In this episode Our Country Cottage has not finished sending me power failure alerts and In The Beginning, ITB, covers the first month of year three of construction.
In The Beginning, month 25, August.
This is the part of the episode where I go through pix, emails, logs etc to give you the best recollection of the construction of Our Country Cottage.
I had three visits to OCC this month. Each was three days long.
The first visit, I had a load of those flat pack boxes from that store, known for its assemble yourself furniture. My collection promised that they would turn into two closet organizers for the master bedroom closet. The instructions had a picture of two characters putting them together. Seeing that I was by myself, I took it as a handy suggestion and proceeded to do it with the, unwritten, one character option. More challenging, but more rewarding and much less debate as to what goes where etc.
I found a picture with them assembled and in place. Proof positive that just cause it ain’t written in the instructions, doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Our cook top was used for the first time to make breakfast.
Also, due to very heavy hail our vehicle was parked in the garage for the first time, but not without acquiring some new contours. I seem to remember running around outside with pieces of cardboard protecting my head from the hail. Yes, cardboard cut from those flat pack boxes.
The last day of this visit was a gorgeous, sunny day and I took the time to do a photography project with my phone. 30 pix in 30 minutes. Got some cool shots.
So this part of the podcast ,ITB, is supposed to be about how the construction was proceeding not what I was doing by myself. Spoiler alert. Nothing happened for the whole month. After spending alone time at OCC, I called the project coordinator to see what was going on. Turns out our contractor had been very ill for a time, hospital stuff, etc, but he was doing better and should be back soon.
While back in town, more furniture evaluation trips were made to flesh out Our Country Cottage.
My next three day visit saw the grass getting cut, some brush getting wacked and my partners first overnight stay.
The last visit of the month, yes three days again, gave me pix of starry early morning skies, drainage round the septic tank area, a gravel pile and those piles of construction leftovers. There are a couple of lovely pix of the front of OCC with the lights on at night.
I printed some of those pictures from that 30 pix in 30 minutes project and put them in a multi pic collage frame sort of thing, and that got hung on a wall.
A note in my log book informs me that there were 4 deer and two elk on the front clearing at the same time. A regular zoo.
So that’s it for ITB, month 25. Will next month pick up?
Tune in next time for, “Its month 26, do you know where your contractor is?”
Now on with the OCC update
While winter has been refusing to loosen its grip on Our Country Cottage, my visits have evolved into a one day trip, every other week.
The month started with, what has become, the regular “Power has been lost” email from OCC. A check to see what local weather condition were at the time of failure revealed that the temp had dropped to -35C (-31F) that night. So understandable.
I was not concerned about anything breaking in the cottage as I had drained the water a while back and was in no rush to go up. In fact, it was ten days later that we went up. In that time span Our Country Cottage emailed me 110 times to let me know that power had failed. You would think that once it failed that would be it. Remember that OCC is primarily solar powered so when the generator decides it does not want to work until someone presses its buttons, to clear errors, the batteries get charged by the sun on clear days.
So here is what happens, power fails, sun comes out and charges the batteries until they reach a certain level to turn the power back on. Once the power is back on the boiler sees a demand for heat and turns on, putting a large load on the batteries. If the sun is shining brightly there will be enough to run the boiler and charge the batteries. If there is not enough sun, like on a cloudy day or at night, the batteries will drain and I will get a, “power has been lost”, email, or 110 of them over 10 or 11 days.
Anywayz, my partner came with me on the next visit. The county plow had left a nice pile of snow at the entrance to our kilometre of fun that we had to dig through. The bottom of our vehicle left a mark in the snow for the full length of the drive, even when I had set the suspension to its highest setting. Yes, my vehicle has height settings. When I first got it, people were messing with me, calling the lowest setting, the handy bus setting.
When we arrived, my first test was to see if the garage door opener would, um, open. It did not. AC was out and the batteries were at 34%. Without power I could not start the generator from inside the cottage.
I flipped off the boiler and boiler control breakers in the utility room, working with a flashlight. No power, remember. I then went outside and started the generator from the generator control panel, after I cleared the error. It cranked a bit but fired up. All seemed OK.
