New year 2012.

Been a while since the last entry so I'll try and lump it all together here.

Electricity:

Trying to get though the winter months with a 60w solar panel is a fail. I've run a massive extension lead from the house to the yurt and I'm a little ashamed to say that it has transformed things inside the yurt. Apart from the obvious like being able to make toast, it has opened up new winter possibilities, the main one being how to deal with very low temperatures on a Friday night when I roll up after a week at work.

The week before last hit a personal yurt record low of -11c, it took 2 hours to get the inside warm using compressed logs (more on that later), that's 2 hours wasted, so I have invested in an electric duvet, so I can at least hit the sack while the yurt warms up instead of sitting there listening to the shipping forecast and watching my breath drift away. At £99 that aren't cheap, but a decent goose down duvet is £60 and doesn't have flashing lights and dials. No brainer for a bloke.

Fridge:

Milk and cheese goes behind the sofa, it seems to be a natural cold spot, so no fridge needed yet. Of course people survived without them for thousands of years anyway.

Heating:

The previously mentioned paraffin heater is still working well but really dries up the air, meaning that I wake up in the AM with a dry throat. As an alternative I've been using Wildfire coal nuggets, they will keep going till morning and the coldest it's been so far at 8am is 10c, that's acceptable. The tonne of compressed wood waste briquettes have been slightly disappointing in that they were part of a batch that were not sufficiently compressed, therefore they burn too fast and are quite messy. The seller has kindly offered me a discount on the next batch so the jury is still out on briquettes. We shall see.

General state of things:

The outer cover is looking rather green now, it's not nice, but the inside is still lovely. I'm considering using a jet wash to blast the green off but will need to be careful not to blast it all under the crown cover and into the yurt. The door is holding out well, no swelling, splits or cracks.

Stove:

The Prithy FG15 has given sterling service through winter, stews, baguettes, pizza, jacket spuds all in abundance. Money well spent.

That's it for now, come spring (hopefully the earwigs will stay away this year) I'll pull the covers off and have a look to see how things are doing there. I suspect there will be the entire ladybird population of the world just waiting to rock.