Chapter 75...Cleaning The Water Tank And Clover On The Hill

Off Grid...Chapter 75 6-25 Mike went up to start our generator this morning and it wouldn't start. Uh oh. This is a first. Mike checked all the fluids and thankfully it just needed some oil. Ok one problem solved. Next he changed out the drain cover at the top of the back of the house. this is the drain that catches any water from our yard and is supposed to run through the drain pipes, go around the house, and run out each of the pipes on the side and out to the front yard. We had a slotted top and it should have been a solid cover. Mike changing the cover. And the new cover is on. Finally we are going to finish the first side hill. Hopefully this will be the "last" time. It is all raked out. Mike is seeding it with White Dutch Clover Seed. After the seed is down we roll out the curlex to keep it in place. Here is Mike stapling down the first piece of curlex next to the wall. We roll out the next piece and Mike starts to staple the seam. After we get all the seed and curlex on the first side I start shoveling the gravel in the driveway. We want to make sure there is no more dirt left. So I shovel any extra gravel I can find into 5 gallon buckets. then I dump the buckets of gravel along the drive and the curlex. We are almost to the point of no more mud. Yay. The curlex and the gravel on the first side of the house is done. Woo hoo. Later on that day Mike and I take a break from doing any work. We are taking Mike's granddaughter out for her birthday. She is going to be 5 years old and we are taking her to 2 of her favorite places for a special treat. We get to her house and she is almost bursting with excitement. She has no idea where we are going. It's kind of fun because we really don't see her often. First we took her to a girly girl store called Claire's. It is a store full of the biggest most overpriced junk for a little girl and she loves it, lol. Mike told her she could go in and get whatever she wants. Now this is a first. Mike won't even let me do that, lol. Anyway, let me tell you this little girl is a born "power shopper". She filled her basket in less than 10 minutes and went up to Papa and said "I'm done". Wow I feel so sorry for her future husband. At least she knows what she wants, lol. Then we went out for Chinese which is her favorite. We had a great time spoiling her and then we got to send her home with all of her goodies. 6-26 I took my stroll with Niki this morning. We go up everyday to check on my gardens. I spotted my very first tomato. Woo hoo. I am so excited about seeing my own vegetables grow. Today Mike wants to clean out our underground water tank. Sure he picks today after we just added water yesterday. Our water is back to being crystal clear. We only had that problem that one time when we got muck in our tank. That was the last time we had to clean it out. We think the muck was because the tank was new and we had some really heavy rains at the time. So now the water is good but we still have to clean the tank. Mike takes the big lid off the tank and puts the water pump into the tank to drain it and he turns the pump on. It works for a little while and then it stops. Uh uh, here we go again. Mike checks it and it is getting overheated so Mike lowers the water pump inside the tank where it is much cooler. Ah now it is working but it is going to take a long time to drain the water. At least the lawn will be watered. While we are waiting for the tank to drain Mike wants to fix our well cover. It settled over the winter and now it is crooked which, of course, is driving Mike crazy. First we take the concrete lid off and then we start to dig around the bottom so we can make it level. Then we take out the old plastic and the old insulation that was inside. Once we get the cover level we make our own nice and neat insulation rolls form some extra insulation that we have. Our new insulation in the well. We put the lid back on and now that's just another small job off the list. The tank is empty and now it's time for the fun part, lol. Mike has to get inside the tank and hose the walls down and get the rest of the water and any debris sucked up. Then he will wipe it all down with clean towels and we will re fill it. We won't fill it as high since it is the summer and it is much warmer out. We will just add water a little more often to make sure it stays fresh. Mike just getting into the tank. I stay up top and hand him things. He works his way out from the far end of the tank. I hand him the hose and he sprays down the walls to clean them. He gives the hose back to me and he takes the pump to suck up the water. We swap again but this time I hand him towels to wipe everything down. Here is Mike cleaning