Chapter 122...Back Home and So Excited For 2012 Projects

Off Grid...Chapter 122 This is our first story for 2012. Mike and I planned on spending the winter in FL in our last house. Well...we ended up selling that house on December 1 and we got bored staying at a campground. By Friday January 6 we were back home. Saturday January 7- It feels so good to be back home. Niki once again was thrilled to be back home. I think it must be all the smells here that she likes The house is in great shape and we found no problems. Whew!! That's always a good thing. Since we didn't plan on coming back until March, there were some things we had to deal with right away. First...I did laundry and hung the clothes outside...then they froze I told Mike, we better get the old dryer back out of the barn and into the house. That was job number one. I was really trying to get away from the dryer and that may work from March until November or so but it doesn't work very well right now. Next on the list. My wonderful real electric refrigerator is not going to make it through the winter months without some help. Since we wanted to be as self sufficient as we can we thought we could go all electric. That worked fine for the spring through fall months but not now. Back to the drawing board, lol. We thought we could add more panels and batteries and we would be fine but without the hours of sunlight it doesn't work. So we had to order another refrigerator. This time we ordered and RV refrigerator which can run on both propane and electric. We will run it on propane in the winter and electric the rest of the year. Hopefully this is the best of both worlds. Aren't you glad you have us to test things out first? And finally. Mike has been researching windmills again. Although they don't give us a lot of power he found one that might work to give us a boost. He ordered that. Monday 1-16 It's time for a trip to town. It snowed all weekend and I told Mike we should only go if the driveway is clear. We have been so busy with other things that he didn't plow the driveway. Mike said it doesn't look bad. There are some snow drifts on the drive but we can get out. OK...let's try it. So in the Jeep we go. We get around the first and steepest part of the drive. OK so far so good. We get to the section that is shaded and we hit ice under the snow. Mike says "hold on" Oh geez...here we go and we haven't even been home a week. We blew right through the electric fence. Thankfully we stayed on the driveway I told Mike we need to stay in town as long as we can so the snow has time to melt. We ran into the UPS driver in town and he gave us our new windmill OK..time to go back home. It looks like a lot of the snow has melted so we start up the driveway. So far so good. We got past the place where we slid with no problem. Mike keeps driving and we start up the worst part of our drive and he says "we hit more ice." There is nothing we can do but hang on as we started to slide backwards faster than we were driving up We bounced off the drive at one point but Mike got us back on and in between the curbs. Then he lost it and we spun. We finally stopped sideways in the ditch. Whew....heart slow down. We are safe and the Jeep is still upright This was all our fault and we knew better. We haven't spent a winter in the mountains in quite some time. We will have to get back into the swing of things. Many of our neighbors have to leave their vehicles at the bottom of their drives and take their 4-wheeler back and forth. You have to adjust to mountain living. It is different than most other places The curve where we slid backwards. And the Jeep is stuck. We grabbed as much out of the car as we could and walked back up to the house. Later that day, after the snow melted, Mike and I went back down to the Jeep with the tractor. He plowed and I shoveled some of the icy edges on the driveway. I got in the car and Mike attached the chains. He pulled me out and back onto the driveway. There was no damage to the Jeep but we do have to clean up the ditch line that we destroyed. Ugh!! the dreaded ditch line It is not something that has to be fixed right now but that will be one of our nice weather projects. 1-17 Today is rainy and dreary but at least there is no more snow on our driveway We got a call from the freight company and they are delivering our refrigerator today. Woo hoo. We had it delivered to the Farm Supply just to make it easier. We caught up with our friends at the Farm Supply...and it seems like we all have ice stories and sliding in the mountains. Good to know we are not alone, lol. We got the refrigerator loaded up onto our trailer and got it home. This one is smaller than both our propane refrigerator and our electric one. Here is Mike taking it down on the hand truck. We got that into the house and that is on our list of things to work on. Since it is an RV refrigerator it can't be hooked up right away. Mike will have to do some thinking and figure out how to make a box for it and get it installed. So onto our next project. Mike want to move our water pump from the back closet outside. This way we will have more storage space inside the house. That is always a good things. I help him work on getting the pump outside. Next he will work on building an insulated box for it. For now we will keep it covered with blankets until he box can be built. Next I decide to do laundry and I learned something new which I will share with all of you I learned about negative air pressure. As you know, our house is pretty air tight....which does have it's own set of new problems. We have been using the wood stove everyday and it is working great...although we do need to cut more wood...but that is another story, lol. Anyway back to the laundry. I put the clothes in the gas dryer and turned it on. Within seconds the whole front of the house smoked up. Uh oh. What would cause that. So I turned off the dryer and opened the doors. I looked up what might cause it. And it is negative air pressure caused by the vent from our dryer sucking out the smoke from our wood stove. The solution is more air. So now when I turn the dryer on and the wood stove is on I have to open the front door. Most people don't have to worry about this because there are usually drafts in houses but not in ours. Ok..lesson learned. 