BrianW

A nice warm start to November here with another almost +20 departure on the overnight low...

Its unreal down here on the shoreline. Its like spring with plants flowering again. My neighbor said her tulips were coming up. A friend who owns a landscaping company said they are still mowing. My low for October has only been 46. Leaf cleanups will be around Thanksgiving here.

Took this picture this morning at sunrise when I let the dog out. I'm still mowing every 3-4 days here and the maples just started changing... My overnight low was 58 and my low for the month is 46. My garden is still going strong. Best year ever for my cannabis as well.

To those looking for a generator spend the extra and get an inverter. A regular generator runs at a fixed speed of 3600 rpms and guzzles down gas. A large 7500 watt can suck down its 5 gallon tank in hours. Inverters can adjust the engine speed to the load down to a few hundred rpms. The fuels savings is insane. Your gas will last like 4 to 5 times longer. Inverters also deliver extremely clean electricty and are way better for electronics. I have the 2000 watt $500 HB inverter. It holds like a gallon of gas and can power low loads like your fridge, microwave, window ac, chargers etc all day. Its nuts how long a gallon of gas lasts. Also great for camping and tailgating.

83% of Plymouth County out of power.

I volunteer for the local land trust doing trail maintenance and was working on this shoreline property yesterday. I was talking to a local 83 year old retired Yale professor of plant biology. He said he has never seen anything like this. We were in a swamp and he said it looked like spring. Skunk cabbage and all other species of plants that normally sprout early spring were sprouting again. Everything is still pretty much green here.

Do you already have ductwork? If you do a whole house system like the bosch is definitely the way to go. The other upside of heat pumps is electricity is extremely stable in price as its regulated by the state. In CT the rates are changed on July 1st and Jan 1st. They are often increased or lowered by just 5-10%. I just watched a billboard for heating oil go from $2.29 to over $3 in a few weeks.

What an absolute torch of a month here on the shore. KHVN put up a +24 low departure last night with a 67.

If you have solar then a heat pump is a no brainer. There is no cheaper or cleaner source of heat then using 450% efficient heat pumps powered from the sun. Since my 6 year old panels reached their ROI my heat is essentially free. My Eversource bill is $9 month year round. There are huge rebates in CT for heat pumps. CT along with most of the New England states are leading the nation and pouring big money into converting people to heat pumps. My friend just got a $10k heat pump system that only cost him $4k after the state incentives and federal rebate. At current oil and gas prices and even with CT's high electric rates a heat pump would save you more than 50% over oil even if you bought the electricity. https://energizect.com/your-home/rebates-and-incentives

Run the heat pump as much as you can. It will save you a ton of money on oil. I think I recall you had a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat installed? Maines electricity is 79% renewable and the cheapest in New England. That's why the state is aggressively deploying heat pumps. Here is a fuel cost comparison for Maine using the EIA statewide averages. Your cost may actually be lower as Maine has some areas that have real cheap electricity. Cost per million btu. Fuel oil at $3.10 a gallon with 85% efficiency. $26.04 Mitsubishi Hyper Heat with COP of 4.5 powered from Maines .14 kwh electricity. $9.33

KBG sod came out beautiful. Lawn is growing the best it has all year. Been mowing every 3-4 days.

It might be because of the state incentive. They probably did a site survey and they can very accurately model what your roof will produce. You probably have too much shade and the state bases the incentive off the estimated yearly production. Let's say there are 2 5kw systems on roofs. One is in full sun and will produce 6000 kwhs a year. The other is partially wooded and will produce 3500 kwhs. The full sun system will get the full state incentive of lets say $8k. The other only gets $3k and will take twice as long to payback. I used Aegis Solar a local company in Branford.

I assume you use a lot of oil with 2 tanks?You should look into installing a heat pump or mini split. You could cut down your oil usage big time and save a ton. Vermont has really good rebates on them. Vermont's electricity is also mostly from Hydro Quebec and way cheaper than other New England states. I just crunched some numbers on a fuel cost calculator using your $3.07 oil price compared to a good heat pump. Here are the cost per million BTU. Fuel oil at $3.07 a gallon with 85% efficiency. $26.04 Mitsubishi Hyper Heat with COP of 4.5 powered from VT's .17 kwh electricity. $9.35. Anyone with a heat pump should run one as much as they can this winter. With gas and oil at record prices they will be way cheaper to run this winter as you can see above.

There is a palm tree nursery in Cheshire that rents them for the summer and they store them inside in the winter. They have become really popular the last few years at places. I read an article that the guy started it as a hobby and it just took off. His business is booming. People also plant hardy ones along the shoreline that survive year round. https://www.ctpalmtrees.com/

78 for the high. Still haven't been below 51 here. Everything is still green including the palms at a nearby bar on the shore.

You should see the increases on the CT shoreline. Many areas now have over 200 growing days. This is a cool study where they had temperature data all the way back to 1788 at Yale. The average length of the growing season over the past 47 years (1973-2020) is 26 percent higher than the average length of the growing season from 1788 to 1866, an increase from 126 days to 159 days. Since 2004, the length of the growing season has been equal to or exceeded the modern-era average every year, but five. https://longislandsoundstudy.net/ecosystem-target-indicators/length-of-growing-season/

It's still 71 here at 2 am. A nice +26 departure on the overnight low....

Todays another great beach day and I bet we hit 80 again here. The sound is still around 70 here and I just walked my dog by the beach and people were in the water. You notice the insane amount of baby crabs everywhere?

What a stretch of dews here.

81 for my 3rd 80 this month.

This is very true. I know a ton of people in especially the skilled trades that took some time off as they made so much money the last year and a half.

Tons of buds and flowers here. My Hibiscus and Hydrangeas are still blooming. +17 overnight low departure here with a low of 63. Average low is 46 at HVN.

Going to be an expensive winter for heating. The EIA just released their winter fuel report. Heating oil, natural gas and propane are at record highs and almost double what they were a year ago. Electricity is going to go way up as well due to most of our generation in New England being natural gas fired. The average heating oil price in New England is now over $3 gallon and expected to go higher