cold

Isn’t it supposed to get warmer?

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I checked the temperatures during the night, shortly after 2am, where we were at -29C/-20F, with a wind chill of -43C/-45F

I checked again shortly after 7am – when I would normally be getting ready to go outside to feed the cats and do my rounds.

It was -31C/-24F, with a wind chill of -42C/-44F

I checked again about half our later, and the temperature was the same, but the wind chill was back to -43C/-45F

Okay. I’ll just wait for things to warm up a bit before I feed the outside cats. They wouldn’t want to be running around in these temperatures, anyhow.

More than an hour later, and the temperatures hadn’t changed.

So I went and gave the outside cats their not-frozen kibble and warm water, and basically skipped my usual rounds entirely.

The thermometer in the sun room, at least, was reading around -15C/5F at the time. Still cold enough that the heated water bowl has frost around the top of the water level, with a layer of ice around one side, and cats had frost on their face fur. I don’t bother to put kibble in most of the trays anymore – the ones I can see they aren’t eating from. Instead, I scatter it in spots on the platform and shelves, under the heat bulb and the couple of trays they do eat from. Even outside, where their kibble trays are over full with frozen kibble, I leave very little fresh kibble, but have instead scooping some of it back into the bowl I used to carry their food. The bowl in the catio gets extra kibble, since it does warm up in there, but it looks like the birds are the ones eating the kibble under the shrine. The isolation shelter, however, gets the rest of the kibble in the bowl, including what I’ve scooped out from the frozen trays. The cats finish that bowl off completely!

Today was our day to do the litters which, with using the stove pellets, gets dumped into a separate compost pile behind the outhouse. This is one of those jobs where the girls do the inside part, and I do the outside part. We waited until past 3 to do it, though! By then, it was -23C/-9F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F, but it was bright and sunny, which meant the sun room and the isolation shelter where much warmer – and filled with cats!

I got the above photos earlier in the afternoon, though. I was able to get a few shots from the bathroom window, which got their attention, but they didn’t run away. In the first photo, we have Fluffy, who is doing well enough to be on the very top shelf of the shelf against the old kitchen well. Most of the others were crowded in the opposite shelf, against the window, enjoying sun spots.

Instagram cropped the next photo for some reason, even though I set it to “full size”, so you’re not getting the full effect of having those three cats starting at me! It’s the little one in the middle that has me laughing, though. Those eyes!!!

The last photo of the thermometer shows it reading about -5C/23F. That thermometer is on a cold wall mounted about two west facing windows, so it would actually be reading colder than the ambient temperature – and certainly colder than the temperature in the sun spots filled with cats!

Slight interruption while writing this.

Well… not “slight”.

My mother called. As we were talking, it came out that she apparently did not get her second and third med assist visit from home care. It took a bit of questioning to find out this apparently happened on Saturday (today is Monday). According to my mother, then the home care aid that was supposed to show up on Saturday showed up on Sunday, she told my mother she didn’t know my mother was home from the hospital, so that’s why she didn’t show up. Which makes no sense.

There was also a very confusing thing my mother started taking about the medications she was taking in the hospital. After much questioning to figure out what she was talking about (it sounded like she had brought hospital medications home with her), it turns out she “remembers” me packing her medications from home, that she’s brought with her to the initial appointment that had her going to the ER, the day we brought her home. She said, don’t you remember, you put them in the bag, because they didn’t fit in my purse. W

Which did not happen. I’d already taken her partial bubble pack she had in the hospital, then took all her old bubble packs and pills from her place, to the pharmacy the day before she came home. Then, before we came to get her, we were able to pick up her new bubble packs from the pharmacy, with the updated prescriptions.

My mother has no memory of this. She thought her partial bubble pack was in the lock box, to be used so they wouldn’t “go to waste”.

I’ve already called and left a message with home care, explaining what my mother told me about the missed med assist visits. I should get a call back, tomorrow.

My mother, meanwhile, is upset that she can’t get at her own medications to take them herself, if home care doesn’t show up. Yet she clearly doesn’t know what is happening with her medications anymore, if she thinks she still has her old prescription bubble pack being used right now.

I made sure to message all this to my brother. One of his responses was, and they say Mom doesn’t need full time care?

*sigh*

There is a reason we have to have home care visiting my mother for her med assists. Many reasons, really, as well as reasons her medications are now in a lock box.

We really need to figure out what’s going on!

The Re-Farmer

Well, at least the sun is out

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For now.

This is what it was like this morning.

