First snow and god bless my neighbour

Yes well the weather people do say that is an el nino year and big snow falls and hard winter follows hooray for winter lots of ski..

I live 10km from Borovets in Samokov and already the snow has been down to base level for a couple of weeks now .. roll on 5th Jan , snow here I come lol

@philip Mckay very nice mate must have cost a packet there.

We came over for a 1 nighter. the forcast in the uk said 1-2cm of snow. no problem we thought. we can drive in that.

omg have we learnt 😂

we got stick in the middle of no where. A local couple was hekping sig us out then they got stuck. then the next 2 cara came and bot equally as stuck (all because we did!!)

a couple if lovely strapping men came druving like bats out if hell in pick ups and towed everyone out.

we then followed a lovely man and his wife to e83. we then managed to get to the airport where we are sat waiting for our plane.

the purpose of the trip was to see the house i bought 2 years ago. we never made it to aee the house. next time 😂😂

we are moving in march so i kind of need to awe what im moving into 😂😂

Yes Bulgaria is very dynamic .. where did you buy your house?

always plan for the worst in winter .. 

2018 we spent the last 4 days of our months ski holiday  stuck in the house with no way of getting out until the snow plough came ... It just snowed and snowed for days .  4 days of skiing lost uugh!  We dug the car out twice ..

it can be really crazy in winter

l have been snowed in several times

heating food on an open fire and water to make hot water bottles to keep warm no electricity

l am told by my neighbours that one year food was bought in by helicopter!!

quite an adventure when your a couple

now l am alone l tend to spend my winters in UK 🇬🇧  its a bit scary on my own !!

@Suzi Masterson Them bats out of hell in pick ups must have been them Bulgarian mafia boys 😃 😀 😄 Did you make it back to your nest safe and sound? I reckon you will be back for more like muggings here everytime it snows.

Thinking this is not the place for me.  Only got the water on 2 weeks ago after a long, hot dry summer and now no electricity for 3 days.    Feeling like Im going backwards - not what I need at this time of life.

@Snowball6 where about are you? See how this fellow got them moving!

https://m.novinite.com/articles/222641/ … n+Bulgaria

You sure it aint a fuse? Think about getting yourself a backup gennie wont cost that much.

Live in Veselinovo near Shumen.  No it is not a fuse, whole village in black out.  Might also have a bath in the reception of the local water authority if im still here.    Hope I won't be totally sick of this place.

@Snowball6

After this winter you should seriously think about how to make life easier for yourself and solve the problems there ..   I have a place in Samokov and power outages are very rare .. since iv been on this site there seems to be more power problems in other areas .. Mickey's suggestion of getting a small petrol generator is a good one  but you will have to think about what you will run off it ..  eg. Lights? hot tank maybe ?   Hot tank could be 3kw .. lights almost nothing if your using LCD or low energy

But you do need to get it wired into your electric system properly . 

Even just having a spare car battery with 12 v lighting can sort your lighting problems for a couple of days .  Buy a solar trickle charger for it . Costs about £20 on AliExpress .  Look on eBay as there is a lot of solar powered stuff on there ..  you can get nice power banks  for around  £100 or less but obviously the more storage the better the longer it lasts .. you can even plug your phone and charge it on these power banks ..

@Snowball6

When I bought my place in the mountains it was just a very large shell just bricks and concrete .. after I got it I  realised that there was a hight possibility that the chimney flues were not lined properly so I had 3 phase domestic installed which would give me 18kw for electric heaters .. I installed gas pipes to run LPG from bottles which I can run for a month without buying gas .. I bought a single lpg stove that can run off the little gas bottles .  Hot water bottles to replace the electric blankets if electric outage . 

So basically I can last quite some time   if I'm snowed in without being to affected .. 

Thanks for your comments and advice Philip,    I'll have a serious think about my options before throwing in the towel.

If you have gas heating, mains or bottles or even a generator. Get a Carbon Monoxide detector. 

What @SimCityAT said!

Any petrol generator needs to be located well away from the house. Even having it under a window opened just enough to pass a cable into the house can let enough carbon monoxide from the exhaust fumes into the room to kill the occupant.  It has happened, sadly, and killed entire families using emergency gennies during power cuts. I'm also a bit wary of the flueless bottle gas heaters and cookers and wouldn't use one at all without a good CO monitor. We should all have one if we use wood stoves, too. I'm being a bit naughty at my place as we don't live there full-time yet and I don't bank the fire up to burn overnight while I'm asleep. I just have the little cards with the dot that changes colour located where it's impossible not to notice it. But when we move there full time, a proper CO monitor with an alarm that will wake us if needed is a must!

Our back-up plan for electric outages is wood stoves to keep warm, cook, and heat water (and an outside cooking set up for summer), lots of rechargeable battery lights, power banks to recharge phones and tablets (though in our village the mobile network goes down when the electric does), and a few small solar panels, which angled right can work surprising well even in winter if there's the least bit of sunlight.

And it seems water might be a problem at our place, as we're halfway up the hill. When the pressure drops, our neighbour at the bottom of the hill gets water, we sometimes don't, or just get a trickle. The short term fix is to store lots of 5L and 10L bottles filled with tap water and a few 10L bottles of drinking water, and have a back-up non-flushing toilet.  The old outside deep-drop loo is still usable in an emergency, too. The long term fix will be a storage tank that the village water supply can fill when there's enough pressure, and we can switch the house supply to when there's not enough pressure. Also I want to install rain water collection tanks now we have guttering and downpipes. Unfortunately we don't have a well or a spring.

I'm not sure how my husband will cope with outages. I grew up in a country house with lots of quirks. dodgy wiring, and no town water. He's a city boy who expects everything to work at the flick of a switch. We will see.

@Snowball6

Bulgaria is a great country to live but it has it's challenges.  Just to add that  petrol generators also need a home to live in and not outside .. you will need little hut for it so you don't get fumes in your house .. another option is a stove with a simple  back boiler .. like a parkray.. pritti may do something similar  .. I suspect your in a village ?  So your using wood to heat ? .. well a back boiler just feeds off the heat you are creating for your home .. nice hot water .. could be a better choice than a generator which will burn petrol quickly and won't provide heat to your home .. so over a few years it will pay for itself over the winter period

Phil

@SimCityAT

Good advice ..  I have wall heaters and mobile heaters .. did buy a catolitic LPG heater last year and sent it across to Samokov but it's so sensative it kept tripping out all the time .  But when it was working it was very good ..  camping Gaz make ..

All my heaters have oxy meters as standard .. but if you have a boiler it may not