Shortly before 8am, we were at -27C/-17F with a wind chill of -39C/-38F
As I write this, it’s past 10:30am. We are still at -27C/-17F and the wind chill is -41C/-42F
It was probably about 8:30-9am when I headed outside to feed the yard cats and do a quick check around the house. I was definitely not going to do my regular rounds.
It doesn’t look like we lost any trees this time, though I did find some downed branches. Not anything to pick up now, but to be cleaned up in the spring.
With the cold, I had my hood up over my toque. To keep it from being blown off my head, I had to use the Velcro closure that goes across the mouth. I normally don’t use it, because anything over my mouth causes me to struggle to breathe, so I try to tuck it under my chin. It was cold enough that I had to sort of go back and forth; tuck my chin behind it to warm up, then out so I could breathe.
My glasses, of course, immediately fogged up, so I was also trying to see over the frames.
As I was going around the north side of the house, I have my usual paths to follow, which made it easier, except… well… I couldn’t really see much.
The next thing I knew, I’d tripped and was on the ground.
Thankfully, I was not injured, but this was a real problem. My knees are shot. Getting back up again is very difficult, even the few times I’ve tripped and fallen in the summer. Compounding the problem is the snow. There isn’t a lot of it, and it’s only half-packed. So I’d manage to get myself onto one knee (trying one, then the other, to figure out which one I could actually use) brace my hand onto the ground to push myself up, and the snow would give out. Next thing I know, my hand is lower than my knee, and I’ve pitched myself back into the snow again.
I actually fell three time, twice while trying to get up.
Of course, I cried out as I fell, but no one inside could hear me. After much struggling, I did manage to get up, but for a while, there was a real concern that I wouldn’t be able to, without help. Meanwhile, my phone was in my pants pocket instead of my jacket pocket, where I couldn’t get at it while lying on the ground.
In these temperatures, this was a very dangerous situation.
For the next while, as we continue to have these extreme temperatures, one of the girls will be coming with me when I do my rounds, just to be on the safe side. We’ve got two more days of this before it starts to slowly warm up again.
Meanwhile, I’m fortunate in that I just seemed to have slightly pulled some muscles. My neck and left side of my body is a bit stiff.
The girls have been plying me with tea and sustenance, so I don’t have to move around too much. I’d already taken painkillers before I’d gone outside, but I might need to take some more. I don’t think I need the prescription painkillers, though. Those are “take as needed”, but only once a day, and I save them for before bed, so I can get some pain-free sleep.
This could have gotten really bad. Thank God it didn’t!
The Re-Farmer
addendum: I just got a call from my brother. He’s on the way over right now, to switch the pipes on the septic pump! In this weather! Apparently, next weekend doesn’t work for him, so he’s coming out now. Hopefully, the roads will be clear!
As I write this, we are at -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. That wind chill has actually improved a bit but tonight we’re expected to get wind chills of -34C/-29F.
When I headed out this morning, it felt even colder. I did manage to check on the ejector, just enough to make sure the heat tape is still powered and doing its thing. I didn’t uncover it or check on how the melt is going, as I did not want to risk shattering the plastic taking off the cap and elbow in what was -35C/-31F wind chills at the time.
In a couple of days, though, I’ll probably unwrap it completely, to help it warm up! We are in for some temperature whiplash over the next while.
Yeah. We’re expected to go from -18C/0F to 2C/36F overnight. We’ll have a couple of mild days after that, then drop right back down again.
Looking at the monthly forecast, the next cold snap is supposed to last about a week, then we’ll be warming up at the end of January.
I hope it does warm up at the end of the month, because we now have two cats booked through the Cat Lady, one male one female (whichever ones we can catch). Which means we’ll have to close up the isolation shelter for 2 weeks again, keeping the other cats out.
A lot of them basically live in the cat shelter right now and hardly leave. Between the heat lamp and their body heat, it must be pretty warm in there!
Meanwhile, I’m waiting until Wednesday, when it’s supposed to go above freezing, to do any driving around and some errands.
I am getting really tired of this cold – and this is far from the coldest winter we’ve had since moving here! I’ve spent most of today drinking tea and eating hot soup, because this house just doesn’t really warm up in the winter.
That is -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -35C/-31F. I took this screen shot after I came inside, and it was actually colder than when I first headed out! In fact, even as I was about to take the screen shot, I saw the wind chill drop another degree.
Brutal.
I did manage to do a bit of shoveling and going around to make sure various solar panels were clear of snow. The ones for the lights in the kibble and water shelters were completely buried.
When I got to the gate to brush snow off the trail cam solar panel there, I had to get these pictures.
The photos do not do it justice. Those are the largest sundogs – rainbow or otherwise – I’ve ever seen. You can just see a hint of a complete halo.
Sundogs and halos around the sun or moon happen only in extremely cold temperatures. The stronger and brighter the sundogs, the colder the temperatures.
Needless to say, I did NOT check the ejector. I wasn’t going to uncover it and expose it to this cold. With the bright sunshine, the black tarp should absorb some heat, while protecting the heat tape around the ejector from the cold. The heat tape has all sorts of safety features to keep it from overheating, and is just warm enough to keep pipes from freezing. It wouldn’t take much for temperatures and wind chills like this to basically negate anything it’s accomplishing. I’ll see what the conditions are like this afternoon and decide if it is worth slogging out there to uncover it and check things. We’re only supposed to warm up another degree for the high of the day, but if the wind chill drops, that will make the difference.
