"topping up the hoppers" ... ahead of hopping into town ...

G'daye Maits!

Yesterday, we hopped into Ft. Simpson, to make sure that all was well back at our place in Bannockland, shovel about 12"-16" of drifted snow from our driveway, fire up the wood stove, & then enjoy a community meal at the Great Slave Helicopters party.

We topped up the hoppers in both the wood pellet stove & the wood pellet boiler so that they could operate as needed without running out of fuel.

Pam re-filling the wood pellet stove

Here's a few pic's to show you what Wayne's hand-made pellet boiler hopper looks like ...

wood pellet boiler hopper ... needing a refill before we head into Simpson

Pam clearing off the snow from the bulk wood pellet bags

wood pellet refill pail #1

Max & Niko supervising Teresa's hopper refilling technique

I managed to put at least eight, 20 litre pails of pellets into the boiler hopper, while Pam shoveled around the site, ... a good workout & warm-up for both of us, for the snow shoveling that awaited us back in Simpson!

pail #3 ... into the hopper

Max waiting patiently for me to finish refilling the hopper (pail #5)

full hopper (after pail #8) for the Check Point wood pellet boiler :)

Here's a picture of the snow drifts that we had to clear from our place in Bannockland, when we arrived there Saturday afternoon ...

time to tackle the snow drifts at Bannockland ...

We managed to clear away the snow in less than an hour, while also getting our little wood stove fired up to start warming up the house after our first 3-4 days away.  As much as radiant, in-floor heating can be a good idea for some homes, the set-up in our place does not seem ideal, since the ambient temperature in the house was about 10 degrees lower than what we left the thermostat set at.  We had suspected this might be the case, so we had left the thermostat set at ~18C but after 3.5 days without having the wood stove kicking out heat, the in-floor system was only maintaining the room temp. inside at ~8C!

Despite the delay in our return after the community get-together/party (with the extra time we had at home gathering up a few other supplies to bring with us), ... any concerns about what state the wood pellet supply might be in when we got back were quickly wiped away when we saw that it still had half a hopper of pellets waiting to be dispensed into the burning chamber :)

Now, it's off to Lindberg Landing to visit our friend Sue at her awesome "offgrid" place & our dog Yukon who is now living with Sue, enjoying the freedom of no leashes & the adventures that arise with each raven, wood bison, squirrel, snowshoe hare, & pine marten that appears!

Looking forward to tramping/snowshoeing about with Sue & Yukon in the big snow that recently came our way :)

Teresa