October 28, 2009 - This Old (F'ing) House

This ooooold house. It has it's "charm". I have discovered that there are places in the house that let fresh air from the outside blow right in. The air blows into the house between some of the walls downstairs, which pipe-lines it right into the rooms downstairs and the floors upstairs. This is a somewhat recent discovery and it has been on my "short list" of things to take care of since last March ... so ... here it is October, nay - November ...

Here is a shot of the 'big room' downstairs, with evidence of my most recent endeavors: sealing up the big room. To the left, you will see the 'Shrine to Mountain Creek' (actually, I have started to finish framing) ... to the right of that there once was a door which was insanely leaky ... i didn't have any drywall handy so I just said F-it and patched in plywood. I mean, really. Who care?! And in the background, you will see the opening I made, exposing the main culprit ...


The exposure of The Main Cuprit. Behind this wall, inside of this hole, is where air from the outside is blowing inside. It is insane. The air inflirtration is coming from where an addition was attached to the house right out side this big room and Jason's bedroom. The addition was made to shelter a fuel oil tank and act as a sort of mud room/entry room. It just was not done well and as a result air from under the eave of the addition comes right into this space between the big room and Jason's room and to all sorts of spaces between the floors upstairs. THUS! Finishing this project before it gets too cold will be essential to saving energy this Winter.


This is a weird angled shot. Looking inside the wall now, we see to the center-right the opening to the awning/ceiling of the mud room addition. The mud room has no insulation, so the wind from outside essentially blows right in. If it is 10 degrees outside and blowing, that is blowing directly into this space, which is right next to Jason's room and the Big Room. There was a bunch of insulation stuffed up and around here, but it was not nearly enough to stop the wind from literally blowing right in the house.

Honestly, I can't believe we didn't explore this sooner.


A cool thing though was finding these little 'cave paintings' drawn on the 2x4s that were used to frame the inside of this crevace.


We do get a lot of mice in this old house ...

October 19th - 2009. Getting the last bits tied up

It was a beautiful Sunday. Bright with possibility and irregularly patterned with persistent criss-crosses.


Last weekend we took the opportunity to till under the gardens. That morning, Dad and I drove out to Lone Rock to pick up a few bags of rye with which we intend to make bread and also use as a 'green manure' - a term of which I only recently become aware of. Hopefully, it will grow up instead of weeds in the Spring. Then it will be tilled under prior to planting.


The last remaining plants. Rutabaga. We'll get to them soon. They can stay in the ground all Winter long I believe. Might wanna Google that up.


Chicken. Some chickens actually eat eggs. This one eats eggs. It's a disturbing sight I am told. I don't want to say it, but this one here might end up in a pot. Might be an opportunity for Jason to learn how to do all that otherwise I may return to my vegetarian heritage.


And now to the dome. Check it out! The layout is more or less set in stone. I would like to add 2 more water barrels. The barrels are to help save up heat during the day. We've salinated them to give them a lower freeze temperature. I need to find out where the maximum saturation point line meets the lowest temperature line ... we'll see.


This is the big experiment. We dug about 4 feet in the ground where this bed is. It wasn't dug as a perfect square simply because it was a giant pain in the rear. It ended up somewhat conical the deeper it got.


The bottom 8 or so inches is crushed lime stone to help draining. Water drainage really shouldn't be a problem, but we put the limestone in to be thorough. And because my wife said I should. After that we put in about 2 feet of horse manure. We added some of our awesome chicken poop to it, too. Follow that with 18 inches or so of soil mixed with some of the horse manure. What should happen is the horse and chicken poop layer will continue to digest, thus creating heat.

The heat will be trapped in the raised bed by this cold frame.


The cold frame is simple. All of the raised beds are cut identically, so we just lifted another raise bed on top. The glass panes are windows that I saved when we replaced many of our existing crank-out windows. I despise crank-out windows with the heat of a thousand white hot suns. But, the windows themselves were perfect for this purpose. They just slide or lift right up.

I dunno. As I look at this picture now I think I can see some flaws. I probably should have built the beds to perfectly match the windows. Doh! I'd get more sun, too, if the box was wider. They should do just fine for Spring and Summer gardening, though.


Here is a lemon balm that we've been keeping in the green house. Seems to be doing well!

Monarch Butterflies!!

Lillian has been very busy throughout the later summer, learning about insects. In particular, she has been interested in butterflies. She has managed to find a handful of Monarch caterpillars, which she captured and brought into her little grow house. Here we have four Monarch cocoons, one of which is about to bear a butterfly!


The cocoons are quite beautiful.


A Monarch butterfly!




... our newborn Monarch butterfly released! Can you find it?


Aiden and Lillian being silly.

Dylan and Kellie's wedding!!

