Winter Wonderland

[spyderchick]

Went for a little walk today in the snow and took some pix with my old digital.

Link to slideshow.

[Super Dave]

Similar stuff out here  in der west eh...

Very pretty in spite of my dislike of snow. 

[Sobottka]

I agree with SD...but here's a couple i took from an ice storm last year




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[weggieman]

Winter wonder land is right............I wonder what the hell I'm doing living in this crap!! Have i ever told you how much i hate snow?? Don't ask, you don't have the time or the ears for it.......

It may make for pretty pictures but otherwise it SUCKS! Unless it's here for deer season, then it's great..........but only then.

[resurection]

I'm thinking some of you may not appreciate how the winter helps you enjoy summer even more .
And how cool is that first ride in the spring,or the colors in the fall .I'm all good with winter it's a good trade off.

[weggieman]

winter is fine............. it's the snow i don't like. Rain goes down the sewer or soaks in the grass, there's shade for hot sun and always A/C for the heat but this damn snow has to be moved, shoveled, snow blown or whatever the hell you do with it. It's a pain in the ass!

[Smy]

I need to make winter more fun because I am going crazy.  Wouldn't it be nice to look forward to winter?  But how do we do that? 8)

[resurection]

Snowmobile?
It's like off road biking w/o the cops and WFO all the time.

[weggieman]

tried it.......didn't like it.

[resurection]

Was it the WFO that scarred you of or the bobwire fences?Happy new year

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

winter is fine............. it's the snow i don't like. Rain goes down the sewer or soaks in the grass, there's shade for hot sun and always A/C for the heat but this damn snow has to be moved, shoveled, snow blown or whatever the hell you do with it. It's a pain in the ass!

My parents have a good solution for this aspect that their implementing into the house my Stepdad is personally building for them to retire in. The house uses radiant floor heat, this works by circulating warm water thru tubing imbedded in the floors thruout the house, because heat rises the room stays much more evenly warmed. In this area once your apx 15-20 feet below ground the temperature stays apx 55* year round, so they have 1 very large and 2 medium size fluid storage tanks that are in a room at least that far below ground level (this was easy to achieve and access since the house is into the side of a slight hill and the south side of the house is exposed down to the basement). The tanks stays apx 55* just from the earth's natural heat so they only have to heat the water about 15* to keep the house at 70* in the winter and in the summer you can use it to cool as well.

This leads to snow removal, my parents figured that since snow removal can be a real pain (and source of possible back injuries and injuries from falling) they should implement something for that as well. What they are doing is actually having an independantly controlled radiant heat system used for the garage that can be redirected and used for snow removal on the driveway, sidewalks, and porches as desired by merely activating a control. Since they will have concrete for all those surfaces you have to be careful because you can't heat it too rapidly or it will crack from the sudden temperature shift, so the control unit slowly starts increasing the temperature of the fluid at a pre-specified rate (the garage radiant system will have an environmentally freindly antifreeze type solution in the lines). The 55* fluid used to mix with that system is in one of the medium tanks below ground, that fluid is slowly mixed in and exchanged as the snow removal system circulates with a smaller tank kept above ground (that tank is normally at whatever the temperature is outside). The great part about this is that you don't have to heat the water that's melting the snow because 55* will do it quite well, so your only operating cost is the electricity to run the pump to circulate the fluid - that will come from solar energy anyways, but that's a different story. 

[resurection]

Boy what an advantage to start at ground level and plan your attack with time on your side.
The ideas are endless ,maybe just as simple as a window facing the sun ,or maybe a shop with a second floor.