Merry Christmas 2012

 It's been snowing almost constantly for a week, but today, December 23rd, it stopped! Okay, it started snowing again at 5 pm, but up until then we had none. We even saw the sun for a few hours dodging in and out of the clouds allowing our PV modules to make some power for the first time in 6 days. Everything looks beautiful! What a winter wonderland we live in! It was picture postcard pretty, with snow dripping from the over saturated branches of every tree. Rather than try and tell you how it looks, we've uploaded some pics so you can enjoy it right along with us.

Whisky wondering if we've brought him something to eat.

Mystery hoping for a treat.

The back side of the house. Note our snow-covered truck on the lower right.

What a beautiful paddock our horses live in!

Joey and Ben on the driveway below the house.

Looks like a postcard!

Carol and I both hope you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoy writing it. Of course, we'd like to post more often but life gets in the way. Living on and building a ranch in the hills around Kamloops means there is always something that we should be doing so time to sit and work on our blog comes at a premium. We'd like to take this time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

How NOT to plow snow!!

I think that the pictures speak for themselves, but for those who weren't paying attention to our previous post I will illuminate.

 We have received somewhere around 12"-15" of snow in the last 4 days. I had plowed off the worst of Thursday evening's dump on the weekend but needed to have another go yesterday after we got another 6 inches. I managed to get 2 passes done but halfway down on the 3rd pass I got a little too close to the right side ditch and managed to put the tractor on its side!!

These pics are the scene of the crime as I left this morning on my way to the office. I won't be able to try and get it out until late tonight or maybe even tomorrow sometime. By then it will be well frozen into the landscape! :(

Snow Plowing 101

It's been a while since our last post so I thought we should update everyone on our progress. As I write this, I am looking out the window at the 6-8 inches of snow that fell on Thursday. We made it in to the office in our little 4WD car but it was obvious that we needed to plow out the driveway. We took the afternoon off and headed home. The tractor was a little reluctant to start but came to life nicely with a little persuading. I managed to get 4 passes done on the 2km roadway up to our house - 2 up and 2 down. Plowing downhill with a little tractor is easy. Gravity helps keep you pushing the enormous weight of snow off to the side. Plowing uphill, however, is another story. Without gravity on your side, momentum becomes the tool your turn to. The trick is to keep the little diesel tractor engine running in its sweet spot rev range. Too many revs and you can spin all 4 wheels. Not enough revs and your speed quickly falls off. Keeping your uphill momentum takes a little skill and a lot of luck. Several times my luck ran out and I had to back down the driveway and clean up the mess with the front bucket before attempting to continue up. With the amount of snow that fell, it takes about 15 minutes to make one pass up or down the driveway so it was almost dark by the time I had completed 4 passes. If you're wondering why we don't just make 1 or 2 runs with the plow, the answer is "width".  The blade is around 5 feet wide and angles off to the right side so the snow is moved off the road. Our neighbour told us when we moved up here that you need to keep the plowed area as wide as possible, especially early in the year. As the winter progresses, the snow comes, melts a little, freezes and creates rock solid ice berms where the plow piles it off to the side of the road. As you continue to plow over the winter months, these berms trap the plowed snow causing your roadway to narrow a little each time. If you didn't keep them very wide to begin with, you can barely get your car between the piles on each side  by late in the season.
So you start plowing just off the center line with the first pass, with the second pass going in the opposite direction on the other side of center. The next passes are to increase the width by plowing as close as you can to the ditches on either side of the driveway. Don't get too close to the ditch or the tractor might slide in or even tip over! Oh, one final tip...make sure you have lots of fuel in the tractor. I know that this seems like a no-brainer,  but after having the tractor get stranded on the narrow driveway last year when I managed to run out of diesel, it seems like good advice!
We have managed to finish all the paddock fence wire and will be installing the final gate this afternoon (this does not include the gates and wire that will eventually be installed across the driveway at the front of the house). Carol has returned from her trip to visit her family in Ontario making all the animals thankful that they don't have to deal with me full-time any more. It's nice to have her home for the holidays!
We will try and post some photos over the next few days but would like to take a moment to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Horses!

