An outrigger…great solution to needing higher scaffolding, and another reason we love our truck. (And this is actually a lot safer than plans A, B, and C!)
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Scaffolding goes mobile
Sunday, December 13th, 2009We’re here
Friday, December 11th, 2009Apologies for the dearth of electronic communications this week. On top of all my other hand problems, I slammed my finger (left hand, thankfully) in a car door this week, making typing not so easy.
So the storm that many of you saw blow through California over the weekend hit us just as we had stripped our house almost bare to repaper and prepare for stucco. There were gale force winds that blew off some of the little remaining paper that we thought could be salvaged. The wind was so fierce one night that it kept us both up all night. I honestly thought a big piece of something might come through the window at any moment.
I had to work at schools Tues. and Wed., but by Thurs. we were ready to attack the house again. In two days, we got most of the paper back up and more than half stucco netting up. We should finish this weekend and hopefully be having a lath inspection next week. Yay!
Here’s an update from Brad on the solar stuff.
The first five columns to support the solar panels are poured. I need to put together a test in order to determine how far the back row needs to be from the front row so that we can properly adjust the angle of the solar panels. Once this is done, we will pour the next five columns and install the first six solar panels.
Here is what a dried and peeled column looks like.
December 21st is the solstice and the day I need to measure the shadows in order to properly position our two rows of solar panels. I just realized that I need to measure in the morning, afternoon and evening because the sun is making an arc to the south this time of year.
Finding your passion(s)
Monday, December 7th, 2009[I wrote this last week. Since then, I’ve gotten more interested in my project for work, in part I suppose, because it’s been too cold and windy to do much else. It’s a nice quality, at least, to find enjoyment in whatever I’m stuck doing. :]
I’m a big believer in finding something you really love to spend most of your waking hours on. Too many people hate their jobs, and we spend too many hours at work for that. I’m sure that some think it’s pollyanna-ish, but I think that everyone can find something they love that generates enough money to live on. I’ve been fortunate to do this for all my life. I love my job. I’ve been spending less time on it this year though and have started to think a bit about what I’m going to do after the house project is finished (not that that will be anytime soon…but it’s kind of like when I was in Africa; I was puzzling over how my career would track before I even left).
This morning, I spent awhile working on a project for work (my paying job, that is). It’s been a bit of a frustrating project that I just am not having a ton of fun with. After I finished, I went out to work on the house.
I started by putting up insulation for a couple hours. Working with insulation is not the most fun job in the world. It’s itchy and scratchy. You have to wear a mask that is awful. It requires contorting your body in weird angles to reach ceiling corners. And still, while I was doing it, I thought about how much I love doing construction. I kept thinking, “I wonder if I’d like this as much if I were doing it for someone else’s house?”
I asked Brad. He’s worked construction for years, and obviously knows me pretty well, so I thought he’d have a reasonable answer. He said that he thought I might like it even more. He pointed out that building other people’s houses gives you the chance to learn new things and to do kinds of work that you’d never do on your own house.
Food for thought.
Solar panels
Saturday, December 5th, 2009We have so many things to do at the moment that getting the solar equipment running is on the back burner. I have managed to make a little progress on installing the solar panels.
I searched the web and believe I have found the ideal angles for the solar panels for winter and not winter (the proper angle is entirely a function of latitude, ours is 31° 50′ 7″ N, and the angle of the sun). You could, I imagine, adjust the angle of your solar panels constantly. Most people just pick a angle somewhere in between the summer and winter ideals. Some people adjust their angles four times a year. I’ve settle on two angles, winter (57°) and spring, summer, fall (28°). My thinking on this is that adjusting the angles will be a pain, and I won’t want to adjust them very often. There are fewer hours of daylight in the winter so the angle during the winter months will be most important. During the summer months we get lots of hours of sun so having the perfect angle is not really that important. Therefore, winter and not winter angles.
You might wonder about the solar panel mounts that track the sun automatically. Unless the price drops dramatically, they are not practical. They provide very little additional power; it’s a better value to buy extra solar panels. Also, they are a moving part, and moving parts break.
In order to make adjusting the panels easy and to make sure I remember the proper angles, I cut two pieces of OSB each to one angle. Here is the winter angle propped up and facing south.
We ended up getting twelve 210 watt panels. They will be mounted in two rows of six, one in front of the other. You never want shadows on your solar panels (enormous decrease in power output) so I need to position the front row accordingly. I could just compute the proper distance, but it’s close enough to the solstice that I’m just waiting until then to measure the proper placement. I’m thinking about ten feet should do it, but will find out for sure on December 21st.
Neither gratifying, nor enjoyable
Saturday, December 5th, 2009Lest I’ve given anyone the impression that the work here is all fun and games, let me tell you about today. It was awful.
