Winter of my discontent

I joke all the time about how I hate winter, but it’s actually true—when winter is being winter, in the usual sense for wherever I was living that season. Here in New Zealand, the news media and ordinary people alike have all talked about the past few winters with the word “unusually” preceding whatever they’re talking about: “unusually mild”, for example, though it could be cold, wet, dry, or anything else. While there could be faulty memories involved sometimes (as in, “winter was never live this when I was a kid”), it’s also true that records of all sorts are falling all over the planet.

Take the gross weather, stir in things going on in my own life, add the short days, and for me this winter has been particularly awful. All the things I hate about winters in this part of New Zealand—cold, rain, and days in which it doesn’t rain, but that remain dark and dreary, anyway—have been present more days than not.

To be sure, it’s not dark and/or rainy every single day—there have been some beautiful days, too. It also hasn’t been below freezing every night (though it has been on far too many nights…), and some daytime temperatures have been quite pleasant. However, taken as a whole, winter this year has been pretty awful—in my opinion, of course.

I took the photo up top on a very foggy night last Thursday, when I took the recycling to the kerb for collection the next morning. However, I didn’t share it anywhere because I didn’t think it showed the fogginess well enough. Leo and I then went bed, and a few hours later, at 2.40am, he woke me up to let him outside, and I sleepily ambled into the lounge, slid open the door to the patio—and saw that the fog was completely gone. Kirikiriroa-Hamilton is legendary for having heavy fog in winter, especially in the morning, and after I snapped the photo I just assumed it would thicken. Instead, I think it may have rained between the time we went to bed and when I noticed the fog was gone, and the temperature may have changed, but whatever it was, I was definitely surprised.

Fog isn’t normally that much of a problem for me: I think that since I’ve moved to Hamilton I’ve only had to drive in fog a couple times—once once in the morning when I went to a medical appointment of some sort, and once at night after a family get-together. The truth is, winter weather phenomena like fog or frosts don’t actually affect me. It’s cold and sunlight.

The trouble with cold is that my house is mostly unheated: Only the living area and my bedroom have a heat pump air conditioner, which means that the other two bedrooms (one of which is my office) and the hallway can feel pretty cold, especially at night. To cope, I add another layer of clothing, and I shut the doors of unheated rooms—the guest room, the toilet (room, not throne), the bathroom, and, when I go to bed, the en suite attached to my bedroom. I also close the door between the living area and the hallway until there’s just enough room for Leo to get through in the morning (he loves running down the hallway to the kitchen).

Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about the amount of sunshine or the length of the days, so I have to rely on other things to cope with those problems.

My solar power system reduces the amount of electricity I need to buy, dramatically in the summer months, and slightly in the winter. The problem with winter is, first, the days are short, and second, it rains so very much, or at least is overcast, that I don’t generate much electricity in the winter months.

To cope with that, on the many days with no sunshine, I do power-hungry chores—like running the clothes dryer or dishwasher—after 10pm when the electricity rates are lowest. When I can, I wait until a sunny day to do those sorts of chores so I have free electricity, but that’s not always possible—especially when we have the better part of two weeks with nothing but cloudy or rainy days.

And then there’s the potential problem with hot water.

I have a special device installed that diverts solar electricity to my hot water cylinder before sending it to the power grid, meaning that, basically, I have a solar hot water heater. The problem is that the solar panels have to produce enough electricity to heat the water. When we have several days in a row of cloudy skies, especially if some of those daylight hours are storms, and especially if we have nighttime temperatures around or below freezing, it can mean my water never heats properly, though it’s rare for the drop to be noticeable—in fact, the second time it happened was this week.

I had my shower Saturday morning, and noticed that the water temperature was barely lukewarm. I turned the knob toward hotter, and it was warm enough, though it could’ve been better. The thing is, the en suite is at one end of the house, and the hot water can take forever to get there in winter, so I needed to test it—maybe I just had to wait?

A little while latter, I hand washed a couple dishes in the kitchen sink, and even turned to all the way hot, it wasn’t very hot. Time for my back-up plan: I went into the garage and tapped the “Boost” button on the controller to use mains power electricity to head the hot water for one hour (at the time, the panel on the device said something like that it was “waiting for surplus power”. This is an expensive way to heat water (hot water cylinders are normally on a special circuit at a reduced rate), but, as the saying goes, needs must.

The only other time I’ve needed to do that was the first winter after the controller device was installed. In fact, there was some sunshine Saturday, and again Sunday and today, so the hot water is back to normal. Hopefully, the weather will be more favourable for power and hot water for the rest of winter—something I say with no rational reason for doing so.

There’s not much I can do to change all that at the moment, however, if I stay in this house long-term, I’ll change the heating so that all the bedrooms are heated/cooled, and I’ll work to get the hot water less reliant on sunshine. Right now, though, my strategies for coping with winter weather are pretty much working. Even though I can’t always say I’m comfortable, I nevertheless have it better than many, and far better than some. Still, it does seem kind of pointless to have to cope with cold temperatures and lack of sunshine without the pay-off of snow—is something I’d never actually say.

By the way, have I ever mentioned how much I hate winter? No? Well, here’s a bonus photo: The moon amid the clouds around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning, after Leo got me get out of bed. Again.