Hallowe'en Update

We apologize for being lax when it comes to keeping the blog up to date. We've all been hard at it.
Mike and Alex have made numerous wood gathering forays to the piles of trees knocked down during last winter's driveway construction. We have finally managed to fill the new woodshed, but we calculate that should only last us about 6 weeks! Every log we can get now, will be one less we have to extract from the snow in a month's time. Typically, Mike chainsaws the fallen trees up into 18"-20" lengths, Alex loads them into the truck and then splits and stacks them when we return to the house. We are burning 24/7 now as temps are below zero at night and rarely go above 7 or 8 degrees C during the day.
We have finished insulating the top two floors. Vapour barrier is done but for one small area upstairs and one section of the cathedral ceiling.
We have managed to get the plumbing for the downstairs bath/shower installed and working. Now, if only we could get some time to do the tile work and put up a shower curtain we could actually shower standing up! Still, it's nice to see the bathroom progressing, even if the work goes slower than we'd like.
Our kitchen cupboards arrived last Thursday! Carol and Alex had a tough day cleaning and tidying up the basement to give us enough room to store them. They were 9 days early and we're not quite ready to install them yet. I still have to frame in a bulkhead above the stove and then drywall the kitchen walls. While not all that difficult, it is still a challenge to find the time to get it done. We ordered the kitchen stuff from Home Depot and have chosen a shaker style in a dark cinnamon colour. Pics will follow as we install them.

Generator is working

Last night, after getting home from work, I set to connecting our generator to the Xantrex inverter/charger. The Xantrex unit includes 2 automatic transfer switches to safely energize/de-energize power from the grid and/or a generator. If you remember, we had Eric's guys dig trenches for the gas line and the power cable from the generator. I had purchased and then buried the cable last weekend so we could get our driveway back (it was criss-crossed with the open trenches), but had not connected it at the generator or pushed it through the basement wall to the mechanical room. I have yet to find a connector that will act as a strain relief and weatherproofer for the generator end as it has surface mount lugs for attachment with just a swing-up cover for protection. If anyone has some suggestion as to what to use here, please let us know. The inverter panel end was a no-brainer, and we simply purchased the appropriate connector. The Midnite Solar connection panel makes it easy to connect/disconnect all your electrical wiring and panels to the inverter, coming pre-wired with buss bars for the various inputs and outputs.
I turned off the "power" to the inverter (shut off the battery disconnect switch) rendering the panel safe to work in. Connecting the ground, neutral and two load wires (don't forget, we're talking 240V single phase power from the generator) went quickly, and likewise at the generator. After a warm-up we turned on the output at the generator, checked the output voltage, went inside and checked the voltage on the generator input and then threw the breaker, energizing the system.
The inverter took a little while as it checked the power from the generator to confirm that it was a viable and safe power source, then switched the inverter off, powered the electrical panel from the generator power and finally, started to charge the  batteries - very cool! I have yet to connect the Xantrex Automatic Generator Controller to the generator, so we do not yet have the benefit of a "smart" generator - we have to go and manually start the generator each time we need to use it. Eventually, the system will sense when the batteries need to be recharged and will automatically start the generator and switch into charge mode. No need to go outside in my pyjamas on those cold winter mornings!

Thanksgiving

We needed this long weekend. We had lots to do before the "real" cold weather arrived and this was our shot. Carol would give the new stove a workout preparing a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. We chose the first day of the holiday weekend for the big meal so we could take advantage of the leftovers the rest of the weekend! We would get the big ladder in and put the 45 or so remaining batts of R40 insulation in the cathedral ceiling. Vapour barrier installation would follow but was not quite so critical as retaining heat was the main focus.

Saturday morning, I was up and at it early. I put the plastic on the wall behind the TV and then went outside to see about moving the shipping pallet that originally held our windows. At 11 feet long and almost 4 feet wide, it would make a good floor for a small woodshed. I rigged a sling around it, picked it up with the tractor and moved it over to the north side of the house, by the back door. It would need to be solid and flat so I had to cut a number of 4 foot lengths of 2x10 lumber to shim it level and oriented it the way I wanted. It would be equally easy to access from the back door and the end of the "driveway". This would ease delivery of the unsplit logs from our chainsawing expeditions. We had bought an electric log splitter on sale at Canadian Tire and found that it worked well when positioned on the back deck, adjacent to the woodshed area.

