The look of 20 degrees at 6am...

On the good side, no frozen pipes!

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My insanity on display! http://www.pioneeringaz.blogspot.com

Much better night!

It was colder tonight than yesterday, awoke to 20 ° outside, but a nice 50 ° inside... Very warm for out here. The extra battery maintance was just what the Dr. ordered...

No major damage

None of our pipes broke last night, but they did freeze. On another note our dogs water troft were completely frozen 2in thick!

Bad night at the ranch...

Last night was the coldest night this year. Dropping to 24 degrees. Between the cold and clouds our batteries failed us, no batties mean no heat. No heat means froozen pipes! This could signal a very rocky winter for us.

Some random shots of the house...

It never really warmed up today... But life goes on, had to reinstall the front drive shaft on the YJ, Help the neighbor lady with a broken pipe, and change the oil in the generator, were I found a rat had made his home for the winter. Damn rats, can't wait to ask God why those were ever created in the first place.

An off grid way to judge how cold it got the night before

Living off grid we rely on 12v battery power and right now we are only using 2 deep cell marine batteries. While they work great, we are really limited on power usage. (only around 300 watts available) We do have a small solar panel to handle battery maintance, any type of a draw will bring those batteries down quickly. To recharge them we rely on generators which need to be manually started. All that to say, our heater is forced air running on 12v and at night it has been running on average two to three times an hr. Last night it must have been on every five min! I checked our batteries this morning and they are almost 40 % discharged! (in 7 hrs!) Yep it was a cold one last night.
On the good side, clear skies and the solar panels are making quick work of replinishing the power used last night.
Just another reminder that life, off grid, is very different than life on!

Merry Ranch Christmas...

All decorated and ready to go...