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Never been here in any other season but thought I might start #1 The snow consistent and light compared to other countries #2 Easily accessible from Perth (where I live) with minimul time differen

#10 Boots

To get back on topic. I love snow covered old style Japanese houses like in Shirakawago and the crystal blue skies on a clear winter day

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They're quite common around here yes. Some people just have them along the front in their driveways or going round the house.

 

Has saved a lot of work moving snow yes. Raku! :friend: Like I said though not cheap. The ido drilling, pump and associated work was around 1.5 million, and you have the electricity running costs on top of that in the winter months of course. It's there though so we now have it to use into the future.

 

The only real downside for me is that the water coming up from the well stains the concrete mostly in the places it lands once 'sprinkled'. It's not that bad in this area, but if you go to Nagaoka city and some other areas you will see lots of the concrete there is really stained like a deep brown/red colour. It's really not a good look. I have tried to cover up a few parts for now but want to look into how I can try to protect it more before the start of next season.

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Those systems are really good. Japan should use geothermal much more. No fossil fuels and all that.

 

Our roof is 45 degrees so we get no snow accumulating on it. I have to use a snowblower though to remove the snow that's slid off, but to be honest I'd need a snowblower anyway for our approach and car park. Luckily we have plenty of room around the house to chuck the snow. A fair few people in snow zones live in built-up areas, where a system like Andrew's is almost essential.

 

It wrecks the snow, but I like winter sun. As muika's photos attest, there are lots of beautifully clear sunny days in winter. It also warms the house up for nothing, which is always welcome. If winter were simply storms and 9 hours of grey daylight in between, it would be a bit depressing.

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...but to be honest I'd need a snowblower anyway for our approach and car park. Luckily we have plenty of room around the house to chuck the snow.

Can't you recoup some by charging for your car park?

500 yen a day should make it more attractive than the usual 1000 yen! ;)

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You seem to get more of those clear days over there than we do here, Mr Wiggles. And I'd prefer to have more, we seem to get more of those overcast-y kind of annoying days.

 

I see it's nice and blue sky/cloud in Hakuba today, still snowing here. :( I want more blue sky days!

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Sure, we have only had two bills so far since we started using it. The first one was about 17000 yen and the second one around 13000 yen (less snow, and fiddled about with settings)

 

One oddity of this system is that the thing shuts down for 1 hour every day in the afternoon. Even if it's blizzard and you want to use it, you can't.

 

Actually there is a way to have it available 24/7 - if you have it available through the year it doesn't have this shut down period, but our winter only contract there is the one hour off.

 

In the whirlwind of the beginning of the season, I did at one point try to find a good proper reason for this strange setup. The best I could get was 'this is just how it works', so I remember soon giving up and moving on to more important things before my head exploded. Shikata ga nai, ne!

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snapback.pngSJ-Andrew, on 23 February 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

 

One oddity of this system is that the thing shuts down for 1 hour every day in the afternoon. Even if it's blizzard and you want to use it, you can't.

 

 

That'll be the great inaka tradition of "ippuku". Cigarette break!

 

The running cost sounds fine. That whole region gets manic amounts of snow lower down at town level. This may be a "bad" season, but JMA's poles still say 2.5m at Tsunan and 2.0m at Yuzawa. Its a really weird climate, because it's not that cold, just super snowy down to low altitude. The locals there pay a big price for ski slopes to play on.

 

The Bubble-era house cum restaurant I used to live in had a separate boiler for heating the approach, but I think it might have just been the concrete stairs up to the entrance. I was told it was broken and never investigated further. For water based systems, I guess it helps that Yuzawa is not so cold, so that the water freezing is not an issue. Sheet ice on the road/your approach would be much worse than snow.

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