So, for those as statistic-obsessed as me, here are the numbers crunched from the datalogger under the kitchen counter:

Dates: Nov. 5, 2012 – April 15, 2013

# of temperature data points: 15,423

Minimum temp:  39.0°F

Maximum temp: 68.2°F

Mean temp:  52.3°F

Standard deviation: 5.4°F

Comparing to the previous winter, you can see that this winter’s max temp was 1.1° lower, the min temp was 3° lower, and the overall mean temp was 4.25° lower!  Not sure how we achieved that– if anything, I thought we were getting a little soft this winter… but there it is.

So what now?  Well, it’s finally lovely and warm in Maine, the flowers are busting out, the lawn is green, and you can walk around in shorts (if the bugs aren’t too bad).  But cold weather is always just around the corner here.  At present we still have about a winter’s worth (1.5 cords) of slaughtered Norway maple in the garage, so yet again there will be no need to spend anything on heat next year.  Someday I may put in a small furnace, if only because it will be impossible ever to sell the house without one, but it won’t be this year.

Anyway, if you’d like to have a listen, here’s the link.  The segment begins at minute 20:00 with a local environmentalist, then me (halfway awake) about 25:00.  We’re sandwiched between a bit about macaroni and cheese and the actual serious news.  Which seems about appropriate.

And, hello to all seven Scots who found this blog via the radio show!  Come visit any time!

Meanwhile, haven’t had any fire/heat on in here in 48 hours.  A bit of sun, not-so-cold nights, some cooking, and the kitchen is still holding at 50F/10C.

One new activity I’ve been enjoying this winter is riding my bike on a trainer.  I put it in the living room, where I can watch inspirational bike videos on the TV and crank up the music.  At normal indoor temperatures I find riding a trainer unpleasant– I sweat buckets.  But if I come home and the house is, say, 45F, that’s perfect.  Half an hour on the trainer and I feel pleasantly warmed up (more than half an hour, I actually have to aim a fan at myself to keep cool.)  Plus, it heats up the room a little!  Can’t say it’s a significant contribution, but the magnetic friction gizmo does get pretty warm.  I’d guess an hour on the trainer is good for 0.5 kWh or so of heat to the house.

I can’t really compare our lifestyle to theirs, but our sleeping plans are a bit similar.  They mention using an electric blanket, which is also a critical part of our strategy for sleeping in an unheated bedroom.  Our bedroom, though, at least has solid walls, and rarely goes down into the 30F range– while their’s must routinely go well below freezing, if not below 0F.

Actually, it’s not quite clear in the story whether they use fire inside the tipi– in the video clip, Mrs. Winters (great name) says they never have heat in the tipi– but in other photos, you see her wheeling some very large pieces of firewood towards the tipi, with mention that Mr. Winters “had started a fire inside”.  And in another photo, you see a small fire in the tipi.  But they appear to have two tipis, so maybe one is a hang-out tipi where they have fires, and the other is for sleeping and totally unheated?  It would seem considerably unpleasant to sleep in a tipi with a smoky wood fire burning inside– hard to imagine they would be doing that.

Anyway, I’m hoping we might get an invitation to go visit.  Also, this reminds me of an idea I had last winter:  to build an igloo in our yard, and offer overnights in it via Airbnb.  Also, I note a great advantage of their sleeping arrangement:  they are very unlikely ever to be infested with bed bugs, which can’t survive prolonged sub-freezing temps.

Average kitchen temperature for the winter still hovers at about 52.6F.

- Above-average temps (highs 35-40F, lows 20-25)

- Above-average sunshine

- Above-average laziness on starting a fire

- Above-average use of bike trainer (warms you up fast, even in a cold house!)

So, no fire from Sunday night to Thursday night:

Ran into a couple of problems, after having the house this cool for this long.  For one, the liquid dish soap solidified and became impossible to get out of the bottle.  It is an all-natural product… mainstream dish soap brands probably have chemical emulsifliquifactifying agents that prevent this.  Maybe I have to store it on top of the water heater or something.

Second, the contents of the freezer (above the fridge) started to thaw.  This is ironic, the idea that your house can be too cold for your freezer to work, but in our cheapo fridge I’m pretty sure the freezer only turns on when/if the fridge turns on– it has no separate temperature controller.  So if the house is cold, the fridge barely runs, and after a few days, the freezer starts to nudge above freezing.  Obviously this isn’t good.  I turned the fridge down a little (it was set rather on the warm side) and that seems to have cured the problem.

Overall average temperature so far this winter now stands at 52.5 F…

We’re just back from a few days playing touriste in Quebec City– a place that really knows how to enjoy winter.  No one up there was griping about the cold– they just put on bigger hats, string up more lights, put on a smile, and go out to ski, toboggan, drink…  It was also pleasant driving around in a place where snow tires are mandatory, and the proportion of SUVs on the road was dramatically  lower.  I think we got out of there just in time, though, as the forecast low for tomorrow night is -17F (-27F).  That’s cold even to me.

Back on the home front, our living area has averaged 52.8° F so far this winter.  As the graph clearly communicates, the temp in here is rarely steady, either from hour to hour, or day to day.  Hard to say how much wood we’ve gone through so far– maybe 1/5th to 1/4 cord.  We haven’t started on the actual split wood from Treemagedon yet, still just burning the cut-up branches and other little stuff.