Scottish-Irish Skier

Mini Miss SS did her best to capture this stunning winter's early sunset on the way down the A9 near Drumochter. Plough captured for effect. WhatsApp Video 2023-01-01 at 15.36.27.mp4

Always wondered what the lamppost in the forest at the back of the wardrobe was for. Then I realised - snaw watching! Wuids up behind where the sawmill used tae be in Carrbridge this morning. Walking my sister's dug, who was having a whale of a time in it. As you can see fae the state of the road, we felt discretion was the better part of valor and didn't drive up to Sluggan.

Happy new year fellow kilters. Woke up tae this here in Carrbridge! Gonnae be a picture-sque new year's walk up Sluggan the day. EDIT and the sunset last night was stunning. Looking up the upper Dulnain valley fae behind Lethendrychule. Well worth the run up there burning aff festive calories! Bit slippy though! run.mp4

Few cm covering out of this event. Snowing lightly.

Ok, now snawin here! Absolutely chucking it doon and settling! White boxing day! EDIT. Radar suggests something of a wee W->E streamer coming my way. EDIT2. Sis heading up the A9 home from Edinburgh tae Carrbridge. Luckily has winter tyres!

Gey driech here! Sleety mix, becoming wet snaw when heavy. My wee bro's over with his wife's family in Pennsylvania right now. Luckily they're just mainly getting the cauld, but not the problematic snow as they're to the south and not near the great lakes.

Merry Christmas all! Absolutely lashing it doon here now. But who cares! Was up in Edinburgh for lunch with the French in-laws who are visiting our fine capital / us for Christmas and was on driving duty. Now safely hame and totally stuffed after way too much delicious Scottish food the past few days. Can safely report we have the Auld Alliance thumbs up here! No mean feat! Will crack open a beer in front of the crackling fire now and find an easy watching movie. You never know, might turn wintry here according to the MetO warning!

Either have to be in, or can see the highlands close by from my home office windae. I'm a teuchter by birth (Carrbridge) and been away too long. Finally comin hame!

Lol, had in my head Eastern highlands, although I might end up working an hour west of Aberdeen on occasion! Now corrected W, not E!

So Doric speaking kilters, [EDIT] furryboots is guid fir snaw in the NE? Looks like in the spring, family SS will be hoose hunting an hour or so W of Aberdeen along the edge of and intae the highlands! Whoop whoop!

For various reasons I'm looking at moving to the eastern highlands / rural Aberdeenshire! Photaes like this just make me want to even more!

Aye, the light's been crackin at times. We've only a few cms, but with the frost, it's a winter wonderland.

Water of course settles to the bottom of oil tanks, which is where the feed for the boiler draws from! Related, and maybe I've mentioned in the past, but with ethanol (to make it cleaner burning) added to diesel, this is causing it to partition to the water sitting at the bottom of petrol station fuel tanks. That expands the water layer much more than normal, making a water-ethanol mix under the diesel. Along comes a filler tanker and disturbs this when it fills the station tanks. Think twice about filling up if the garage is getting filled up! Settles quite quickly, but has killed some engines that got a mixture of water and ethanol rather than diesel when they filled up. We had a transport company send us samples of what they drained from their dead trucks and it was exactly this. Back to oil heating - on a day above zero, it's not too hard to drain your own outside oil tank from the bottom to remove any water. Should be a valve for this right down the bottom. You might be quite shocked how much water can be there! --- Weather? F'n bawtic. -7.5 °C and falling.

Very seasonal dug walk the day.

Finally! Woke up tae a couple ae cms here. Very picture-sque. EDIT. Incidentally, our gairden is currently host to about 10 blackbirds and other assorted species who love the apples from the trees. Bumper crop and as usual, we just can't eat them all or give them all away. We initially just had 'Brenda and Bob' who nest in the shed bouncing around. But it seems they've invited the extended family for the apple feast. Another shower passing through!

Blob finally incoming here. Oan the edge ae ma seat! EDIT. Snaw!

Well, at the rate it's been snawin here so far, I'm on for 1 cm in a week! Even my wee bro has more behind the Pentlands. But that might all change the nicht! MetO suggesting some real fun and games coming my way. Hopefully doesn't get marginal. Some great pics. Enjoy yer snaw all!