The morning started cold but with little wind, so it looked like a good day to prep Tumbleweed for stucco (our current #1 priority). So….we spent the day ripping most of the paper off the house so we could put new paper on. You may remember that I wasn’t too keen on putting the paper on. Well, tearing it off was much worse. Trying to dig all the capped nails out of the walls wasn’t that fun either.
As we worked, it got colder and colder. And the wind came up. Pretty soon, we were getting whipped by the half-removed paper.
Knowing it was difficult work, Brad asked me at some point how I was feeling.
“Frustrated. Cold. In pain. Tired. Cranky. And I NEVER WANTED TO BUILD A HOUSE ANYWAY.”
OK, the last part was just out of frustration. We got through it, but with the wind, we didn’t get to the next stage of putting paper on (just to get back to where we started). Maybe tomorrow.
For now, I’m baking fresh bread and pizza and not thinking about it.
Christmas came early
Friday, December 4th, 2009My life has changed! I have discovered the palm nailer.
It you don’t have one of these, you really must get one. (I’d recommend Porter-Cable. I love their tools.) Here’s how it works:
Barry brought us one when he came to visit last week. When he showed it to me, he had a look on his face like it was something really special. Kind of like he was showing a giant chocolate cake to someone who’d never seen or tasted one before. I was thankful for any new tool (he also brought us a nail gun) but didn’t fully appreciate how great this was.
I’d seen some kind of corner nailer on TV and wanted one. It’s supposed to make nailing into corners easier. It’s a handheld thing that you put a nail in the and then it hammers it in for you. With all the problems I’m having with my hands, I thought it might be worthwhile.
The palm nailer is all that and more. First of all, it’s pneumatic (runs off compressed air), which is essential, because it means it has real power.
It works not only in corners but everywhere. I will use it for almost everything from now on.
The nail gun is great too, but the palm nailer has several advantages to me. First, it’s not remotely dangerous. I can imagine nailing myself with a nail gun (and have heard the story about Doug about a hundred times) but not with the palm nailer. It’s very gentle and innocuous. It’s also a lot lighter than the nail gun, which is especially good when you’re nailing overhead. And of course, it’s super small so you can use it almost anywhere.
For a just a minute or two, I wondered if it was lazy or somehow inauthentic to use a power nailer. Then I thought about accounting. I’m glad I know how to do debits and credits by hand on ledgers. Having actually done that, I better understand the process and how the various accounts work. But would I ever think of running a business without an accounting software package? No.
I think that the nail gun and the palm nailer together will probably save us hundreds of hours on the rest of the building. (Just today, I did some work that I never would have finished in a single day without them.) And the pain and wear and tear on my hands that this will eliminate is incalculable.
Me and my new nail gun
Stucco’ing
Saturday, November 28th, 2009Last week, we stucco’d the battery house (the first coat that is; there will be one more finish coat done in a month or so). The whole thing only took two days.
Here’s the formula:
1 part STUCCO MIX (We have a pallet full of bags of this. It’s astonishing to think how much stucco’ing we’ll be doing.)
PLUS
3 parts SAND (We just got a delivery of 13 tons. Eek.)
PLUS
WATER (We have lots of this.)
AND STIR COPIOUSLY…
(This is our new cement mixer. It is so awesome! I highly recommend one of these. The small ones are quite cheap.)
This kind of stucco seemed to go on quite easy. One thing we learned was that you really want the chicken wire stapled down super-tight before you stucco.
Corners are my speciality.
The final step is troweling in a mesh fabric. It is supposed to prevent cracking. We found it super easy to work with.
Here are the final results.
Arches and lath
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009One of the things we wanted to experiment with as we built the battery house is archways. We’ll have several archways in the houses, both inside as doorways and outside as an architectural element. The idea is to have indented archways around a few of the outside doors.
This kind of detail is added by putting Styrofoam on the outside of the house and then stucco’ing over it. Apparently, some people put this inch-thick Styrofoam over their whole house (for insulation value, we hear…that seems very odd to us), but we’re doing it just for looks where we want detail like this.
While I love the design (see below), I have been concerned about how we would do the arches.
Brad has always said he’d just “freehand” it, and it would be fine. Today, we found out.
We began by looking at different shaped arches on the Internet. Then we talked about how we’d do it. Since Brad thought he could just draw it and this was only a test (we could always throw out the foam if it didn’t work; we have lots), I said go for it.
We planned to cut one half first and then use that as a guide for the other half so they’d be symmetrical. Brad started by showing me how this would work and that it would indeed result in the point at the top that I wanted.
Then he drew out the design.
He cut the foam with a jigsaw and used a guide for the straight part.
Here’s the end result.
And on the actual battery house.
After we got the arch done, we mounted it on the wall of the battery house and started on lath. The lath we’re using is called stucco netting, and it looks pretty much like chicken wire (or what they call here “poultry netting;” that cracks me up). We were both dreading how difficult it would be to put up.