While I ran the snow thrower up and down the drive, my partner cleared a path to the generator and propane tank along with the stairs and a path to the battery hatch.
Clearing the drive was slow going but when I got back I checked the generator. It was at 1541 hours.(I said 1514 hours in the audio, should have been 1541) That was 131 hours since its last oil change. I shut it off and changed the oil and oil filter. The new oil filter wrench I had brought up before worked much better than the strap wrench I had been using. The new wrench was more like a wide mouth set of channel lock pliers, and really grabbed the filter.
A check of the propane showed we were at 48%. With power back on I was able to start the generator from inside OCC. I put the gen back on auto. I then took the system controller data and the living room data logger info.
Before we left, my partner noticed that the radiator in the back hall was cold, even though the sun was shining brightly. Down in the utility room I found the solar collector system was off. On a hunch, I flicked on the boiler control breakers. The solar collector system fired up. Still learning stuff.
Now don’t confuse the solar collector system with the solar power system. The solar collector system has two panels on the roof that heat glycol (a liquid that won’t freeze) and circulate it through the domestic hot water pre-heater tank or the radiator in the back hall. The solar power system has 30 solar-cell panels (photo voltaic panels) mounted on two poles, that generate electric power. Umm, not the poles the panels…..
Anyway….
I had decided to leave the boiler off for the rest of the cold season, so we collected all the liquids to take back to the city.
The batteries were at 58% and the generator was running when we left.
Two weeks later, and not one power fail email, I went back up. Turning the boiler off was the key.
On the way in, my vehicle slid off the road and into a ditch. It took me about 45 minutes to get it out. The vehicle is a very capable four wheel drive unit but very heavy as well. With a lot of digging, a traction mat under each rear wheel, a blanket under one front wheel and a tow rope wedged under the other I got it out. The traction mats weren’t doing it alone, it was warm and wet. The tires were just slipping on them.
When I got to the cottage the batteries were fully charged at 100%.
The drive needed to be cleared and I didn’t want to go without the shovel and traction mats. Now if you remember I was trying to figure out a way to attach those items to the tractor with a bracket or clamp system or something. In desperation, I had brought a set of bungee cords with me and within ten minutes I had them all attached in a very workable way. Talk about over thinking a problem.
Good thing too as I got the tractor stuck while trying to clear snow, apparently a bit too close to the gate. This one took me about an hour and a half to get out. At one point the guide bar that is mounted on the snow thrower, to show you where the edge is, got between the bars of the gate. I don’t know how that was even possible. I just looked up and there it was, in the gate. I didn’t think twice. I just grabbed the guide bar and bent it out of the way.
So as soon as I noticed the tractor slipping sideways toward the ditch I put the, now readily available, traction mats under the back wheels. The tractor just slid sideways towards the ditch. I ended up using the snow thrower to lift the front wheels off the ground and put the mats right underneath. With the front wheels pointing to the centre of the road I was able to creep forward a bit at a time. I had to reset about 6 or 7 times before getting out of the gravitational pull of the ditch. I finished clearing the drive.
Back at the cottage I topped up the batteries. They were very thirsty, and, I checked the generator. It had only run 5.7 hours since last time. Propane was at 47%. I had a feeling that in my rushed last visit, when I changed the oil, I might have put too much in. Too much oil can blow out seals and cause a lot of damage. So, indeed I had. All still looked Ok, though, with no pools of oil etc. I grabbed my oil pump and sucked some out. Much better.
When I left the batteries were still fully charged. Just to put a period to the day, I almost went off the drive just past the gate on the way out. The vehicle started heading to the side, I was going very slowly (5 mph or kph your choice) as it was, but I stopped and backed away slowly from the ditch. Gad!
Two weeks pass and my partner and I go back up to Our Country Cottage. On the way we stop for coffee and just across from the coffee shop there is a pet store. We went in and got a bag of kitty litter to put in the rear of the vehicle. For some reason, I have become very traction oriented lately.
The kilometre of fun, our drive, was covered in heavy wet snow, but the vehicle managed to make it to the cottage, just.
While I cleared the drive, the path to the gen and propane tank was also cleared. Upon inspection, it was revealed that the gen had not run at all since the last check and the propane was still at 47%. The batteries were well into the green.