Light dandruff blawin in the breeze here. Ground all frozen so the wee / close tae the ground King Charles dugs dinnae need a wash post walk! Lovely weather. Cauld but clear and very seasonal. Give me this over cauld pish any day. EDIT. Aw man, looks like Earlston 5 miles doon the road's goanne get dumped on while that massive blob misses me. Need to go to the coop later, so decent excuse to visit!

Tryin tae convince masel there's a wee bit ae dandruff in the gairden. MetO still convinced I'll get a shower ae snaw here in the next few hours, but am no convinced. -2C. EDIT, haud oan, blob incoming! Better no fizzle oot!

I'm guessing that occluded front coming down N. Sea is where my wee snaw symbols are from 7 tae 11 am the morn. It's beginning tae look at lot like Christmas...

Whit a difference a day makes, 24 wee oors... EDIT. Wow, what an ecm. Plenty of opportunities oot tae t240+ Sod it, I can burn the furniture. Worth it for some decent snaw / hame skiing.

Couple ae flake symbols from the MetO for fort SS on Saturday! That's a start!

Well, just walked the dug and you can feel winter arriving. That NW wind is pretty chilly. 4 °C here. As for snaw, as the old saying goes, get the cauld first, then start looking for the snaw! EDIT. Cairngorm putting its winter coat oan. Can cover up the bulldozer tracks!

When we bought this 1860 stone cottage it had no heating and no insulation. We took out all the internal plasterwork (complete with like horse hair and stuff), and rebuilt internal framework etc. Lagged to the max with rockwool in the cavities before plasterboard back and re-plastered. It wasn't actually that costly (knew the plasterer as I did some work for him as a student to earn beer money), but jeez what a total mess if you are living in the house trying to do this room by room. Anyway, installed off peak storage which is just pointless unless the house is actually well insulated. Also replaced windows with double glazing. Of course in this case we knew we were going to have to pay for all this, but then the cottage didn't cost much due to being something out of the 1950's in terms of standards. When we had the extension done, it's got kingspan between the joists and insulation backed plasterboard. If I recall correctly, the roof is rockwool between joists and a layer of kingspan. Over the top on insulation. It's now pretty toasty. Or was as we used to heat it quite lot because we could! Was 25 C sometimes when we forgot to adjust the charge settings and it got warmer! Not this winter. more 19C now, but managed to bring usage down by 40% on the same time last year! And a wee tip here... Be wary about companies selling foam injection insulation. Seems a great idea and can work in certain circumstances, being much less onerous than taking all the plaster work out like we did. However, if not done properly, can trap moisture / stop air flow and cause your joists to rot. I've come across some news stories about people being unable to get a loan / remortgage on a property due to concerns here. EDIT. Just hud a wee look at the latest ECM. Sweet. Fun and games from the morn right out to T240+

Aye, which is why to open the windows a little. I guess it really depends on the air saturation differential. Cars really mist up e.g. when you left it the previous night and the air was warmer and holding more water vapour when you closed the door. Overnight the temp drops (even to the point frost / dew forms as water drops out), and the air inside become supersaturated with water but this has not nucleated into droplets as it's so still inside. Then you open the door and jump in, breath warm (body temp), supersaturated air out, and condensation kicks in rapidly. In this case, letting dryer outside air in makes sense. Certainly you need to open the windows a bit to let some moist air out, but not so much as it doesn't warm up. But you can mist up too if the air inside is warm with a lot of water in it, but not at saturation, then peeing cold rain / sleet hits. This cools the car outside rapidly, and misting sets in as condensation occurs because cabin temp drops (rain chill effect). In this case, you don't want to let more moist air in as it's saturated with water. So here, recirculating is likely more sensible. Get the temperature back up again. If you keep the air above its saturation temp, it will stay dry, even if it is holding moisture. I'm not sure about when air con kicks in, but it does dry air as water condenses on the cooling cools, which are normally way below cabin temperature. So air cooled by air con is dryer than naturally cooled air often as not. But then if the cabin's cold, the air con will not come on probably, thinking more about it. Certainly, it's not going to harm your demisting if the air con is on. Not going to make things damper! Not so simple, but the sun visors as baffles for warm air blowing on the screen is a clever idea!