Baby it's cold outside

 

It is -34 with a windchill that makes it feel like -38. That's actually pretty good compared to yesterday morning. I think the windchill was well below -40 on Saturday.

The province of Alberta reached a crisis point yesterday. Heather and I were playing a game of canasta when both our phones lit up and sounded off with an emergency alert. The Alberta power grid was close to being over taxed. In other words, it was generating as much power as it was being asked to deliver. Albertans were asked to respond immediately by shutting off space heaters, unplugging cars, stop using stoves and other power sucking appliances.

Apparently, the impact of that call to action was positive. The overall strain on the system was eased and the province made it through the night without having to do rotating power outages. 

We immediately shut off the two space heaters we had running and shut off as many lights as we could. By the time I got up in the morning the thermometer was reading 13 degrees. Don't be alarmed or concerned. I believe that reading has more to do with the location of the thermostat than with the ambient temperature in the house.  It sits right above the fresh air vent. Without the space heater balancing out the cooler fresh air coming in, the thermostat picks up the temperature of the fresh air coming in from the HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilation). 

The SEED Homes team is still troubleshooting the HVAC system as a whole. This is normal. Years ago, I was a project manager for the development of The Redpoll Centre in Fort McMurray, a social profit shared office space. It took months to work out the kinks in the temperature control department. I would get constant calls that various offices were too hot or too cold. Our house is going through a similar journey.

While the furnace is "overkill" for the square footage, according one of the HVAC guys, several factors are not allowing it to do its thing. This super cold weather is providing a suitable test. We would rather go through this now than a year down the raod, when the project is a distant memory. Right now, we have the full attention of the SEED Homes team and we are confident they will work out a solution that will make our home snug as a bug in the rug, even during these polar vortex events.