Preparing for Winter in Alaska

Looking for a home with a fireplace? Call Cindy Wilson,
www.EagleRiverHomes.com

Preparing your Alaska home for winter now can save you from a cold, drafty home, frozen pipes and no water, huge heating bills, and allergies and illnesses from dust mites, mold and mildew. Although procrastination is the natural response to a logical recommendation like this, you can at least sit back, have a hot drink, and read about all the things you know you should do but were hoping to stay in denial about for a few more weeks.

1. Heaters need servicing, filters washed or changed and the gas turned on if it has been off for the winter. Crank up the furnace to high open the windows, and let the old dust blow out of the ducts, if you have central heat. If a bad smell lasts more than a few minutes, turn it off and call a service person. Consider upgrading your disposable fiberglass heater filters, which trap less than 40% of debris with an electrostatic or a HEPA filter, which can trap up to 99% of airborne particles. If you have allergies, this is even more interesting advice to investigate. If you have these types of filters, these would be a good time to wash or clean them.
   Make it an Energy Star-certified furnace and you'll save 15% to 20% versus standard new models. You could save 50% or more compared with many old furnaces still in operation. Be sure to take advantage of federal tax credits for new furnaces, which can cover 30% of the cost, up to $1,400.
   

   
   

   AHFC offers up to a $10,000 rebate to Alaskans that increase their energy rating upgrading or replacing old windows, and repairing or replacing furnaces and boilers. A before and after visit from Alaska Housing will be required, as they will rate your home’s energy rating before the improvements, then again afterwards. Once repairs are completed your home is rated again, and you submit your invoices to Alaska Housing. The energy rating improvement, measured in stars, will determine how much of the $10,000 available you will receive.
2. It is time to clean your gutters. Remove the leaves, check for clogs and leaks. You can avoid floods and disasters with planning and work now. Once you have removed the leaves, run water from the hose through your gutters, and make sure they are throwing water 10 feet from your house, and not forming puddles that will seep into your basement or foundation.
3. Check your home for drafts using a lit stick of incense or a lit cigarette. With all the windows closed heater and fans off, check around each window for drafts using the smoke. Doors, electric outlets and light fixtures should also be checked. In colder areas, now is the time to put up storm windows, or add winter plastic coverings over your windows. Some windows may have to be replaced; others can be sealed with caulking. Many areas have government programs or incentives offered by the power companies for making expensive changes to your home. Do a search for “energy savings assistance program” with your city name and see what comes up.
   

   

   Keep your kids warm in a new home in Eagle River or
   Anchorage, Alaska! See www.EagleRiverHomes.com

4. Do you know any good chimney sweeps? If you have a fireplace or wood stove, the buildup of creosote and ash can cause a major disaster of smoking and coughing the first time you fire it up for the winter. Or worse, it gets totally clogged on the coldest night of the year. Chimney sweeps. They get busy when it gets really cold. Call someone today and ask them if they know a sweep, or check the computer for local recommendations.
5. “My water pipe’s busted and now the toilet won’t flush, I can’t wash dishes, cook or get a drink of water. My basement is flooding, and there is water spraying out the pipe and then freezing! "Help!” This could be you on the phone if you don’t have your pipes wrapped and insulated properly. Pipes that pass through unheated areas such as a garage, basement or under the house need to be wrapped with insulation rated for your state. A visual inspection with a flashlight of the status of the foam or insulation protecting your pipes can save you from a world of hurt on a cold, miserable night. If you have not replaced your pipe insulation in 5 years, check it for cracks and crumbling.
6. Many ceiling fans have a switch on them to reverse their direction. In the winter, you want the warm air which rises to the ceiling to be pulled back down by the fan. As you look up at the fan, it should be turning clockwise for winter and counter clockwise again in spring.
   