After a very busy month putting all sorts of infrastructure in place in anticipation of Whisky and Mystery arriving, they're here! More than a year earlier than we had planned, Lea and Sara trailered the horses to their new home. Whisky is Carol's horse, and Mystery is on loan to us from Dreamscape Ranch to keep Whisky company (horses are herd animals after all!). Mystery is retired from being a riding horse due to a medical issue so he is the perfect buddy for our Whisky. We had been completing the fencing work right up until minutes before their arrival. We managed to get the area we call the winter paddock all fenced and energized with the solar controller.

Whisky and his blue eyes are interested in what I'm doing.

The other 3/4 of the fence project can be completed over the next few weeks. We have around a dozen gates to be put in as well, so we will be busy at this for a while yet.
Apart from the weather challenges - first the rain and now all the snow - the HotCote fence wire went in quite easily. All the tensioners, post bracing, grounding and wire hookups takes much longer than the actual fencing.

 We chose the HotCote fencing after much Googling and surfing and couldn't be happier. The proof is in the pudding, they say, and it was very satisfying to hear that friends who have seen our installation are now considering a similar fence system for their ranch!
I mentioned the weather a few sentences back and I should elaborate on that topic a little. We went from a cool wet spring this year to a wonderful long, dry summer that extended right through to the middle of October. Since then we have seen very little sun with dreary weather being the norm for the last month. The rain turned to snow as the temps fell and for the last couple of weeks it has snowed almost every day. We now have 6 inches of the white stuff on the ground making any kind of outdoor work a little more difficult. I should mention how wonderful our Bobcat 3400 ATV has been. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's hot and dry, cool and raining, or cold and snowing out little buggy starts, goes and does everything we ask it to. It has been awesome and we really recommend that anybody looking for something similar give the Bobcat a look. Carol is now using it to haul feed, water and hay to our horses. I then throw all my fencing tools in the back and go to work on the wire. When that's done, I load up the chainsaw and go looking for firewood which is loaded in the back and then automatically dumped when I return.
Carol has been working hard on cleaning up and organizing the basement/barn/garage and has been making wonderful progress. It is a wonderful space for all those uses and has also been serving as our mud room to keep from tracking everything into the main part of the house.

Fencing

We've been working our a##es off lately and this last weekend was no different. After getting our fence posts in last week, we needed to get on to installing the electric wire, gates, solar engergizer, and ground rods. If you are not aware, our weather has not been great, with several inches of snow having fallen, most of it still on the ground. This has made working outdoors difficult & messy. It's not quite cold enough to be frozen solid, but it's not quite warm enough to melt everything either. It's just ugly.
All the "stuff" for our fences arrived safely last week, thanks to John and Lesley at Ferris Fencing in Courtenay, BC.

The heavy coils of HotCote wire and the solar energizer arrived directly from the manufacturer in the USA with the remainder coming from Ferris on the Island.
We quickly realized that we needed some way to unwind the wire in a way that enabled us to feed it through all the insulators (900+) that Carol had installed on the posts, without binding up or kinking. After some Googling we discovered the device we needed was a "spinning jenny".

Of course nobody in town had one in stock but Tom at The Horse Barn ordered one up and promised it would be here late on Saturday. We spent Saturday putting in some of the many gates we would need and installing a few of the ratcheting tensioners that mount on the terminal posts. I went into town, picked up the spinning jenny, brought it home and assembled it ready for use on Sunday morning. Sunday was foggy and snowing when we first went out but it didn't take long for the fog to burn off revealing beautiful skies and even a little sunshine.