You’d think things would be warming up by sunrise, but nooooo. This has been the coldest part of the day of late. -30C/-22F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F Normally, I would have been heading out at this time, but decided to wait. I knew the outside cats still had plenty of food, even if they don’t like eating frozen kibble, and they would still have water in at least some, if not all, of their heated water bowls.

It says the extreme cold warning is until Monday at 6am. My desktop’s weather app has the warning to 7:01 this evening. I would say my phone’s app is the more accurate one!

As I write this, we are coming up on 11am, and have managed to warm up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -28C/-18F Thankfully, the sky is clear and sunny, so we’ve got some passive solar heat happening in the sun room and the isolation shelter. We’re supposed to get a bit of snow early this evening, though.

The cats – especially the younger ones – have been absolutely thrilled they can go into the isolation shelter again. That top level is just crowded with kitties. I haven’t been able to do a head count, though. It seems to be mostly the more feral ones, and they panic and run away if I get too close. I don’t want them to leave their cuddle pile in the warm shelter, so I stay away, unless I’m actually putting in more food and water. That is the one place where the food bowl is completely empty when I get to it! I might start scooping frozen kibble from the outside bowls and trays to put into there, so it’ll thaw out enough for them to eat it.

Then there are cats like Patience.

Patience definitely looks like he is losing patience with this cold! Of all the cats, though, he probably has the biggest, thickest coat of winter fur of them all. Even more than Adam…

Adam is a physically larger cat than Patience but, with his winter fur, Patience looks bigger than she does!

Adam was sitting loafed like this when I first came out with the kibble. I’ve taken to scattering kibble in various spots on the platform and other raised areas, where I know they will actually eat it before it freezes. I put some right in front of her in the cat bed, and she barely even backed away from the scoop. She didn’t move from this spot until was about to go inside. I started petting Colin, right in front of her. I’d hoped I could sneak a pet while petting Colin, but as he kept pushing closer in front of her, it was just too much, and she finally got up and moved to the other cat bed.

Kohl, meanwhile, still seems to be holding a grudge against me! A trip to the vet and two weeks in isolation – is it a month ago now? – and she still rarely lets me touch her. She does like to eat kibble on this shelf, though, and that was enough for me to get at least a few pets in. Her fur is getting pretty matted. I am hoping we can get her comfortable enough with us again, that we can do something about that. Probably not until spring, though. We don’t want to be combing out her undercoat and cutting away mats, in this cold!

Magda peeking from behind her is so adorable!

When we got Kohl and Cat 1 fixed (yeah… I couldn’t come up with a name), we did not give them collars. They are not yet their adult sizes. Without knowing if we’d be able to handle them again, I didn’t want to take a chance of them growing bigger and the collars starting to bother them. I remember when our elderly Freya first showed up on our balcony in the city. She had a collar, so we assumed she was someone’s pet that was allowed outside. One day, she showed up with the collar gone – and a rather large spot on her neck where the fur was rubbed off, and a wound visible. Thank God it was a breakaway collar! She’d been on her own long enough to outgrow the collar, and it was harming her. I don’t want that to happen to these two.

Kohl might still let me pet her once in a while, but Cat 1 won’t come near us at all anymore. Getting collars on them when they are bigger, so show at a glance that they’ve been fixed, is not going to be easy!

Sadness. 😢

Today, our expected high is -22C/-8F, and our low is expected to be -30C/-22F, and tomorrow is expected to be the same. On Tuesday, we’re supposed to start warming up again. Thankfully, we don’t need to go anywhere. I might head to the post office tomorrow to pick up some parcels, but there is nothing essential in, so I will probably just wait until Tuesday afternoon!

I am definitely in the mood to hibernate as much as possible!

The Re-Farmer

Winter can go away any time now

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I just got back in from giving the outside cats their food and warm water. Then I headed to the garage to check on the truck and run it for a while. It was insanely cold. There is a meme that goes around saying, “the air hurts my face. Why do I live where the air hurts my face?”

That was me, this morning.

As soon as I got back in, I checked the temperatures.

-30C/-22F is bad enough on its own, but a wind chill of -39C/-38F? The wind is only 8kmh/5mph, too.

Yes, we are still under an ongoing extreme cold warning.

The sun hasn’t even risen yet, though at least it’s light out right now. This is actually the coldest we’ve been for the night. We’re supposed to get overnight lows of -33C/-27F at about 4am. It is expect to still be in the -30C/-22F range when we’ll be trying to get Fluffy into a carrier for her vet appointment. We are expected to have lows below -30C/-22F for the next 5 nights, even as the daytime highs start to warm up.