On a completely different note, today the girls tested out the Instant Pot with rice for the first time. All the recipes and instructions are for Jasmine or Basmati rice. The rice they prefer is a sushi type rice that usually needs to soak in cold water for half an hour before cooking. I got them an Instant Pot cookbook and they looked at various rice recipes, but the chart that came with the Instant Pot said for 4 minutes for all plain white rice (longer for brown rice). They went with 4 minutes, and it seems to have worked fine.
Once they were done with it, I tried it out myself for the first time, to make a beef stew. I found a basic recipe, though I had to substitute a couple of things – carrots for rutabaga, for example.
The cookbook then said to set the pot to manual for 18 minutes.
Our model of Instant Pot doesn’t have a “manual” setting. It does have a rice setting, which put the time at 12 minutes. It has a meat/stew setting that put it at 35 minutes.
We both used the “pressure cook” setting, which seems to be the equivalent for “manual” on our machine, as it allowed us to select heat levels and time ourselves. The stew is cooking as I write this – oh! it just started beeping! – so we shall see how it turns out.
It smells amazing, that’s for sure!
Time to see if I can have myself a nice hot bowl of stew on this cold, cold day!
You can see the times I took the above three screencaps, showing this morning’s temperatures. It’s coming up to 1pm as I write this, and we have not only finally warmed up to -20C/-4C, but it’s such a sunny day that the “windchill” is -15C/5F. The last screencap I took, at 9am, was just before I headed outside to feed the cats (I skipped the rest of my morning rounds), and the south facing part of the house was feeling much warmer. The wind direction just managed to be blocked by the trees to the south, which made a huge difference.
Unfortunately, we still have no septic, and the tank was not pumped yesterday, so we can’t use our plumbing. The septic truck broke down and never made it.
This morning, I tried calling one of the plumbers back – they are supposed to be available 24 hrs, according to their website. I left a message, but no one has called back.
So, we’re still using the honey pot in the bathroom. No showers and using as little water as possible to wash our hands. To do dishes, we’ve got basins on the dining room table, then we dump the dirty water outside when we’re done. We’ve even changed how we’re cooking, to try and dirty as few dishes as possible, and nothing that involves washing things, or dumping cooking water down the sink. I made a “use whatcha got” soup this morning out up leftovers – even the last bits of charcuteries meat and vegetable sticks we’d prepared extra of for New Year’s – for a hearty one pot meal.
—— pause for phone calls and messages and more calls and …. everything has changed! ——
Okay, I feel like I’m going through mental whiplash right now!
I will get to that in a moment.
Where was I?
Ah, yes. Doing dishes!
Basically, we’re being careful to have as little water going into the septic tank as possible. It can handle being at least a bit overfull – we’ve certainly gone more than a little over full just this past summer! – but we really want to avoid that.
I’m actually getting used to using the honeypot, because we can’t flush the toilet.
Yeesh.
Anyhow…
The plumber I left a message with got back to me while I was writing this. The first thing he let me know is that they are booked solid and cannot come out.
He also sounded rather upset for me. I’d mentioned the ejector was replaced about a month, month and a half ago. Ejectors are made to work in the winter. He used to install them himself. He has one himself that was installed in the 90’s, and it’s working fine. It shouldn’t be frozen. He suggested I call the company that installed it and get them to fix it. I told him I’d already talked to them, and he asked what they said when I told them it was frozen. I told the plumber that, at the time I called, we were thinking the problem was somewhere else at the time, and he was the one who suggested the ejector might be frozen. I didn’t confirm that until after. I also mentioned he’d asked me to call him back today, which I was planning to do. He told me that, when I did, to tell them they needed to come put and fix the ejector.
*sigh*
I did call the owner of the company back and basically told him what the plumber said. He was quite frustrated by that; apparently plumbers pretty regularly do stuff like that, when they don’t actually know what’s going on.
The problem is not the ejector.
The system we have works like this. The plumbing in the house all drains into one side of our septic tank. The solids sink to the bottom and, once it fills, the greywater drains into the other side of the tank. That side has a float with a pill switch in it. When it fills, the float triggers the pump inside the house. The pump pulls the greywater from the second half of the tank – this inflow pipe is where we have the filter installed, to catch any bits and pieces that might be in the water that could damage the pump – then pumps it out to the ejector. The outflow pipe runs most of the length of the basement and out the wall. The pipe, along with water pipes that supplies the heated water fountains for cattle, and a tap in the barn, runs about 300 or more feet to the barn, then turns away from the barn towards a low spot. From there, the venturi pipe creates enough pressure to draw the water up the pipe and out.
With ours, we’ve got a sheet of metal roofing to reduce erosion and divert the greywater towards a low area, further away from the barn.
That elbow at the top is part of the venturi pipe.
When the septic pump shuts off, any water in the venturi pipe drops down below the frost line and collects at the bottom of the 4″ pipe. The next time the septic pump turns on, the venturi pipe drains what’s at the bottom of the 4″ pipe first.
Here’s the problem.
There has to be enough pressure for this to happen, and that requires a certain gallons per minute rate of flow (he couldn’t remember exactly what that was). If there isn’t enough pressure, the venturi pipe can’t drain the bottom of the 4″ pipe completely. Then the pump shuts off, the water drains to the bottom, but now there’s more than there was before.
Eventually, the water level in the 4″ pipe gets above the frost line.
The septic pump, he told me, should take only about 2-3 minutes to drain the tank.
Ours takes about 5 minutes.
Except, recently, we’ve been having issues with flow.
First, the pump would empty the filter, but there wasn’t more water coming in from the tank. I would have to stop the pump, prime the filter, turn it on again, and it would work. The inflow, however, wasn’t as powerful as it had been, before.
The night before it stopped working entirely, the pump hadn’t gone off at all. The only reason it would was if we were using enough water for the second side of the tank to fill and the pill switch triggered the pump to turn on. That just didn’t happen.