 The spinning jenny worked great and we quickly became electric fence wire stringing experts. Good thing, as we have 2 miles of the stuff to install! By the end of the day (and the end of the light) we had one of the paddocks almost completely fenced in with only a couple of short sections still needing wire. We have yet to brace the terminal and corner posts so could only apply very light tension to hold everything together. The bracing rails will be here on Wednesday so that job can be completed and the fence brought up to full tension. And so it goes...

I've included a couple of other shots to show off our "Muskoka" wood rack that we keep in the house. As you can see, Ben loves laying in front of the fire!

The other image shows Carol preparing a meal on our wood stove. She's become very good at this great energy conserving method of cooking. We have the stove going anyway to heat the house so this was just a no-brainer. BTW, it was a very tasty beef stew! Mmmmmmmm

Snow!? No wait, we're not ready for winter yet!!

It's hard to believe, but we woke up to 2" of snow yesterday (Saturday). Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that we were in the middle of some beautiful summer weather? I guess that's life up here in the high country.
On the way back from Lea's last night, there was a big fir tree blown down across Campbell Range Road, about 1/2 km from our driveway. We decided that we would get up early the next morning and go buck it up with the chainsaw and bring it back home to split for firewood. After getting over the shock of the ground being covered with the white stuff, we headed out at 8:30am to do just that. Of course, by that time some good samaritan had already chopped up the top of the tree that was laying across the road leaving most of it for us. We took both the truck and the Bobcat ATV as we expected to get quite a haul of firewood. We were right. We left the site with the pickup almost filled level in the back. We thought that rather than waste the empty ATV, we would stop on the way through the crown land on our driveway and find another downed tree to cut up. We didn't have to look for long so only 40 minutes later, we had both the truck and the Bobcat full to the max.
Last year we used the deck to mount the splitter on when doing the firewood. Seeing as the deck is now finished with railings and a vinyl covering, we have built a small splitting station next to our wood shed. It is very convenient in that location and Carol has been keeping busy splitting all the logs that I bring back with the ATV. We have the woodshed full and then some, because we know from last year that we will need to have the equivalent of 3 to 4 "wood sheds" of firewood to get us through the cold winter months. That work is still ongoing.
One job that is complete is the fence posts. John, from Frolek Fencing brought his amazing skidsteer vibratory post pounder up to our place on Wednesday evening and by noon on Friday, he was done! Over 300 fence posts were installed, giving us 4 large paddocks, a round pen, and a smaller "diet" pen. This would enable us to have cattle on our property as we have the last couple of summers, and keep the house safe and give us lots of room for the two horses.

Some of our 300 fence posts!

We will be using a solar powered energizer to power the 3 strands of HotCote wire that will be installed on those posts. Each post will receive 3 plastic insulators to keep the wire from shorting to ground once energized. It will give any animal that touches it, a healthy jolt (like a static shock you get when running around on the carpet with your nylon socks on!). They quickly learn to give the fences some respect which results in less wear and tear on both the fences and the horses!
We should have all the wire and hardware tomorrow. It is being shipped to us directly from the States by our supplier. We've already managed to install some of the insulators but with more than 900 required, we still have many left to go.

Speaking of horses, Carol and Whisky are still getting together with Ray at Dreamscape Ranch every Wednesday afternoon. He is doing great! Apparently, he is a quick learner as Carol is now able to steer him around and back him up with the reins. For now, of course, Ray is still there with a lead rope on him in case Whisky gets annoyed with Carol on his back, but so far, all is going well.

Whisky changes everything!

In my last post I mentioned that we were getting a new addition to our family, Whisky, the little rescue horse. He is doing very well at Dreamscape Ranch, loving all the attention that Lea, Sara and the girls are giving him - along with all that good food! Lea estimates that he has gained 50 lbs since his arrival just a few weeks ago! He is looking much healthier and happier. The farrier (Shelley) has trimmed his feet, the vet (Jennifer) came up and gelded him (I'll leave it up to you to Google "gelded" if you're not sure what that means!) and removed a small growth from his thigh, Lea gave him his de-worming medicine, and Carol has been up working him in the round pen a few times. He is much improved and has bonded nicely with Mystery, his corral mate who will be accompanying him up to Gull Lake Ranch.

