Jan 6 - lake down; tank up

It is fascinating to watch. Up goes the lake and down goes the lake. The ice floated up with the rain, froze at that level and has then receded by 18-24 inches. When it re-froze right after the rain the rock in front of Reddick's was completely submerged; the rock in our cove only showed a few inches and the ice level was just about touching the boat-house door. Now there is broken ice all along the shore with suspended ice at rocks and stumps. There is an ice-shelf that extends out from the top log of our gazebo base and then drops down a few feet out. The ice-shelf is close to 6 inches thick -- this is where there was open water after the rain.

Where I drill holes for ice fishing, about 20-25 feet from the rock outcrop in the cove, the ice is about 10 inches thick now. When I walked across the lake a couple of days ago, drilling holes as I went, my 8 inch bit hit water a few times as the drill chuck went into the hole -- clearly more than 8 inches everywhere. That does not stop me from worrying as I walk on the ice ... it's natural. That does not stop me from thinking about crawling back onto the ice -- could I do it ? could I run back home without freezing to death in the meantime ? It's silly ... 7.5 inches can support a car. I, however, am smaller than a car and could fit in a small hole ! The truly prepared person carries a pole so that they cannot fall through a small hole and an ice pick so that they can pull themselves back up. They also wear an exposure suit. Wearing and carrying all that crap is too much work ! With skidoo tracks running down the lake past the Lodge to the Wolf River, I should not have anything to worry about.

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I measured the ice depth at the hole that I drilled with the auger -- 10 inches. We're into "light truck" territory now !

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It's morning again. It's our last day before traveling -- lots of packing to do, and heavy packing at that with skis and gear.

Nagging at Superior Propane again yesterday finally produced some results. It's lucky that Sandy was home though because the guy called from Port Loring asking if he really needed to come because he was running late. Yes, you really need to come because we won't be here to keep the driveway clear. Yes, I've been chasing you for weeks now. No, I'm not going to do it this way again !

I talked to the guy when he was here and he said that the last place that he'd been to had the same size tank -- biggest tank that he'd ever seen at a residence and now another. I asked him how often most people had their tanks filled and his response was 60 days. I called SP after he was here to change my credit card on file and the lady asked if we still wanted to be billed the 1st of the month. I asked her -- as opposed to what, I haven't paid attention to when I've been billed, just that I'm billed after the tank gets filled ? She said either the 1st or the 15th -- and then I told her that we only get the tank filled once per year and she laughed.

I have always had the propane refills charged to Amex which in turn of course converts the Canadian Buck$ to USD in my bill, but I had taken advantage of a time a couple of months ago when the USD was running at $1.28 CAD and moved a chunk of money northwards, so I'll use that money since the USD is now "only" at $1.18 or something like that. Amex charges the going rate + 2% for the currency conversions; I get a much better rate using my currency broker.

We got an email from David who arrived in Edmonton at 2am their time. His flight was late but did fly, thank goodness. I hope that we fare well tomorrow. Having been used to flying at least weekly and more often, my mind will go into "traveling / airport mode" at some point tomorrow as we go from "we're in control" to "someone else is in control". I'll have to use the Air Canada website later today and print off our boarding passes. It's been a while since we've flown Air Canada domestically. We flew AC from Toronto to Los Angeles during the summer ... I cannot remember the last AC flight before that -- probably a time 10 years or so ago when we went skiing at Whistler flying from Philly via Toronto. That was the time that Sandy left her purse in Araxi's restaurant and we lost hers and Jeffrey's Green Cards. It was memorable because the US INS guy in Toronto hemmed and hawwed and finally let us through just in time to miss our flight, the last one of the day.

There was no action under the lake yesterday. My ice fishing rigs stayed out all day without even a lost minnow. On top of the lake, however, there was action. I went for a walk with Abby and then took the 3-wheeler out down to the Lodge and back, with Abby sitting on my lap and then some more cruising without Abby.

It's really windy outside now. I just saw the thistle-feeder out front swinging wildly back and forth and had to check that there wasn't some animal at the base trying to push it over. It's pretty heavy and narrow, not exactly a wind-grabber, but the base was swinging in at least a one foot arc. I then looked at the trees and realized that it wasn't just the feeder.

By the end of the day the water was down about 2 feet -- (assuming, that is, that the ice is floating on the water). That makes me wonder if the Ministry did come in and remove some logs from the dam after the thaw to make it drop this rapidly. Of course, with the cold weather, none of the snow is melting so any water flowing over the dam will drop the lake level. I'd love to go down there and see but am not sure how close I could get before the current would make the ice unsafe. At the left dam I could probably travel straight through with the 3-wheeler through the rocky shallow side which is probably high and dry or at least frozen to the bottom. I'd want to stay very close to shore all the way though ... perhaps when we get back in 10 days if it has stayed cold I'll venture down. Jim Matthews will likely know of any trouble spots. I see that the overnight temperature is supposed to hit -27C while we're away -- that will definitely thicken the ice !!