So not only was the flow of water from the pump low, but there was no flow at all during one of the coldest nights we’ve had this year. Flowing water would have helped keep it from freezing entirely – at least for a while longer.
Which means that, ultimately, the problem is the pump and the flow of greywater.
Now, the pump *is* wearing out and needs to be replaced, but that may not be the problem. There may also be an air leak somewhere, affecting the vacuum. Which may have been what I was seeing, with a leak from the filter and the O ring not sealing. Or, there could be an air leak somewhere else.
Now, we could install the diverter and an emergency measure, but we still need to get the ejector thawed out, and we probably still need to replace the pump. I’ve been checking the filter regularly, and even turning the pump on for a few moments. It’s not draining, and the filter is not leaking, which – in theory, at least – means there is no longer an air leak.
Other issues could be that the pipe leading to the ejector is also getting coated with gunk on the inside and getting narrower. This is something we have been aware of and have been taking steps to try and improve. One of those was to use the Septo Bac every two days for two weeks, and we really did see a difference in how things flowed after that. Currently, we’re using Free Flow pipe maintenance twice a week; that is more to clear the pipes inside the house, but it would be beneficial for the tank and the pipe to the ejector, too.
—– Must pause for exciting news. —–
The septic guy just arrived! Our tank is being emptied right now!
We’ll be able to flush our toilet again!
I did get a peek into the tank when he popped the lid off. The level had not reached the pipe that the pill switch cable runs through yet, which was quite a relief.
That guy deserves one helluva tip.
Okay, where was I…
Right.
So there are a number of possible reasons why the ejector wasn’t able to drain properly, which resulted in the freeze.
I then got instructions on how to thaw out the ejector (that doesn’t involve ice fishing tents and heaters, as one plumber suggested trying).
I wasn’t able to pull the venturi pipe out because it’s frozen, but could rotate the cap. I couldn’t take the cap off, because of the elbow.
Well, that elbow has a screw, and it comes off.
We could take off the elbow and remove the cap.
We could then start pouring boiling water into the 4″ pipe, around the venturi pipe. However, he said to put some copper pipe down, first. The pipe itself will heat up and help thaw things out faster, but it would also help get water down more directly and further through the ice on the bottom.
Once it seems like enough ice was melted, someone could turn on the septic pump and, hopefully, it would drain the water at the bottom, and empty the septic tank.
That would take a long time, and it’s still colder than -20C/-4F out there.
—- pause for more calls —-
Oh, my goodness. More changes! This time, for tomorrow, too. I’ll get caught up to that, later.
With all this, I’ve been keeping my brother and his wife up to date, pretty constantly.
Given our concerns with the truck, another thing I had to deal with last night was how to get my mother to her medical appointment on Monday. Plus, I was supposed to come early enough to do her laundry for her. She called last night to tell me she was able to get her laundry done herself and that I didn’t need to come early. I told her a bit about what was going on (I didn’t want to overwhelm her!) and that I wasn’t sure if I could get her to her appointment. She tried calling my sister to drive her (which she didn’t want, as I’m the one who normally accompanies my mother, so I’m on top of what’s going on), but my sister starts her shift at work less than an hour after my mother’s appointment.
I passed that on to my brother as well. Today, I was supposed to run the engine a few times, so see if the problem continued, then decide Monday morning, if I’d be rescheduling my mother’s appointment. Possibly mine and my daughter’s on Wednesday, too.
I got a call from my SIL. They were going to be coming home on Sunday (today), and she offered to drive us. She would pick me up first, then we’d pick up my mother, drive her to her appointment, then she’d drive us both home again, then head home herself.
I was stunned by the offer – that’s a LOT of driving for her! Once I was sure this would not be too much of a problem for her, I gratefully accepted the offer.
Today, I’ve been messaging them the whole time, while they are on the way home. My SIL was driving, so my brother was able to respond to my messages.
When I told him about thawing the ejector and needing to look for a long enough copper pipe (I know I’ve seen some, somewhere!), he called me. I was just bundling up to go outside and check the barn.
Which is jam packed with their stuff.
I’m sure there is one long enough in one corner of the old bull’s stall, but it’s full of my brother’s gardening supplies now. I wasn’t sure if it was there, and I wasn’t sure if I could reach it! I’m pretty sure there are lengths of copper pipe in the rafters, too, but again, I’m not sure I could reach them. The centre aisle of the barn is full of tractors and snow blowers and rotary mowers, and I’m… well… short.
My brother called to tell me not to bother trying to thaw out the ejector. They would go home, then come here with both their cars. My SIL would follow later. He would take a look at the ejector, see what he could do, then she would drive him home.
They would leave one of their cars with us. It’s already parked outside, so they know it can handle the cold.
My truck should, too – it certainly did last winter! – but that’s another story….
The thing is, they were still about 3-4 hours away from home! Add in the time to come here, and he won’t get here until after dark!
But he felt he had no choice. No one is coming out to install the diverter, and no one was going to come out to thaw out the ejector. The one company would have, but they are so far away, it would be a lot more expensive, and they didn’t want to ding us with a huge bill. It’s not like they’d be coming out to fix an actual problem with the ejector they installed, that would be covered by any kind of warranty.
Plus, by leaving us with their car, my SIL won’t have to do all that driving.
Then my brother told me to sit down with a cup of tea and relax for a while. He knows me well enough to know how all this has been stressing me out.
Which is about when my husband called out, saying “are you expecting someone with a big truck?”
I’d opened the gate for the septic truck last night, and never closed it. He was able to drive right in!