   

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7. As you are about to be using fire and heat in your home again, it is a good time to think about your fire alarms. Is it time to change the batteries? Does your house have a carbon-monoxide detector, the invisible, silent killer?
8. The water hoses that you use to water your lawn may have water trapped in them. If you are done watering your lawn for the season, drain your water hoses and put them away. Water trapped in hoses can freeze and bust the hose open, making it useless. In other states that get hot in the summer, water leads going to air conditioners or swamp coolers can be drained now, or might burst later. Alaska residents don’t have to worry about air conditioners. But snow! Ice! They don’t mix well with water in pipes and hoses outdoors.

As you think about snow, freezing temperatures and ice, perhaps you are wondering, with this be a good time to sell my home, and move to a warmer climate, Hawaii or Arizona perhaps? There are always snowbirds that come and go with the snow clouds, and as a logical extension of that, many people in cold climates put their house on the market in the fall. In Alaska, northern Wyoming, Michigan, Maine and other northern states, a percentage of homes are sold as summer vacation homes. Home prices tend to be lower going into the winter and higher in the spring in some colder states reflecting this trend to flee the cold in the winter and embrace the rugged wilderness and solitude of a place too cold for some people to live year around. So if you are asking if this is a good time to buy, the answer is yes! The prices will be lower in the fall as snowbirds are leaving and higher in the spring when they arrive. Buy now!

If you are considering buying or selling a home in Alaska, visit the website http://www.EagleRiverHomes.com and call 907-244-1930 to chat with Cindy Wilson or her team members. They can help you decide if it would be in your best interest to rent, purchase, sell, or sit and wait until the market changes.

Buying or selling an Alaska Home

Alaska Real Estate in Eagle River

Alaska Real Estate is better with Cindy Wilson. See www.EagleRiverHomes.com for more information about Eagle River and Anchorage Alaska area property.

8 Top Reasons to Move to Alaska

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The people that live in Alaska are some of the toughest, most independent individuals you will meet, yet honest, helpful to their neighbors and friendly. Why are they willing to endure the long winters and cold? Here are the top 8 reasons to move to Alaska.

1.      Quality of Life. Alaska offers a lifestyle with very little traffic on the freeways, huge inexpensive homes on large pieces of land, clean air, clean water, good schools and is an awesome place to raise a family. It is a slower, more relaxed pace.

2.      Alaska, the Final Frontier. Many parts of Alaska remain unexplored. There are mountains and waterfalls that are unnamed. Vast areas in Alaska have no roads, and can only be reached by boat, horse, sled dogs, hiking or plane. It is more than twice the size of Texas, and there are forests, glaciers, mountain streams, waterfalls, lakes, islands, mountains and tundra for you to enjoy.

Photography by Dennis Davis
DennisDavisPhotography.com

3.      Sportsman’s Paradise. Hunters have big game like moose and bear to hunt, but also wolverines, caribou, mountain goats, wolves, and musk ox. Fishermen can fish everything from Salmon and Arctic Char to Lake Trout or Halibut.  The town of Homer, AK is known as the Halibut capitol of the world. Some of the best hunting and fishing in the world is in Alaska, and if you are willing to go out and get it, you can have plenty to eat without going to the store.

4.      No State Taxes. Alaska has no state taxes, and many cities have no sales tax. Revenues from the oil pipeline have allowed Alaska to do away with state income tax. In addition, they state government has enacted the Permanent Dividend Fund (PDF) which allows residents to receive $300-$2,200 a year from the state’s oil revenue. 

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5.      The Never-Ending Adventure. If you enjoy change, excitement, travel and interesting experiences, Alaska is your new best friend. Snowboarding, cross country skiing, mountain climbing, flying, biking, and hiking – the wilderness never ends, and so adventure is just outside your door.

6.      Photographer’s Dream. Landscape photographers could spend their whole life capturing the mountains, lakes, rivers, glaciers, forests, oceans, islands and other landscape features in Alaska, and never get bored. Wildlife photographers can photograph wolves, lynx, moose or Dall sheep in breath-taking, natural settings. Lifestyle photographers can capture rugged, athletic people enjoying the outdoors. Everywhere you point your camera is a beautiful picture, and fine art photographers never run out of inspiration.