Speaking of ice, there is an ice buildup beside and in front of my woodbox beside the stairs that is now 18-24" thick. There is snow melt coming down the hill -- presumably from the two thaws -- that flows over the ice and when exposed keeps building the thickness. There is a galvanized garbage can beside the woodbox that we fill with ashes from the wood stove and it is half-way buried in ice. That's a lot of ice ! That did not happen last year so I'm not sure what is going on. Of course last year it was very cold with very little snow so the ground had a better chance of freezing deep (we had 2 feet of ice on the lake last year) whereas this year we got snow early -- cold yes, but the snow insulates the ground.

David thought that it might be coming from the septic system but no, the septic system is a hundred feet away. The water from the septic bed would actually have to travel uphill to get to that point since the tiles are 3 feet underground and start 10-15 feet downhill from the satellite dishes. If there was a problem with the effluent it would flow straight downhill and show up at the shed which is downslope from the septic bed, not at the stairs. Heaven help us if we have more septic problems !

Speaking of the septic, I found a way, which should have been obvious, of flushing the tank. There is a floor drain that goes straight into the tank, after an air trap of course. The floor drain cover comes off and I can put a hose in it from the water tank and fill up the sewage tank. With the pump unplugged, I can fill it until the alarm light goes on, with the alarm switch in the off position so that it doesn't blare in my ear. There is no danger of overfilling if the alarm float is sludged up because I can monitor water going into the trap. Even once the pipe down from the trap starts to fill it takes a long time at full hose-flow to fill up the tank.

With the pump unplugged from the float switch, I plug it into the receptacle and run it until I can hear it start to pump air. It takes a couple of minutes -- the tank is quite big -- then I unplug it from the receptacle, plug it back into the switch and then back into the receptacle. The only things to watch out for in this procedure are a) don't get bored and leave the water running into the drain and let it overfill; b) remember to turn the alarm switch back on (of course it did no good with the recent problem anyway); c) remember to plug the sewage pump back in.

Why would I do this ? Well, it cleans out some of the crud. If we're leaving, dropping the level to the bottom means that the floats are not in the crud building up a crust sticking to them. Remember, the "crud" to which I refer, floating on the top of the tank, is oil and soap. It forms a hard crust, probably during periods of inactivity when we're away. I wonder, though, whether leaving the pump in the air is a great idea because it is probably more susceptible to rusting in the air than in crud. The bacteria quickly uses up any oxygen in the liquid, I would think, reducing the likelihood of rust causing problems ... who knows.

I am determined to keep this thing maintained though. An annual cleaning would probably do the trick. With a working pump (as opposed to a plugged pump), draining it, filling it with clean water, popping off the top, scraping the sides and floats, flushing it with clean water a couple of times, putting the top back on and resealing is probably a good thing. Having a spare pump, even though they are expensive, is probably a good thing. I'll do some shopping around at some point. It may live longer than I do, but that would make it worth the expenditure, something like carrying an umbrella guarantees (maybe) that it won't rain.

As you can see, I'm in a septic mood this days. A year and some ago I would wax eloquent about tiles and mortar, now it's crap and crud. There's never a dull moment in our lives !

Changing topics -- it's light now and I can see the tree branches and the feeder blowing in the wind. I'll have to go out and get ice fishing again. I only have a couple of minnows left -- they were closed yesterday when I went into town, but I'll use them up.

It's a very gray day. I think that we're supposed to get a few flurries, nothing more. In addition to packing I have to roast enough coffee beans for our trip to Whistler. We need about 1.5 pounds of coffee for that period of time.

Oh -- some propane facts -- 2123.3 liters of Propane @ $0.71 per liter = $1,507.54 + $8.95 Hazmat handling fee + $11.00 transportation fee + $76.38 taxes = $1,603.87. That's for a little more than a year because last year the refill was before Christmas. Also, we dropped an extra 10% of the tank, perhaps 200-300 liters, between when we left in November and when Sandy got back in December, with heating the outside. Sandy had left the bedroom sliding door open a crack. That may be an exaggeration ... perhaps only 100-150 liters, hard to say, but I had never seen it drop so much in such a short period of time.

I did some research on electric heat, just curious as to what I might need in electric heaters to keep the place from freezing if we ran out of propane. From what I can see, a 1500 watt heater puts out around 5,000 BTU's. A 20 amp / 220 volt circuit, fully loaded with heaters, would thus equate to 4400 watts or 14,667 BTUs. Our furnace is something short of 100,000 BTUs, as I recall, so to keep up with the furnace running flat out I'd need a lot more heating circuits. Having said that, it doesn't take all 100k BTUs to maintain the house at 50F ... but then again, I'm not sure what it would take to keep the place at 50F it it was -40F outside.

I found out another interesting thing about propane -- it liquifies at -44C. That's equivalent to -47F. I've never seen the temperature that low, but does that mean that if "global warming" which doesn't mean warmer everywhere, pushed the temperature down to -50F, even briefly, that the propane would stop evaporating inside the tank, pressure would drop and we'd have no heat ? Also, evaporation reduces the temperature of the liquid itself, so if it's even close to that the rate of evaporation would reduce the gas flow to less than that required to produce 100k BTUs. Certainly we would have a hot water problem, because the on-demand Takagi hot water heater can burn up to 200,000 BTUs at full flow ... which has probably never happened.

I guess that I'll worry about global warming another day.

This blog has gone on long enough !