It has to be nailed down very tightly so that the stucco goes down smoothly. And the stucco goes on in a very thin coat, so you can’t really cheat it much. On the solid wall, we used a staple gun to nail it down. On the foam we had to use very long roofing screws, which was a lot harder. Overall, though, it really wasn’t bad to put up. More pictures here if you’re interested.
All in all, a very good day’s work.
Busy!
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009It’s a busy week at the ranch! First, we have a guest visitor this week — Brad’s long-lost (just kidding) brother Doug. He’s here all week, and you better believe we are putting him to work! I’m not sure he knew this was what he was signing up for. He has his own business, and it’s the first time he’s taken time off in a long time, so we are honored that he chose to spend it here.
Secondly, we’ve had all kinds of adventures related to the delivery of the various solar components. They were supposed to call ahead about deliveries so we’d be there, but you know that wasn’t going to happen! On Monday, I was home by myself (getting ready to go out to a school I’m working with here) and I got a phone call — 4,000 pounds of batteries are on their way here now (with no forklift), and they need directions. I give them directions, but there is a major problem — they don’t have paperwork to drive through NM….but that’s the only way to get here, on paved roads at least. So I tell them about the back road. Several phone calls ensue. Brad gets involved. The end result is that the batteries go back to Tucson.
In the meantime, we’ve got our very nice neighbor to drive his tractor with forklift attachments over. It’s sitting on our property now…waiting.
We got a call today from the freight company who says that they will be coming again tomorrow, this time with a truck that is licensed for NM and with a liftgate and pallet mover. Hallelujah! Let’s hope even half of that happens.
We’re also expecting the panels in the next couple days. Brad and Doug started assembling the supports for the panels today. It seemed to involve a lot of reading and re-reading of directions and a fair amount of unhappiness, so I mostly worked on finishing the battery house walls and moving some dirt while they did that.
Other than that, with the whole battery thing, we’ve kicked the battery house construction into high gear. Yesterday, we put in blocking, insulated the walls, and put the inside OSB decking on. (Lots of hammering for me.) These will be the first walls to be completed. We didn’t have enough insulation to finish the whole thing, but three walls are up, which is enough to build the shelving for the batteries.
The weather here is glorious this week. It’s hot, sunny, and clear. Our garden continues to thrive, and we have more arugula and lettuce than we can eat. I’m hoping for one more batch of tomatoes this year as well.
I put a lid on it
Saturday, October 17th, 2009The battery house is progressing nicely. Yesterday, while I had some other work to do, Brad put up hangars for the i-joists. Then this morning, we cut and put in the i-joists. Then while Brad cut OSB for the decking for the roof, I nailed it all on. I didn’t count the nails, but it was a lot. A 9′ x 12′ space with i-joists every 16″ and nails every 6″ on every i-joist and every edge. Very satisfying work. Brad also got the back wall covered with decking which added quite a bit of stability to the whole structure. I do think that framing is one of my favorite parts of construction.
Now, for an update on some of the everyday details of our life here and some of the things we worried about initially and how they’ve worked out. (Feel free to stop reading now.) The 50 mile distance to a grocery has been no issue at all. We go shopping every couple weeks, though we sometimes go into town more often in need of construction supplies. I cook every day, and we eat better than we ever did in California.
We just ate our first salad with produce entirely grown ourselves. The compost…well…it’s about the same.
The guesthouse we are staying in continues to be a godsend in terms of easing the whole building process, though I am anxious to move into our own house. This will most likely not happen by the end of the year, but I am hoping for early next year. I keep thinking of ways we could move sooner, but always forget about that pesky occupancy certificate.
We have both lost weight and are in better physical shape than we’ve been in a long time. (Amazing for me, since I’m eating more than I’ve ever eaten. I’m worried that when we stop building, I’ll gain a ton of weight.) We are still running every week, but the yoga has fallen by the wayside for now. We’ll resume it again at some point. Brad found a new doctor that he really likes, and his blood sugar, etc. is better than it’s ever been. I have started taking the full recommended dose of Gucosamine/Chondroitin/MSM, and my hands are better.
Our Internet here is great (more reliable than the phones and/or power sometimes), and we don’t miss cell phone service. We have started using Google Voice which works well. We don’t miss much from “civilization” except for the occasional sushi (which we have in Tucson) and once or twice, a movie (Julie & Julia…, Star Trek, which we’ll catch on pay per view).
I love my new camera. (In case you don’t get enough of the photos here, you can always check out our Flickr page.)
My planned decrease in regular “work” work has gone well. I’ve been able to spend a good amount of time working on the house, while still maintaining enough business to pay the phone bill. :) I am doing projects with three local school districts now as well. I’ve managed to reduce my travel significantly. I have a couple projects that are ramping up now (one that involves no travel and one that could be a lot of travel but only for a few months) and am a little worried that will cut into construction, but we’ll see.
We love spending 24/7 together (but that’s not really a change). And I especially love working outside in the sun almost every day. Very good for the mental health.
All in all, we are loving it here. Come visit!