Aaaaand now it's 40 above!

Another year of odd weather. It's now above freezing and everything is melting. We'll enjoy it while it lasts!

Cold snap!

Fairbanks is one week into a major cold snap, and the week-long forecast shows no end. Lower elevations have seen -50 or colder. We often are 30 or more degrees warmer at 950 feet elevation, but lately it's only been about 10. We saw a new low for the house of -37 degrees!

I've had the fire going constantly but amazingly enough it still heats 90% of the house to 70-75 degrees on low, with 2-3 armloads of birch per day. The spare room needs a little heat to keep warm when the door is closed, but it does get some heat from the rest of the house still.

I carefully keep track of our fuel usage to see how much benefit we get from the wood stove. In the last 4 weeks we burned about 40 gallons of fuel for heating. 3 weeks were around 0 degrees and the last week dropped to -30 or colder. That's less than 3 gallons a day on the coldest days, and most of that is for the garage which has no wood heat (yet). Compare that to about 10 gallons per -30 degree day to heat the house and garage normally, and we're saving $15 a day, which could double quickly if fuel costs go back up.

The best thing of course is having a cozy fire to read by, and our house it much warmer than we might keep it without the wood stove.