The apple's proximity to the tree

The apple and the tree: seeds planted by parental example....

The Parent As A Child

Planted pinks on the parent’s graves last week. Both died in May, 30 plus years apart.  Usually I go with geraniums. Couldn't find any. Too early, or out of fashion, I guess.  

This post is about Mom, who died just shy of 87 years old. She was a life long Republican, but oddly, something of a social liberal who leaned left as she aged, who admired Hillary Clinton.

For 25 years Mom worked as what they now call an "admin" at a state police troop and then when they moved that troop out of town, she worked for a few years at a second one that was closer. She was a discrete and loyal an employee as they could hope, never spoke about work things at home. There was a little hint once.  

While working at the barracks she got a call for jury duty, Years afterwards she said the case involved a motorcycle accident and she relayed a few of the jury selection questions. Had she ever ridden a motorcycle or knew anyone who had? Why yes, her husband. Before they married they rode around on an old Indian machine until they were hit by a car.  Hmm. Because of her job, they asked another question.  Would she always take the word of a police officer over anyone else's?  That would depend, Mom said, on which police officer.  She was dismissed, not sure which side objected.

 Mom had a regular New Years Day Open house and invited relatives, friends and associates from work to stop by. Among the annual attendees was a police dispatcher named Minnie who was usually the only black face in the crowd. Minnie commented on this each year, and she was pretty comedic about it.  To help us see it from her point of view, Minnie invited Mom to a summer barbecue at her house in Bridgeport where Mom would be the only white face in the crowd. Mom agreed to go and asked me to drive.  We were indeed a minority of two. And we were treated  as all Minnie's friends and kin were treated: with mint ice tea and welcoming smiles.  We stayed all afternoon and went away slightly changed.  

It wasn't the first time Mom surprised me. Years before there had been a gay member of the police auxiliary who invited folks from the barracks over to his house for lunch. This was many years ago, another time really and not one of the officers  agreed to go, so the boss asked Mom and the troops only police woman to go. On the day, even the police woman backed out. Unwilling to be so rude, Mom went to his luncheon by herself. 

I was in my early 20s maybe - and I'm afraid I didn't even know what gay was at the time..  She explained without fuss or judgement, very matter-of-factly that it was when certain men liked other men instead of girls, that this man lived with a male friend, and it was like they were married.  She said he was a lovely man, lunch was very nice and she was sad for her host that no one else went. 

There was another thing as well - Mom never voluntarily went to church unless there was a wedding or funeral involved.

I asked her about this several times over the years. She always told me she didn't know what she believed. In later years I pressed her and she said she didn't know if she could know if there were a god or not. Maybe there was maybe there wasn't.  Yet she told me didn't want to fight about it or even think much about it. If someone said 'pray for me,'  she would nod sympathetically.  She would never tell them. And now that she is gone, none of them really believe me. Oh well.

I'm AWAKE and WATCHING YOU WORLD!

 

I haven't posted in a while. After the events of Jan 6,  I was horrified and speechless. 

After a few heat pump posts, and a lot of silence,  I’ve been thinking - that I’d like to make a post here every day until my death. Seems unlikely. 

Nonetheless - I’m going to start.

I declare this blog open and active again!

3 Month review of the heat pump

 

It's New Years Eve and I've now had three months of electric bills with the heat pump. Remember I'm heating around 950 square feet with a Fujitsu Halcyon- an 18,000 BTU mini-split for cold climates.

So I'm going to offer my last three months of electric bills.  My normal electric bill is around $50. (I don't use much juice I guess. No large TV or stereo, no cable modem or TV controller, I never use the stove - i'm a microwave, rice-cooker person.)  So I'm figuring any amount in excess of $50, we can chalk up to the heat pump.

The first month hardly counts as it was early fall: the bill for September,-October, (mostly milder weather this year) was $67. I ran the thing constantly as the advice was to set it and forget it so that's what I did.... So $17 for a little heat.

For October-November, a colder time at the end, my bill was $102.  So $52 for heat. Not bad.

