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Son of a biscuit eater it's cold.

@Dusty I grew up not too far from you, in Burlington.

Were you there for the great deep snows of '64? (or was it '63?) we had over 8 feet of snow on our front yard! shoveling the roof that year was a weekly occurrence... And cold! -27F and the cold Lake Ontario breeze to walk to school with... and few snow days that year...
 
I can live with the cold but the wind chill is nasty. Best Feb i ever had was in Arizona 3 years ago. :) We even had frost 2 mornings while i was there.
 
YYCHM said:
When I worked on the Arctic drilling rigs, on one flight north (on an Electra no less) they had removed some of the interior trim and insulation. I swear that plane had a inch of ice on the interior of it's skin. I've always wondered how they came up with a weight and balance to accommodate that phenomenon:p
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Ahh the old PWA (please wait awhile) airlines Electra. I actually flew with a pilot that his name tag was "Hartwell" but don't know if he was "the one"'....I drank a lot of whiskey on that one!!
On one of the flights in an Electra I asked the pilot why "those wings flexed & bounced so much"....his reply "start worrying when they quit flexing....means their maxed out".
 
PeterT: Sustained minus 40 is our house pain threshold. Having some freezing off issues on some water pipes in our crawl space area as we speak. Thought we had the issue licked with a furnace duct entering the space a few years back but apparently not. Anyone have any pro/con experience with retrofitted heat trace lines like this?
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That would be great if your lines are copper. I think you also want to wrap them in an insulated jacket, and do it neatly with a sealed wrap around it. Making sure the insulation won't have any disagreement with the temperature of the heat-tape, of course. If you aren't working with copper pipes, then I don't think it will help.

You could say the same about my house's pain threshold, but in my case it's the waste lines, not the supply from the well. I guess if I had to choose drains to fail first, but I'd rather not have either giving me trouble. You may remember the 2019 February deep-freeze we had for 3 weeks. Heat tape wouldn't have helped my drains against that.
 
SparWeb said:
I don't have an EV (Yet!) but I do keep track of their capabilities.

The Norwegians seem to enjoy test-driving EV's. Here are two articles that may interest you:
2020: https://insideevs.com/news/404632/winter-range-test-best-evs-cold-weather/
2018: https://elbil.no/the-biggest-electric-car-test-in-winter-wonderland-ever/

The answer shouldn't be a surprise. All have reduced range and reduced recharge rate in winter. This varies from model to model.
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I checked the articles linked and watched the videos as suggested. Very informative. Thanks for posting. What jumped out at me in the first link was that they initially charged the cars indoors, but sadly did not specify if this was with onboard inverters or $40K fast charging stations. As a side note, I could never do this because:

1) My garage is full of tools and I'd have to get rid of all them to put a car in there. That ain't happening.
2) My panel can't support an 80 Amp Fast Charge Station. Last time I enquired as to cost for the upgrade to 200 Amps it was $25K— and that was in 2001.

The second example appears to mostly use fast charging (and starts in a hi tech parking/charging facility) but on one occasion uses standard charging (Schuko) which looks to be regular household current (albeit on fully charged batteries overnight I think).

A couple of other observations...firstly, that country is bloody beautiful. The scenery is amazing and I lost concentration on more than one occasion.

Secondly, I take some solace in the fact that I always sound negative when talking about EVs. Historically speaking, whenever I thumbs down an idea involving battery technology I'm proven wrong within 10 years. So I feel good that my skepticism on this forum is playing a pivotal role in advancing the technology to the point where it will work in Canada soon enough.

You're all welcome.
 
CalgaryPT said:
I checked the articles linked and watched the videos as suggested. Very informative. Thanks for posting. What jumped out at me in the first link was that they initially charged the cars indoors, but sadly did not specify if this was with onboard inverters or $40K fast charging stations. As a side note, I could never do this because:

1) My garage is full of tools and I'd have to get rid of all them to put a car in there. That ain't happening.
2) My panel can't support an 80 Amp Fast Charge Station. Last time I enquired as to cost for the upgrade to 200 Amps it was $25K— and that was in 2001.

The second example appears to mostly use fast charging (and starts in a hi tech parking/charging facility) but on one occasion uses standard charging (Schuko) which looks to be regular household current (albeit on fully charged batteries overnight I think).