Solar power system data was taken and some snow was pulled off the roof over the battery hatch. For some reason when we left I didn’t take my normal set of pictures.
Another two weeks pass. No power failed emails had been sent. I go up. Supposed to be warm and sunny. Well the warm part was right. Clouds obscured the sun and gave very flat light. When I got to the start of our drive there was the usual berm left by the county plow. I got through that and came to a slow halt. The drive was covered with more heavy wet snow, more and heavier than last time. I could get the vehicle in just a couple of car lengths before the weight of the snow stopped forward progress.
My snow shoes were in the back. It had been a while since I last used them, but I decided to give it a try. Looking at the drive I couldn’t really tell how much snow was there. As I said, the lighting was really flat. Figured I would go as far as the gate and reassess. The snow shoes worked great. I only fell once when the tip of one shoe got caught under the crust of the snow and down I went. Took me a bit to figure out how to stand up again.
The gate was hard to open, what with hard packed snow round the bottom. For the rest of the trip I was very conscious of the potential of bear and cougar encounters. I had two pointy ski poles with me to fend off any ill will doers. Singing and making a lot of noise along with stops for a careful look around for sneaky critters. Yeah, lets go with that.
Not to over emphasise the flat light conditions but I almost walked off the drive into the ditch a couple of times cause it all looked the same. White!
When I finally arrived at OCC I found the batteries fully charged, 100%. I had been meaning to run the well pump for the last couple of visits but not got around to it. So I shut the water feed to the house, after the pressure tank and turned the pump on. It filled the tank with no problem. I was worried that sediment would build up, due to lack of use, and stop the pump from working. But it was OK this time.
I got ready to clear the drive. I grabbed my ski goggles that had yellow lenses. That helped a bit with the flat lighting, so that I could see where the drive was.
But first there was a big mound of snow in front of the garage that took me several runs at with the snow thrower to get out. Once on the driveway I found it was very slow going. Just crawling along. The snow was so thick and heavy, from my vantage point, in the tractor seat, it looked like there was a large ball of snow just rolling along in front of the snow thrower blades.
I finally made it back to my vehicle and parked it on the road while I cleared out the entrance. I then proceeded to clear on the return trip. I would go to a point where I thought my vehicle would have no problems going from a full stop situation, hop off the tractor , walk back to the vehicle and drive it up to the tractor. Then back on the tractor, and so on. There were six or seven of these routines. On the last or second to last I got too close to and edge and got the tractor stuck again. Did I mention, very flat light….. oh and I had given up on taking my goggles on and off so I wasn’t wearing them. Only took me bout 15 minutes to get out this time. I’m getting better.
I didn’t take my vehicle anywhere near the garage when I got it to OCC. The sun was now out and the snow was really starting to soften up. I was concerned I might have a hard time getting out.
I went in to OCC to empty the pressure tank and to top up the toilet bowels with RV anti freeze. Over time that stuff evaporates and if the toilet trap becomes empty it will give an excellent path for all those fragrant fumes from the septic tank. I also remembered that the generator hadn’t been run for over a month or so, so I fired it up from inside the cottage and it ran fine. After I put it back on auto it shut itself off, as expected. Then I left.
The drive out was tricky but I managed to keep it going.
So basically the whole trip was spent just getting in and out of the place. Well, if nothing else, I proved I can do it if I have to and I am really looking forward to when the snow goes and I can just drive in and out without it being a major pain.
This has been the worst year for getting stuck than I can remember, and I keep notes. On the drive back home it occurred to me that the reason I might be having so many problems is because the edges of the driveway have become rounded off. It was in the back of my mind, last year, that I should pull the shoulders back up on the drive, to reclaim some of the gravel, and this gives me another reason to do so. Just got to figure out how to do it.
Well, that brings you right up to date with Our Country Cottage. Next episode, will I still be talking about snow and In The Beginning, month 26, will anything happen?
Last time I promised to get some new pix up on the web site and failed. This time, for sure, new pix before the next OCCaN podcast release.
For pictures, and new ones coming soon, and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com
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Till next time….