He’d backed into the yard, so I threw on my parka and headed out. We went over to where I’d cleared things to make room for the truck and the hoses, and got the insulated tarp freed from the frozen ground. He then went to back the truck up the rest of the way. I confirmed how much we owed him, and told him it might be a couple of days before I can get the cash to him. He was fine with that. We’ve done this before, and he knows he can trust us.
With that, I went back inside and let my brother know the septic truck was here. It didn’t take him long at all to empty the truck, so when my brother said he wanted to call, I delayed it long enough for me to go back out, put the weights back down on the tarp, which the septic guy had put back, and put everything away.
Not before using the toilet and actually being able to flush it!!!
Ooooo… Very exciting! 😂🤣😂
While it was great that the tank was emptied, it does make thawing the ejector a bit more complicated. It will take probably a few days before both sides of the tank filles enough to trigger the pump again. Which means that, if we thaw the ejector, there’s not way to test it.
My brother thinks he should be able to use his heat gun and the copper pipe to thaw the ejector.
We’ll see how it works out, though. We won’t really know what we’re dealing with until we get that cap off and can actually see how high the ice it – or use the copper pipe to find how far it goes.
When they reach their place, he’ll grab a few tools, but we really only need a screwdriver to remove the single screw to get that elbow off.
Of course, things never turn out as expected, so who knows.
They don’t have a lot of tools at their place right now. They brought most of them here, to the farm. However, they’re scattered all over. They didn’t have time to be organized about it, but just jammed things wherever they could. My brother won’t be able to start organizing things until spring, at the earliest.
Well, we’ll do what we can with where we are at.
Meanwhile, they will be leaving a car here, and it will need to be plugged in. So I headed out to the garage to get a 100′ extension cord and set that up through the back door of the garage, so the car can be parked in the more sheltered yard.
While I was at it, I finally got to the truck and got the engine running. Then, after puttering with the extension cord, I set up my OBDII scanner.
The first thing I noticed was that the oil pressure gauge was still sitting at 0 and not moving. The check engine light was on again, too.
I did a full module scan. What I’m getting is “Engine Oil Pressure Sensor/Switch “A” High. Five times.
Looking into more detail, the scanner tells me this code frequency is “very common”. The recommended fix is to replace the engine oil pressure sensor.
Which got replaced not that long ago. Unless “switch A” is a different sensor.
I took screen captures of the results. When I’m somewhere with enough data signal to send images through text, I’ll send them to the garage.
Otherwise, the truck sounded just fine. In fact, now that the MAF sensor has been replaced, I do hear an improvement in how it starts, when using the remote car starter. Definitely smoother. I’d checked the oil yesterday, and it was fine, too.
Phew.
This post took a lot longer – and became a lot longer – than I expected!
As of right now, I’m basically just waiting for my brother to arrive and will accompany him to the ejector.
My brother is the best. So is his wife! I am so glad my mother transferred ownership of the property over to them. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
The first thing he asked when I answered was if we got our ejector working again. I told him no, it’s frozen solid. We’re going to have to install a diverter.
Which is when he had to tell me he wasn’t going to make it. When he hadn’t shown up for so long, I was afraid of that.
We might have to call another company, but this is the only one that has been willing to come out as needed, rather than waiting until there are several costumers needing to be done in the same area. It means paying more, but that’s better than having to wait weeks to get it done.
I just set the honey pot up in the bathroom. At this rate, we’re going to have to invest in a commode. The honey pot is a seat that fits on a 5 gallon pail. Not very comfortable, not very stable.
We actually do have a flushing portable toilet in the basement that we found while cleaning up, but the base is missing, so there’s nothing for it to empty into. It won’t fit over a 5 gallon pail, unfortunately.
I don’t get it. We’ve had more severe cold, for much longer periods, in the first few years we moved out here. We had our vehicles frozen for a month. But we never had problems like this, with our septic system.
And it’s not just us. The Cat Lady had the well pump at their cottage freeze and flood the basement, on Christmas Eve. My brother’s sump pump is frozen, and he’s monitoring it through his security camera to watch for possible overflow. During their drive, they saw semi’s broken down all over. Their own car ran well, thank God. The plumbers all mentioned having vehicle troubles from the cold, and they’ve been dealing with calls for service because of the cold. It may be brutal out there, but we’ve had worse!
Someone just shoot me know. Put me out of my misery.
No, I’m not serious. Just hyperbole, but really?
So we’ve got our septic issues. The pump never turned on during the night. I did check it, and found that m it wasn’t until late morning that I finally heard it turn on, and I immediately went down to check on it.
There was no flow through the filter. In fact, it was still full and nothing had drained out the bottom.
So I did the usual. Shut off the pump, pop the cap off the filter to fill it…
There was no seal.
I primed it, turned the pump back on…
There was no water flow. Nothing.
At this point, it was looking like we needed a new O ring. I’ve been messaging my brother through all this, and he suggested using Vaseline to get a seal. I found a tiny little jar of Vaseline in the bathroom and gave it a try.
Still no seal, still no flow.
I then spent I don’t know how long, calling hardware stores, looking for a 5″ O ring.
No one had.
Even the one in the town to the north of us, which I knew carried their own version of a septic pump filter, didn’t have one. They had a 6″ one.
They did recommend I call an auto place on the same street as them, as they carried all sorts of O rings.
The first question I was asked was, how thick. I never even thought of that, because all the places I called basically had one thickness. It was never a question. I gave the closest I could and he went looking.
They had one.
Yeah!
I started heading to the truck to head out.
As I was unplugging it, the first thing I notice is the front driver’s side tire is really low. So I fire up the compressor to pump it up.
That poor compressor. It was NOT liking the cold!