He seems very smart and learns quickly. So much so, that Lea and Carol decided to bring their favourite horse trainer, Ray Scott, up for some lessons with the little guy. Ray put him in the round pen and after a brief episode running, bucking and generally being a baby horse, Whisky settled down and went to work. He did well and even allowed Carol to mount and sit in the saddle while Ray walked him around the pen. It was all very exciting. Carol was a little nervous at first, but trusted that Ray would know if Whisky was ready for that big step. Apparently, Ray was right (as usual!) and rider and horse had an uneventful first ride together.

We had planned on owning horses "one day", but with the arrival of Whisky, that day is today. That means that all those jobs that needed doing next year to prepare our place for keeping horses, have to be done right now. We need fencing, corrals, gates, hay, feed, water, and shelter for Mystery and Whisky to be able to winter up at Gull Lake Ranch. We have decided on electric fencing as this will be much less expensive than traditional post and rail fencing. Arguably, it's also better for the horses as they tend to get tangled up in just about anything. The shock from the electric fencing keeps the horses safe as they tend to avoid getting too close to the fence itself. After asking around and shopping for fence vendors we have chosen Ferris Fencing on Vancouver Island to supply the fence hardware. We are already in the process of having all the fence posts installed by John Frolek of Frolek Fencing. Jim and Val Kershaw were kind enough to deliver 150 hay bales up to our place last weekend. We found some plans online for horse shelters, or loafing sheds as they are known. We will be building one using left over material from our house build. Eventually, we will dig a trench for a water line to service the paddocks, but for this winter it will be a "bucket brigade" job hopefully using the ATV to haul water in containers to the horses. Grain and supplements will be prepared in the basement/barn as we have come to refer to it lately. This gives us a warm place (thanks to the new heaters!) to perform this chore, but is 100 yards from where the horses will be so time will tell if this works out. Some friends have donated or lent us enough blankets, halters, and lead ropes to get us started. Lea has volunteered to bring the two horses up in her trailer once we have the fences in place. Lesley at Ferris Fencing thinks we should have everything we need by the end of next week so as long as John manages to get all the posts in by then, we should be good to go by the end of October. That should be just in time for the snow to arrive! I guess that finishing the siding will have to wait for now.
Hmmmm, better get cracking on the firewood supply, too. Where did the summer go?!

It's fall already!

The fall weather means that we're going to need to stock up the wood pile again. We had planned to install direct vent space heaters in our home so we could leave the house for more than a few hours without having to worry about everything freezing up. After much online research, we settled on Cal-Gas here in Kamloops to supply the units we needed. Fred uses the Empire brand heaters in his own home and highly recommended them for our situation. Being "off grid" we must satisfy all of our electrical power needs with our solar panels and diesel generator. There are no hydro lines running to our house. The Empire heaters we chose use no electricity at all, burning propane and using convection to heat the cooler air at floor level, allowing it to rise naturally. That's where our ceiling fans come into play. They will push the warm air down from the roof to the rest of the room. Granted, the fans do use some power but it is a very small amount when running at the lowest speed and they wouldn't have to operate continuously.
We chose 2 different models for our home - the DV-35 (35,000 BTU) and the DV-210 (10,000 BTU). We put one DV-35 in the basement, one DV-35 in the dining room part of the great room, and one DV-210 in the spare bedroom on the main floor. This bedroom receives the least benefit from the heat of the wood stove and will not be used most of the time so we can keep it cooler until occupied by guests, at which time they can simply turn up the thermostat to a level that keeps them comfortable. We haven't had to use these guys yet (thankfully!) but are confident that they will allow us to keep the house warm at all times, even if we're not home to fill the wood stove every 8 hours or so. The basement heater will keep our water lines safe from freezing and make the area usable for whatever we want.
Direct vent technology means that the heaters get all their combustion air and vent their exhaust gasses through a double-walled pipe going through an exterior wall. Outside, all you see is a small vent cap mounted on the siding. In testing, the units are very quiet - another benefit! - and seem easy to use. There is a pilot that needs to be lit at the beginning of the season but it has a BBQ-style sparker to ignite it and a thermopile that shuts off the gas if the pilot light goes out. They come with everything you need to install them except for the short flexible gas line that must be installed by a certified gas fitter. We hired Brock from Rivercity Air to come up and install the units and he made quick work of it installing all 3 in less than 8 hours. He's a very nice guy and does great work so if you need someone to help with heating and cooling your home, look him up and give him a call.

