Monday, November 28, 2011

Its Winter Again Already?


     Well this post is a little out-dated, but Winter came early here in MA, with a generous helping of 2 feet of snow right before Halloween! It feels like we just got finished with winter not too long ago, I'm not ready for this yet! The snow came above the bottom of the bus door so I had to really push it out of the way as I opened the doors. Remember all those beautiful brassicas growing in the field? Yep, all crushed in the heavy snow! But we were quite lucky compared to some towns that lost power for a week or more. We only lost power for a few days, and we enjoyed being cozy inside the bus with our wood stove, drinking tea in the candle light.
Louie, as you can see, does not love the snow so much.
Several days later the temperature was in the 70s and all the snow was gone by the end of the week. But the nights have been getting pretty chilly and we have been making fires pretty often. The one night that we got home too late to bother to make a fire, the temperature inside the bus was just about as freezing as it was outside, and in the morning (after sleeping in a wool sweater and hat) I saw that all my jade plants froze to death in the night! We realized that we need to make a fire pretty much every night to be comfortable in here.
So I tek-foiled the bedroom! I could feel the cold draft disappear as I covered each window with the foil. Even though we insulated pretty well in the bus, we were losing a ton of heat through all the windows, and even if it looks like a space ship now, the tek-foil is keeping the heat in.





6 comments:

  1. Oh, man, I feel for you! I'm sure the foil insulation will help over the winter. How do you keep the snow from blocking your door from opening, say if you got a huge storm??

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just checked out your blog. Wow, you've done a he!! of a lot of work in just a year. I my self i'm a cobbler, not a lot of 90* angles. but you are truly craftsmen. i'll be sure to check back to see how things progress. tis the season!

    ReplyDelete
  3. wow - how magical your place is! The snow is gorgeous - love how you have a fireplace in your motorhome. Are you allowed to have it registered and drive around in it with your setup?
    Cheers
    Lisa
    PS - we live in a motorhome but there is no room for a fireplace!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Impressive! I just read your whole blog and I have to say you guys have really done a beautiful job building up your bus. I want to redesign my bus to be more pleasing to the eye. That will have to wait until I find out where I will settle down.
    I totally understand the challenges of living on a bus in cold temperature. I moved to Denver earlier this year and I am getting my taste of real cold.
    Good luck. I will check in from time to time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the comments, everyone.
    April, I don't know what will happen if we get a huge storm, I hope that doesn't happen and I don't have to find out. The door does freeze shut on really cold nights, but we can just give it a good kick.
    Lisa, our stove is a small model and is actually RV approved. We don't do too much driving at the moment, as we are living on the farm where I work full time, but we would have to take the chimney off if we take the bus on the road. I hope you have heat in your motorhome, I don't know what we would do without our stove. Its pretty cold in here even with a fire.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh hey, quick idea!
    you can instal the TEK mylar wrap on the ceiling with some 3M tape, or screws. It would reflect all your heat back at you. We loose alot of heat through our ceilings.
    anyways, just an idea.

    ReplyDelete