A is for Arctic

The entry today is for the alphabet challenge....if I can work out how to post it!

If you thought yesterday looked cold here, then today was seriously cold. I went into town for a quilting group class and took a couple of photos en route as the temperature was -3' and even the sky looked cold. I had to leave the class a bit early to dash home to meet engineers from an underfloor heating company in the hope that they could fix the heating under a tiled bathroom floor. They arrived with all sorts of interesting looking machinery and within minutes they had identified exactly where the fault was by using one piece of equipment which created an arc over the fault - I could even hear it making a noise. Apparently when it was installed the terminal had not been secured underneath a tile - per manufacturer's instructions - but had been left hanging in a void in the wall cavity. The reason it should be secured within the tile adhesive under the tile is that when it becomes warm the heat can disperse safely, whereas when it hangs freely the heat has nowhere to escape and the terminal eventually burns out! So they have replaced the terminal but as there was insufficient wire for it to be pushed under a tile they advised me to smother it with about an inch of tile adhesive and it should now last for ever!! They showed me another piece of equipment which can identify the element underneath tiles and somehow the faulty area shows up as a white dot. Normally only one tile needs to be removed, the fault sorted and tile replaced. Very impressive. Most of the faults are due to sagging floors, the elements being badly installed (ie with a kink) or like mine.

After the engineers had left I took the dogs up to Loch Turret. Although the temperature was below freezing I knew the road up would be dry and safe. As I had half expected, a large part of the water surface of the loch was frozen and it looked wonderful, albeit cold. You can see the ruffled area of water at the far end which was free of ice. There has been very little rain recently and subsequently there was no outflow at all compared with my last blip from the loch, so with no movement in the water the surface had simply iced over in the cold.

We had a really exhilarating walk along the loch side although I had to be careful not to slip on the numerous icy patches on the rough path. I was well wrapped up and I'm sure the dogs didn't even feel the cold as they romped over the heathery undergrowth. A couple of times Cara ventured into the water and returned to me with icy tail feathers! I took loads of photos and eventually decided on this one which I took as we were leaving. The light was beginning to fade by then and the temperature had started to plummet even further.