by Alan Stankevitz | Feb 7, 2003
I was recently asked if I was disappointed in the solar heating system considering that the temperatures in the house were rarely in the 70’s. I would imagine that anyone monitoring the house temperatures over the last two weeks, you might be drawn to...
by Alan Stankevitz | Jan 25, 2003
Remember those warm weather days just a few weeks ago? I guess I never should have bragged about all that warm weather! Temperatures dropped below zero this week for the first time in ten months making it a rather long walk to the outhouse. Envisioning frost...
by Alan Stankevitz | Jan 11, 2003
I will probably be deported from Minnesota for letting the cat out of the bag, but I’m here to tell you that the vision planted in everyone’s head of Minnesota being a frozen wasteland is totally inaccurate. (The movie Fargo was just that—a movie.) With...
by Alan Stankevitz | Dec 22, 2002
Chickadees, juncos and finches know, Time has come for winter’s new snow. Days are short and the nights are long, Quiet are the woods, devoid of song. Ask the coyote, hawk, fox and deer, They all know the time is almost here. It won’t be long now for...
by Alan Stankevitz | Dec 6, 2002
As I reported in the last journal, I discovered that the heating system was thermosyphoning from time to time. The fluid in the pipes is only suppose to go in one direction: from the solar collectors to the tubing in the sand bed. This is what occurs while the pumps...
by Alan Stankevitz | Nov 23, 2002
(Click here to see a full-sized image from on top of our bluff.) With pocket protector and slide rule (Slide rule?…What’s that?) in hand, I went to work this week writing a computer program and installing an A/D (Analog to Digital) converter to...
