Yesterday we had our first significant snow fall of the season. The accumulation over night was probably only about 2", but it has been very cold. The pond is still flowing, at least I can hear the water flowing. It is covered with snow and ice.
Last week I bought a pond deicer. It was not meant to keep ice off the pond, but only to keep a hole in the ice. However, it did not work and I sent it back. It was rated at 500W and had great reviews. Unfortunately, the one sent to me did not work at all. We may try it again, but for this season, we will observe how the pond gets along with just sustained water flow. We still have a leak in the pond somewhere which makes it more difficult to keep the water level sufficient to maintain the pump flow. This leakage, plus the amount of water being turned into ice, has forced us to add water a couple of times.
Having never heard back from Our Mike about when/if he intends to return to work on the list of items still remaining to finish the project, we have started making other arrangements. On Monday, we had a painting company come in and give us an estimate on repairing dry wall that was removed during the project. Yesterday, T finished staining the quarter-round trim surrounding the stained glass above the south door of the sunroom. We also bought some tinted wood putty, which I used yesterday to fill all the nail holes in the sunroom casement window frames. I would show a picture, but, thankfully, you cannot see the filled holes.
The cold weather (wind chills down as low as -15F) has again demonstrated that, while we had Frank (AC) out last fall to increase the duty, the floor heating still cannot maintain the sunroom temperature without assistance. That assistance has been supplied by the fireplace. We have the fireplace place on thermostat control and it puts out a lot of heat. We may contact Frank to see if the floor heating duty can be further increased. I believe it can.
