House is about to get a lot colder.

UPDATE - See bottom

Yesterday was definitely an interesting day.  I got my national park pass.  Almost everything for the trip is set up at this point.

I also got the GoPro mount redone with actual bolts.  It is reasonably stiff now, so it is ready to get stuck on the truck and tested, see if that 90lb pull magnet is strong enough pull to withstand the lateral torque of wind resistance.  

Right before I went to bed last night, my heat pump decided it has had enough.  I can still hear the relays clicking on and all that, but the fan never starts.  It is possible that the fan is just frozen in; this unit historically has had exceptionally poor drainage and we went from 50 and raining to below freezing in less than 12 hours.  I did hear the fan blades scraping on ice which is the loud noise it makes in the winter before it stopped completely, so it might have just finally cooked the fan motor.  Unfortunately, we have run out of warm weather for a little bit, so if it is frozen in, it will stay that way for a while.  

The good news is that we are close enough to spring I can just heat the place with space heaters.  I have two.  I set one up this morning, since it was very chilly in the house this morning.  I also still have a window unit AC in the shed that I can put in for the summer.  

That heat pump was really expensive (I paid $700 for it) and they are $1100 now, which I won't pay to replace it for at most a year.  Unfortunately since wall units aren't standardized for size, I can't just pick up a cheap LG unit or anything, they won't fit.  Most of the small heat pump market has gone to mini-splits, wall mounted units are largely a thing of the past at this point, so my odds of finding a replacement are slim.  I will just have a higher heating bill next winter if I am not in the new house by then.

Today's snow coverage: down to 10%.  I haven't gone up to check if the side of the shed has melted off, but it almost assuredly has.  I am going to be running around at lunch, I might stop up and check and get it covered.

UPDATE - I went up at lunch and saw the Fedex guy.  The tires for my truck have arrived.  

One of the reasons I went up at lunch was to cover the side of the shed.  The first major chunk is covered.  The snow moves in tonight.  I have seen everywhere from 6-8" to 12-16".  It is unfortunate that I never fixed my snowblower, it will get at least one more workout this season.

The other reason I went up is that since the space heaters have an analog temperature setting, I didn't know what they were set for when I set them up this morning.  Turns out they were set for about 45ish.  That is a bit too chilly even for me, so I cranked them up a bit. It was up in the 50s when I went back to work.