the tank. And he is almost done. It's almost like new again. It really doesn't take us that long to do. The longest part is draining the water out of the tank. At least the lawn got a good dousing. Next we start to work on the second hill next to the house. A lot of the rock and debris fell down to our front yard so we have a lot of cleaning and raking to do. The soil that Brian brought up for this side is very rocky. I start raking with the rock rake and then shovel it up and fill the tractor bucket. Mike brings the tractor down and dumps the rock on the pond wall. Then he scoops fresh dirt and brings it back up top for me to sift through again. What a great guy, lol. Here I am working on the second side of the house. I fill the tractor bucket about 5 times. then Mike and I go to the front of the house on the same side. We rake up the rock that rolled down the hill to the front yard. Mike parks the tractor on the outside of our fence and we fill 5 gallon buckets with rock. then we dump the buckets into the tractor bucket. Here is Mike taking a short cut down the big hill to the driveway. He starts to tip. he had to put the back blade down for some extra support. It was a good day today. We got some good things accomplished. When we got back into the house we turned on our water and the inside pump was making a racket. It sounds like there is air in the lines somewhere. Oh well just something else for us to do. Tomorrow is another day and we will figure out where the problem is. I hope you enjoyed another look into the Mike and Lisa world. Lisa [+] Rate this post p

Chapter 45...Making A Desk, Futon And Cleaning The Water Tank

Off Grid...Chapter 45 Monday 1-12 It's cold today but at least the sun is poking through the sky. We have a very cold forecast for the week so Mike and I went to town for staples. After we got home Mike sanded down our piece of wood that was leftover from our old counter. We are going to make our desk. Then he took the wood outside put it on a box to spray paint it. He is starting to spray it. Oh what a pain this stuff is. It's made by Rust-Oleum and it's a stone textured finish. As you can imagine it does not want to spray through the nozzle. It keeps clogging. We have to keep taking the top off and clean it out with a needle. We had to do this at least a dozen times for this one little board. Finally spraying more on. Then we brought it inside to dry because it was too cold outside. The fumes were too strong even with the doors open so we brought it back outside. When it dried Mike sprayed a gloss coat on for protection. After the gloss coat dried we brought it inside and put it on top of the file cabinets. Our turkeys are visiting. They are still petrified of us but they come into our yard everyday for seed. Tuesday 1-13 The last time we filled our 1200 gallon water tank we got some really dirty water from our well. For months we had beautiful crystal clear water and last week we got this sludge. We are bringing a sample to the well company to see what they need to do. Hopefully they will fix it. It happened after a heavy rain. Today we pumped out the nasty water and Mike got inside the tank and cleaned the whole thing. Ah. Now the tank is almost like new. The whole time pumping out the tank and cleaning it we had our well running. By the time we re filled the tank our water was much clearer. Mike also drained out our hot water heater and re filled it with clean water. It's a good thing we had bottled water to drink. Wednesday 1-14 It started snowing late yesterday so this morning there is a layer of white covering the ground. We are so lucky we did the water yesterday. Unfortunately because of the snow we couldn't work on the culvert as planned. So Mike hoked up the generator and I cleaned and did laundry. The house is getting less and less dusty since we finished the construction. Mike started organizing our new desk and it fits perfect in our spot. He also hooked up my Internet to the laptop in the office. I used to go on-line while I sat next to Mike in the living room. Now I feel like I was sent to my room for being bad. We are going to have to get some kind of wireless router so I can use the Internet while I am in the living room. Thursday 1-15 I went on the computer this morning all by myself in the office. It is very quiet and lonely. Mike is always asking me "what are you reading?" and his favorite "any 'sponses?" We haven't been this far apart since pre- motorhome days. It is frigid outside. