Tag Archives: heat

Side Tracked

It’s a heat thing…

Heat Booster

As I try to balance working on the house and working on the Rover, I’ve decided to complicate life even more by trying to do a little Beetle work. I’ve always wanted to hunt down one of the gasoline powered heaters that were a VW dealer installed option back in the day. They are difficult to find in decent condition, and for a price that is less than I paid for the car in the first place.

I’ve opted to try to add a pair of booster fans to the air ducts instead. The kits run around $169 when you can find them, but I’ve found a couple of inline fans that have a very good reputation within the VW Cult. $19.99 each, and available on Amazon. I just love free shipping.


Swanky

New Heated Windscreen

Sometimes it’s good to splurge a little.

I saw these heated windscreens back in May or June, and knew I’d be buying the set at some point. In Fairbanks, anything involving heat tends to get your attention, and anything that can add more heat to a rolling aluminum box will get mine.

Defroster

My Land Rover was originally imported into Canada. Due to this, it had the cold weather gear that was available to LR at the time. The black defroster plate, in the picture, is powered by the Kodiak Heater. At the time, the Kodiak was the bomb, but it lacks a little in the way of versatility. When you want heat down by the floor, you open the little door on the heater housing. When you want defrost, you close the little door.

Extreme simplicity.

Pulling passenger windscreen

Since the driver’s side glass had a serious crack, and the passenger side had a small crack, the heated replacement glass was an easy sell. Pulling the glass took very little time or effort. It’s held in by thin, aluminum angle channel. It took more time to remove the passenger side wiper motor for future R&R.

So the glass is out, and the windscreen frame is completely clean.


Weather Update

Mushers in Denali
Pulling a sled in this weather is hot work

It was 52 degrees in Denali National Park today. Moose were seen rolling in overflow to cool off.
The amazing thing is that 52 degrees wasn’t even close to being the Alaska high temperature for the day. These temps are not great for mushing dogs, and I’m sure with the start of the Yukon Quest looming, mushers would prefer a bit of a cool down in Interior Alaska and the Yukon.

Valdez Avalanche

Valdez Avalanche 2014
The road to Valdez — Photo courtesy of Alyeska Pipeline

An avalanche swept down upon the Richardson Highway outside of Valdez, Alaska on both Friday and Saturday, leaving as much as 40 feet of snow on top of the highway. A 50 mile section of the road is closed for at least a week, cutting Valdez off from any road traffic. The ‘Rich’ is the only highway serving Valdez.

The city’s airport and Alaska Marine Highway terminal remain open. Highway closures to Valdez are not unusual during the winter, as the town receives, on average, 297 inches of snowfall each year. Valdez is the snowiest community in the United States.

Avalanche Debris
Photo courtesy of Alyeska Pipeline


6am AST

At 6am on Friday, I saw that the temperature here was 41 degs. I was dubious, so I opened the door, and all I heard was the sound of running water from the melting snow. A quick check revealed that Minneapolis was 17 degs and San Antonio was 27 degs.

How warm was it in Fairbanks? It was so warm, the school district cancelled classes for the day.

Say what?

I’m not kidding. 41 degrees, and classes are cancelled because the roads may be icey. Fifty or sixty degrees below zero? No problem. Classes as usual. 40 degrees above zero? Damn, this is foreign territory, everybody better stay at home.

Insanity.


The Heat from Firewood

I’m glad I subscribe to the theory that planning too far out is simply a waste of time. Embrace that loosey-goosey lifestyle!
I was supposed to install a chimney & woodstove this week for a client. The night before I was to start the job, the customer informed me that she was no longer interested in a woodstove. It seems a mutual acquaintance, another contractor in fact, told her she didn’t want to deal with firewood. The damn busy-body! The cost of heating oil isn’t dropping anytime soon, hot shot.
Ahem…
What really annoys me is that she’s going to change her mind back and want the stove installed in October, when we have a nice layer of snow up on the roof. Why do it now when we don’t have a cloud in the sky?

On the plus side, she has about ten cords of downed birch & spruce stacked near the cabin. “If you need firewood, take what you need,” she says to me.
So I’ve been hauling, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood this week. It was 85 degs here today, which is not ideal wood cutting weather. I realize that I won’t be getting any sympathy from South Texas, but 85 is still hot to those of us within a short drive of the Arctic Circle, and I’ve been sweating up a storm this week.
Normally, we’d be seeing rain and weather twenty degrees cooler about now, but there is still no rain in the forecast. Not that I’m complaining about that, since I’m trying to get a nice roof job yet this month.
With the excessively dry weather, the Borough and State have banned woodcutting in the public areas dedicated to that. With the high heating oil prices, the price of firewood is bound to climb as well. So free firewood is just as good as getting paid to install a chimney.


Clear Skies

Alaska from Space

Here is another great, even rare, shot from NASA of Alaska.  Taken last week, during Part 1 of the 90 degree heat wave, this space shot shows Alaska almost completely devoid of clouds.   Judging from the edge of the photo, I’m guessing that the Aleutians were not cloud free.  Still, it is unusual to even see Mainland Alaska with so little cloud cover.


That’s A Lot of Red

We’ve been in a bit of a heat wave here in Interior Alaska.  In fact, it’s been near 90 for days, and my thermometer was at 91 this afternoon.  Over 90 is again forecast for tomorrow, and on Thursday before we drop back down to the upper 80’s.  Talk about a motorcycle kind of summer.  Two mornings ago, my thermometer read 73 degs at 7am.  That happens here about as often as cicadas make an appearance in Lower 48 locales.

I masked a house today for a repaint tomorrow.  I wonder how many of the windows will have the plastic torn off when I go in tomorrow morning…


Frack it’s hot

A break from the normal broadcast.

95 degrees here near Yakima. With the rolling hills and crosswind, The Rover is running hot.

Hot. Hot. Hot.

Plus my feet are running hot, so I swung into a Subway to drink ice tea refills and upload blog posts while the Turner cools down enough to check the radiator.

Afterall, the Cascades are looming across my horizon. At least the summit is reporting 66 degs.

Who would have thought Washington would be the warmest state of this trek?

The truck had no trouble at all with Lolo Pass, but it was in the 70’s. That was one beautiful drive. I’m ready to turn around and go back.


Podunk, Kansas

20120425-170003.jpg

I was on the road early, but the ninety degree weather was on us by 11:30am.
Plan B was to bail into any state park that showed itself when the heat became unbearable, which happened around 1:30, and the Rover and I were parked under a shady tree by 2pm.

It’s a strange park, and I don’t even want to name it. There is a puddle of a pond, which is no doubt stocked with some small fish, with a dirt road running along its shore. It kind of looks like a gravel racetrack with a pond in its center. People have been driving around & around slinging gravel since I arrived. It’s either a cruise destination or a drug drop off point. I have not decided which, and the characters seem to be running 50/50 in favor of each I hate to disparage the place, in case it is beloved by the local community, but it really is a bit of a dump.

I’ll eat dinner shortly, then crawl under the truck to check all fluids, while trying to avoid the broken glass scattered about. Afterwards, I will venture further north, although things have not cooled down yet. I’ll get to I-70 for sure tonight and may try for I-80 or beyond depending on how I feel. The votes are even, and I will cast the deciding vote when the time comes. Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing?

The Rover was running just fine this morning and I shut things down before the temps became too nasty. Besides, my feet were really hot today, which just may become the deciding factor in the future. I figure that right now I am 12 Rover hours from Knoxville.