Joerg

An artificial ski training range in my village, and in the winter you can practise walking/gliding in our forests. Our highest mountain is a few hundred meters high, you find it near Maastricht(see google earth.). That highest one is also our only one.......

Just south of me is the Salton Sea, which in the past has been Lake Cahulla (sp?) and filled most of the southern part of the valley. It is still below sea level now, and you can see the ancient waterlines all along the mountain sides down there. A good quake, and I really do get ocean views, or at least lake views!

Of course if you are talking San Andreas, the Mission Creek branch is about 1/2 of a mile south of me. I can see both it, and the Banning fault from my back window!

Charlie

Sure, if one ever happens. Are relying on your crystal ball, or just your faith in Lord Gore?

Thanks, Rich

Hi Rich, No, 120 degree summers are normal out here! You just have to get out of the 'June Gloom' and come out where the skys are clear, and the temps high! I am just outside of Palm Springs... 8-)

Charlie

Sounds like a very cold house no matter how high you turn up the stove. Did you ever consider floor heating?

No second hand market? Recently I bought two large Velux roof windows for 6% of the original retail price.

The comfort from dual pane glass is well worth the money IMHO.

The house had that once upon a time but one of the previous owners cut off the pipes &*%#^!!.

However, in the end it doesn't matter how you pump heat into a house. It has to go in one way or the other and I actually like the wood stove. Except it gets colder here every year :-(

Not here, and not for this size sliding glass door.

But not $40k.

that

:-)

full bore,

central

dislikes

and the

about

with

preferred

single-pane.

I've seen

foreboding

in

Berkley? What's the downside?

Drive to Germany. From where I live its about 3 hours by car to a ski resort.

No way to restore that? I know its not done to put pipe couplings in the floor but desperate times need desperate measures.

AFAIK that is not true. Heating is not about getting the temperature to a certain level. Heating is about feeling comfortable. Floor heating offers comfort at much lower room temperatures.

Same here. Must have something to do with low solar activity. The temperatures should go up over the next couple of years.

That's a bit steep. Unless you have a really large house.

We're 15 minutes from the Pacific Ocean and three hours from the Sierras. You can get up in the morning and decide to hike or surf or ski. And Digikey will get you almost anything overnight. Not a bad life.

John

We're two days from the Sierras and the Pacific and three hours from the Gulf of Mexico. DigiKey still gets us stuff overnight. McMaster-Carr is less than

One of the nice things about the USA is how easy it is to start an electronics company. Parts are cheap and easy to get. Ebay has astonishing test equipment dirt cheap. Legally, you can just start doing business out of your garage or a spare bedroom, with minimal hasssle.

John

They cut it off smack at the concrete ceiling layers. Everywhere. It'll be quite cost-prohibitive to restore.

My parent's home has floor heating but neither energy consumption nor room temperature are much different versus similar homes. It is nice for tile floor though, feels less cold on the feet. But since we don't walk through the house barefoot it wouldn't matter to us.

No, they must have called off that AGW hoax :-)

If the temps ever make it back to normal I'll pop the champagne. If they get above normal I'll buy a whole case of champagne.

It is a 300 square meter house because there's office and lab also in there. A Frank Lloyd Wright style custom design from the 70's. Lots of windows which makes for a nice living atmosphere. Back then they didn't care much about energy efficiency.

Until the goons come and write you up because the disabled sign on the bathroom is per federal standard but not Californian. Which was unobtanium in all the local stores. Seriously, that just happened to a client of mine. If we laid off at least 80% of the bureaucrats we would probably have the situation you describe ;-)

The standard San Francisco lot is 24 feet wide. Our house is tall and skinny and in physical contact with the neighbors on both sides, so the sides, the biggest areas, have zero heat loss.

John

than

We've had only minor hassles with regulators, a little annoying but nothing serious or expensive. I started my business in my garage, and then moved it into a place that was not zoned for manufacturing, and nobody noticed. If all the laws and regulations were enforced, the country would screech to a halt. But they're not.

When we bought the fortune cookie factory and refurbed it for electronics, we violated all sorts of building codes and handicap things and stuff, including my illegal skylights and a really questionable staircase, and some fire exit issues that could have wrecked the whole plan. The building code people looked it all over and acted sensibly. I was surprised at how reasonable they were.

My wife works in a medical facility. It's usually cold and space heaters aren't allowed. Lots of stuff in her office isn't allowed. But inspections are announced ahead of time, and cars have trunks.

John

Grass Valley has snow, tons of it, and got another half-foot last night. The hills above Truckee have 50 FEET of snow.

I cancelled class last Tuesday because I didn't want to be coming home in the dead of night over Donner summit with big rigs in the left lane going like dammity hell and the locals in Truckee called me the flatlander that doesn't drive in snow.

The next day a big rig overturned on the hill onto a 4-wheeler and caused a 50 car pileup with one fatal. I think I made the right call.

Jim

Pray tell what area in the central valley is below sea level.

Jim

Yes, with aeons of dead plant and animal matter falling to the bottom of the sea. THe topsoil there reaches a few HUNDRED feet deep.

Jim