You know what? I think I’d put up with the spiders, snakes an alligators right now!

I really feel for the people that have to commute to the city right now. Thank God we don’t have to. Just the trip into down to take the truck to the garage is pushing it for me these days.

I am so done with winter.

The Re-Farmer

Glad to be home today!

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First, I need to share this bit of cuteness. Behold, the grandmas!

Even Butterscotch is in the picture!

Just before I was able to take this picture, I watched as Freya slithered her way into the cat bed, on top of Beep Beep. They spend a lot of time, snuggled together in there!

Butterscotch being where she is on my bed is a big deal. She has expanded her range by about three feet to be there. Butterscotch, one of the originals, still refuses to leave my office/bedroom/craft room. In the mornings, I have to chase most of the cats out and close the door so she has a chance to use the litter. There have been times I’ve seen her go for it (she will only use the one under my computer table), and stopped what I was doing to stand guard. Out of nowhere, one of several cats will teleport from somewhere and start stalking, if not outright attacking, her when she tries to use the litter. Most of the time, though, she will stuff herself into the shelf above my pillow to snarl and growl at other cats, even if they’re just walking by some distance away and completely ignoring her.

Beep Beep, on the other hand, has no issues getting along with the other cats (except Butterscotch; they don’t like each other). She has become downright kittenish in her behaviour since moving indoors. You’d never know that she (and Butterscotch) is more than 10 years old. Probably closer to 15, but we just don’t know their exact ages.

Freya, on the other hand, showed up on our balcony in the city in 2010, and we estimate she was barely a year old at the time. She is really showing her age these days. We make sure there is softened kibble for her in a tray in my room. It’s easier for her to eat out of a shallow tray than a deeper bowl. Usually, the kibble is softened with plain water. When we do their afternoon cat soup, I make it extra thin and use it to soften the kibble for her, too. She spends most of her time in my room, these days, snuggled up and sleeping. At night, she will sometimes come over to cuddle with me, too. Every day that she is still with us is appreciated.

As I was outside this morning, doing the morning rounds after giving the outside cats their food and warm water, I was really thankful I don’t need to go anywhere today! There was almost no wind, but it was cold enough to be quite painful. The gate cam is having issues. It is fully exposed so, while it does get plenty of sun to both warm it up and power the solar charged batteries, it’s too cold for the batteries. While changing the memory card yesterday, the display would shut itself off almost immediately. Today, it stayed up long enough for me to read “low battery”. The solar batteries will charge up during the day, but the back up regular batteries were too frozen to take over powering the camera. I haven’t checked the files yet to see how much it manage to capture during the day. The sign game is more shade, as it’s under a tree, but it has enough to shelter it that the camera’s batteries didn’t completely freeze.

As I write this, we’re coming up on noon and have warmed up to -26C/-15F We don’t have a wind chill right now, but the region is under a several cold warning. Tonight’s low is expected to drop to -30C/-22F, but the wind chills are expected to drop it to -40C/F

Looking at the long range forecast, it seems we’ve got about another week of these temperatures before things start warming up a bit. By the end of February, we’re even supposed to get highs above freezing. I don’t hold much stock to that, though. It wasn’t all that long ago when the long range forecasts were saying we’d be warming up and even going above freezing right now.

My husband popped by earlier asking if I could go to the post office to pick up a parcel.

I told him we were at -27C/-17F.

He said, tomorrow, then. 😂

The down side is, I have to take the truck in to the garage tomorrow morning. I have a 9:30am drop off time. At the time I will need to start heading out, we are expected to still be at -29C/-20F Thankfully, the truck is in a garage and plugged in, but it’s still going to be wicked cold. There is no heat in the garage. I’m told there used to be a kerosene heater in there, for when my late brother was working on my parents’ vehicles, but that’s among the things that disappeared in the two years it was empty before we moved in.

Tomorrow we are finally getting that slow leak in the tire fixed. Hopefully, that will also get rid of the “service tire monitoring system” warning I get, every time I start the truck. Next month, we will take it in for the engine flush, sensor replacement and oil change, which should get rid of the check engine light and get our oil pressure gauge working again. I really wish we had to budget to do that first! As it is, I’ve just messaged to ask if they could replace one of our windshield wipers as well. I could do it myself, but wouldn’t be able to get a new blade for a while, and sure as heck don’t want to be figuring out how to replace it while standing on a stool to be able to see and reach, in the bitter cold!