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing so at least we are producing power. But we are "not" going outside today. Friday 1-17 I woke up at 5:00am and I checked our water. Guess what? We had no running water. It froze. There is no running water in the house so I woke Mike up. He bundled up and went outside with the flashlight and the hairdryer. He has to try and find where our water line froze and try to melt the ice using the hairdryer. It is 3 degrees outside. This is the coldest it's been here in years. Mike got the generator running so he could use the hairdryer. While he was outside I put on coffee and turned on the fireplace so he could warm up quickly. Mike had to go back and forth to keep checking the hairdryer. We also aren't positive where our line froze so Mike also checked the lines inside our water tank. He opened up the tank lid and steam came out which means the freeze is closer to the house. Finally, 40 minutes later the water starts running in the sink. We got lucky. Usually we leave the water dripping at night but it has been so long for us that we didn't even think about it. Time to go back to bed for a couple of hours. We turned the heat off and went back to bed. When we got up we decided to get ready and go to town and do a little shopping and go bowling. We needed to get out of the house and "do" something. Just as we were ready to leave the phone rang. It's the furniture store and our futon is in. Ok. change of plans. We hook up the trailer and go the other way to town and bring our futon home. We bring the boxes in the house and start to unwrap it all. We decided to put it together in spot. Here is the first part of the frame being screwed together. The rails are done. The frame is done. We put the mattress on and it is a perfect fit. Now we just need a picture for the wall and some pillows. Saturday 1-17 It is sunny out but very cold. It got down to zero last night and we still didn't use the fireplace during the night. We drove to town to pick up a couple of things. No bowling today because it is saturday. We bought a wall shelf for the bathroom. When we got home Mike started to put it all together. Here he is organizing all the parts. Sunday 1-18 It looks nasty outside. It is cold and icy. My satellite dish and our solar panels are covered with ice. We had 24 turkeys in our front yard this morning and it is so cool to see them that close. I couldn't get a picture because they are so skittish and I didn't want to scare them. Mike took out the old hook in out bathroom and he installed the shelf. Here is our shelf with and the hole filled with spackle where our hook used to be. Now we just need a hamper below it. And we got our cork board up in the office. Lisa

Chapter 31...Toilet Install And Wind Generators

Off Grid...Chapter 31 It's another chapter in the Mike and Lisa world. Monday 10-6 Mike and I are beat. Last week was pretty busy so we are a little run down. Mike did some clean up outside while I gave Niki a bath. After breakfast we took a ride. First we stopped at David's to get some plumbing parts. Then we drove over to one of Jimmy's properties to see how he was doing. He is developing his land to sell. He's doing a really nice job. After we left Jimmy's we stopped at a new neighbor's house "across the holler" from us. Hi Shogun- sorry we missed you. He and his wife weren't home but we got to see how our property looks from across the way. I wish I had my camera. We finally got back home and Mike said "we have to do something on the house". OK, let's go. So we went down and installed the toilet. Exciting stuff . The first thing Mike did was install the water line and valve for the toilet. Then he put the toilet flange over the 4" sewer pipe and marked the holes to be drilled. Next he drilled the holes into the concrete floor. After the holes were drilled, Mike put the flange on top and screwed 6 screws into the concrete floor. This will hold the toilet in place. Then Mike put the wax seal over the flange. Then he centered the toilet over the flange, wiggled it into place, and bolted the toilet to the ground. Next, Mike put the gasket on the back of the bowl. And then he installed the tank. This is Mike hooking the water lines to the toilet. And that's how Mike installed our toilet. Tuesday 10-7 Today is our anniversary but we will have to put off celebrating until the house is livable. We have our priorities. We did a ton of work outside today. We started by cleaning the entire front yard. We had to rake up all the rock, seed the lawn, and put straw on top. I raked all the rock and Mike and I both shoveled it into the tractor bucket. We filled the tractor bucket about 6 times. Mike unloaded all the rock and debris onto our pond wall. Mike also picked up the curlex that was destroyed by the cows on our big hill. At least all the grass grew in before the curlex was torn up. Mike put all the curlex in a big pile so that we could burn it next time we get some rain. As he was doing this Mike had an