Good for you Dale!!!
The day wasn't near as bad as it could have been. The F350 just laughed when I tried to start it. I had to get to town to get the battery for the crawler. I tried getting the ancient salamander heater my FIL gave me to start. Ha! As if! The old girl is beyond tired. So I got creative and parked the Ford tractor in front of the 350 and ran the jumpers between the batteries. Then I threw a moving blanket over the engine bay and looked for piece of pipe to channel the exhaust under the F350s engine. All I could find was a hunka 1 1/2" PVC drain pipe. Good enough! It fit the tail pipe on the tractor and it was working pretty fair. The engine bay was warming. Well, even at about -20 the PVC got too hot after some time and sagged to the point it came unhooked. What a dummy I am! Anyone need a piece of bent pvc? So I moved the tractor and hooked the battery charger up to trickle charge the battery, maybe help keep it a little warmer. Had no hopes of success, but I stuck the key in Cindys Wrangler and that stupid thing roared to life like it was 75F outside! I was definitely surprised. Took that to town and picked up battery. Got thinking about the truck and the tractors with frozen hydraulics and such. Stopped at the local lumber yard and asked if they had any oil fired salamanders (Reddy Heaters) in stock. Guy says they have 1 50K BTU job in stock for $339.00. I hem and haw, ask if I can see it. He sends me out to a shed where they keep that stuff and I find 6 or 8 oil fired salamanders! I guess their inventory system ain't real hot. I see the 50K unit he was talking about, but there are some 135K BTU jobs there too. So I take a pic of the stock numbers and go back inside. One, a "Duraheat", (? never heard of them), is $595.00. The other is a Dewalt that he tells me is discontinued and it's $335.00. I sez, "What? It's almost 3 times the BTUs for $4.00 less?!!!" He says that's right, so I got a brand new DeWalt 135K heater! That should make life a lot easier. I got the battery in the crawler, had to fix a couple loose connections, but I got it started. Got the plow bank moved! Then I could get the hay moved to the stock. I don't think they appreciate my efforts at all! Ungrateful, that's what they are. Anyway, I eventually tried the truck again after it got up to our daytime high of -11F. I got it started, but she wasn't happy. I left that to warm up and got the firewood into the basement. I'm whipped!
All in all it wasn't a bad day. The water didn't freeze in the barn, that's a biggie. While the oil furnace is kaput, and I did call the service guy and leave a message, at least I have wood. The animals have water and food, my feet stayed warm in 3 layers of wool and while Gordy managed to set his pants on fire at work, again!!!, he didn't get burned too bad. The bottom 10 or 12 inches of his pants is missing on the left leg, but he got the fire out before he blistered! Got to take the good with the bad, right?