Soda, Screens & Windows, Rest & Pretending!

Well...I keep trying to turn my camera on, but it appears to be truly gone. Oh, well!

I am sitting here drinking an IBC Cream Soda. Yum! Dave and I like their cream soda more than their root beer...and we both like root beer a lot. We don't normally buy soda, but we found it on special for a good price and decided to by a six pack of each. Normally, sodas are too sweet for me to finish...but I really like these.

It is raining today. After a few days of nice warm weather, we are dipping into the 40's in the daytime and 30's at night. Brrrrrr!!!! It is getting chilly. We put the foil insulation in the windows last night to help keep the warmth inside. It is a good thing we did not put the oil heater outside yet!

Last week I put the screens back into our big side windows. I take them out in the winter because of the ice that forms on the inside of the windows. On an RV, the screens go inside, not outside. When ice forms on the window, it freezes the screen to the window, making it difficult to remove the ice.

Darn! I just realized that I never took a picture of the ice on the windows before it melts. Thankfully, this last winter was nearly as bad as the winter before. We did get ice, but not as much...on the windows anyway. We got a lot MORE ice on the roads...which is where it really counts. That is where people's lives are at stake. I would much prefer to deal with ice on the windows than on the driveway and the roads!

I heard a really good sermon today on pretending. Are we real in our walk with God? Or are we pretending? Do we do things to try and look good...being hypocritical? Or are we being real about how we live? Dave and I love sermons that step on toes...especially our toes. We want to be challenged. We do not want to live a complacent life.

We are resting today between church and the evening class. Dave worked hard yesterday on the creek trench. So hard, in fact, that he came in sore. So, when he asked what our plans were for after church, I told him "rest"!

Well, I am getting a bit sleepy. Hmmm...maybe I will take a nap!

From our little RV on the hillside to you on this lazy Sunday afternoon...blessings!

Wind! and Random Observations!

Wind! Sometimes we have incredibly powerful gusts of wind. The tarp over the top of our rv is tied down to cinderblock bricks in some places. It is amazing to see how high the wind lifts that tarp. Sometimes I wonder if the strings are going to break and I will see the tarp blow away.

This is the second day of warmer weather. It won't stick around, though. The cold is on its way back in; but it is nice to have a couple of days of respite. Later today we are supposed to get some rain, which is supposed to continue for the next few days. During that time we are supposed to get some snow showers along with the rain. It always concerns me when we get this snow/rain mix. I hate the thought of icy roads, not to mention icy driveway!

Last night is the first night in a while that we did not put the foil insulation sheets in our windows. That was sure nice, especially since our heater was also on low all night. We were nice and cozy.

This morning when I first looked out the window I saw the sun shining on one side of the trees. It was beautiful, as if a golden color had been lightly brushed on some of the branches and tree trunks. It was clear which direction the sunshine was coming from. It seemed as if the trees had taken on this golden glow. I had to take a few moments to sit by the window and just gaze out at them.

In our little valley, the sun rises at one end and pretty much goes down on the other. Our valley curves a little bit...but it is fairly narrow and the sun follows it. This means that we get a lot of sun. Although we have trees on the hillside above us and below us, they don't really shelter us. One end of our RV is now somewhat blocked from the sun due to the location of the laundry room we are building. Come summertime, that might actually be nice!

Answer to Another ? About the Icey Windows

Anonymous said...

I still dont understant why you have to remove the ice. would it drip on the floor? Would it stay frozen? Do you need the window open in this kind of weather?


We don't actually need to remove the ice from the window. What we need to do is to unblock the drain holes. Once I take the insulation sheets off the windows, the ice starts to melt...fairly quickly. So, I need to remove the ice plugs from the drain holes so that the water won't run over the lip of the track and down the wall.

The sliding window has a very narrow space between it and the front wall of the track. If that space is filled with ice, which it usually is, the ice on the window melts and runs right down over the ice in the track and onto the sill and down the wall. I don't remove the ice to open the window. In fact, even when the ice is removed on the inside, there is often still just enough ice at the bottom to keep the window frozen shut anyway.