7.      Easy to buy Property. The American Dream to own your own home is out of reach in many parts of the United States. The same three bedroom house on a one-acre lot that would cost over $1 million in Los Angeles could cost $195,000 in Alaska. $330,000 is the average cost of a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house with a two car garage in the Anchorage area. There are many first-time home buyer programs, low income loans, single parent loans, etc., to make it easy and attractive to move here.

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8.      The People. There are only 731,449 people living in the entire state of Alaska as of 2012. That is less than many people in Los Angeles or New York has living within a mile of them. The low population makes for a small-town community feel throughout the state. People greet each other on the street. Families are important units, and family gatherings are a regular thing. People take the time to be courteous at the stoplights and on the freeways. The people in Alaska are more independent, adventurous, kind, generous, helpful and hard working than many other states I have visited. Homeless persons and people that make begging a career tend to travel south, where sleeping outdoors is more comfortable. Lazy people don’t like it here; there is too much work to do. That leaves lots of people you would like to get to know as friends, all over Alaska.

I am visiting Alaska for the second time in my life, and I have to say I love it. I live in Los Angeles with an ocean view apartment. I can walk to 40 restaurants, 6 grocery stores, coffee houses, bars, churches, schools and almost anything else I could want. However, there is never a time in my home when I cannot hear traffic noise, TV, music, fire trucks, and other sounds of the city. Peace and quiet difficult to come by.

As I write this article, I am looking out the window at a snow covered mountain peak. I am in a beautiful large home surrounded by a forest of birch, spruce and cottonwood trees.Chickadees and Stellar Blue Jays take sunflower seeds and peanuts from the bird feeder on the deck, where a warm fire waits for me to join my family members talking and enjoying snacks and drinks. This is paradise, and it amazing that unspoiled wilderness property is still available for sale at affordable prices in Alaska. To learn more, contact my niece Cindy Wilson at http://www.EagleRiverHomes.com

Keywords: Real Estate, Alaska property, Anchorage homes, Eagle River property, Eagle River Homes, Alaska Adventure, Alaska Travel, Alaska Airlines, Alaska Cruise, Alaska Photography, National Parks, wildlife, quality of life

Wild in Alaska

Commercial Photographer Goes 
Wild in the Alaska Wilderness

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This is only the second time in my life to visit Alaska, and my departure date is September 27^th, one week away. The excitement is building; this is going to be big! This is a place that’s twice the size of Texas, but has about the same amount of people living in the state, (731,449) that live within 5 miles of me in Long Beach, California. That’s a whole lot of wilderness, and lots of room to meet moose, bear, wolves, caribou and many other wild animals. I can’t wait!

The first time I saw a moose in Alaska I could not believe how huge the thing was. It was walking on a train track near Eagle River, AK, and my head would not have reached his shoulder. The largest of all the moose races is the Alaskan subspecies (A. a. gigas), which can stand over 2.1 m (7 ft) at the shoulder, has a span across the antlers of 1.8 m (6 ft) and averages 634.5 kg (1,396 lbs) in males and 478 kg (1,052 lbs) in females. The largest confirmed size for this species was a bull shot at the Yukon River in September 1897 that weighed 820 kg (1,800 lb) and measured 2.33 m (7.6 ft) high at the shoulder.

Like me, the moose is a vegetarian. However an adult moose needs to consume 9770 calories per day to maintain its body weight. That’s about 5 times the calories that a human eats, and if I eat that much, I would be the size of a moose! Their diet is mostly fresh shoots from trees such as willow and birch. They also eat aquatic plant life in lakes and rivers. In winter, moose are often drawn to roadways, to lick the salt that is used to melt the snow and ice. This leads to many car / moose accidents in Alaska.