Then, on Thursday, my daughter and I are taking Fluffy to the vet for a follow up appointment, though at least that appointment is for later in the day. This will be Fluffy’s last day in the isolation shelter, and we will be able to open it up to the other cats again. My daughter is coming with me so she can stay in the truck with the carrier while I go into the Walmart to take care of the overcharge from a couple weeks ago, and pick up a few things.

The daytime highs over the next while won’t be too bad, but the overnight lows are expected to be brutal, and last through most of the mornings.

For now, I’m going to enjoy staying at home. I’m not looking forward to more driving over the next couple of days! I’m really hoping things warm up faster. I have to take my mother to the eye clinic in the city on the 19th. It’s going to be hard enough on her without having to also deal with the cold!

I keep wanting to basically hibernate over January and February, and avoid going out as much as possible. Somehow, it just never seems to work out, but this year has got to be the worst for appointments and errands in a February since we have been living here! I’m just thankful we have the truck and that it handles the cold as well as it does. Our first couple of winters, we got hit with far worse temperatures and our van and my mother’s car froze.

I know it could be worse, but gosh, I’m getting really tired of winter.

The Re-Farmer

Not done with us yet, and updates

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Brrr.

Winter is definitely not done with us yet!

This is actually warmed up a bit. When I checked during the night, it was -28C/-18F, with a wind chill of -38C/-36F As I write this, we are at -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -33C/-27F

I did my short rounds this morning! I did make sure to check the ejector, though. The splash area is open, and the heat tape is warm, so that’s all working. I’ve been talking to my brother about what I’m seeing when the pump runs. It does take longer to empty that tank (almost 7 minutes, instead of about 5), and the speed of inflow, while consistent, with the water level in the filter no longer draining, is slower as well. Since this happens while the pump is running, that suggests the possibility of something in the venturi valve. The only way to know for sure is to pull it up and check, which we won’t do until the spring or summer.

The first thing I did this morning was tend to the outside cats, of course, and check on the isolation shelter. I’d noticed something about it last night, when looking out the kitchen window. There is a “ceiling” of rigid insulation under the roof. One full width piece with a notch cut out for the extension cord, and the other cut narrower to fill in the remaining space. That narrower piece was pushed back, and I could actually see through the clear roof panels into the shelter from the kitchen window! Not enough to tell where the cats where, but I shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

When I checked the shelter this morning, Midnight was gone. Only Fluffy was inside.

Some things were knocked about that I had to straighten up. While she eyeballed the open window as I did that, then refilled the food bowls, she would not go near me. When I came back to do the water, she was on the second level, but jumped down while I did the water and hid in a corner by the litter box below.

No sign of Midnight, anywhere. He’s probably going to make strange for a while, but I’m sure he’ll come back for food and warmth soon.

I didn’t like the idea of Fluffy being along in there, though, so when I saw The Grink, I decided to try and catch her (I think she’s a she). The Grink is one of the tinies and is among the crowd that regularly used the isolation shelter to hang out in. She’s not feral, but not socialized, either. When I did manage to touch her, she let me pet her and pick her up, and was more than happy to be put into the isolation shelter!

As I was finishing up and checked again, The Grink was in the cat bed in front of the heat lamp, grooming. It took a while to spot Fluffy, tucked into a shadowed corner.

Hopefully, over the next two weeks, she’ll warm up to us.

Last of all, I made sure to give them a can of cat food, which The Grink eagerly came over for. Fluffy was still hiding, but there are two food bowls in there now, so I hope she creeps over to at least one of them.

We’re expected to be a lot warmer tomorrow, but also to have snow all day, through to the day after. “Light snow showers” the forecast calls it. So I really don’t want to drive in that with the Costco shopping.

I was planning to visit my mother before heading to the city, but I think I will make an extra trip, first. Talking to my brother last night, I mentioned we’ll need to go into her apartment to make sure there’s no food going bad or anything. They had managed to visit her the other night, and remembered that we need to bring in clothes for her! She’s still wearing the same clothes as when she was went in for her appointment and ended up in the ER. They told me, she is even sleeping in her clothes with her shoes one (her feet get cold). I would have expected them to have given her a gown or something!

So I think I will go to her apartment first. She has had a bag – just a reusable grocery bag – set up as a “hospital bag”. She’s been complaining about her health and wanting to go to the hospital for a long time (and would get very upset when she’d go to the ER, they couldn’t find anything wrong and sent her home), so she had this bag for clothes and necessities. Hopefully, she still had that, and I’ll be able to find it, and make sure it does have everything she would need.

