Ice Storm December 2016

Starting on Thursday December 8, this was the scene on Friday morning. 

Ice continued to build up as the temperature stayed just below freezing through Friday.  Of course, we lost power on Thursday afternoon through evening, and again Friday night through Sunday at 1:30am.  We even lost power to our telephone landline Friday night through Saturday.  And it is not possible to go online and see a map of where the power outage is (as the Portland General Electric phone message suggests) because when we have no electric power here, we have no cell phone service and no internet connection (just venting a bit).

Saturday morning the sun came out and the temperature began to rise.  Lots of broken branches and ice chunks crashing to the ground.

 A Great Blue Heron visited the neighbor's field.

 And Deagan got a chance to stretch his legs as the ice started to melt. 

 Close up of the ice-encrusted grass.

Sun starts to set on Saturday -

Geothermal Heat Exchange in the Gorge

Geothermal heating/cooling starts with a long loop of flexible pipe filled with coolant that is buried:

underground horizontally, what we did

or underground vertically, like a well

or underwater, if you have a big enough pond or lake

The flexible pipe is filled with a coolant that absorbs heat from the ground (or the water of the pond).  A compressor in your home concentrates the heat which is distributed as warm air through duct work (like a traditional furnace).  In hot weather, you can collect heat from the house and put it into the earth to cool your house.  Sky Heating & Air Conditioning of Portland, Hood River, and The Dalles installed our system.  For more information see www.skyheating.com 

The trench for our ground loop

When the trench was excavated for our ground loop, topsoil was placed to one side of the trench and subsoil to the other, so that the topsoil could be easily put back on top where it belongs.  You can see the darker color of the topsoil piled up on the left side of the picture below (and the soil horizons on the right side of the trench):

The piping was laid in the trench

The piping in the foreground leads into the house and was installed with a special machine that bores a small tunnel underground, under the house, leading to where the compressor and pump are installed in the little room that used to hold our old oil furnace.

Our new high-tech thermostat :)