At Home In The Woods

[jayste]

Last night I parked my car at the bottom of our street and walked through the woods to get home. I went to work this morning and had to walk back through the woods to reach my car. It's a 10 minute walk and kind of pretty. I didn't know when I moved here that as a side benefit I would get to take morning and evening strolls through the woods!

A great way to wind down after a busy day at work and a slippery drive home!:thumbsup:

 

[tommu56]

Your trip to you car reminded me of this from high school many moons ago.


Whose woods these are I think I know.


His house is in the village, though;


He will not see me stopping here


To watch his woods fill up with snow.



My little horse must think it queer


To stop without a farmhouse near


Between the woods and frozen lake


The darkest evening of the year.




He gives his harness bells a shake


To ask if there is some mistake.


The only other sound's the sweep


Of easy wind and downy flake.




The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,


And miles to go before I sleep.



poem of Robert Frost

 

[Obed]

Your trip to you car reminded me of this from high school many moons ago.

...

poem of Robert Frost

Yes, I can see that. And actually, my trek through the woods goes beside our pond down in the hollow.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Today I hiked to my car again at the bottom of the hill and went to work. My wife's car was parked at our house but couldn't get her car up our driveway because of the snow. She tried to scrape some snow off our gravel driveway with the tractor but that didn't work very well. She did take the tractor and scrape the snow off the street which enabled me to drive my car to the top of the street after work. I parked my car at the street for tonight so tomorrow morning I won't get to walk through the woods.

 

[dstig1]

I'm thinking you may want to switch over to AWD or 4wd vehicles over the next couple years... And maybe even good winter tires....

 

[Obed]

The master shower does not yet have a shower door installed so we aren't using it. We finally got the shower rod and curtain up in the hall bath so this morning I took my first shower in the house. It was much nicer than showering in the camper. I didn't really want to get out of the shower.

We made sure we got shower controls that allow us to change the volume of water that comes out of the shower. A lot of the showers of people I've visited only have one setting for flow rate - full blase. That just seems wasteful to me and makes things difficult if lots of people need to shower. Our shower control also lets you set the temperature independently of the flow rate. The water temp was very easy to adjust. Adjusting the water temperature in the camper's shower was very hard to do with the cheap plumbing controls.

 

[Obed]

I'm thinking you may want to switch over to AWD or 4wd vehicles over the next couple years... And maybe even good winter tires....

Dave,
If we keep getting winters like this one, we might have to consider a 4WD vehicle. This winter has been abnormal as of recent years. It does remind me of the weather we had when I was a kid.

Obed

 

[Obed]

When we tried to use our 240V wall-mount electric space heater in the master bathroom, we found that it wasn't working correctly. It would run a couple minutes at most and then shut off. When we tested it after the electrical workers installed it, we just verified that it would run but never left it on for more that 30 seconds.

During construction, the electricians originally ran 120V to the heater and we had to make them change the circuit to 240V. After finding out the heater wasn't working, I started wondering if the heater did not get wired correctly so I checked the wiring both in the electrical panel and in the heater's wall box to make sure they matched the manufacturer's instructions.

When I took the heater out of the wall, I noticed that some of the heating coils were bent and were touching each other. Thus I got a pair of tweasers and bent the heating coils so they didn't touch each other. After putting the heater back together, it ran for 20 minutes before I turned it off. So it appears the problem has been fixed.

That heater sure makes the bathroom toasty in no time. If I had it to do over again, I would have located the bathroom HVAC register somewhere other than right below the wall heater. Having warm air flow through the register right below the heater might give the wall heater false temperature readings. We'll have to see how much the register affects the wall heater. But for now I'm just glad we got the wall heater working.

 

[dstig1]

Dave,
If we keep getting winters like this one, we might have to consider a 4WD vehicle. This winter has been abnormal as of recent years. It does remind me of the weather we had when I was a kid.

Obed

I talked with a local architect a few years back who said that once a clients driveway started to get to be over 8% slope or so he started recommending that they have AWD vehicles to avoid trouble in the winter. My wife has an AWD Explorer, and I am driving a little Civic (FWD), and I can tell the difference between them by a ton. We currently live in a typical suburb development (essentially city/suburb - not rural). When you back out of our driveway to go towards the main road, you are now pointing slightly uphill, and when there is snow on the road, I spin my tires to get going (sometimes, a lot). The Explorer just goes. I also have a 4wd F250 for towing the tractor and for when it gets really bad.... Same thing there as I can really tell the difference between 4wd and 2wd modes when it is snowy.

 

[Obed]

When I took the heater out of the wall, I noticed that some of the heating coils were bent and were touching each other. Thus I got a pair of tweasers and bent the heating coils so they didn't touch each other. After putting the heater back together, it ran for 20 minutes before I turned it off. So it appears the problem has been fixed.

The heater is not fixed. The next morning it shut off after running 30 seconds. You can get it to work by taking off the grill and pushing a reset button. Yesterday I called the manufacturer. They are going to send me a new thermal overload device and a new grill with larger openings in the grill. The support person said that sometimes the heat from the heating elements causes the thermal overload to trip.