Then I’ll go to the hospital to visit with her before going to the city.

In the end, though, I’ll see how the truck runs when I got to warm it up before I leave. It should be fine, but I’m so flipping paranoid about breakdowns these days. I do have an emergency kit in the truck, and we have CAA, but still… this is not the kind of weather to take chances in.

We shall see how things work out!

Time to bundle up again start warming up the truck, and do another OBDII scan while I’m at it!

The Re-Farmer

Well, technically, we’re warmer…

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Good grief.

Yeah, the thermometer shows it’s gotten warmer, but we’ve got another bit of a storm happening. The winds are quite as severe as a few days ago, but with more snow.

When I headed out this morning, we were at -26C/-15F, but the wind chill was at -39C/-38F I spent as little time outside as possible! Basically, just give the outside cats non-frozen food (their food trays are filled with frozen kibble) and warm water, and that’s it. I did manage to get a few pictures, including a show of this gorgeous girl.

I want to pet her. I want to brush the mats out of her fur.

I want her to not be pregnant.

I assume she is, as the boys are leaving her alone, now, though when I checked out the bathroom window last night, I saw some shenanigans happening with Midnight and a female I couldn’t make out under him; definitely not a big fluff ball like Brussel. I wasn’t going to even try interrupting them, since that would just scare cats outside into the cold.

As I write this, we have warmed up to -19C/2F with a wind chill of -32C/-25F This time, the wind is coming up from the south at 34km/h21m/h, though we certainly have higher gusts that I can see blowing past my window.

We are supposed to reach a high of -17C/1F I don’t know what time of day they use to determine when the high happens, though, as the temperatures are supposed to continue warming slightly, to reach -15C/5F by about 10pm tonight, and stay there until about 2am, when we’re supposed to cool down. The “high” of tomorrow is supposed to be -19C/2F, but that’s supposed to be at about 5am, and things are supposed to keep cooling down for the rest of the day.

Thursday, at least, we’re supposed to have a high of -15C/5F. I got mixed up and was thinking that’s when we’re taking a couple of cats in for a spay and a neuter, but that’s on the 30th. This Thursday is a follow up doctor’s appointment for my daughter. Her appointment isn’t until 3pm, though, and we’re supposed to get snow again, starting Thursday evening and continuing all through Friday. Friday, however, is supposed to have a high of -3C/27F!! Then, on the 28th, we’re supposed to actually go above freezing!

If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, things should stay pretty mild, with only one or two days below -20C/-4F in February.

I certainly home so.

This polar vortex may have some other negative effects that we won’t know about until spring. While our Liberty apple tree is planted in a sheltered spot, and protected someone with an anti-deer wrap, it’s still a zone 4 fruit tree. These temperatures may have killed it.

Our winter sowing experiment may also be affected. While the sown garden beds did get a thick layer of mulch, they would also have benefited from a thicker layer of snow to insulate them. We just don’t have a lot of snow this year (which is NOT a complaint!). Some seeds, like the onion seeds, I’m sure will survive just fine. Others, I’m not so sure!

Well, we’ll see in the spring. Once things warm up and melt away enough, I’ll remove the mulches. Then we’ll see whether I’m making a mistake by not buying more seeds this year.

Oh, who am I kidding. I am sure there are some seeds out there I will end up buying!

With the cold, the snow and the winds, I am cheering myself up by thinking garden thoughts!

The Re-Farmer

Widespread

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This weather system is really wide ranging!

Everything in red on the above weather map is under extreme cold warnings, defined as “extraordinary threat to life or property.” Orange is “severe”, which is defined as “significant threat to life or property”. Yellow is “moderate”, or “possible threat to life or property.” The few patches of blue are “mild” or “minimal to no known threat to life or property.”

The ongoing weather warning, particularly for the region to the south of us says wind chills could reach from -44C/-47F to -50C/-58F.

As I write this, coming up on noon, we have warmed up to -31C/-24F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F.

I check the critter cam every now and then, and it amazes me how active the cats are in the sun room. Most, however, are in various groups, snuggled together in cat beds, under the heat lamp, or in the shelf beds at the window. I know others would be taking advantage of the warmth in the top level of the isolation shelter. It’s the ones that are too feral for any of those spaces that concern me. I see some running around on the driveway, the various paths dug out in the snow, or dashing along the sidewalk, to or from the house. They older cats have their thick winter fur, and the long haired cats are giant fluffy balls, rolling through the snow. It’s the littles that concern me, but they seem to know to stay close to the house and near the heat lamps. Still, when they do go out, I can see them doing this little dance with their paws, always having at least one paw raised up out of the snow. I wish they would just stay inside their various shelters!