I will be posting pictures on this blog from my Alaska Wilderness Adventure from September 29 – October 5. Although there are only about 150,000 moose in Alaska, I hope to photograph a good number of them here for you to see. Watch for images of pristine lakes, majestic mountains, blue ice glaciers, and tundra, and animals, lots of animals.

www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

On the other hand, I will also be posting lots of pictures of the wild and rugged people in Alaska, including my nieces and their families. I am shooting lifestyle advertising photography for my niece Cindy Davis Wilson, to use on her Alaska Real Estate website http://www.EagleRiverHomes.com if you are buying or selling property in Alaska; Cindy Wilson is who to see. So watch for people pictures as well as wilderness and animals.

So what would you do with a 10 day visit to Alaska? Where would you go? Would you go dog sledding, on a cruise ship around the harbors? Denali is the highest mountain in North America, with 20,156 feet (6,144 meters) in height, creates its own weather patterns. Do you want to see bears, lakes, forests, natives, towns – what would you want to photograph, and what would you want to see? Follow my blog, and experience Alaska Wilderness from your Laptop.

Keywords: Travel Photography, National Parks, Landscape photography, Alaska, Alaska Wilderness, moose, animal photographers

Alaska Wilderness Adventure

I am about to embark on my second adventure to the magnificent Alaska Wilderness, 

and along the way

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photograph quite a few Eagle River, Alaska Homes, tourist attractions and properties. I am a commercial photographer based in Long Beach, CA, where a cold winter’s day is down to 52 and sunny. I have been to Alaska once before to visit my family nieces; Cindy Davis Wilson and Kim Tanner and their mother, Burnadine Thiesing. This was almost 20 years ago, when my own parents, now gone, were able to enjoy the visit with me. But I am going to visit Alaska in October this time, not mid-summer like I did before. I don’t own any gloves, ski caps, snow boots – guess it’s time to hit REI or Sports Castle.

This visit is on my bucket list, to photograph Alaska one more time, to please my eye this time, and visit the fine artist trapped inside this advertising photographer who shoots for Hewlett Packard, General Electric and Bank of America. I know that somewhere inside of me is an artist waiting to say “this this most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I don’t care if anyone else likes it but me.” You see, my life is full of Hollywood Celebrities, Makeup artists, models, food stylist, art directors, production managers, location scouts . . . not to mention clients. So many people want to have a say in what I am photographing. And I am totally cool with that, in fact, I love working with a great team to produce an amazing commercial or advertising photograph. I get that. To understand my world, visit http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

I did not take this picture. Not that it is bad, but I do
it like this http//www.PhotographerInLosAngeles.com

I am shooting images this time with my niece Cindy Wilson in mind, as she runs a real estate agency in Eagle River, AK so check out the website at http://www.EagleRiverHomes.com 

But think about the fresh breeze blowing through your hair, perfumed with spruce and burch burning in a fireplace. Spicy!

You view is an Alaskan lake, and the sun is beginning to set. You take out your camera / smart phone to capture the view and a male adult moose walks into the lake in the foreground. This could be your front yard, dude. For way, seriously low prices. We are talking laughable to guys like me with an ocean view Los Angeles / Long Beach California. We can’t buy a one bedroom condo here for what you can get a three bedroom single family dwelling for in some parts of Eagle River and Anchorage areas. Who wouldn’t want an amazing vacation cabin for under $300,000!

So come along with me. Visit the sites. Follow this blog September 29 – October 6 to see me post daily pictures of my adventures. I am going to Alaska to check out some wilderness property, and you can come along through this blog.

You could own an Eagle River, Alaska property similar to this
one next week with the right credit or finances. Your home in
Alaska!

Keywords: Alaska property, Alaska Homes, Alaska Real Estate, Alaska Photography, Eagle River Homes, Cindy Wilson, Cindy Davis Wilson, Homes in Eagle River, Anchorage Property, Anchorage Homes, Anchorage Real Estate, buying homes, selling homes, buying property, selling property, Los Angeles Photography, Los Angeles Photographer, photography adventure, photo journey, travel, national parks, wild animals