So, really, it is all about keeping the water from running down the wall inside. I squeegie the windows above the ice where there is just water. The water running down over the ice actually helps to melt it. Removing the water also makes it a lot easier to see out the window, which is why I squeegie it every morning to remove the condensation.

I hope that answered your question. Feel free to ask more!  :)

Snow! & Answer to ? About Icey Windows

We have snow! Only about 2-3 inches, but it is still very pretty. We also water dripping off the tarp that covers our roof, which means that it is melting and will probably turn to ice.  

I thought we would be moving back into the type of weather I remember as a child when we lived in this are for a few years. I have to admit it is disappointing having this weather, not to mention also difficult to work around with all the ice buildup.

Someone asked why our windows get icey. I will try to answer it as best I can. Our windows get cold from the outside. The cold glass is touched by the warm air inside and draws the moisture out of the warm air. This causes condensation on our windows. If we did not put anything in the windows, I don't think we would ever get ice because the warm air inside would keep leeching to the outside through the glass, keeping the condensation as water.

However, because we put insulation sheets in  there is a slight gap created. It is just enough to let a bit of warm air, forming condensation, but not enough to keep it warm enough to leave it water. So, the air in between the insulation sheet is cold enough to freeze the water to ice. When I take the sheets down in the morning, there is always a mix of water and ice. Water at the top, ice at the bottom. I guess it makes sense that it would water at the top since heat rises. Obviously, the warmer air would be higher up.

How much ice is there seems to be dependent on how low the temperature gets and how long it stays low enough to freeze the water.

I am sitting here listening to an older PBN podcast...one with Christmas music. I so love the Christmas music they play. It is very worshipful! It is something I can listen to any time of year as it reminds me of what Yahweh has done for us through His Son, Yeshua. I am always amazed when I think of the love of God. It is simply beyond my comprehension. So, I just sit and bask in it as He wraps His arms around my heart. mmmmmmmmmmm! How wonderful it can feel!

Ice Dams and Frozen Hearts!

We have a whole routine we have to follow in the winter regarding our windows. This is a very old RV and it is made for warmer climes. It was also made before they started putting doublepaned windows in them. Even now, double-paned is only an option on a lot of RV's, not a standard. Or at least that is how it was a few years ago.

We use foil insulation sheets in the windows at night. They look like foil covered bubble wrap...the kind with the tiny bubbles. Cut to size, we put one up in each window. This makes a HUGE difference on the amount of heat we lose. Then we slide our curtain blankets over the two main side windows. Considering the size of the RV, these are big windows. The window on the couch side runs almost the length of the couch. The one across from it, behind me, is slightly smaller.

Even as I sit here, I can feel the cold air coming in from the one across from me where I have taken the foil back out of the window to let light in. Hmmm...light or heat. What a choice! I have not taken the one out of the window behind me yet...and I may not. I may leave it in, especially today, since I will be gone part of the day. In fact, when we go somewhere...on those very rare days that we do...we will often leave the foil in the windows to conserve energy. It is 18F out there right now and I have just shut the blanket curtain. I am thinking of putting the foil back in for awhile because of the cold. The condensation makes it hard to see much out of the window, but it is nice having the light. I also just turned the heater up. :P

On nights when it drops below freezing, taking off the foil insulation sheets can get very interesting. There is so much condensation that forms on the inside of the windows that the foil is often frozen to the window with bits of ice...or even a sheet of ice in the bottom part of the window. The fact that the ice can form is a testimony to how much heat the sheets are deflecting back into the RV. I have to very carefully peel the sheets off.

When it is not freezing, I simply pull the sheets off, wipe off the window sills and squeegie the condensation off the windows. The window frames are made of aluminum, so they act like heatsinks to the outside and the inside of the frames get very cold and condensation will often form on them, too.

When it is freezing, there is a whole other routine I must follow. First of all, the condensation has run into the little holes in the two ends of the window frame and frozen into ice dams. So, the water that would normally drain right out of the track is stuck. Well, if I don't get those holes thawed, the condensation on the windows, along with the melting ice, will overflow the tracks.

Along with that, the window is in two pieces...one stationary and one sliding. The sliding one is on the inside and the track gets very narrow between it and the inside wall of the track. During the night, enough condensation has formed and dripped down to make that little part of the track fill completely, or almost completely, with ice. So any water that drips down from the sliding window will automatically run right over the ice and onto the sill.

