I’m not in favor of it, but wasn’t asked to vote on it! I should have moved somewhere to a warmer climate years ago, but I’m well rooted here, so I’ll stay.  And complain, and write blogs! Not really winter yet, till 12/21 and the Winter Solstice.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice 

We’ve been lucky so far, and haven’t had a lot of cold yet, but the next  weeks are showing us that it’s coming.  We have 45 degree days coming, but nights of 22, 25, 29, brrrr.

I put in a heat pump several years ago and that has made a difference in how much it costs to heat my house.  My main furnace heats with oil, which is terribly more expensive than when I bought the house.  The heat pump is not a geothermal one.  Geothermal ones work by having pipes in the ground and heat is actually extracted from the ground.  It’s more complicated than, that, and I don’t understand that well, but here’s a  good Wikipedia article.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

Mine is an air source heat pump.  These are not efficient below 30 degrees, so once the temperature gets that low, the heat pump turns off and automatically my furnace begins to run, burning oil, to heat the house.  That’s most winter nights and also a good number of the days, but the savings when it’s above 30 have probably already almost paid for the heat pump and its installation.

You need forced air heat to use a heat pump, cos the heat circulates thru the duct work.  But, since the ducts are already in place, you get an added benefit of air conditioning in the summer!  I like that, cos I’m getting too old to enjoy the summer when there are 98 degree days like there were this past summer.  80 is nice….98 is not nice! 

It’s important to remove snow from the top of the heat pump before the pump operates, to give it room for air to circulate. The day I took the picture of mine covered with snow above, it was about 20 degrees, brrr.  Shortly after it stopped snowing, I went out and cleared the snow, because it was supposed to be warmer the next day. 

Watching my electric bills during the time when it was so hot this summer and I ran the A/C a good bit, I learned that the heat pump A/C was not that expensive.  Not as compared to people I know who tell me about the big electric bills from regular air conditioners.

So, getting older, not liking extremes of temps hot or cold, the heat pump has been a very good decision.  I can be cozy in my house when it’s doing things like going down to zero or close, or giving us nasty snowstorms, like  one we had last year. 

YUKKK!!!!

MaChatte just likes watching, and speaking to, the birds outside on the feeder.  Cat Big Screen TV!  Later she’ll try to catch snow flakes thru the windows.  It takes about 15 minutes into each snow fall for her to give up and quit trying to catch them.