winter pictures, future plans

This blog doesn't have many pictures from the outside of the house, so here are a few new ones I took this morning.



This summer we're debating whether we should flatten out a spot below our house for a lawn.

Original land. It's fairly steep, though it doesn't really appear so.


I photoshopped a flat area to the right, with the spruce tree in the middle of it.

It's easier said than done. Since our lot is steep, we'd need to make a switchback path, stairs, or both just to access the lawn. We'd have to remove some trees, but there is a natural clearing, and we will still have great privacy. If we cleared an 80x150 foot area, we could flatten about 40-50x150 foot area. The rest gets used up on the inslope and outslope needed to create the flat area. Basically above and below the flat area become steeper. Still, this is about the size of a city lot, and it would be nice for summer get togethers, playing with the dog, etc.

Hindsite is 20/20, but had we anticipated this, and our budget, we might have built the house with a daylight basement, wich could have walked out onto a lawn without the steep slope.

Last fire of the season

Today we had what is probably the last fire of the winter. When it's above zero, the house gets too hot with just a small fire going, especially this time of yyear when the afternoon sun helps heat the place. I didn't want to end the season with small fires, which can build up creosote, so I had one last hot fire. We also rearranged the living room a little, and I like it a lot, it makes the stove more of a centerpiece and seems more open. Roland, as usual, likes his rug and the fire.

Irksome detail finally finished

While we've finished 99% of our house, a few tiny details remain. One that has bothered me is the baseboard trim. It's not that it wasn't installed, it just wasn't completely done. We painted it and installed it last year, and then caulked the seam . The caulk remains flexible, and as a side effect is slightly sticky. Because of this, it attracted dust like a magnet. Or something, magnets don't attract dust. And our house has plenty of dust, dog hair etc, thanks to Roland. But anyway... We finally took the time to move furniture, thoroughly vacuum, then clean the baseboard, caulk the nail holes, and then paint it. I had to get some paint matched since the store we originally bought paint from went out of business.

updates coming!

I know our blog has been really dead lately. The house and garage are basically done, and we've been hunkered down for the winter and enjoying our nice place!

However, I'm getting the itch to start some new projects. Some might be small like paint touch-up, some might be fun like building an entry-way storage bench and adding storage to the entry closet, and some might be big (overkill?) like tackling some major landscaping. Check back to see progress and help with ideas.

Updates soon to come...

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.

Wood burning

I've always liked heating with wood, having a place to warm up or sit and read by, so I'm really enjoying our wood stove. I'm actually looking forward to a cold snap of 30 below or colder. Our house is so efficient, I can hardly keep the stove cold enough when it's not below zero out.

So far the Jotul F400 stove seems like a good choice. It's very simple, with no damper, just a + /- control for air. It's also the easiest stove I've used to light. It's efficient, with a secondary burn chamber. Not quite as efficient as a catalytic converter model, but less finicky. It burns about 6 hours with 3 ~5" logs, so I can run it on about 2 easy arm loads of wood a day. I'm trying to burn whenever it's 10 degrees or colder to offset heating costs, though fuel oil is almost down to half the cost it was when it peaked this summer.

The big glass door is nice for viewing the fire, though it cleans itself best when running above minimum temp, which is why colder weather will actually be welcome.

garage completed

I've been working away on the garage, mostly on weekends, and it's now basically done. Outside is fully sided, lights and outlets are installed, and my dad came up do help wire the place inside, which went smoothly.

Then he actually came up again for a weekend because the lake was freezing early so he needed a place to stay, so I had help building the workbench, which turned out really nice. It spans the full 24 feet of the garage. There is abundant storage in the garage as well, big shelves up high on each side, and one full wall of shelves, plus another couple metal shelf units. There's a lot of space under the workbench too. All this, and both cars still fit fine, with room to work at the workbench.

With all the shelves done, this weekend we spent moving boxes of camping gear, garden stuff, sports gear, luggage, and all the crap we seem to have out into the garage. This included the tools that were still in our living room, so now our house is more like a house!

In the process of organizing stuff, we found the little bed Roland used to sleep in. It was on the floor, and he climbed right in. He actually managed to fit, it seems like he can make his body just slightly larger than his head.

pictures of recent work

Just a few more rows of siding now that the insulation is done. The hole is the access for insulating, installing ceiling-hung shelving supports, and falling through the ceiling.

Garage door partially installed. It came damaged, so work will continue Monday with replacement parts

Last night and this morning I installed the snow stops on the roof. It was snowing both times.

The stack is taller than it looks, about 8 feet. The box in the back holds 1/3 a cord of kindling, leftover scrap from the building projects. One more row will fit and be protected from rain, totalling 3.5 cords of firewood. Maybe 2 years worth depending on how much we burn.

Remaining firewood in the driveway to stack. There are still several piles in the woods.


Our new Jøtul F400. We've had two of the three break-in fires. The stove seems to work beautifully and makes pretty flames.

"Why isn't it on?" Roland immediately laid by the fire when we first lit it last night.

New stove from upstairs. We may build a hearth another time. Next summer perhaps. It has a long stove pipe inside and short chimney outside, which helps keep flue gasses hot for good draft.

Here in the garage, the heat tube manifold. Notice the shitty drywall work.

I took the house lockset off and put it on the garage, and got a new one I like better for the house.

Getting ready for winter

Pictures coming...

We got our first frost a couple days ago, and we're getting ready for winter just in time.

Firewood stack: Marcy and I cut all our firewood, which turned into two huge space-hogging piles in the middle of our driveway. Marcy just finished stacking the bigger pile, and should get the rest done this weekend. Of course there are more small stacks around the property, but this is the bulk of it. We should have about 3.5 cords of wood under the roof overhang. This is all from our lot, and would have cost over $1000split and stacked, here in Fairbanks. Also, it will offset about $1700 in heating costs. There's another two cords or so already cut on the lot.

This brings me to the more exciting news: We finally got our wood stove! We had this picked out a long time ago, and should have bought it then because the price went up. It's a Norwegian Jotul F400 Castine, sized to efficiently heat our entire house. There's a 3 day break-in process, but we'll post action photos when that's done.

The Garage slowly continues. It is fully insulated and the exterior is done. Much better than the October siding we did on the house. It was way too cold.

I hooked up the floor heat. Everything works well, but I had a small 1 drip an hour leak in one of my connections. Turns out I damaged an o-ring when installing it. Simple fix, and I guess 17 out of 18 leak-free connections isn't bad for a non-plumber. The Rehau pex tubing and manifold is a very high quality and easy to use system.

The manifold has little flow meters and thermometers on the supply and return side to help determine how much fluid is moving through the floor. From this, it's easy to determine how much heat is going into it. As I hoped, there is about twice as much heat as is needed for the coldest day, so at -50 degrees, the heat should only have to run half the time.