I got the tire pumped up, then got the truck started to warm up while I opened the gate. As I’m backing the truck out of the garage, I see something odd.
The oil pressure gauge is at 0, and is not moving. At all.
I stopped most of the way out of the garage, so I had room to set up the foot stool to check the oil.
It was fine.
I started the truck again, and the gauge still wasn’t moving. I left the engine to run while I went inside for a bit. I tried calling the garage, but it went to voice mail, so I tried sending a text, instead. Then I went back to the truck.
Now the check engine light was on.
*sigh*
I did not have time to fuss with this. I parked the truck, plugged it back in, locked the gate and headed inside.
Then I started calling plumbers.
Long story short, after getting through to one place and explaining the situation, they recommended someone in the town where the O ring was. I called there and left a message.
Then I went to the basement to try the pump again.
As before, I turned on the pump, but nothing was flowing through the filter. So I shut it off and opened it up.
It was sealed so well, I had to pry it off. It took a while, but the Vaseline made the difference.
I checked things and even switched out the filter baskets, even though that had been done recently, so the one in there was still pretty clean, closed it up and tried again.
So the problem was not the filter, after all. And the pump seemed to be running pretty normally. So why wasn’t any water flowing?
I ended up calling the first plumber I got through to again, talked to the receptionist and explained what was going on, which she passed on.
At this point, I had so many calls and return calls to so many different places – including the company that installed our new ejector – that I’m starting to get them mixed up.
Long story short, it was suggested the ejector might be frozen. With suggestions and advice from different places, I headed out with a couple of jugs of hot water to see.
From how the ice and snow was on the diverter, clearly the expeller had been working all right until now. It obviously had quite a bit of pressure to create that ice wall so far from the expeller.
The cap is held in place with two screws, which I removed.
It was frozen solid. I couldn’t even rotate the cap.
I poured hot water over it and was eventually able to rotate the cap, but the venturi pipe would not move. I didn’t want to use too much force on it, or it would crack in the cold, but there was no way I could remove it to thaw it out, or to pour hot water into the pipe.
This is a serious problem. There is no way we can thaw this out, which means no septic for the winter.
I was keeping my brother updated through all this, though he’s currently out of province. When talking about the possibility of the ejector being frozen, he brought up something I completely forgot about.
With the problem we were having before, he’d brought over a massive hose for the diverter.
We could set up the diverter, if necessary. We would bypass the ejector system completely. A diverter pipe would be attached to the pump and run out hole in the wall, which is currently filled with spray foam insulation. The hose he’d brought over is now stored in the barn. We could set that up and the pipe from the basement would get drained into the maple grove for the winter.
With the ejector being frozen solid, that is now our final option.
More phone calls needed to be made.
One of those calls was to our septic guy. We need to get the tank emptied, since the pump can’t drain it. We can’t use our water. We still are, for small things, but no showers or doing dishes, and even flushing the toilet has to be avoided.
Thankfully, they will be able to come out today, so we won’t have to set up the honey pot. They’re a cash only business, though, and I don’t have any, but I can pay them later, which is something I’ve done with them before.
It will take a while for them to warm up the truck and get here, as this cold is causing all sorts of vehicle problems for everyone. As I write this, we are under extreme cold warnings, still. The temperature is at -21C/-6, and the wind chill is -29C/-20F
Once the tank is emptied, we’ll have a bit of a grace period and can use our water while waiting for a plumber to come in.
So far, I’ve had one tell me they’re booked solid for 2 weeks. I’ve left a message with the other, explaining what I needed and asking them to call back. I’ve also gotten through to the company that installed the ejector and asked if they could install the diverter for us. They are the furthest away and would be charging mileage, so he suggested I keep calling others. He then asked me to call him back on Sunday evening to update him. If I can’t find anyone, he’ll have someone come out. Otherwise, he wanted me to let him know if we found someone closer.
Which is where we stand right now. The septic guy hasn’t arrived yet, but I was able to get the insulated tarp over the tank lid freed of ice and snow and pulled back far enough to access the lid. Then covered it again, until he gets here.
As I write this, I realize it’s been at least an hour since the septic guy called me back. I hope he’s okay!
The extreme cold warning extends into the wee hours of tomorrow. We’re supposed to have a high of -19C/-2F tomorrow afternoon, and the days are supposed to keep warming up after that.
Just checking the weather now, and we’ve already dropped to -22C/-8F with the windchill now at -31C/-24F. Which could be worse; some places are getting wind chills of -40C/F
It’s past 3pm as I write this. I’d better go top of the kibble for the outside cats and – more importantly – give them more warm water. A lot of the kibble bowls are still really full when I head out. The ones in the kibble house may be sheltered, but there is no warmth. The bowl in the catio, wrapped in its plastic, gets emptied, but now the bowls under the nearby shrine. I’m rather surprised the plastic is making that much of a difference. The bowl in the isolation shelter gets emptied completely. So I try to leave more food at the bowls that get empties, so they don’t have to go into the cold to eat. I want them to stay warm and cozy as much as possible! Their winter fur is obviously helping, though, as I’ve been seeing them all over while outside.
As I write this, we are back down to -22C/-8F, with the same wind chill of -33C/-27F that I was walking in, earlier today.
It could be worse. We could be Regina! They are at -31C/-24F, before wind chill!
We are currently under ongoing extreme cold warnings but, thankfully, we will be warming up over the next few days, so it’s really just tonight that’s expected to be severe like this.
I am glad that the truck it plugged in, though! 😁
In other things, I believe I’ve found the cause of our septic pump problem. Potentially. I went down to the basement randomly to check the pump, and found water pooled under the filter. The filter itself was pretty full, though. I couldn’t find the actual source of the leak, but I believe it is under where the pipe from the tank screws into the filter housing.
