great. I have a power monitor that measures electrical usage, one sensor on the 200 AMP house panel and the other on the 200 AMP HVAC panel, so I have a good measure of power usage by the HVAC systems. I use an average of $100 of electricity per month ($1200 a year) to heat/cool a 6000 sq ft house. The heat pump is always working at a constant source temperature (about 52°, I think), as the 1000' of coils are buried about 6 feet deep.

Well, it was great until now...

11 degrees at my office this morning, but warming up nicely...

I'm delighted the COLD is on the way out of the area... it was only -13°F here this morning (Eastern Iowa). Yesterday was -22°F.

My kids and I opted to perform the flash freezing of a hot liquid, I never get tired of that experiment.

It ain't much warmer here! To y'all Northerners the forcast below might seem "tropical" to you, but it sure as hell isn't to us Floridians. Andy J. is probably the only Floridian not currently freezing. It's 35 degrees at the office now. :-O

John,

What kind of weather station do you have? I’m looking for a wireless ip system with all the goodies.

TIA B-)

I'll let you in on a little secret

The best place to live, in the country, is the Pacific Northwest.

It is a balmy 37°f in Puyallup this morning and should get to the upper 40's by this afternoon with a few sprinkles to clean out the air. The rest of the week is predicted to be pretty much the same; we might even hit 50° on Friday.

We have, maybe, 2 weeks of winter and 2 weeks of summer, the rest of the time it's spring or fall.

I grew up in Eastern Nebraska; te Great Plains has 2 weeks of spring and 2 weeks of fall; the rest of time it was winter or summer.

A temperate climate is the best place to live, but please: keep it a secret, there is very little rural Western Washington left.

I hope everyone has a great day, I know I will.

Radar

> John,
>
> What kind of weather station do you have? I’m looking for a wireless ip system with all the goodies.
>
> TIA B-)

If you aren't joking, do a search for Davis weather stations. It has all the goodies but are kind of pricey. I was going to get one back when I had money to burn but not that much. A couple thousand back then. They hooked up via RS232 back then but I would be surprised if they haven't "modernized" since then. That was about 20 years ago.