I love the new siding color and that gorgeous stone wall!
I'm sitting here at the river house with 20+ mph wind hitting the back of the house, straight off the water. Thank goodness it's not cold outside today- it's downright temperate- but it's going to get cold tonight.
This is the house to which we hope to retire in a few years. It has a heat pump with a back up gas furnace, powered by (of course) propane.
We've not yet installed an alternate heating system here because it's not mandatory that we be here during cold weather. Both of us were sitting here last night, and the night before last, missing our pellet stove but not touching the thermostat. After the sun went down, temps quickly dropped to the threshold below which the propane furnace would have fired as opposed to the heat pump.
The house is new, built very well by a local builder whose family has lived in this exact location for hundreds of years. The builder's father was in construction, as was his grandfather. These guys know how to build and insulate a house for this location. We were very, very lucky to fall backwards into this house. The only thing we've had to do to this house in terms of winterizing is to insulate the electrical outlets on the exterior walls, as well as adding those childproof electrical outlet plugs that keep kids from sticking object into outlets.
We were here one weekend last winter when it was indeed cold, and a stiff wind was blowing right off of the water and onto the back of the house. I could put my hand in front of the electrical outlet and feel the cold wind coming in through the prong openings in the sockets.
Yeah, it gets cold here in the winter. We thought we'd hold off on buying a pellet stove for this house until we were closer to retirement, but we're in the process of changing our minds. It's entirely possible that a pellet stove could pay for itself in money saved by not using propane, just in part time use during the winter in the remaining years that my husband hopes to work.
