Dog run and some snow

Okay, I’m back with another post — time to dig into the memory bank. Ah yes, our first winter here and our first snow. But before we get into that… my next project!

This one was pretty weak, to be honest. We didn’t have our 5 acres fenced in yet, and the two dogs we had at the time were wanderers. So, we needed to give them a dog run for when no one was around to watch them outside. What better place than the old carport behind the house?

This thing was very overgrown. We had to clear out some brush, clean it up, and throw together a temporary fence and gate for the dogs. And I do mean temporary. That carport went through quite a few evolutions over time — you’ll see more of that in future posts. But for now, an upcycled cattle fence and an old side gate with some pounded-in posts did the trick.

Not long after, we got our first snow. Perfect timing to do some more painting in the girls' rooms — or better yet, let them do the painting. Haha.

Honestly, snow around here is hit or miss. Some years, we barely get anything that sticks. But since moving here, we’ve only had maybe one or two years where we didn’t get a decent snowfall at least once. The microclimate in this area is wild. There have been plenty of times when the temperature at our house is a full 10 degrees different than the nearest town just 6 miles away. That’s the difference between no snow and a whole lot of snow around here.

A couple of snow chores I always have to stay on top of: brushing snow off the RV (which still needs an RV port, by the way) and trying to keep the driveway clear. That’s almost impossible without a tractor, but I make do.

One thing we definitely noticed — our heat pump is in the absolute worst spot. I swear it was placed there on purpose just to guarantee the previous owners would have to call for maintenance when it broke down. The house roof warms up just enough to melt the snow, which then drips down and refreezes. Add the heat pump fan to the mix, and you end up with a ton of ice buildup. Every time the heat pump kicked on, the fan would hit that ice, breaking it up over and over again. It actually started damaging the unit.

So, I MacGyvered a temporary cover over the top of the heat pump to stop the ice from building up. You can even see the ice in my gutters — but that’s a whole other issue we’ll get into later.

Turns out there was more going on with the heat pump than I realized. Apparently, it wasn’t even supposed to run below a certain temperature. The electric furnace (our emergency heat) was supposed to take over when it got that cold. I didn’t figure this out for a few years — mostly just getting mad at the heat pump the whole time. Turns out, there was a single wire that had never been connected. Once I hooked that up, problem solved! Now the heat pump usually doesn’t run below 20 degrees.

Honestly, even when it did run below 20, it didn’t do much besides blow cold air around, so we ended up relying on the fireplaces inside anyway. Someday, I’d love to get a good, efficient wood stove insert that can burn all night. We’ve got plenty of firewood, and running the electric furnace is way more expensive than the heat pump. Right now, though, the fireplace is mostly just for ambiance — keeping it burning overnight is too much work.

Oh, and that water issue we used to have with ice? It’s way better now thanks to the new gutters we put on — but that’s a story for another post.

That’s all for today! Next time, I’ll go over the fence project and the dogs finally getting some freedom to roam the property. Haha.