November-December had some really cold spells. My bill was $202. So $152 for heat. I would have had an oil delivery by now. So $152 compared to $400-$945 for a load of #2 heating oil, depending on the price of oil.  

UPDATE: Feb 6, 2023 - I now have the Dec-Jan bill also a bit higher but still better than a tank of oil - $272 minus the baseline $50 so $222 for heat. 

(I have water filled heat pipes in three rooms not heated by the mini-split. If temps are freezing, say in the teens for several days straight - I am sporadically running a electric space heater on low in two rooms to keep those rooms about 50  degrees. The cost of running them is included in the electric bill.  For three days when temps were in the single digits, I ran the furnace over night - for just for three days to warm up that unused space so the pipes don't freeze. 

So far so good. I still have most of the oil delivered here in March at an exorbitant price. (I have hot water off the furnace. Dont use much of that either I guess!)  The electric company will up rates in January. We'll see how that pans out. :)

Heat Pumps - a gentle, steady warmth

An air-to-air, ductless minisplit heat pump is a kind of sneaky device. 

It works very quietly extracting little bits of heat from the cold air outside and adding them to the inside air.  And quietly, gradually, without out fanfare or glare or anything burning or glowing - your house is warm - and it stays warm too.  All at 3 times the efficiency of "resistance" heaters.

Conventional thought says you pull your chair up to a heater, warm your hands on it.  But new-fangled air-to-air heat pumps really aren't like that. At any given moment the indoor fan might be pushing out a sort of lukewarm air, occasionally warmer - but nothing like a wood stove or an infared heater. Yet your home is quietly warm. Very strange.

Pictured above at right, is the outside unit - a Fujitsu Halcyon Inverter installed a month ago. This heat pump installation is designed to heat the areas I actually live in - a core area of bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room. And as it gets colder its proving its worth. I'm waiting for the first month's electric bill. (This time last year I was heating with electric space heaters instead of using the furnace.) 

And I will be quite happy not to buy more #2 heating oil for a while.  Instead of six tankfuls a season I'm hoping the full tank I have (delivered in MARCH when I didnt need it and when prices were skyhigh) will last a lot longer. I  will not turn on the regular heat until it's really frigid outside, to keep the pipes in the unused rooms here from freezing....  

Winter's heating dilemma

 

Now that I am old, I like to be warm. But how to be warm and not ruin the planet?? Like many New Englanders, I have an old house and an old oil furnace. As the leaves turn gold and winter approaches the season poses questions.

Every year I ask the tech if this 35 year old Burnham boiler will last the winter. Every year the answer is the same: Maybe....  The burner itself has been replaced but the boiler is decaying.  I've been trying to decide on a replacement but there are a lot of things to consider. Meantime, I started working in earnest on conserving the heat I have. 

The attic insulation is now at R-48. Then the seal-up and save guys came. They mocked me for the folly of having the insulation put in BEFORE I called them, which screws up sealing the top plate. But they plugged a lot of other holes around the house with foam and contributed a few LEDs to my collection.  I used less oil last year and only turned the AC twice,

         My strategies this year: 

1) Heat less space,
2) Use oil less, electric more
3) Make a window quilt for the big north window in the dinning room, 
4) Get an insulating shade for the damn skylight in the kitchen. 
5) Maximize heat gain on sunny days.

HEATING LESS SPACE

Aging in place in too big a space - I'd avoid it if I could. I've looked around. In this super heated pandemic housing market downsizing is risky. Might be easy to sell - but I have been going to open houses for four years now. I've concluded that this old house, is the safest, happiest & most convenient option for the foreseeable future. So how to heat & cool less space? 

First, close doors, add doors. Between the kitchen and an impossibly leaky unheated  "sun" room on the northwest side -  I had an insulated pre-hung exterior door installed. It wasn't cheap but totally worth all the waiting and wrangling to get it done. That's 150 square feet of essentially enclosed porch I no longer have exchanging heated air with the rest of the house.

