Chickadees and icicles

[jhetley]

Sunny today, temperature up near 40 F, so the snow is packing up and leaving. This produces icicles on roof edges, which proceed to glint in the sun. We need to redeploy the window-sash prisms for the winter -- an assortment of glass that throws rainbows all over the room, but we have to take them down in the summer when we want to, you know, _open_ the windows. Rainbows in winter are a goodness.

Also chickadees. They flit around and scold us and the cat and nab seeds and fly up into the maple to whack them open, dropping hulls all over. Makes even the coldest, grayest morning a little brighter.

Great North Woods survival tip of the day: Beware of black ice at night. Melt during the day, refreeze on road surfaces or sidewalks when the sun goes down.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I keep crystals in my windows, though my windows are wide open year round. I cannot imagine ever shutting them--doesn't the house get lethally stuffy if you do? How do you keep fresh air coming inside if the windows are shut?

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Drafts. Most houses seem drafty.. hence a wisp of fresh air almost no matter what you do.

Though sometimes, I admit, I open the windows (or door) for a little while on a warm day now and then to air the place out a little. Sickness and general ick-ness seems to breed otherwise.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Woo, I cannot imagine. I sleep directly below an open window, with a big box fan four feet away blowing on my face all night long.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I suspect you'd at least shut off the fan if the outside ambient dropped below zero. F, not C...

And, as Tarsia said, we get ventilation in our house whether the windows are open or not. Comes with the whole 1850 package, no extra charge. The heating and plumbing were afterthoughts.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, below zero would considerably alter sleeping habits, yupyupyup.

Sheesh. We think our place old because it was built in 1970.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my parent's house is probably around 120 years old.... Plenty of nice refreshing drafts in the winter. And stilled heated by forced hot air that comes up through this 3x3 cast iron grate (I think it's cast iron) in the middle of the living room floor.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally forgot about heaters. Yes that would be fresh air.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Nonono! Heaters are not fresh air!!! Theirs is sooty, at least when it's not working quite right.

But even the radiators in my current place.. it's not fresh air.. just this warm aura in certain spots.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

So it recycles the same air already inside the house? Hmm.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Yeah, their furnace doesn't have an exterior intake.

And steam radiators are an enclosed system.. pipes that have hot water run through them and radiate heat. Actually, several heating systems rely on radiating heat through pipes. Others are hot air, and it wouldn't surprise me if newer types do have exterior air intakes, but I just don't know.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Look, we're Yankees. Once we've paid to heat that air, we're not going to let it get away easy.

Our heating is oil-fired* hot water, big cast-iron radiators you can snuggle up to on a winter morning. Sometimes we sit on 'em.

*Originally coal-fired boiler, retrofitted with an oil burner back in the age of the dinosaurs.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

They had radiators at the university in Vienna, in 1972. I remember people sitting on them. My apartment was heated by coke and coal, which had to be lugged up five flights of stairs in fifty pounds sacks. Not fun when you weigh ninety-five pounds. Every morning, though, the landlady opened both sets of windows and put the bedding in them, whatever the temp, unless there was actual precipitation.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

The cast-iron radiators are also nice to warm up your snuggly sweater on.. or dry gloves n mittens and such.. Good cat perches too, from what I've seen a friend's cat do.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Comes with the whole 1850 package, no extra charge.

You, too, huh? Do you have that wonderful variably-permeable interface between Outside and Inside that sometimes results in Outside Critters turning up in unexpected Inside places? (The winter we had a resident ermine was, well, different. There is no point in trying to catch and evict an ermine: they're faster than you are and are apparently part Martian Flatcat as far as compressibility goes. We figured that at least he was working to keep the mouse problem down.)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the wildlife has made it all the way indoors. Skunks or woodchucks under the attached garage and workshop, yes.

Yes, an ermine can fit through a 1/2" gap. I think they have hinged skull plates.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

You don't, not really. (Except for the usual familal comings and goings through the front door, and whatever may leak in where things aren't air-tight.) Windows up here are not only shut, they're usually either double-glazed or fitted with storm windows on the outside. Fresh air getting in is less consequential than keeping heat from getting out. Which is why carbon-monoxide detectors are an important accessory.

By the time spring comes around and you can actually open the windows again, everybody has soaked in the mustiness of winter for so long that they barely notice it, and the first breath of spring air smells like perfume.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I guess this would relate to sharp cold.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Mm.. spring is divine