I ended up messaging my brother about it, as he installed the filter after we moved here – and the pump itself, the last time that was done. I’d told him we were looking into replacing the pump, and could only find one at a specific hardware store. Turns out, the nearest location is the one he’d bought this pump at, and he bought the most powerful pump he could get. Which is interesting, because when I showed a picture of our pump to one of the staff to show what I was looking for, he took a closer look at the label and commented that it wasn’t very powerful. I don’t know how long ago it was replaced – probably closer to 20 years ago. The newer pumps would have improved quite a bit since then, I’m guessing!
As for the filter, after I described what was happening, he told me this had happened before. A different filter had been installed at the time. My late father had noticed problems with the septic pump and my brother could not find the source. He ended up hiring and excavator to check the pipes to the tank, and they never found the problem there, either, though they did find some things that were loose that shouldn’t have been! That was fixed, at least. The plumber ended up having to leave without finding the problem, because he’d been here for so long. In the end, my brother took out the filter (it had been installed by another family member) and just put pipe back – and it worked fine again!
So when he got a new filter after we moved here, he went and got the best filter he could find. It’s a Jacuzzi pool filter, and pretty solid.
Well, I guess even the best stuff will wear out eventually!
This is not something that can be repaired, though. The entire filter would need to be replaced. I don’t know where my brother got it from, other than “in the city”. I don’t even know if they still make the same style of filter anymore. I’ve done a quick search and the closest I could find to what we have is attached to a pool pump – and it’s the pump that’s being sold in the image, not the filter. It may not be available anymore.
Replacing a filter, at least, would be more affordable than replacing a pump. Plus, it’s something we could do ourselves.
If we can find one, and I sure as heck am not going to be driving around looking, in this cold.
My daughter and I have joint medical appointments on Wednesday, which is supposed to be warmer. The hardware store that carries the septic pumps has a location just a couple of blocks from the medical clinic. I might want to pop over after our appointment to see what they have.
We had some bitterly cold temperatures last night – dropping to -24C/-11F, when I was awake to check. There was no wind chill, though. In fact, the “real feel” was slightly warmer than the actual temperature.
When heading outside to feed the yard cats, I found a whole crowd of them inside the isolation shelter – all in the top level, too!
Including the isolation babies. Both Kohl and her fluffy partner were in there.
With so many cats and one bowl in a corner, the littles weren’t able to get at the food as well, so I dropped a handful beside the fluffy boi.
With the cold, a lot of the food trays still had a lot of food in them. None of the cats, understandably, want to be outside eating, and even in the sun room, they prefer to huddle together in their various shelves and beds and under the heat lamp. I saw several through the cat house window, near the heat lamp in there, too.
The food bowl in the isolation shelter, however, didn’t have a single crumb left in it, and even the water bowl was mostly empty. At this point, I think the top of the isolation shelter may be the warmest place around!
The insulated box nest, however, seems to be in the way. I am considering taking it out and putting it in the lower level, where the little box is. We had to take the cat bed out from there, since they were using it as a litter box. Since this box nest is insulated, it would probably get used more in the bottom level than it is in the top level. The food bowl can then be put in the middle where the box is now, and more cats can eat out of it at the same time.
Moving the box nest will require moving the entry box shelter away, so I’ll save doing all this for when I have a daughter available to help out.
Meanwhile…
My husband and I had plans today. We were going to head to the nearer city, where he can go in to exchange his cell phone, as the 2 year plan is up. He doesn’t use it much, but if he simply kept it, we’d be charged almost $700 for the balance on the phone. Or, he can return it and get a credit, but would have no phone. Alternatively, he can exchange it, have another phone on a new plan, and still get a credit.
So that’s what we were going to do and, thanks to a generous monetary Christmas gift from my mother, we were planning to have an actual sit-down dinner date, too. It might just have been to Subway or something, in the same shopping commons as the phone place, but it still would be a fun and rare treat for my husband.
With the cold, we waited until things warmed up in the afternoon before we started heading out. It was -19C/-2F and the time we left. I went ahead to take out the shopping bags in the back of the cab to make room for his walker while warming up the engine a bit. Since we haven’t been able to get the block heater cord repaired, I made sure to run the engine a bit while I was doing the morning rounds, too.
Soon we were loaded up and on our way.
We got maybe 5 or 10 minutes out, when it happened.
The console started dinging, and the “oil pressure low, shut of engine” light started flashing. The oil pressure gauge had suddenly dropped right down.
We already had the oil sensor replaced from the last time it happened.
So I popped on the hazards and pulled over.
Of course, the first thing I did was check the oil level. We had an oil change done when the sensor was replaced, so it should have been full.
It was. Looked pretty clean, too.
I still added a small amount. It was a fight to get the oil cap off (thank goodness we keep a stool in the truck, or I couldn’t have reached it!), and one of the first things I noticed was the interior. It looked almost as if the black plastic was blistered.
It wasn’t.
It was ice.
So I added a bit of oil, then cleaned out the inside of the cap as thoroughly as I could before putting it back and running the engine for a bit before checking the oil again.
Definitely plenty of oil.
Well, we weren’t going to take a chance. Once everything was put away, we turned around and went home, while my husband messaged our daughters to open the gate for us.
The warning light did not turn on again, and the gauge stayed within the range it was supposed to.
The gate was ready and open for us, so I pulled straight in to the garage, stopping only to get the walker out for my husband before pulling the rest of the way in.
As soon as we were inside and settled, I called the garage and left a message describing what happened. Our mechanic called back within minutes.