1-18 It is a very cold day so we drove into town to pick up a pantry cabinet. We are going to use it for one of the sides for our refrigerator. On top of that I got 30% off because of some damage to the door which I think I can fix 1-19 It's time for some pictures....finally Mike and I are about to start working on the new wind generator. I will give you the pictures and then explain why we did what we did Here I am sanding the 4x4 post so I can paint it. After I sand it, we bring the pole into the house and set it on buckets to work on it. Mike is drilling a hole in the pole adapter. We needed this piece to attach the new windmill to the square post. Fitting the pole adapter onto the post. Mike screwing the metal rod onto the pole adapter. Mike working on the wires. Mike sliding the wires into a long pipe which will be attached to the post. He also uses rubber tubing to protect the wiress as they come out of the pole. Mike drilling a hole in the pipe for to make room for the wires. Mike putting the wires through. Wires are in.  In between all of Mike's work, I painted the post green to match the house. Attaching the wind generator to the post. Screwing down the pipe holding the wires to the post. She is ready to go. Hopefully Mike got the wires right Next we go up top to dig the hole to install the pipe. While Mike gets his tools together I start digging. Mike finishes up the hole. Both of us carry up the new wind generator and place it in the hole. Then we pack the dirt and some gravel around the post. Mike screws the post into the house. And it is done Another job done. Now let me explain about the changes and what we did with the wind generator. Our first wind generator was about the same size as far as blades go but it was only 200 watts and it needed a consistent 13.4 MPH to make electric. Our next wind generator had a much bigger blade size and put out 900 watts of power but it needed 28 MPH of consistent wind to turn the blades and produce power. We also installed that with the help of the backhoe and two taller poles which were connected in the middle. We never cared for that set up. We also don't want to have to call in "anyone" for any help if things need to be fixed or changed. So we decided to give this one a try. The blades are about the same size as our original one but it is 500 watts instead of the 200. It also only needs 8MPH of wind to produce electric. I know many people use towers and that is great if you want to rely on on other people to help you when things go wrong. Mike and I want to try and do it all on our own. We are slowly getting there and trying to improve as we hit our glitches. It takes time and learning to get it all right. Someday we all get there And for our final picture for this story. We had a pretty sunset that night. That's all for this week. I hope you all enjoyed our story and learned some things Have a wonderful week and I will write again soon.

Chapter 110...Another Closet, Poles For My Garden Fence, and Cutting Wood

Off Grid...Chapter 110 Wednesday 5-11 Wow, today was a really rainy day so that means Mike and I will have to continue with our inside jobs. Mike wants to redo the office which has always looked like an unfinished room. We are going to take out the desk since we really don't need it and it has become a catchall for stuff. We will also take out the nice white cabinets along the wall and add a real closet from floor to ceiling. We are also going to move the futon and maybe get a new cover and repaint the room. We moved the futon out and this will be the perfect spot for the new closet: I decided to get a jump start on Mike and paint the inside before Mike starts construction We are using the same color in the office/bedroom as we used in our bedroom. We also added a liquid mildicide to all of our paint to help the house with any moisture issues. We haven't had any trouble in the front room but in the very back corners of the house we have a higher level of humidity. Since most people run A/C and have carpeting in their bedrooms, many times the moisture is hidden. In our house we know when we have more moisture...now we are going to fix it It also helps that we are got rid of our propane appliances like the fireplace and the refrigerator. Both of those put out a lot of unneeded humidity in our house....little did we know but I'm telling you BTW, I love love my new refrigerator and it is running completely on our solar system Once anyone is inside our house...you would never know we have a solar house OK..back to the closet Installing the front wall: The wood is up for the front wall and the top of closet: Next we install the wood shelf for the top of the closet. Then it's time for the sheet rock: After the sheet rock is on, Mike spreads the spackle, lets it dry, and then sands it. This had to be done a few times to get it nice and smooth. After that, Mike caulks up any of the openings between the wood and the wall: Now we have to wait for the spackle to dry. Thankfully the day has cleared up so I get to work in my garden I planted squash and green beans today: 5-12 It's time to make the upper closet doors. We are using the leftover bead board from our bedroom closet doors. First we have to measure the bead board so we can cut it