What Are You Doing Right Now
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hey how are you guys in the usa going? seen it's very bloody cold up there.
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.i'd much prefer the 110 degree days we've been having.
good luck people.
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
hey how are you guys in the usa going? seen it's very bloody cold up there.
We are pretty chilly.
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Water can freeze in the pipes, but normally those are below the frost line, we hope. The north actually handles the bitter cold better than the south handles a mild one with water freezing in the lines.
Electricity works just fine in the cold. It's ice storms that pose a risk there, but that's at much higher temperatures.
It's actually not all that bad. You bundle up, you stay indoors, you avoid going places. But if you do, you warm the car up a lot first, drive slowly, run into the next building quickly. Not really that bad.
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Fireplace.
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.
Sometimes. Well, I've lived through government collapses before so it ain't no thang.
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@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Fireplace.
Not that cold, it'll cool the house rather than warming it.
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saw a clip of chicago on the news last night, all whited out, said it's colder than siberia
when do they think it may improve? -
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
saw a clip of chicago on the news last night, all whited out, said it's colder than siberia
when do they think it may improve?Two days. Tomorrow is cold, but should be good by the weekend. NY is supposed to be decently warm, in fact.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Fireplace.
Not that cold, it'll cool the house rather than warming it.
That's news to me. Certainly a lot of heat is lost through it, but it may depend on how your whole thing is setup, including damper, how much air you can pull from the outside, and so on. The general, traditional idea is to have a huge hearth and chimney breast so that the bricks heat up and stay warm. In fact in the late medieval homes (well, the nice ones) they'd be so large they would weigh more than the entire house, but would also keep it fairly warm. Also other designs like the rumford-style help with heat and avoiding making it colder, but in certain situations I could see how it could make things worse. I imagine a lot of modern homes in the west especially because fireplaces are meant more to be for fanciness/style rather than function it could be the case.
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
saw a clip of chicago on the news last night, all whited out, said it's colder than siberia
when do they think it may improve?Siberia typically isn't all that cold anyway.
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@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
saw a clip of chicago on the news last night, all whited out, said it's colder than siberia
when do they think it may improve?Siberia typically isn't all that cold anyway.
Just really... empty.
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@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Fireplace.
Not that cold, it'll cool the house rather than warming it.
That's news to me. Certainly a lot of heat is lost through it, but it may depend on how your whole thing is setup, including damper, how much air you can pull from the outside, and so on. The general, traditional idea is to have a huge hearth and chimney breast so that the bricks heat up and stay warm. In fact in the late medieval homes (well, the nice ones) they'd be so large they would weigh more than the entire house, but would also keep it fairly warm. Also other designs like the rumford-style help with heat and avoiding making it colder, but in certain situations I could see how it could make things worse. I imagine a lot of modern homes in the west especially because fireplaces are meant more to be for fanciness/style rather than function it could be the case.
Yes, most modern ones at least here have essentially no mass to them and are meant to not overheat the house. So they barely do a thing and mostly just force all the heat right out the top.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Fireplace.
Not that cold, it'll cool the house rather than warming it.
That's news to me. Certainly a lot of heat is lost through it, but it may depend on how your whole thing is setup, including damper, how much air you can pull from the outside, and so on. The general, traditional idea is to have a huge hearth and chimney breast so that the bricks heat up and stay warm. In fact in the late medieval homes (well, the nice ones) they'd be so large they would weigh more than the entire house, but would also keep it fairly warm. Also other designs like the rumford-style help with heat and avoiding making it colder, but in certain situations I could see how it could make things worse. I imagine a lot of modern homes in the west especially because fireplaces are meant more to be for fanciness/style rather than function it could be the case.
Yes, most modern ones at least here have essentially no mass to them and are meant to not overheat the house. So they barely do a thing and mostly just force all the heat right out the top.
Yeah it'd be a different story if I was thinking about it in the context of some crappy thing like that. I'm glad I have a house though, an old one, so it does have several large fireplaces, but people in the 20th century apartment blocks typically have gas/oil water heated radiators. I guess heating oil shortages are sort of a relic of the economic crises of the early 90s but nevertheless I like being able to burn evidence as well as wood.
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we have a steel, wood fire with a flue that goes up through the roof but I'm pretty sure it would be inadequate at those low temps.
have most people been staying home from work? how about shops & stores, have they been open?
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
we have a steel, wood fire with a flue that goes up through the roof but I'm pretty sure it would be inadequate at those low temps.
have most people been staying home from work? how about shops & stores, have they been open?
Most things are open. Certainly many people take time off and many schools close. But tons and tons stay open. "Severe cold" is essentially never an excuse to close. It's not like getting ten feet of snow, that closes anything.
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@JaredBusch fogged over freezing glasses are the worst.
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@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
hey how are you guys in the usa going? seen it's very bloody cold up there.
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.i'd much prefer the 110 degree days we've been having.
good luck people.
Its warm where I'm at.
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@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo my walk to Chicago union Station 30 minutes ago.
Air temp: -15°C (5°F)
Chicago River:
Me:
Gee that looks darn cold, but beautiful, more so the first photo than second
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@siringo I think @JaredBusch is plenty beautiful, I know I had the image he kept posting of his ape-like chest blown up and put over my mantle. Truly not since Adam has perfection been moulded from clay.
Edit: I think this may be the most poetically stupid thing I've said in a while, I'm actually impressed with myself.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
how do you keep yourself warm on a day when it's minus 30 with windchill of minus 46?
Does the electricity shut down/crash/collapse? How do you keep going? that's real survival first type stuff.Fireplace.
Not that cold, it'll cool the house rather than warming it.
That's news to me. Certainly a lot of heat is lost through it, but it may depend on how your whole thing is setup, including damper, how much air you can pull from the outside, and so on. The general, traditional idea is to have a huge hearth and chimney breast so that the bricks heat up and stay warm. In fact in the late medieval homes (well, the nice ones) they'd be so large they would weigh more than the entire house, but would also keep it fairly warm. Also other designs like the rumford-style help with heat and avoiding making it colder, but in certain situations I could see how it could make things worse. I imagine a lot of modern homes in the west especially because fireplaces are meant more to be for fanciness/style rather than function it could be the case.
Yes, most modern ones at least here have essentially no mass to them and are meant to not overheat the house. So they barely do a thing and mostly just force all the heat right out the top.
Most folks around here retrofit an insert into the older fireplaces so that they're actually useable. Either Wood, Pellet or Propane (no Natural Gas in this neck of the woods). The insert typically will have a simple variable speed blower to pull air around the firebox and blow it back into the room. We used the wood insert in the living room (Napoleon 1402) as the main heat source for 3 or 4 winters until I got fed up with firewood and replaced the oil/hot air furnace with a air to air heat pump. Haven't lit a fire in 4 years but I still keep some firewood on hand just in case we get an extended power outage.
