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Winter 2020 New England Banter and General Obs


CapturedNature
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Last year we built a new house with really good insulation and buried 2-1000 gallon propane tanks.  We used just over 400 gallons of propane from the beginning of February to mid-October.  Cost us just over $500 to top off in October for the winter.  It is well worth owning the propane tanks to make shopping for it possible where as with leasing, you are stuck with the company you leased from.  We use the propane for heating, hot water and whole house generator.

We also installed solar panels which we purchased, with a break even period of around 9 years.  It sure is nice getting a monthly bill from Eversource for $10!

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Getting back to the whole internet in no man's land thing, why can't Mitch say he works from home and needs someone here to fix it immediately? Unless he already did that? I picture like that movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase and the mail man. The cable guy just effs with poor Mitch. Drive's by, pretending to come and fix it only to peal out and laugh. I wonder if the schools there use rock walls for a chalk board?

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Exams are scheduled all day and by alphabetic order, we are 1st.  Talked briefly with a women who’s done this before and said it’s a good thing as they get backed up during the day.  This beats going to registry and have state police administer the test.  It’s busy here.  Easily 1/2 dozen TDA academy cars.  I’d recommend to anyone with a kid ready to drive

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21 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Getting back to the whole internet in no man's land thing, why can't Mitch say he works from home and needs someone here to fix it immediately? Unless he already did that? I picture like that movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase and the mail man. The cable guy just effs with poor Mitch. Drive's by, pretending to come and fix it only to peal out and laugh. I wonder if the schools there use rock walls for a chalk board?

You didn't read the responses in the other thread I guess.

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24 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Exams are scheduled all day and by alphabetic order, we are 1st.  Talked briefly with a women who’s done this before and said it’s a good thing as they get backed up during the day.  This beats going to registry and have state police administer the test.  It’s busy here.  Easily 1/2 dozen TDA academy cars.  I’d recommend to anyone with a kid ready to drive

Look out world. Lol congrats man, really frees up your time when they become independent. Makes ya nervous the first couple of months but overall it's a good step towards their independence 

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We’ve had rime ice on the trees in the valley with freezing fog the past two nights.  

The inversion going on has been insane!  Day two of stout inversion. 

Yesterday the highs at the ASOS were all 13F to 15F....the high at Mansfield was 28F.  The summit was beautiful near 30F while it was an icebox in town.

Last night it dropped only to 16F at the summit, but -8F here at home.  

Here’s a photo from yesterday from my coworker above the frigid cold:

758323C9-4A3D-4A31-9E37-F6AE63F75526.thumb.jpeg.3aebcef1df684c5f75695fadb37c06a7.jpeg

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16 hours ago, BrianW said:

Maine is aggressively deploying heat pumps and has incentives for them. Here is an interesting article on it. Didn't realize they had soo many installed. I also attached a performance graph of how newer units can achieve some impressive cold weather performance. My unit can put out its full rated heat all the way to almost -20 before capacity drops. 

 

Maine is the most heating-oil-dependent state in the country. More than 60 percent of the state’s 550,000 households rely on heating oil as their primary energy source for heat.

But because a little more than half of the electricity generated in Maine already comes from zero-carbon hydropower and wind power — and legislation signed yesterday sets a 100 percent renewable electricity target for 2050 — a rapid shift to electric heat could deliver significant emissions reductions. It should also save households and businesses money.

Maine  has probably the poorest access to natural gas in the lower 48, hence its use of heating oil (and firewood.)  Hydropower is somewhat controversial in the state currently, due to the proposed PQ hydro corridor - lots of info flying around, but the thought of all that juice flowing thru the state with none going directly to its residents doesn't play well in the optics game.  Maine burns a lot of biomass as well.  Tough economics for a stand-alone biomass-gen plant, but when it's co-gen with a pulp or sawmill the finances look a lot better.

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1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

We’ve had rime ice on the trees in the valley with freezing fog the past two nights.  

The inversion going on has been insane!  Day two of stout inversion. 

Yesterday the highs at the ASOS were all 13F to 15F....the high at Mansfield was 28F.  The summit was beautiful near 30F while it was an icebox in town.

Last night it dropped only to 16F at the summit, but -8F here at home.  