Work goes on again this weekend with the siding. We've got to get all the remaining stuff on the front of the house. Then we will need to rent some scaffolding to finish up the siding on 2nd floor. Hopefully, the weather will continue to be dry - at least for a couple more weeks. I missed last weekend working on the house as I took a motorcycle trip to Edmonton, Alberta to visit my family. My mum lives just north of the city in St. Albert and my son and his family live in Sherwood Park, on the east edge of the city. It was great to see my granddaughter, Harlee, again. It has been almost 2 years since I was last there. She was only days old then and the change in her is amazing! She's walking, talking and generally being super cute. It was worth missing some "house" time to spend some time with her!

Oh, and it looks like we have a new addition to our Gull Lake Ranch family - a young colt we rescued from a future at the meat plant. "Whiskey" is a little over 2 years old and is a quarter house/paint horse cross who (we think) will mature to be a little over 14 hands high - perfect for Carol. He was gelded yesterday and had his feet trimmed so will not be in the best of spirits for a day or two. We owe Lea and Sara and the girls at Dreamscape Ranch a big "thank you" for finding him and looking after him until we have our place set up to look after him. He is super cute and seems very calm and friendly. We hope he likes his new home. One of Dreamscape's "retirees", Mystery, will be keeping him company at our place.

September...yikes!

Looking at the calendar, I notice that it reads, "September 5, 2012". We've been living in the house now for just over a year. It's hard to believe that a whole year has passed since Carol's parents visited late last summer. Inside the house is dramatically different with insulation, walls, flooring, a kitchen and two bathrooms all looking much like the finished versions we had in our minds' eye. Our electrical and water systems are pretty much finalized with just the basement and exterior lighting left finish. The mechanical room is looking pretty good with everything organized per the inspector's report.




We are slowly reducing the piles of "stuff to be installed" and getting some of the boxes of personal items put away in their new homes.
Outside, it's still a different story. The siding we were hoping to finish by the end of August is, of course, taking much longer than I first anticipated. Don't get me wrong, it's coming along nicely now, but it will be another month before we have it all done.




Where the siding is up the house is looking really nice. Finally, we are managing to hide the Tyvek house wrap under our Autumn Red fibre cement Certainteed siding. It goes up quite quickly but slows down around all the items that interrupt the clean expanse of the walls - stuff like windows, doors, vents, faucets, and outlet boxes. Since we have 19 windows, 3 doors, 5 vents, 4 outlets, 2 taps and a couple of conduit entrances, the installation goes "slowly," if I have to choose a word. Before they are nailed to the wall, the siding boards are easily broken if not handled properly. 



Compounding that concern is all the cutting and manipulating that has to happen to go around all the aforementioned obstructions. Tedious and fiddly work, this satisfying the Building Code! As I said earlier though, the place is starting to look good!
I have to get my butt in gear. We're running out of warm weather (not this week though, with highs forecast to hover just below 30*C) and I will soon have to focus on our firewood supply. Some good news on that front is that we should have our direct vent propane space heaters installed by the end of next week, courtesy of Fred and his team at CalGas.

