Forty Degrees and Raining.....Beginning Winter Preps

And we started bringing up the heaters after I vacuumed the dust and other stuff out of them. The new heater I installed down in the basement is working fine, and now the chill in that room is gone. From some reason, I get creepy feelings down there at night, so I'll see if this makes that space more user friendly.

I pulled the vent piping out of the window and took it apart for the portable A/C unit in the guest room, collapsed the hose, and stowed it all in the room's closet. We're not expecting any visitors for a while, and we won't need the A/C in that room. And removing the vent allows us to fully close that window, making that room "winterized".

I haven't drained and coiled up the garden hoses and put the 'freeze protectors' back on the outdoor spigots yet, but that's coming Real Soon Now.

One of the things I'm planning on doing before winter really sets in is to get some sheets of the R-13 foam board from Home Depot. One sheet will go in between the storm door and original exit door in the garage, and the other sheet will get sectioned up so I can put pieces of it in the basement windows. If I cut them to fit snugly, it should cut down on the heat loss through the windows, and keep the basement warmer with less energy input. We have a quote from Renewal by Andersen to replace these windows, but it was deemed "Not Critical At This Time" by SWMBO, so they're still the aluminum framed Heat Pipes like we had topside in the rest of the house.

Same with the garage doors. Even though there's a volume of 'dead air' trapped between the two doors, there's still significant heat loss out of that portal. I'd planned on replacing the 40 year old side door in the garage (it's half glass, the glue joints are popped open, and it's sagging) this last summer, but never got one of those circular tuits from the jobjar to handle it. It's not as bad as the original aluminum framed windows we had replaced, but if you step into that corner of the garage you find yourself in a "cold spot". And I'm also thinking of putting four sheets of some thinner stuff across the garage door on the Toyota side. Even though the doors are insulated, and extra couple of inches can't hurt. It was getting down to 40 degrees in the garage last winter, and my "log" shows 10 nights at temps below 45. When it gets under 50 out there, it starts to get hard to work more than about 30~45 minutes. Even when I was huffing and puffing scrubbing out the paint last year, under 50 was sure to make my fingers stiffen up. I *might* look into some supplemental heat if I can do it inexpensively. Since there's NO natural gas piping on this cul-de-sac, hanging a big old Modine heater on the ceiling is out, thanks to Jimmuh Cahter.

Halloween preps this year (we closed on the house 31 October last year) include one of those little stick-in-the-ground "laser" light shows, a flicker bulb replacement for the porch light, some flickering plastic pumpkins on the porch, and a couple of speakers on the front porch playing spooky music. Oh, and four big bags of candy, per our neighbors.

Snow tire swap is scheduled for sometime in mid-November, as that's when most of the tribe does it, and they've lived here for quite a bit longer than we have.

I had these things on the list for October, but waking up to sub-40 degree temps, and then the drizzle, reminded me that there's no time like the present.

Oh, and I want to get a Farmer's Almanac this year, too. I haven't had one since high-school, but Mom put a lot of faith in their forecasts.

Must be a Midwestern thing.......