Here’s a photo from yesterday from my coworker above the frigid cold:

758323C9-4A3D-4A31-9E37-F6AE63F75526.thumb.jpeg.3aebcef1df684c5f75695fadb37c06a7.jpeg

Would you call those underdogs?

image.png

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9 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Getting back to the whole internet in no man's land thing, why can't Mitch say he works from home and needs someone here to fix it immediately? Unless he already did that? I picture like that movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase and the mail man. The cable guy just effs with poor Mitch. Drive's by, pretending to come and fix it only to peal out and laugh. I wonder if the schools there use rock walls for a chalk board?

In my wife’s building, it is not far from that. The building isn’t that old and they have some decent technology. But without fast internet a lot of that is useless

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8 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Pond hockey today. First time I’ve seen it this early around here, even in a shallow pond. 

Scott,  NH large lakes have just stated to skim over in the bays.  This may lead to really dangerous conditions with warmer weather upcoming.   Lots of vacationers coming up from SNE this week and they may not realize the ice is not thick on the big, deeper lakes.

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7 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

Scott,  NH large lakes have just stated to skim over in the bays.  This may lead to really dangerous conditions with warmer weather upcoming.   Lots of vacationers coming up from SNE this week and they may not realize the ice is not thick on the big, deeper lakes.

I would not venture out on anything deep. This is a shallow pond, virtually a swamp in summer. But I was impressed to see people on it.

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13 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

In my wife’s building, it is not far from that. The building isn’t that old and they have some decent technology. But without fast internet a lot of that is useless

I didn’t know she was a teacher too? Good for you guys. Sounds like a topic for debate in school committee meetings. 

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26 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I didn’t know she was a teacher too? Good for you guys. Sounds like a topic for debate in school committee meetings. 

It’s not a school committee thing. The whole down doesn’t have it. I think part of it is that they are rather remote with less than 1500 people.  Companies don’t want to run the lines out there. 

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8 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

It’s not a school committee thing. The whole down doesn’t have it. I think part of it is that they are rather remote with less than 1500 people.  Companies don’t want to run the lines out there. 

I wonder if they have to have one of the companies have a monopoly. That is, they agree to run lines if they are the only provider? When that happens, they can sponsor technology like that.
 

 I honestly don’t know. What town is she teaching in?

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1 hour ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

It’s not a school committee thing. The whole down doesn’t have it. I think part of it is that they are rather remote with less than 1500 people.  Companies don’t want to run the lines out there. 

How far is the nearest Internet?  Can you create an air bridge from there?  If the companies won;t run the backbone, that could be an alternative.  You'd need a high spot on either end but you can go 20-30 miles between points.  The best part is once you do that you can offer Internet service to everyone around the school.

How abut cellular service?  I think AT&T & Verizon have rural Internet service packages.  It's more limited, but would give you Internet access.  Even if the cellular signal is weak, you can use external antenna's to improve the signal.

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1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I wonder if they have to have one of the companies have a monopoly. That is, they agree to run lines if they are the only provider? When that happens, they can sponsor technology like that.
 

 I honestly don’t know. What town is she teaching in?

Here in CT when the cable companies were running lines in the 80s they were forced to provide service to streets/towns in rural areas  to avoid what happened in Mass.  The cable companies were told that if they wanted to provide service to Town X, they had to also provide service to Town Y even if it only had a few hundred customers.  The same thing happened in towns like Stafford where most people live in the center of town (Stafford Springs).  If they wanted to provide service to Stafford Springs, they had to run lines down all roads in town.  Now every town and road has Internet.  I honestly don't know why Mass. didn't do that.  It's not like these places are truly remote like in the High Plains or Rocky Mountains.  In a lot of cases we're only talking about 10-20 miles.

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21 minutes ago, MetHerb said:

How far is the nearest Internet?  Can you create an air bridge from there?  If the companies won;t run the backbone, that could be an alternative.  You'd need a high spot on either end but you can go 20-30 miles between points.  The best part is once you do that you can offer Internet service to everyone around the school.

How abut cellular service?  I think AT&T & Verizon have rural Internet service packages.  It's more limited, but would give you Internet access.  Even if the cellular signal is weak, you can use external antenna's to improve the signal.

I have no idea.  There are a number of towns that either have no broadband or it just got put in.   Very weird for such a progressive state. 
Even Princeton,MA just got it in the last year or two and you can see Boston from there

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11 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

I have no idea.  There are a number of towns that either have no broadband or it just got put in.   Very weird for such a progressive state. 
Even Princeton,MA just got it in the last year or two and you can see Boston from there

They would rather raise your gas tax

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