That will take some of the pressure off our wood stove this winter and allow us to leave the place for more than a few hours without fear of freezing up all the pipes. We will use more propane with these in place but if you consider that we have only used about a third of our tank over the last 11 months, that should not be a big problem.

Busy Weekend

Carol's birthday falls on a Monday this year, so we decided to celebrate it on the weekend just before. I had invited our friends Roy and Patou to join us for dinner and drinks on Saturday evening. Within a few minutes of that invite going out, Paul, Tamara and Paris emailed to ask if they could come to visit over the weekend. I figured the more the merrier, so we set it up. If you remember, we haven't done the floor in the guest room yet so we decided to take the day off from the office and get it done. It would also give us some time to vacuum up the dog hair before the Paul's bunch arrived later in the day.

We were up and at it early and had the floor finished by 3pm. It looks great, and it's nice to have the last of the flooring on the main and upper floor finally done. I went down to meet them at the highway so they could follow me up to the house. Right on time, they pulled up at 5pm and we wound our way up the tight switchbacks on the east end of Robbins Range Road. Carol and the dogs were standing on the deck as we pulled into the drive beside the house. Much barking and carrying on later, we were finally able to make our way inside.
The weather was predicted to be hot, in the mid to high 30's all weekend and it didn't disappoint. It was smokin' all weekend! We BBQ'd some steaks, had some wine, and settled in to enjoy the evening. Now THIS is why we put this big deck out here!
The next morning I took Paul for a tour in the Bobcat ATV showing him how it worked and where a few of the local roads/goat trails went. The plan was for him to take Tamara and Paris exploring. It was a good plan and the girls really took to it. I think the 3 of them spent about 5 hours over the weekend travelling many of the back roads and trails in the area. My take on it was they had a blast!
Saturday evening, as I said before, our friends were coming over for dinner. It turns out that they have two students from Germany staying with them, Maria and Peter. Of course they were welcome to join us, and as it turns out, it was Maria's 21st birthday on Saturday! Carol had made some of her famous BBQ spare ribs and potatoes, and with Patou's salad, Tamara and Paris' awesome cake decorating and the cake that I baked (yes, it was from a box!), we had an awesome meal! Carol and Maria took turns blowing out the candles. It was quite late by the time we got cleaned up, said goodbye to our dinner guests and fell into bed.

Another beautiful morning on Sunday meant we spent the entire day on the deck with most of us getting some good sun. Paris' paddling pool was a big hit as a place to cool one's feet after walking around on the hot deck. Another ATV ride and then Paul and family set out for the coast around 4 pm. It was left over ribs and steak sandwiches for dinner for us and another excellent episode of "The Newsroom" before bed for we Gull Lake Ranch residents. A really awesome weekend. Thanks, everyone!

Siding Progress

After a week of hard work, this is the result.
The siding on the basement level is finished.
Siding on the back half of the house is well under way. This (the back half of the house) represents the bulk of the actual siding as there is very little of the stuff installed on the front walls, and although there is more on the front sides, it is easily accessed from the deck.
Access has proven to be a big time consumer. In order to work from ladders and/or scaffolding, the ground must be relatively flat and stable.

 Our driveway and the dirt around the back of the house is not yet  "to grade" and was quite rough in spots. I spent quite a number of hours on the tractor smoothing it out, filling in the low spots and topping it all off with gravel from one of the handy piles left over from early in the construction. It is paying off, and things are progressing much better now.

The first job is to install the pressure treated 1x3's around all the doors,windows and obstructions (vents, taps, outlets, lights, etc.) then the siding itself, and finally the white trim boards. The result is very nice as you can see from the finished product on the basement level. We are targeting to finish this job by the end of the month (August) but that will depend on the amount of time we can take off from our real jobs at the office. This is just another challenge we must face as we move toward successful completion of our home. 