Thus starts a whole new routine for the winter. My son has a little experiment kit. OK...now you are probably thinking "huh? What on earth does THAT have to do with winter window routines?" Well...read on and learn! :) In that kit is a little plastic pipette. The first thing I do is fill a cup with very hot water and the pipette.

Now, the size of the plastic tube on the pipette just happens to be the perfect size to fit into the drain hole on the window frames, IF the hole is not dammed up with ice! Starting to get where I am going with this? I very carefully take a pipette filled with hot water and squirt it where the hole is. I keep doing this until I can stick the pipette into the hole. With each squirt, I can get it to go in farther and farther until the ice is melted through and the water can drain. This must be done immediately for the ice on the windows starts to melt as soon as I pull off the insulation sheet.

Immediately after that, I have to go take care of the ice dam on the sliding window side of the track. Again, the tube on the pipette is the perfect size for fitting along the track between the window and the inside wall of the track. Very slowly, I slide the pipette from the middle where the sliding window meets the stationary window toward the end of the sliding window, while gently squeezing out the hot water. I have to squeeze it fast enough to get it out while it is still hot, but slowly enough that it is not just running over the ice and onto the sill. It takes a little practice, but is not really hard to master. In fact, it is kind of fun! I get to be an adult who plays with water and ice! :)

The main thing is to NOT let the hot water touch the frozen glass! THAT would NOT be good!

I just keep sliding and squeezing the hot water into the track all along that side of the window track until the ice dam between the window and the track is completely melted. It takes a few minutes to do this as the pipette does not hold much water. Once the holes are unplugged and the track is clear, I can squeegie away and the water won't overflow. Although, I do have to squeegie slowly on the sliding window because the track on that side, being so narrow, can still only hold a certain amount of water at once.

So, there you have it...ice dams! But what about the frozen hearts? Well, this morning as I was working with the windows I thought about how this can be a parallel to spiritual life.

When the cold winter storms of life hit is my heart kept warm by the fire of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit)? Or am I allowing them to freeze His fire out of my heart? I know that, as I look back on my life, there are many times that I have allowed my heart to grow cold. Thankfully, and only by the grace of Yahweh, I don't think my heart has ever totally frozen. However, I DO know that He has had to warm up my cold heart many times over the years when I have allowed it to get cold due to anger, or frustration, or despair.

My abusers tried to freeze my heart toward God. But they never succeeded! I have always, since the time I was very young, had a heart for God. I was not always able to live it, but I strived for it. And He blessed me in it. Yet, there have been times when my heart grew cold...sometimes due to being blessed...sometimes due to being overwhelmed.

We each have those things that tend to make our hearts grow cold toward our heavenly Abba (Daddy). What is yours? Do you have so much that you don't feel a need for the fire anymore? Are you hurting so badly that, instead of running TO Him, you run FROM Him? Have those who call themselves by His name wounded you so deeply that you have forgotten that He is NOT those people? Whatever it is that temps you to let your heart freeze, please don't let it! Run from the temptation. Ask Him to put that fire back in your heart. And remember that this world is temporary. It is not all there is. And not everyone who calls themselves by His name... are really His!

Are YOU His? That is the key most important question you can ever ask yourself! The answer settles your destiny. Do you think you are His? Make sure! Sha'ul (Paul) wrote:

2Co 13:5 HNV
(5) Test your own selves, whether you are in the faith. Test your own selves. Or don't you know as to your own selves, that Yeshua the Messiah is in you?--unless indeed you are disqualified.

If you are sure, rest in it, for Yeshua (Jesus) said:

Joh 6:37 All those who the Father gives me will come to me. Him who comes to me I will in no way throw out.
Joh 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
Joh 6:39 This is the will of my Father who sent me, that of all he has given to me I should lose nothing, but should raise him up at the last day.

And we have this promise, too, along with so many more!

Heb 7:25 Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, seeing that he lives forever to make intercession for them.

I will try to write more about our day later...but for now...have a good day from all of us here in our Little RV on the Hillside!