Cold & Snowy

Temperatures have been in the teens the last few days, so the snow we got on Sunday and Monday hasn't gone anywhere. It's still just beautiful outside. Here's a picture I took this morning at sunrise outside my office (really, this is just somebody's yard in Sedro-Woolley). We never actually saw the sun, but for a few minutes the whole sky turned a stunning pink.
I haven't been out to the house (the roads are super trecherous, it's definately not worth driving out just to oogle) but Mark & Steve have been out there putting up more trim and working on the floors. Mark reports that there isn't much more snow up there than in town, but the wind is stronger and its piling the snow into drifts. Luckily it seems one of the neighbors is keeping the driveway cleared.

The painters are there today to work on some of the upstairs trim, but there's some kind of problem with the heat, the house is down to 53°! Either we've run out of propane (d'oh!) or the regulator has frozen, which is apparently a fairly common occurance according to Yvonne at the propane company. Mark is working on figuring out which it is now. Fingers crossed it's just the regulator, because if we can't get it going today we'll lose the painting time. Which would suck.

Update: Turns out the condensation overflow pipe was frozen! It's a 1/2 inch PVC drain that runs out throught the wall of the mechanical room to let off excess water. The snow had drifted up over it on the exterior, and the pipe is frozen solid. Mark disconnected it at the base of the boiler unit and drained nearly a gallon of water out... after which the unit started up fine. I guess that's a good thing to know about & watch for in cold weather!