Siding and trim started

I really felt like a farmer this last weekend. Our weeds have been growing out of control, with thistles and mullein over 5 feet high along parts of our driveway. We talked to Brian and Louise about effective means to control the weeds while not causing any harm to the cattle we have grazing on our property. TNRD has a system in place to "loan" spraying equipment to land owners at no charge. With this system, we can just buy the herbicide required (in our case, Grazon) and the spraying equipment is free! We get it for a week with the only catch being that it must be returned clean and that we must apply the chemical on a day where no rain is forecast for 24 hours.
Saturday looked like the only day for a week where that might be the case so by 8am, I was up and had the sprayer installed on the ATV. I filled it up with a mix of the Grazon and water. Grazon is a great product if you have grazing livestock. It kills all the common broadleaf weeds quickly (within a few days of application), remains effective for up to 5 years, and is completely safe if consumed by cattle or horses (although they do suggest a waiting period of several hours before allowing the livestock on the sprayed areas). It also allows and promotes the growth of natural and introduced grasses. The Bobcat ATV allowed me to go anywhere I needed to spray the weeds easily and in fact seemed ideal for the job. All in all, it took about 3 hours to spray about 2.5 acres of land in a small strip all along the driveway and up to the well. We used 1/2 a jug of the Grazon and the sprayer unit worked great. A job well done!
We've had the Certainteed ColorMax fibre cement siding since the house material first arrived. This product virtually identical in every way to the more well known HardiePlank siding. This stuff has a great reputation for durability and is a great alternative to traditional cedar planking. The type we chose even looks like a painted cedar board with all the grain and character moulded into the surface, then painted at the factory with a durable coating. Apart from sealing the edges after cutting, there is no painting or staining is required.
You just nail it up to the sheathing on the exterior of the house. Now that is what these guys would have you believe anyway! The siding itself is great and it appears that it will live up to our expectations. But we have discovered that there is a lot of prep work required before you can "just nail it up". As with almost every aspect of building your own house, there is a ton of stuff to learn. In addition to the "best practices" promoted by the manufacturers, there is the building code to consider. And as usual, I know nothing about this part of the code!
Satisfying the building code is turning out to be one of the most stressful and difficult challenges to overcome. Building inspectors love to find all the ways that your house doesn't comply so they can send you back to re-do those areas that don't meet the requirements. Ok, the Building Code is relatively easy to access - you can find it at your public library. (You remember the library, right? It's the big building with lots of books inside. Yeah, that's right...kind of like the Internet, but you actually have to go to this big building to use it!) So, you go and find the part of the code that applies to "building envelopes" and learn that. Not so fast! This stuff is written by lawyers, for lawyers, so they can fight about it in court when your house doesn't work the way you want it to. It can also be wielded by insurance companies trying to refute your claim for damages after a fire or flood. We're good people. We want the house to be built correctly and safely. We want to satisfy the Code! But gosh darn it, couldn't someone please put this info into a format that is easily accessed (online), cheap (the Canadian Electrical Code book alone costs several hundred dollars!) and written in language that is easily understood by mere mortals?!
We would far rather "do it right" to paraphrase Mike Holmes, than do it over, or perhaps even, do it so badly that our house becomes dangerous to us or others.
With our current project being the siding and trim, one of the challenges is flashings and how they should be installed around the various openings  (windows, doors, vents, etc.). I discovered (after much Googling) that these things require "end dams" to meet the Canadian building code. Ok, so what are these end dams. More Googling....find Jon Eakes site and his "Origami Guide to the Building Code". In words and a super video, Jon describes exactly what is required, and as the title suggests, shows just how you need to "fold" the metal to make these Code compliant end dams on your flashings. I haven't posted any in line links before in this blog, but this one is just too good to ignore, so here it is...

