8:14 PM
| Sunrise at | 10:19 AM | in direction | 143° | Southeast |  |
| Sunset at | 3:44 PM | in direction | 218° | Southwest |  |
Ha! Notice that today is 6 minutes longer than yesterday. In 10 days on the 28th, the day is 6 hours and 28 minutes long. With over two hours of really nice twilight - 8 hours of daylight. We are starting to rock!
Yesterday, when I presented temperature differences between Nome and Fairbanks, I failed to mention one very important detail. The coast can have wind and the wind chill factor means Nome residents can live in weather as bad or worse than Fairbanks. Earlier today it was -3F and calm in Nome, but when a storm is blowing in off the Bering Sea - well, it's a whole different story.
Remember how I said you have to live it to understand it? My own words sunk in. In reading through logs of the Iditarod, two places stand out for the worst possible scenarios on the coast: 1) Norton Sound between Shaktoolik and Koyuk where racers cross sea ice completely exposed to any and all weather in the sound. 2) The blow hole along the beach south of Safety. Winds can be as high as 80 mph along that stretch and dog team leaders can be turned out to sea.
So, really, we have it easy here in Fairbanks. I prefer the deep cold and no wind to -15F and 80 MPH winds. However, that is all based on the supposition that you are dressed for it and your furnace is working.
Ours stopped heating today. Yesterday evening, while doing laundry down in the garage, I noticed some damp sections on the floor under the boiler. We have had back flow from the hot water holding tank before, so I didn't leap to any conclusions about eminent heating failure. There was no obvious drip and no large puddle from a discernible source. I kept it in mind, but that was all.
Serendipitously, last night was the first night all winter that I was not especially vigilant about tending to the wood stove. It was -35F and after several hours it became cool enough that the heat came on in the loft area, a section of the house that we usually find to be too warm. First there was rythmic clanging. It was muted and so I reassured myself it could be the neighbors playing music outdoors for a winter party. But that was followed by several crackles and pops nearby. I turned up the thermostat thinking it might have frozen. This was not completely logical as we have retrofitted each section of the house with additional foam insulation, but, I was very committed to ignoring it, if I could. Finally as the heat began to permeate the room, gurgling and draining water clearly proclaimed there was a problem in the heating system.
As soon as I tended the stove, it stopped. Clearly the problem surfaced when there was a demand on the boiler for heat, but it only seemed to be evident on the top floor. There are sections of the house that are not heated by the wood stove, when burning. It was still warm in Mom's downstairs apartment and still warm in our bedroom which is situated such that it rarely is heated completely by the stove. I let it go. I still thought it could be related to the prolonged cold spell, even though I knew there hadn't been problems before the house was adequately insulated. After all, there is anti-freeze in the heating pipes.
Then another piece of luck came our way today. Since it was -42F at Ft. Wainwright this morning, I worked at home so Mom would not need to go out in the early morning cold. After noon, it began to warm. I once again let the house cool down and since I'd left the thermostat high upstairs, the boiler again attempted to push hot water into the radiator pipes upstairs. Again there was gurgling and I could no longer rationalize it had anything to do with the low temperatures.
I called our heating service, Rocky's. The office staff were very helpful. A technician would need to diagnose what was causing the problem, but if there was gurgling, that was a sign of air in the pipes. Perhaps the boiler refill was not automatically refilling. This happened after a while. If there was any type of leak, and there was no boiler pressure, the heating system wouldn't heat.
I thought about it for a bit and decided it wasn't worth risking. I asked for a technician. Rocky was in my area and he came over immediately. Diagnosis? The boiler water pressure was at zero; the boiler refill valve was no longer automatic; a gasket had worn out in the drain spigot and water was leaking from it. The good news, besides him coming over right away, was that there were no cracks in the front plate of the boiler, which our brand of furnace was prone to do.
He was done in less than an hour. He filled the water until the pressure gauge read 18 psi. Since minerals have created a block in the automatic refill valves, we will need to keep an eye on the pressure and refill the water in the heating system if it drops below 12 psi.
All in all, I'd say it's been a pretty good day. It's -35F in the valley and our house is warm and toasty.
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