He asked a few more questions, and he basically confirmed what I already suspected. Most likely, there was a bit of ice from condensation getting into the sensor and triggering that warning. Basically, the engine needed to warm up longer. He has seen this before, but only with GM vehicles.
Hmmm.
Since we know there is plenty of oil, he basically said, if it happens again, it’s not a panic. That was the main thing. The last time it happened, the truck turned out to be almost completely out of oil, even though there were no visible signs of a leak, nor were we burning blue. There is a separate warning light for low oil, and that never turned on. Replacing the sensor also took care of the leak, and the oil level has been steady, since.
Well, I’ll take this as a sign we weren’t meant to go to the smaller city today.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be meeting with my brother at our mother’s for a visit. It’ll be earlier than usual, since he has to leave by noon, but this is his Christmas visit to my mother, as they’ll be visiting the grand kids for Christmas and New Year’s.
If the cold we got hit with last night is why this happened with the truck, though, it should be fine, tomorrow. We’re expected to dip below -20C/-4F for a few hours this evening, but start warming up throughout the night. By the time I should be leaving in the morning, we are expected to be warmer than we are right now. Long range forecast no longer says we’re supposed to get as warm as 6C/43F around Christmas, but it does still say we’ll be hovering around the freezing mark on those days. We will be doing our dinner on Christmas Eve. I will be setting aside a couple of meals and plan to go to my mother’s to have lunch with her on Christmas day.
Hopefully, the truck sensors will behave!
For the rest of today, though, it’s another home day, after all! I’ll be working on more garden analysis posts, instead. 😄
On a semi related note, a while back I wrote about how I was suddenly seeing ads on YouTube again. I ended up getting an updated version of Firefox and installing their adblocker, as it was the only one that still worked. I was still getting them on my phone’s app, to the point I could no longer play YouTube videos at all, they were so intrusive. Which meant, no playing background playlists to help me sleep.
Well, that has stopped as suddenly as it started. I no longer see YouTube ads on any browser I use, nor on my phone app. None of them had gotten updates, either.
Very strange, but I’ll take it!
Oh, this is too funny! I just got a message from the Cat Lady.
One of the cats they took from us was a muted calico we called Muffin. She was an outside cat friendly enough that we could get her into a carrier. She went to them to be spayed, get the usual vet checks, then go up for adoption. Instead, she bonded with the Cat Lady’s husband, and they are still inseperable.
Today, she is out with him, delivering Christmas bonuses and drinking Starbucks.
Muffin still hates the Cat Lady, for some reason – she’s never had any other cat behave like this towards here before. Muffin still tries to bite her, every day, even though she doesn’t have teeth anymore. But she adores the Cat Lady’s husband, attended Zoom calls with him, goes out to job sites, and when she has to stay home, sits at the window, crying for him all day. It’s got to the point that all these hardened contractors now look forward to seeing Muffin. Too funny!
Well, time to adjust my plans and see what I can get done, now that it’s turned out to be a home day.
It’s almost 1pm as I start this. Outside, we’re at -17C/1F, which is a huge improvement from the last couple of days. Our predicted high for today is -15C/5F
The wind chill right now, however, is -30C/-22F
Tomorrow, however, we’re expected to reach a high of -6C/21F, then -2C/28F over the next couple of days! It’s going to feel downright tropical out there! 😄
My daughter did the outside rounds this morning. The short rounds, since it was -27C/-17F out there, before wind chill, at the time. When I did the evening cat feeding last night, I saw that the wet cat food in the isolation shelter bowl was frozen. It’s right next to the sliding window, so that corner is pretty cold. I reached in to tilt the clamp lamp so the heat bulb faced the back of the shelter, instead of the hammock below.
I was actually able to handle the metal shield around the heat bulb with my bare hands. It was just warm. Normally, I would have burned my fingers if I’d touched it. Another sign of how cold the ambient temperature in there got, even with the heat bulb!
The kitties are okay, though. Kohl had frost on her face fur again, but her fluffy partner did not. My daughter says there was a bit of frost around the top of the heated water bowl.
The kitties have now been in there for a full week. Kohl is handling her surgery just fine. No sign of infection, and neither of them seem interested in licking their surgical sites at all. They’ll be in there for one more week of observation.
They have company, though.
After talking about it with my daughter last night, we decided to add another kitten. There’s one white and grey that has leaky eyes, a stuffy nose, and has been sneezing and snuffling a lot. My daughter thinks it’s Eye Baby, but I’ll have to look closer to be sure. This morning, she was able to snag the kitten and take him into the isolation shelter. She said, he really didn’t like being carried outside in the wind, so he was very quick to jump into the isolation shelter all on his own!
With the temperatures improving over the next week, he will be better off in there than in the sun room, and will get to share the wet cat food as well. A week not having to fight so many adult cats for food, water and warmth will help him recover faster, as well.
At least, that’s the hope.
Today is a bright and sunny day, so they should have some passive solar heat in there, too.
My daughter doesn’t stop to take any pictures when she does the morning routine, though, so I’ll give you this, instead…
It may be warming up out there, but today will be another home day. I think, tomorrow, I’ll make the trip to a feed store. I’m looking to get the 40 pound bags of cat food, but also want to see what they have for heated water bowls. I’d like to get another smaller one. They seem to last longer. When I took the one my SIL gave us outside to chop the ice out, and flipped it upside down to spill out the shards, I found there was a melted spot in the plastic in the middle of the bowl’s bottom! I had intended to go to the town north of us for that, but we are almost out of lysine, and the feed store in the town my mother lives in was able to order some for us. Since I’m also thinking of another smaller shopping trip in preparation for Christmas and New Years, in the nearer city, it would be along the way.