http://joneakes.com/jons-fixit-database/2062

Thank you, Jon!!! (BTW, I just went to the CSA site and the publication describing the CSA standards for Installation of Windows, Door and Skylights can be purchased online for $229. A PDF version can be downloaded for $208! I will leave it to you readers to decide if that's a worthwhile investment.)
This is the end of my rant, now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
Reviewing the "details" on our building plans that illustrate the positioning and type of flashings required for each window, door and vent is the easy part. They only show a typical cross section, both vertical and horizontal and even then they do not show what the finished installations are supposed to look like. After installing and then removing the flashing, trim and underlying 1x3's twice, I managed to get what I consider to be a good interpretation of those drawings. Of course, this was the reason that I chose to start by working on the basement level first. It has one door, a large fixed window and one narrower opening window. It also has a flush mounted exterior light that would serve as a model for the other exterior lights on the main floor. In other words, I could screw up this small area a few times until I got it right so that the main part of the house didn't look like crap! It was a wise choice.
It took me the better part of the last weekend to get the basement level trim and siding 90% complete. I have another few of hours work and then I can move on to the main floor. It is exciting to finally get an idea of what the finished house is going to look like from the outside. Very cool!
Sorry, but I have no pics yet as the weekend weather was not very nice (lots of thunder storms and rain) but I will post some up as soon as I do. We are taking next week off from work so we can dedicate ourselves to working on the house. We have lots to do before the snow flies!

If you want help with a 3-way, I'm your guy!

Huh!? Oh, not that kind of 3-way! Get your minds out of the gutter - I'm talking about 3-way electrical switches! Our house has 6 circuits which are controlled by 3-way switches. These allow you to, for example, switch on the light over the staircase at the bottom before ascending the steps, and then switch it off from a switch at the top of the stairs. It doesn't seem like rocket science but it has taken me a while to understand how and why they work the way they do. In the meantime I haven't attempted to activate any of these circuits. Well, until this last weekend...
We needed to bring in the 28 foot extension ladder to install both our new dining room light fixture and the big overhead fan in the great room. It has been hot - mid to high 30's - and that prompted me to get off my butt so we could get the air moving in the house. The light fixture went in easily and looks great (pics to follow when computer and camera are in the same room), but the fan unit has a light fixture attached that uses one of those pesky 3-way circuits. All the wires had already been run when the rough-in was completed. The challenge was to learn how they hook up to the fixture/switches to make it all work properly. I made it my mission last Sunday to do exactly that. It took me a couple of hours of reading and tinkering before the light came on (really bad pun intended!). With the fan light working correctly, I tackled the hall lights downstairs and the stairway lighting to the second floor. They all work now! I can't believe what a big load that takes off my mind. For some reason I must have been worried about not being able to figure it out!
We also have all the doors installed on the main floor now. We even have a locking bathroom door! The doors for the upstairs bathroom and closet are still on order so they will still be a while. 

Deck Railing Finished

 Clayton getting ready to assemble the railing

 It was a while coming, but we're thrilled to have our deck railing finally in and complete. It looks great and impedes our view as little as the building code allows! Clayton, from Renovation 911, had the railings custom made from black, powder coated aluminum to fit our deck precisely. With all the weird angles there were no "off the shelf" posts that would do the trick.

Almost finished across the front.

Clayton had planned to come on Saturday morning but again, the weather stepped in with lots of rain soaking everything. He said he needed 4 hours of dry weather while he did the installation to ensure that everything stayed waterproof. We postponed until today (Monday) as the forecast was for a dry day and that's what we got. Dry with sun trying to burn off some high clouds - perfect working conditions. Clayton and Alex (his helper) managed to get everything completed in the 4 hours he had guestimated.
Finally, it's nice not to have to worry about stuff blowing off the deck, given the crappy weather again this summer. Hopefully, we get a few warm sunny days now so we have the chance to enjoy our deck.

All done! It looks great.

We had the guys put a gate on the railing right by the back door. It's not that we needed a gate, but since at least one side of the deck is always in the shade, we thought it would be nice to leave the dogs out there occasionally where they wouldn't be able to leave the house, but would be outside.

North side deck showing the gate.