preparing for winter......

[heartwood]

so the cold weather is approaching...how do old house people prepare? how many cords of wood, gallons of (hard) cider, mortite or plastic around windows, hay bales around the foundation, shovels, snowblowers, etc????


last year on halloween, western massachusetts had 2 feet of snow in a true nor'easter...in the next couple of days, we anticipate the brunt of hurricane sandy with record wind and flooding...

i live in a new house (actively house hunting for an old one now) but just purchased 5 cords of wood, a full tank of oil (yuk) and am getting prices for plowing my driveway--all 700 feet long of it! i used to hay in the summer for a farmer friend and he plowed my driveway in the winter--no cash transacted...he retired last year so i'm on my own...i put up plywood between the posts on my front porch to keep 4 feet of snow from drifting onto the front door...

don't wait til the last minute!
...jade

[Neighmond]

I have a few storms that are shot-I wrapped them in plastic and pounded them in for now. Also I open the dampers to the NW corner of the house and halfway shut the dampers in the south rooms so the furnace won't work as hard. I am on street gas but I lay by 200 gallons of propane for my backup heat. Heavy curtians go on the NW windows for added draft break, and I open the south curtians in the day and shut them in the night.

Haybales around the foundation have always been a touchy deal for me-my house is made of wood, and every couple of years we used to hear of a house burning from hay fires, plus rats and mice build nests in them. My neighbour does it, and he sprays the bales with something that rodents hate so they stay away from it.

The snowblower is in the shed-I have to get it out and going this weekend though.

[CS in Low Hud]

Clean the gutters... Swap the screens for storms... Clean the gutters... get a chord of wood (I don't really have room to store more than that, so I need to reload at a couple of points during the winter)... Clean the gutters.... balance the HVAC outlets to favor the first floor... Clean the gutters... cover the air compressor to keep crap out of it... clean the gutters.... move the house plants inside (this requires a block and tackle for one really big tree-like plant that I have had since college. It goes on the second floor in the master bedroom, because it needs a 10' ceiling).

No cider, but I do make wine in the fall, so these months are spent picking, crushing and fermenting in the basement.

Then if I have any spare time, I clean the gutters again.

Chris

[shazapple]

We have a wood pile sitting outside, waiting for the addition to get a roof so it can move inside. other than that the snowblower needs to be readied and we are good to go!

[nezwick]

Ugh - still need to do pretty much everything to prepare for winter. Just haven't had time.

- Get the snow tires on the Hyundai
- Finish reassembling my winter beater car (it got hit earlier this year but wasn't totaled)
- Weatherstrip basement doors since I never had time to put the good metal ones back on
- Weatherstrip attic access hatch
- Put misc. things away outside and dig out the snow shovel and broom
- Fix the generator I mentioned in another post
- Patch the tears in my canvas garage-in-a-box thing
- Stockpile gasoline
- Pre-winter lawnmower cleaning/maintenance

I did get most of the PO's bushes and landscaping cut down or trimmed back this fall, the furnace got its yearly maintenance, so there are 2 things I actually completed!

[Jeepnstein]

Window shakers out, storm windows up.
Bleed radiators
Prepare my gasoline stash for storage
Bag of salt on the front porch
Take the fan blades off the porch ceiling fans
Store seat cushions on the porch furniture

We did buy a new generator this year, which is hopefully the dumbest purchase of the decade. I'm also going to get a dumpster and get rid of a ton of stuff that has really been bugging me lately.

My biggest achievement so far has been to get the pressure regulated perfectly on the boiler. It took a while. The system is totally silent and puts out more heat now. All the radiators are bled but I might need to hit them one more time in a week or two.

I also will probably buy a bottle of bourbon, just in case.

[Neighmond]

I also will probably buy a bottle of bourbon, just in case.

Medicinal purposes, I'm sure!

[Jeepnstein]

I also will probably buy a bottle of bourbon, just in case.

Medicinal purposes, I'm sure!

Why waste good corn on being sick?

[jschneider]

Window shakers out, storm windows up.
Bleed radiators
Prepare my gasoline stash for storage
Bag of salt on the front porch
Take the fan blades off the porch ceiling fans
Store seat cushions on the porch furniture

We did buy a new generator this year, which is hopefully the dumbest purchase of the decade. I'm also going to get a dumpster and get rid of a ton of stuff that has really been bugging me lately.

My biggest achievement so far has been to get the pressure regulated perfectly on the boiler. It took a while. The system is totally silent and puts out more heat now. All the radiators are bled but I might need to hit them one more time in a week or two.

I also will probably buy a bottle of bourbon, just in case.

I just re-piped my boiler- It was piped in a way that created wet steam... heatinghelp.com was a HUGE help when it came to my steam system. I ended up with a steam system that gets twice as hot twice as fast. Good bye $800 natural gas bills!

Venting and radiator pitch are massively important I also learned. Biggest vents go on the furthest radiators and smaller vents go on the closest. Getting the venting right helped balance the system quite a bit and get rid of the hot/cold rooms. It's pretty cool stuff!

Before-


After-

[Jeepnstein]

That's the thing I love about hot water as opposed to steam, it's much more forgiving. We still run some steam at work and it's a constant pain in the backsides. Once you get the steam flowing right it's great but definitely more work.

Did you do your own work? If so, then you win the internet today. I have a thing about tidy plumbing.