Pre-Winter maintenance – hot tub and woodstove

Posted On October 23, 2008

With the temperature forecast to dive to far-below-normal in the next few days, much of yesterday was spent doing some pre-winter maintenance around the house.

The “must-do” job was the semi-annual water change and cleaning of the hot tub. It’s a pretty simple process – drain, scrub it down with vinegar and water, and refill. In the Spring we pull all 70 jets out and clean them too, which makes it a much bigger job, but that’s not necessary every time. The water came out of the well at 46°F but by 10:00 last night we were able to have a 103° soak and watch a few of the Orionid meteorites.

While the tub was filling, I finished off the wood furnace maintenance with an ash cleanout. Luckily, I cleaned the chimney before the roof got that white slippery stuff on it – it arrived far earlier than normal. Today the 5 gallons or so of ash gets spread around the beautiful forest that makes this property so special – the ash makes good fertilizer for this very poor soil.