 I also closed the three north / eastern rooms and turned down the radiators in those rooms. But huge drafts of cold air always rolled out from under the doors. So this year I got 3 inexpensive devises to fill the gap. Essentially they are little cloth bags with two rolls of foam inside. You scoot them under the door with a roll on each side and close the door. If the rolls are too small, replace them with foam pipe insulation in an appropriate diameter. Simple but it works admirably. No more under-door drafts! 

Before heating season, I also made sure to close all the AC vents to minimize heat escaping into duct-work in the unheated attic. When I turned on the heat, I set the basement zone thermostat to 50 degrees. It never got below 55 down there. As a bonus the cool air was much drier. 

So now I was iving in and heating the core at the center of the house.

USE OIL LESS, ELECTRIC MORE

In winter of 20-21 I got a ceramic tower heater and where ever I was sitting I pointed it right at me so I could keep the thermostat set lower. It only added about six dollars a month to my bill. So winter 21-22  I added another electric heater this one an oil-filled rolling radiator thing. During the day when I am able to check on them I kept the electric on and at night I default to the oil furnace thermostat set at 65. 

Mini-split heat pump

The last season's last delivery (in March) was a whopping surprise - a $945 delivery of oil - almost twice the usual price . (it's now September and I have not used it yet.)  The fact i had no notice of the price change, no choice in how much was delivered  - I WAS FURIOUS. So this year for Winter 22-23 I have a new plan. I cancelled a long standing contract with Heat USA and their contractor Hoffman Energy.  I got an independent non-oil selling guy to service the furnace. I lined up a cash on delivery oil company - with a 50 gallon minimum as opposed to a whole tank or bust.

And now I have contracted for the installation of a two head mini-split for the two rooms I spend most time in - pricey but sensible.  If it works out I think I might not turn on the furnace until the end of November. When the furnace dies, maybe another minisplit for the northeastern rooms?

May, May, go away

May has a worrisome cruelty underneath, and I cant seem to let it go.  My father died in May. My mother too.

May arrives, the azaleas bloom, the lilacs too now. But the beauty is not enough.

Today, this year with the pandemic, I didn't visit my parents' grave. I stayed home again. And tomorrow too. I'm not dead as yet and hope to remain in this state for the foreseeable future. Hope to live to vote in November, live to get my shots: flu and someday, for the novel coronavirus. 

I've always been something of a stay at home, but I balanced this tendency with small scale excursions: lunch, coffee, an exercise class, an art workshop, some local live music, a lecture. Little, short, nearby diversions for mental health,.

Now its just scary grocery store trips. And I struggle with everyone else to figure out how to get stuff delivered. It's tricky. 

And though the world is opening tomorrow - I am not fooled. The virus is still here. And I am still securing against it. I don't care what opens. Each time I think of going out from sheer restlessness, I think  - is it worth dying for?  

I proceed with caution only. 

Praying Mantis in the Fleabane!

In August I planted a dwarf butterfly bush, a sterile cultivar called Pugster Blue Fragrant. While not a native plant, it cannot be invasive like its larger relatives. I got it locally at Halas Nursery and even there it was swarmed with pollinators: butterflies, moths and bees. It was pungent and had filled my car with its heavy sweetish smell on the ride home.

After all the digging and watering, I went in the house for some coffee. I looked back out the window and there was a black swallowtale on my new butterfly bush already!  For the next few days, there were always one or two butterflies enjoying the flowers.  But after a week I didn't see any. I figured they were enjoying a change of diet over in my neighbors cone flowers. I kept peeking about but no butterflies.

All summer I have been nurturing a few stands of wildflower weeds as a garden project. The weeds in question are four-foot tall forests of Daisy Fleabane and Queen Anne's Lace. While I was looking for the missing butterflies, I found three praying mantis

- mostly hanging from the stems of Fleabane by their back legs - looking a lot like dead leaves. They have a reputation as voracious indiscriminate predators, even cannibalistic. Mantises eat a lot of annoying insects. But I think they may have eaten the butterflies as well.

Nature is capricious and pragmatic. Next year I think I will let the Fleabane grow elsewhere in my yard - somewhere not in a direct line between the butterfly bush and the cone flowers down the road....