Living Without a Fridge-Life is Good

Well it has been a month since I moved out to my little shack. So far everything has been going great. We had snow and some cooler weather. The coldest night was about -17C or 0 Farenheit so far, but it has been hanging more in about the 0 to -10 celcius range mostly. That is nice. One of the things that I was kinda concerned about when I first started living out here was living without the fridge. So far, my life has'nt really changed much in that sense. Those two green boxes are my fridge. They seem to stay at about 10 C or 50 Farenheit sitting there on the floor under that bunk. I know a fridge is usually alot colder than that, but this is really working good for what I keep there. I leave a 2 liter pop bottle outside on the step that is usually about half full of water, that I can grab from inside the shack. When I mix some orange juice or powder milk(which I am pretty used to now, Yummy), it is nice and cold. If it happens to be frozen, I just add some water to it, and it is ice cold. The red cooler out in the shed is my deep freeze that I keep stocked with a few days worth of different meats. If I have some left over chile or something that I want to freeze, I just set it on top of the cooler over night, then put it inside in the morning, that way it dos'nt disturbe any of the other already frozen goodies inside. I have plastic bottles filled with water(ice) inside, so if the temperatures rise above freezing for a few days, things seem to keep frozen for quite awhile. There are some advantages to living in northern Alberta I guess. When I get into my new house, I do plan on having some kind of refridgerator, I just hav'nt quite decided yet if it will be on propane or 12 volt DC power. I am kinda leaning toward 12 volt though, I can always help it out in the winter with home grown outside ice. I have been kinda busy at work a little bit off and on this month. Although I hav'nt been there for a few days now. A couple days ago I got ambitious again and cleaned a bunch of snow out of the basement area again. The last time I did this I no sooner got it all cleaned up and ready for action then work phoned and I went to work for a few days, and by the time I got done the darned thing was full of fresh snow again. I hope that don't happen this time. So far so good, but I do have some courses pertaining to work that I have to attend all weekend long.
I finally worked on the floor some more. A wood basement floor seems to take a long time to build. If I poured a concrete one, my whole basement might have been built by now, but maybe not. I blame work. lol. I lost alot of good building weather while I was hauling the bales, and it seemed that once the bales were hauled it started to rain and never did quit. I knew that was going to happen, but I gotta make a living too I guess.

The sub floor is'nt permanantly nailed down yet, I still need to be able to get in there for awhile yet.

Just a bit of an update on things. Life is good, and the little old shack is still cozy. I hav'nt started beating my head against the walls yet, so thats gotta be a good thing. The days are getting shorter and I have been running the generator for about an hour in the evening, just to make sure the batteries don't run down too low. I probably don't need to, but it is good to keep them full. Never know what the temperature will be in the morning and weak batteries are more apt to freezing. If I did'nt have a generator, I could survive easily with the solar panels alone, if I were to conserve energy a little, but I have been a bit of an energy pig lately. My inverter charger is equipped with a battery temperature sensor and the solar charge controller is not yet, but one is in the mail. That will help out quite alot, I suspect. The solar panels do usually have my batteries charged right up at the end of the day, but the inverter seems to just dump a little extra voltage at it, because of the temperature correction.

Anyway, this is the life, and I'm lovin it. Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. Canada's was in October. Catch ya later.