Snow.

[Dormouse]

Got brave. Went outside in my moccasins to get this.

The planter tray (top left) is rock solid and has been for days now.

The rubber mat at the bottom of the stairs is to avoid slipping on the icy deck. The stairs don't normally ice over but the imitation wood stuff the deck is made from gets very slippy, very easily.
So, if anybody wants advice on what decking planks to use in icy locations let me know. I have tried three different types now.

[Dormouse]

Somewhere I have a photo I took while on the veranda of a lakeside cafe in Sweden with a squirrel eating at our table.

They can become fairly tolerant of humans if food is involved.

[Dormouse]

I am surprised no one has picked up on these two outside temperature readings from earlier.

The difference is 14.7C !

The wind was negligible so wind chill was not a factor.

We live in an area that is only 100ft above sea level and not renowned for bad weather. God knows what it is like for outlying areas.

Our gas heating consumption has doubled just now compared to the Autumn and, as we have spent a lot of our savings on improving insulation, we know we are using less gas than we did 5 years ago (and we have not had it as cold as this during that period). If this is the same for other families around us in un-insulated homes similar to ours, it must be Baltic for them.

[myglaren]

The greatest difference here was when it was -2.2° on the north side, it was 9.6° on the south.
It was very sunny and that was in a sheltered corner with the sun directly on it.
I had to move from there to the other side of the house as the sun was blinding and it was very hard to see the laptop screen. Moving round the table just put the sun right in my eyes or there were reflections in the screen obliterating everything.
I had tried tidying the garden up a bit but again, couldn't see what I was doing.

[Dormouse]

Our heating is still on "Eco" on my home brewed boiler controller and we have "On On" still left on the back boiler, which also has not had it's thermostat turned up for winter as we used to do. This still leaves us still with our gas fire to "fire up", which we have had to do in the past, so overall we have done as much as we can to improve our home to reduce costs and it has worked for us. At a cost with a lot of preplanning. I do feel for the souls in houses around us where this has not been implemented.

[Dormouse]

The greatest difference here was when it was -2.2° on the north side, it was 9.6° on the south.
It was very sunny and that was in a sheltered corner with the sun directly on it.
I had to move from there to the other side of the house as the sun was blinding and it was very hard to see the laptop screen. Moving round the table just put the sun right in my eyes or there were reflections in the screen obliterating everything.
I had tried tidying the garden up a bit but again, couldn't see what I was doing.

"Air" temp difference of nearly 12c from one side to another. So when you open doors at the back, all that cold rushes in. Definitely cold just now.

[Dormouse]

I am surprised no one has picked up on these two outside temperature readings from earlier.








The difference is 14.7C !

The wind was negligible so wind chill was not a factor.

We live in an area that is only 100ft above sea level and not renowned for bad weather. God knows what it is like for outlying areas.

Our gas heating consumption has doubled just now compared to the Autumn and, as we have spent a lot of our savings on improving insulation, we know we are using less gas than we did 5 years ago (and we have not had it as cold as this during that period). If this is the same for other families around us in un-insulated homes similar to ours, it must be Baltic for them.

We haven't experienced temperatures like this since we stayed in rural Aberdeenshire at the foot of the Grampians. We have had worse there, but you kind of expected it, we do not expect these temperatures here for so long.

[myglaren]

"Air" temp difference of nearly 12c from one side to another. So when you open doors at the back, all that cold rushes in. Definitely cold just now.

Fortunately there is a small lobby to prevent that. Just as well as I open the door every couple or three hours to read the meters. Also made a socket for the thermometer probe and read that at the same time.
Sometimes tallies with the others, sometimes not.

[Dormouse]

I get that too with our other temperature devices. Sometimes they tally sometimes they don't exactly.
When we moved in we made the conscious decision to have lobbies/porches at the entrance doors to avoid rushes of cold into the house while you put jackets and shoes on and off.
Out front we built a semi enclosed porch to protect us from the worst of the winds and keep the rain off while we unlock the door or bring shopping bags into the house. It leads into a small lobby that has an inside door to separate our cloakroom from the main house bit.
Out the back door we built our Sitootery. Basically a large enclosed porch with huge double glazed windows and with two sets of double doors. One goes straight out onto our decking but the other is towards our back gate and is sheltered from the wind. It has a canopy to stop the rain and snow so we can get to the outside freezer shed we built without having to wear oilskins or Eskimo clothes. All of that plus draft proofing and insulation was all thought out at the start when we bought the house and it is weeks like this that it pays off.


It was minus 4c when we went bed last night but this morning the air temp showed plus 1c in the snow we had overnight.

yesterday on the deck was

today it is

and the back garden looks like this