It was quite an honor to be able to attend the wedding of my good friends, Dylan and Kellie. I absolutely LOVE weddings. =) I know - some people love em', so people would rather be dead. Me? I just love weddings.

Here is the new couple!


Chase, Miles, and Lillian looking at something.


Me, Katie and Lillian.


Aiden was feeling needy and decided to use Katie's dress as a security blanket. :)


... and off they go, into the woods to dwell among the fairies!

Actually, the dog in the photo was quite hilarious! And extremely curious as to why these two people were wandering out there when the party was behind them!


Sometime after this, we managed to make our way down to the reception. It was very nice. I met a bunch of people who apparently met me at some point in the past, and met people who I haven't seen since sometime in the past. Meeting up with friends, old and new, is always such a good time.

What was especially entertaining was the kids. Here is Aiden conjuring the ghost of Bruce Lee.


Kids going crazy popping balloons!


Summer, Catherine, and Chris - a couple of my dear friends!


Lillian ..


" ... and here is every reason for why i know that you are absolutely wrong in your thinking about whatever it is you are thinking!"

HAHA! Actually, I have no idea what I was talking about! But check out that mark below my eye! That was caused by jalapeno peppers that I was working with! Crazy, huh? I was being (kinda) careful with my hands, but I rubbed around my eye and it got me! That lasted about a week.

September 8th - Labor Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day

I like Labor Day and what it stands for. Might sound a little "socialist" to you ... but it's a celebration of the worker and what we can do if we all band together as a team to throw off the shackle of the corporate debt machine. Word.

I spent my time off of work to continue work on the green house.


I spoke with one of the local farmers about getting a few bails of straw for the mud cement exterior. It'll be a few days, so in the meantime I decided it was time to start rigging up the tarp.

This is the interior of the dome. The tarp will be pulled in and under the dome struts at the bottom. When the earthen wall is packed onto the tires, it will form a drip edge so it will shunt any water away.


While I toiled, the kids played on the trampoline!




The tarp at the beginning stages. Just getting it up and on was the biggest task.


Now we are getting somewhere. The initial stabs at rigging it up were only to get the general shape. Now I have to undo some of the rigging to get the angles right for this particular situation.


Alas, dinner! On Labor Day, what could be either more appropriate or more cliche than to grill something on the grill? Sweet corn, bathed in butter and brown sugar (oh, yes i did!), Johnsonville cheddar dogs and some cheap (tasting) American schwill??

September 7th - hard labor day

Well, we are still hard at work on the garden dome project. It's almost a little lonely, considering the groups that I had on hand a week or so ago. But it's peaceful and serene after work-work, going out into the backyard to cut cables, etc.

This weekend, we put the door frame in. Dug the holes, cut the timbers, poured the concrete, leveled it out. We had to remove a few struts. The rest of the struts around the frame will be fully connected to the frame for added stability.


Over the course of last week I cut and fit pieces of cable wire and connected them to the anchor rebar. This will (hopefully) keep this thing tied down and not floating like a kite when heavy winds come.


It's time to start covering up the tires. I want the wall to be a thick earthen mass, like adobe you see in the south west. We have been mining for clay - and there is plenty of it if you are willing to work for it. This is a 100 gallon reservoir filled with clay and water. The clay needs to be in water for at least 24 hours if you want to use it in concrete or pottery or anything useful.


Here is Jim and Matt down in the hole. The hole at this point is around 7 feet deep and the clay down there is awesome.


This picture probably does not do it justice. There are all sorts of color differentiation in there. I would love to know what it all is. Pretty incredible stuff.

August 30th - Tire wall pretty much done (for phase 1)

After much haranguing and even much more ado, we have managed to cobble together the tire knee wall which will form the foundation for the dome.

Ya know, I very much could have done without the foundation and simply moved the dome into this location and said 'da hell widdit' - but there are advantages (aside from the education and sore lower back) to having this structure in place. Besides, I am fascinated by 'Earth Ship' building, so it was a done deal from the get-go.

In future posts, I will take you on a little journey where I attempt to make a sort of Earthen plaster out of clay that I dig right on site, some hay, a little concrete and possibly some horse manure. No, no, no - I'm not shitting you (pa-dum-bump!) =D


The dome has been lifted and moved into place. With 6 friends, we easily moved the structure into place.


Sitting on top of the world.


Next steps will be to ratchet the structure down onto the anchors that we installed, build a door way, and wrap the dome in poly greenhouse tarp. At that point, the bare minimum will be complete on the greenhouse. Then after THAT we will be installing the solar heater (as soon as I can get my hands on a low power inline DC blower and a solar panel), building raised beds, applying Earth plaster to the walls, and putting in a hammock. Other niceties will be a water catch system for catching rain water.