A couple of other observations...firstly, that country is bloody beautiful. The scenery is amazing and I lost concentration on more than one occasion.

Secondly, I take some solace in the fact that I always sound negative when talking about EVs. Historically speaking, whenever I thumbs down an idea involving battery technology I'm proven wrong within 10 years. So I feel good that my skepticism on this forum is playing a pivotal role in advancing the technology to the point where it will work in Canada soon enough.

You're all welcome.
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@RobinHood Told me that Europe supplies higher voltages to house holds than NA? Maybe he can comment.....
 
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Yes, Switzerland for sure (I think Germany & Austria as well), regular household power is 380V, 3 phase. Usually about 100A.
 
We had no power yesterday for 3.5 hrs, no idea how long to fix so dig out the kerosene heater and start covering water bowls. The only good thing was there was no wind. Sask Power guy was back and forth a lot and fixed the problem. Nobody like a power failure at -35.
 
Dabbler said:
now THAT is power
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Sure is.

Most folks get their table saws, jointers, mills, lathes, drill presses, etc in 380V, 3ph. It is very economical to wire them up as the cross sectional area of the wires required is seldom more than #10 or #12 AWG equivalent, even for the bigger motors. And now with the VFDs you have full control over the motor speed.

“We had no power yesterday for 3.5 hrs,”

Parents had to use their generator (behind their Kubota tractor) a few weeks back when their power was out for just under a day. Good thing it was not all that cold then. Area power lines came down during a big windstorm. They are south of Ottawa.
 
6.5 Fan said:
We had no power yesterday for 3.5 hrs, no idea how long to fix so dig out the kerosene heater and start covering water bowls. The only good thing was there was no wind. Sask Power guy was back and forth a lot and fixed the problem. Nobody like a power failure at -35.
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Ouch. Farm life is more complicated because animals and outbuildings are involved, but surprisingly the worst power issues I ever had were in our old wartime house in inner city Calgary decades ago (Kensington). Newspaper insulation, cracks and heat loss everywhere. Heat tape on the soft copper supply line to the house. The power always went out when it got cold, as I think the pole transformer was scabbed from the Diefenbunker. The line splices failed a lot and the jellybeans on the comms line routinely shattered in cold weather— showering plastic onto our garage roof, and shutting down internet and phone service for the neighbourhood. I bought a Honda inverter and wired in a DPDT switch to the furnace fan. When power went out I flipped the switch, fired up the generator on the porch and ran our taps at half throttle. At least we had heat.

I still have a inverter generator (now a EU2000i) and always intended to wire a similar switch to our existing furnace in our new house (now 20+) years old. But we have never had a power failure here that didn't correct itself in under a minute. When visiting a friend's house on an expensive acreage some years back, he said it was standard practice now to have switches like that in the country (well, at least in expensive areas such as his). Now of course the switches are actually relays that toggle over the supply source while simultaneously starting up the generator in a protected and heated shed outside. Must be nice.
 
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Perry said:
This cold has me wondering. The garage has no insulation yet. Still working on the wiring in the small fleeting moments that I get. With the furnace on things start to warm up and a bit of moisture is picked up in the air. This moisture instantly freezes on the walls.

I'm thinking this might not be a good thing. Once the wiring is finished and signed off, the plan was to move to the insulating and vapor barrier. Before I do this one would think it would be ideal to have those walls dry.

Thoughts?
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You definitely don’t want to enclose the walls while they are damp. And use Roxul insulation not fibreglass as it does not absorb water.
 
YYCHM said:
When I worked on the Arctic drilling rigs, on one flight north (on an Electra no less) they had removed some of the interior trim and insulation. I swear that plane had a inch of ice on the interior of it's skin. I've always wondered how they came up with a weight and balance to accommodate that phenomenon:p
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Hey Craig, there are old pilots and bold pilots but there are NO old bold pilots. Its called flying by the seat of your pants, and by the grace of God.

Take a wild guess as to where the center of 'G' was because the pilot didn't know either.
 
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Dusty said:
Silly sissy boy! LOL
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I burst right out loud laughing at that. My wife is the only other person I know who has ever called me a sissy!

It was also fun to put an angry emoticon on that comment. ;)It was my very first one!

I still ain't goin flyin with ya....:eek:
 
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