The shed would need to keep the rain and most of the snow off the wood so it would burn nicely during the cold winter months. I envisioned the building with 3 solid sides and a sloped roof with an overhang in the front to help protect the opening. I framed it all in, making sure to keep it all plumb and square and built the roof separately. I shingled half of the roof to save time later and to keep the weight down to something that Alex and I could safely manage. After installing the half inch sheathing on the walls, we hoisted the roof up, screwed it down and stood back to admire the fruit of our labours. It came out well, in my opinion, and should serve to hold enough dry wood to get us through about 1/4 of the winter months. The remainder we would have to store under the deck.
Back inside, we set to getting the big 4'x2'x1' thick batts of insulation in the ceiling. We had decided against using scaffolding to do this as we had a bunch of furniture inside already and it would be too crowded. So, from the ladder, we could put in 6 batts before having to move. Once we had developed a system, the work went quite quickly, and we finished work on the south ceiling easily.
Alex and I then went out to get as much wood cut as possible before Carol had the dinner ready.
Dinner was great! Everything looked and tasted amazing...and the Leafs won! Sadly, in the late game, my Flames were extinguished. All in all, though, a wonderful day with lots to be thankful for.
Sunday, we finished the insulating! Yay! I managed to finish the shingling on the woodshed later in the afternoon and we all had enough turkey sandwiches to keep even Carol happy.
Brian Foley had arranged to meet us on the holiday Monday morning to show us a few spots where there would be some easy-to-get firewood (we think that the neighbours are worried that we'll freeze to death this winter!) and Brian Jr. even felled a pine beetle afflicted tree for us. Of course, it fell right across the road, eliminating going back the same way, so we followed them over to their house so Brian Jr. could sharpen our chainsaw chain, and so we could wish Louise a Happy Thanksgiving.
After returning to our house, Alex and I went back to cut up the giant pine tree. The freshly sharpened chain made the cutting easy and we quickly filled the pickup to overflowing with 20" lengths of varying diameter. Returning to the house, I went in to get going on the vapour barrier while Alex set to splitting and stacking all the logs. The little splitter worked awesome, and even logs up of 16" diameter easily succumbed to its powerful embrace. It took him several hours, but Alex was able to split and stack it all in the shed. No freezing to death this month for these city slickers!

Gas is all done

We would like to thank Michael at Superior Propane for all his efforts getting our gas installed and operating. He went through a lot of challenges during what should have been  a fairly straightforward installation. In BC, Superior has no water heater rental program, so we ended up with a Rinnai tankless water heater after all. Of course, we had to buy it outright, but their service was great and included all the venting hardware and plumbing bits and pieces. These things are cool, very efficient and should last for years, so we're pleased at the way it ended up.
Michael had estimated we would require 12 hours of installation time to run all the gas lines for the current appliances and additional lines for future installation of 3 direct vent space heaters; convert all the appliances to run on propane (not natural gas as delivered); and "balance" the pressures throughout the house. It took him only a little over 8 hours. He had to come back twice, once to deliver and do an initial installation of the water heater and a final time to finish it all up and run the additional gas lines. The driveway was like a 4x4 test track on his last visit and we were happy that he got in and out again safely. Thanks, Michael.
I am attaching a photo of our new Aurora 10kW "silent" generator. It is definitely not silent, but at less than 60dB, the sound it makes is not too intrusive and certainly not annoying. We're hoping to have it "online" and ready to charge our battery bank later this holiday weekend.
That's right everyone, the Thanksgiving Day long weekend in Canada is here! I think we'll be giving thanks that it's over on Monday night - we have so much to do this weekend! Alex and I will be spending the day on Saturday, cutting and splitting enough wood to hopefully last us through several months of cold winter weather. I have promised Carol that we will finish the insulation in the cathedral ceiling of the great room and get it all covered with vapour barrier. The downstairs bath is in but needs tiling and drywall before it is ready to use. We are starting to smell kind of funky so there is a big motivation to get that done, too! If that's not quite enough, we have the upstairs toilet ready to put in if we get some "spare" time.

Carol will be cooking a turkey and baking pies while Alex and I are busy with the firewood. Yum! While we have a fridge and stove in the kitchen, we don't have any cabinets, counters, dishwasher or sinks in place yet. Our cabinets are ordered and due to arrive on November 4th. The counters will follow shortly after, so we should just about be good by the middle of November. The only working sink we have right now is in the downstairs bathroom. Fortunately, Carol is a magician in the kitchen so we're confident that our celebration meal will be spectacular!