down: Then we clamp on a straight edge for a guide while Mike cuts the board. Using the guide so the saw won't slip: Next we painted the rest of the closet, the sheet rock, and the shelf. Just waiting for the doors. While we are waiting I catch up on yard work. 5-13 I called Lowe's to find out of they got our closet doors in. They were out of our doors the last time we went to town. The woman on the phone checked for me and said they just got some in. Mike and I rush to town before they sell them out. For some reason our Lowe's goes through a lot of these doors. By the time we get to town there are only 2 left of the 4 that were in and we got them We get the doors home and start to unwrap them...uh oh....they are different doors than the ones we already have in the room. We didn't even notice that the louvered closet doors come either full louvers or half louvers. Thankfully we just did our bedroom closet. So Mike has to swap out the 2 in our bedroom for the old ones in our office area..and put all 4 new ones in the office.(He will finish this after we paint the room) Here is the closet done and waiting for the doors: 5-14 We start out by installing the top closet doors: Ah..time for painting the room. Mike and I have a system down pat..so it doesn't take us long to paint. First we take everything out of the room and put it in the livingroom....just another mess Next Mike spackles anything he doesn't like in the walls and sands it smooth. I sweep the walls and the floor and then I tape off the trim. After that I get busy with the cut in and Mike does the rolling. We are just about done Mike painting the last wall: Now we have to let it all dry. Later that day I got a cool picture of the sky. It's neat to watch the clouds, fog and storms rolling in 5-15 With all this rain it is tough to get things to dry out but we finally got the closet done The top doors: And we are done: Next it's back to my garden I noticed some prints in my garden. It looks like turkey prints so I am going to have to protect my garden. The animals finally found it Mike is going to help me build a fence. I start out by digging holes for the posts.....ugh!!! And of course I had to hit some rock My 5 poles are in: It actually turned out to be very easy digging We don't have the material to finish the fence but at least the poles are in. 5-16 Wow...it is cold out...Brr!!! We got a call and our chainsaw is ready to be picked up. Whew...just in time. We are going to need a fire tonight Mike and I get the chainsaw and bring it back home. Time to cut some wood. We are going to the hill behind our house. There is so much downed wood back there that it will takes us years to clean it all. It's a twofer...we get to clean up the back hill and get wood to burn at the same time. I love when things work out like that Here is some of the wood to be cut up. Of course, you know who is with us Mike cutting: And Niki being the "farm" dog that she thinks she is, lol. What a life: Mike cuts up the wood and I start to throw it down to our fence. It takes me a few throws for each log but it eventually makes it down the hill Mike helps me finish up and we get the wood thrown over the fence and then loaded into the tractor bucket: We love our tractor We bring the wood down to the house and Mike starts a nice fire in our wood stove. Ahh!! We are toasty now 5-17 It sure doesn't feel like May. It is cold and rainy. Yuck!!! We are stuck inside the house so we spent the day cleaning and organizing. By the time the evening rolled around we were bored Uh oh...bored is never good for us, lol. So we started another project. I decided I was going to paint the kitchen. Hey...might as well...we have extra paint I stripped out the kitchen and Mike helped by doing a quick sand on the walls for me. I started painting and Mike started to work on my oven. I have had trouble since day one with my oven's temperature. If I turned the knob on 300 it would heat up to 400 We called the company last year and ordered the part that is supposed to fix this. Now Mike is ready to do the job for me We pull out the stove and Mike takes the whole thing apart and this company did not make it easy This stove is a nightmare to take apart. Thankfully Mike is persistent Finally Mike gets to the part he needs to replace...but before that he finds another problem that could also be the cause of my temperature troubles. There is a dial that says natural gas, and propane. Well when our stove was installed our gas company never switched it over to propane Either way, Mike got it done Mike got the stove done and I got the painting done: 5-18 It's another cool and rainy day. Mike and I go into town to try and find some pictures and things to decorate around the house. This is not a shopping trip tat we like. Mike and I are terrible at decorating, lol...and we can never find things we like when we are looking. Oh well...at least it will kill a rainy day. We get to town and go to multiple stores and we strike out Really, where do people find pictures for their houses? We did pick up some accent tile for behind our wood stove. I found one that I liked but it was $12.00 for each piece and we needed 5 pieces. Well in the same aisle I found another one on sale for $2.00 a piece. Now that is more my style We got home and Mike works on the decorative tile: After that Mike unhooks out propane refrigerator. We haven't gotten any calls for it and since our new one is working so well, it;s time to get the propane refrigerator out of the house and get the new one in place. Mike's goal tonight is just to get it onto the patio. I hope the two of us can move it We get the door off and the shelves out. Mike and I move it outside and cover it. Tomorrow is another day to figure out how we will get it "up" the side driveway Lisa