Ah, well. We do the best we can for them, and just hope they take advantage of the warmth and shelter we provide for them.

I am so done with this cold.

The Re-Farmer

One more day of this

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It has definitely been the worst.

I took this screenshot after coming in from giving the outside cats food and warm water. I did NOTHING else out there this morning!

If you can’t see the Instagram image, we were at -34C/-29F with a wind chill of -46C/-51F at 8:32am. It’s now just past 9am as I write this and, while my phone’s weather app hasn’t changed, the weather on my desktop days we’re at -35C/-31F and the wind chill is at -42C/-44F

The heated water bowl in the sun room was almost completely iced over at the top. The one in the water bowl shelter was heavily frosted over. Only the one in the isolation shelter had no frost on it – it’s still pretty warm with that heat lamp in there! – but the sliding window beside it was so frosted, I struggled to get it open. Somehow, the food bowl ended up knocked down to the bottom level. I wasn’t about to move the box shelter over the entrance to get it, so I found another container to put inside. It’s just a light plastic thing, and will probably get knocked down, too, but it will do for now.

On my local highway conditions group there is someone who posts a picture with road and weather conditions at the start of their commute, every morning. They live to the southeast of us. This morning, they posted at 6:45am, and reported the temperature at -37C/-35F They did not report the wind chill.

Today’s high is supposed to be -27C/-17F. Barely, and only for a brief period, before things start dropping for the night away. Tomorrow?

We’re looking at a high of -17C/1F. On the 23rd, when we are booked to bring a couple of cats in for spay and neuter, we’re expected to have a high of -13C/9F. On Friday, the 24th, the warmest day being forecast at the moment, we’re expecting to reach -6C/21F.

If the forecasts are even half correct, this will be the last bitterly cold day of the winter. After this, things will warm up and any cold periods expected will not be anywhere near this several. In fact, the long range forecast into February has us going as high as 6C/43F in the second week of February!

I’ll believe that, when I see it.

I really feel for anyone who has to commute in this, or work outdoors. This is one time where I’m glad we don’t have any livestock animals! Homesteaders I know are having a real struggle keeping their water from freezing. We simply don’t have what we need to care for animals in conditions like this – which is why we still don’t have chickens.

One more day of this.

The Re-Farmer

Yikes!

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Good grief, check out that wind chill!

It’s past 11pm as I write this, and we are at -30C/-22F, and the wind chill is at -43C/-45F!

I’ve actually snagged a small heater to use in my bedroom/office, because the furnace just can’t keep up. Especially in my north facing, log walled room with the last drafty window that my mother refused to have replaced when all the others were done, before we moved here.

Time to curl up in bed and stay warm with about a dozen cats or so!

The Re-Farmer

Still working!

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We have another bitterly cold day today. As I write this, at almost 10:30am, we have warmed up a bit and are now at -28C/-18F with a wind chill of -38C/-36F. The extreme cold warnings we were under just ended, minutes ago.

My daughter accompanied me as I did my morning rounds, just in case I had another fall. We did the short rounds, due to the cold, but I did make sure to check on the ejector.

All is working!

My brother redid the heat tape so that it is now wrapped around the elbow and thoroughly secured with electric tape. We don’t want this thing to freeze again! With the septic pump now working at full flow, thanks to that rag no longer being stuck in the back valve, this should not be a concern anyhow, but water was still filling the stack pipe more than it should. I wasn’t about to undo everything to check it it still was.

As for the icicle hanging off the extender my brother added to the elbow, I broke that off then felt around inside. The ice ended just inside the extender. The heat tape around the elbow was doing its job, and it was clear. The next time the pump goes off, the water will melt away and remaining ice as it blasts by. The water is usually warmer, too, since the bulk of the water that goes into the tank is from hot showers.

The pump itself is back to taking about 5 minutes to empty the tank. Which makes sense. It’s now pumping through about 300+ feet of pipe before hitting the venturi valve, then being pushed up a 3/4 inch discharge pipe.

Oh! I just checked the weather again. The extreme cold warning is back. Wind chills in the range of -40C to -45C (-40F to -49F) are expected, particularly in areas to the south of us. We are somewhat protected by the lake effect where we are.

Another good day to stay inside, as much as possible.

Thank God none of us have to commute anywhere.

The Re-Farmer