Preparing for winter II

NualaBuala

Frugal wrote: »

A lot of snow has thawed here altho still a long way to go... Just checked the weather for my area and its going to reach a balmy 7c tomorrow So that should see the last of the white stuff off.

But like you NB I will be excited when we see it again, even tho I am sick of it now

That's cos we are big children at heart Frugal!

Mardatha, look on the bright side re your sweetie situation - unlike me, you won't need to start 2011 by losing weight!

parsonswife8

mardatha wrote: »

They always used to say, whatever America gets, we get a week later.... my penpal in Maine was shovelling snow from round his mailbox in gusts of 50mph and has just given up and gone inside. Up here it's just grey and horrible and really cold. Asda just arrived and I am gutted that I forgot to order sweeties..

I would have thought that sweeties would have been at the top of your list.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Fruball

Its a whopping great 2 degrees c here :cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

AND its raining so that 'should' see the last of the snow and ice being gone by the morning :j:j:j

The birdies will be happy

I have a little Robin who has started to visit me!!! Since I put food out, he/she used to pop up to the french doors and look in but now, has started coming and landing on my front windowsill just where I sit!!! Its like he/she knows I am there and looks right in on me :j So sweet, so I put some suet out for him (i'll stick to him as its easier than he/she) and he looks really pleased with himself

I shall trying to tame him like my Dad did with his resident Robin who used to come and feed from his hand

mrsr

Frugal wrote: »

Its a whopping great 2 degrees c here :cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

AND its raining so that 'should' see the last of the snow and ice being gone by the morning :j:j:j

The birdies will be happy

I have a little Robin who has started to visit me!!! Since I put food out, he/she used to pop up to the french doors and look in but now, has started coming and landing on my front windowsill just where I sit!!! Its like he/she knows I am there and looks right in on me :j So sweet, so I put some suet out for him (i'll stick to him as its easier than he/she) and he looks really pleased with himself

I shall trying to tame him like my Dad did with his resident Robin who used to come and feed from his hand

Thats lovley they can get quite tame.I bought a Bird Table about a wk ago and they havn't been near it,i started of with putting food on top fence post as soon as they took that which was only a couple of days i got the table and they havn't been near since:(

Pitlanepiglet

I need to learn to check my shopping order more carefully! I've been altering and moving the order since before Christmas as I aborted it and went shopping when the forecast looked bad for us (good move!). Just had the delivery as I'm getting a bit short of some basics. Managed to order 6 chickens instead of 3! Our freezer is now absolutely jam packed!

We've got a couple of friendly robins, one seems to live in our front hedge and the other in one of be back hedges. They potter around quite close to us.

Confuzzled

NualaBuala wrote: »

When I went to feed the birds this morning I found the outside tap that I had paid to have repaired only a couple of weeks ago is broken - it's discounnected at a join and is dripping. I'm hopeful that the dripping will at least stop it bursting again but I'll have to get on to the plumber again to sort it.

you know, it might well do just that!

before i left for dunoon on the 18th, quite literally just in time, i decided to leave my heating on full as norml but open all the doors so it would circulate properly, i also put the water heater on the timer again, i normally switch it on and off manually as the heater is so well insulated we don't need that much time heating except on really cold days. but most importantly, i turned all the taps so they were open but only barely dribbling, the kind that stops on it's own after awhile

awhile ago i'd posted on this thread or the is your heating on thread about how in the states people leave their taps dripping to avoid burst pipes. someone challenged that by pointing out that even niagra falls freezes solid so it spurred me to do more in depth research to explain WHY it works and i'm sooo glad i did.

basically leaving the the initial trickle, even if it's so slight it eventually stops dripping, is merely a way to ensure that the pressure in the pipes that builds up as they freeze has a place to go. well when i got home i noticed i could only get water from the hot water taps, and after the first flush of the toilet we had to manually refill it to get it to flush again as it wasn't refilling.

since the cold water refills the water heater i was worried about using too much of the hot water so i feared i'd have to call my letting agents this morning. thankfully though, opening up the kitchen faucet considerably and closing off the bathroom taps as well as jacking my storage heaters up on full blast last night seems to have done the trick as the water in kitchen sink woke me up this morning :T

i was so worried the letting agents would accuse me of causing the problems with the frozen pipes so i'm glad it's sorted itself. i do believe though, if i hadn't left the taps open that little bit i might have come home to a very wet house and some angry neighbours!

mardatha

I always leave the hot tap dripping, because my mum had this mad idea that the heat of the hot pipe would reach the cold pipe running alongside it Might only work in a house like mine where the hot water is always boiling though.

Primrose

mardatha wrote: »

I always leave the hot tap dripping, because my mum had this mad idea that the heat of the hot pipe would reach the cold pipe running alongside it Might only work in a house like mine where the hot water is always boiling though.

Mardatha - you must be fortunate to live in an area where your water doesn't have a high limescale level! We do unfortunately and dripping taps in our household quickly ruin the basins & baths with ugly stains. . We have an avocado bath & sink, & even the odd drop of water left dripping from a tap for a couple of days leaves a hideous mark. . It's the bain of my life continually trying to remove them. However, I can see the sense of possibly leaving a tap marginally open in bitterly cold weather to remove the pressure of water freezing. In high limescale areas though, it might be a good idea to leave a face flanel or other small piece of cloth in the basins to absorb the dripping water so that it doesn't go directly onto the surface of the basin. I don't know whether this would work - the water could obviously still drain away from the soaked cloth but perhaps without dripping directly only to the basic surface. Has anybody tried it?

Wee_Bargain_Hunter

I'll have to put my 2p worth in here as I think it's better to leave taps off if you are out - just run them occasionally if you are at home.
We had a dripping tap last year & came home to find an overflowing sink as the outlet pipe had frozen up! It was caused by a broken washer & was only a tiny drip but was enough to cause a lot of damage! The plumber said it was a bad idea to leave taps dripping/running.
Also my Uncle lost water pressure & couldn't run showers etc for a few days because of other people running taps.
This year I have been running hot water down the sinks & shower outlets occasionally to try & stop the outlets freezing up.

mardatha

I dont think we have limescale in the water here at all Kittie, I've never seen stains on any baths here apart from the odd cottages that use private water supplies, some of them have quite old stained baths.