Until then, I’ve got another day to enjoy my hibernation.
The power is back on again, and stayed on long enough that I turned my computer back on and will try posting this.
We’ve got another brutally cold morning. While doing the morning routine, after feeding the cats, I took the litter buckets out to their compost pile behind the outhouse. They had been in the old kitchen, which is not heated. I couldn’t empty them completely, because of the damp sawdust frozen to the sides of the buckets! Normally, I’d knock the buckets against a tree, but I didn’t want to shatter the plastic.
By the time I got back inside, it had warmed up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F. I just checked again now, and I have three different weather apps telling me three different temperatures! I’ve got one saying it’s -24C/-11F, another saying we’re still at -25C/-13F, and another saying we are at -26C/-15F. Only two of them give me wind chills, with one saying -30C/-22F, and another saying -33C/-27F
I was supposed to pick up our beef share today, but I had already tried to reschedule last night, on seeing the temperatures expected for today. We haven’t replaced the cord on our block heater yet, so I don’t want to try driving the truck. It’s not cold enough to crack the engine block (yes, we’ve had that happen before), but I still would rather not take any chances.
With there being power issues today as well, that’s even more reason to stay home.
In the second photo of the above slide show, you can see the ice and frost accumulated on the inner door of our main entry. There’s frost on the bottom, too.
The next photo shows Caramel in the bigger cat bed inside the shelf shelter, with frost on her face. She could go into the sun room (the thermometer on the wall was reading -15C/5F), or the heated cat house, but she chose the shelf shelter.
In the next photo, you can see that even Kohl has frost on her face! The other fluffball didn’t have any frost on him at all. The insides of the windows were frosted, though. Even the heated water bowl was starting to show ice freezing near the top. After giving them their wet cat food, I scooped out most of their water bowl (the power cord is wrapped around the support on the top, so I can’t take it very far out of the shelter to spill it out) and replace it with warm water.
I noticed a corner of the plastic wrapped around the bottom was coming loose. When I checked it, I found that cats had pulled the plastic down, all along the back of the isolation shelter. So I got a cardboard box and opened one corner, to make one long, flat piece. Three sections were just long enough to cover the entire back, with one section was enough to cover the side of the shelter. I quickly tacked the cardboard in place, but after taking the picture, which is the last one in the slide show, I secured it a bit better and bent the flap, so it wasn’t overlapping the sliding door.
The water bowl in the sun room was frozen solid. It was also completely full. Normally, it just top it off with the warm water, which melts through the layer of ice to reach liquid water below, but that was not going to happen. I ended up taking it outside and chopped the ice out with a hatchet, being careful not to hit the bowl itself. The heated water bowl in the water shelter is still working fine, so they at least had that.
There was still quite a lot of kibble in the outside food trays. No surprise there, really. They would have had to be incredibly hungry to go out there in last night’s cold for food! I know for sure we hit -29C/-20C before I’d gone to bed last night.
With the power going out, we needed to keep tabs on how long it was out. With the heat lamp in the isolation shelter off, it would get dangerously cold in a very short time, and it would be hard for two small cats to keep each other warm, even with the cat bed in the most insulated corner. The cardboard would have helped some, but not enough. We would have had to take them out to join the other cats in their cuddle puddles to stay warm, as there is no way we can bring them inside the house.
Thankfully, the power seems to be staying on, now.
It did get me thinking of alternatives.
If we really needed to, we could use the fire bricks we’ve bee slowly accumulating for our future outdoor kitchen to create a radiant heater in the isolation shelter. A brick or two on the second level floor, more bricks to form a wall around, tea lights inside, and bricks on top to make sure no kitty could touch the flames. The bricks themselves would absorb heat and continue to radiate heat out, even after the candles burned out. For a small space like that, it could work.
We have the ability to do things like cook if the power goes out, but that’s all outside. With temperatures like today, it just wouldn’t be feasible.
Another reason to put a priority on building the outdoor kitchen. Even if we just had the structure up, it would give us a sheltered space for a fire pit to cook over. I’d love to find a way to have it closer to the house, but there just isn’t a good space in the inner yard for that. Too many trees and other structures. As it is, we’ve changed our minds on the outer yard location a few times before settling on the space between the pump shack and the old chicken coop.
Things to think about!
In other things…
I was so happy to get that call from the new pain clinic. They have just opened recently, and my husband’s new doctor had referred him to it already. They needed to send him a questionnaire, which they normally would have mailed, but the postal strike is still going. So they wanted an email address to send it to, instead.
This is why having a corded phone on a land line is still important. We don’t get enough signal to get phone calls on our cell phones – I’m amazed I was able to make my earlier post, with how poor our signal was at the time. Far less signal strength is needed to send things in text, thankfully. At least there was a signal. Usually, there’s nothing.
Hmmm… I’m going to try something here. My current computer with the current OS has features my old one didn’t. One of those is the ability to do a video screen capture. Check this out…
This is the animated weather on my desktop app. From the colours, you can see that large swaths of Canada and the US are as cold as, or almost as cold as, the Greenland glaciers!
Thankfully, days like this will apparently be few and far between, this winter. We’ll have some cold days in the week before Christmas, but the long range forecast is now saying to expect 3C/37F on Christmas Eve, 1C/34F on Christmas Day, and 5C/41F on Boxing Day! Then stay with highs above freezing, through to New Year’s Eve!
Of course, I expect those forecasts to change, but so far, we’re not going to be getting weather like today very often. Quite the change from our first couple of winters here, when we saw entire months much like what we’re getting right now.
Funny. As I get older, I’m finding I can handle the cold a lot better than I used to, physically – but mentally, it’s the other way around!
The Re-Farmer 