audience of cows. They really are like children. As soon as Mike left the pile, the Bull went over and started throwing the curlex around with his head. He ended up with it all over his neck and face. What did I tell you? Children! Really big children. This is the front yard. Howard stopped by to try and get the calves used to going into the pen. He will take them all to auction in a couple of weeks. I'm really going to miss 98. I hope he grows up to be a big healthy bull with his own harem instead of steak. Mike worked on the hill next to the house. After the block was installed we had to clean all the dirt off of it and wrap curlex around the hill. Mike also brought up more gravel from our pile, we are almost out, and spread it in our parking area. We also made a decision on our furniture today. Mike liked a theater seating set that we found last week at the store where we got our other furniture. The problem was it was on clearance and there was only one. So, today we decided to get that and buy 2 chairs and 2 end tables for the living room. The only thing we need now is a daybed, for the grandkids, and a desk for the office. That should be really easy. Wednesday 10-8 Today we woke up to gray and drizzly day. Jimmy called us and told us 2 gravel trucks were on their way. We got more gravel for the road, we only have about 20 more loads to go LOL. But now we have a really good road from the top down to our culvert. We also got a load of small gravel for our walkway down to the house. The rest of the day was a forced day off because of the weather so we organized the coach and did some paperwork, you know bills. Thursday 10-9 This morning we went to David's to pick up more stuff. David and his wife just got back from a short trip to the Amish area in Ohio. They had a good time. When we got home we got everything ready for a burn pile. We loaded up the trailer and went down to the curlex pile. The cows dragged it all over so we had to re stack it and we finally got to burn the debris. Now our yard area is nice and clean. Mike is eying my clothesline. He doesn't like it where it can be seen. He wants to fence it in or something. I told him "we could always move the building again and put the clothesline behind that". Oh yeah, that will be fun. Mike also graded the gravel on the driveway. And we threw more rock into the ditch line. The leaves are starting to change. It should be really beautiful in another week or so. I called Lowe's about my tile. I special ordered 12x12 porcelain tile for my kitchen counter top. We brought them home and laid it out on the counter. It turns out the tile was only 11 1/2x11 1/2 and the grout lines would have been really big. I was very disappointed. I asked the manager if all tile was not the true 12x12. He went and measured some in the store and told me the ones in the store are 12x12 just like they are supposed to be. He told me to bring them back. I am very happy about that. Friday 10-8 This morning Mike and planned on going to Lowe's to return my tile, find another counter, and pick up more stuff. So we got up, showered, got dressed and looked nice and neat. You know, no work clothes. Well nothing ever really goes as planned because while I was getting ready, Howard showed up with our culvert. Howard stopped by yesterday and he was concerned because he couldn't get his truck across our ditch line to feed the cows hay. He has to start feeding them now because there is not enough grass for them to eat anymore. Mike and I already paid David for a 20ft culvert for this purpose but we haven't been able to pick it up. So Howard got it for us. Then as Howard was leaving one of Jimmy's guys shows up with a backhoe to help us with the wind generator. I went out to help Mike and Randy with the wind generator. First we had to stand it up, tie a chain around the pole, and hook it to the backhoe. Here they are lifting the wind generator. Standing it up. Getting it connected. Trying to get the chain off. Mike in the bucket so he can reach the chain. The wind generator is now up and now Mike has to connect it to the battery bank. Mike and Randy went down to work on the culvert. I brought the 4-wheeler down to help. While Randy dug out more of the ditch line Mike and I moved the culvert. Then we rolled the culvert into the ditch and covered it with dirt. Now we can drive across. Finally Mike and I connected the trailer to the Jeep and went to town. First we stopped at wally world. Mike went his way and I went mine. I found a really nice comforter for the bed so I grabbed it. I believe in the saying "you snooze, you lose". Anyway when Mike and I caught up he said he picked out the exact same comforter. Great minds think alike. Then we went to Lowe's to return my tile. Unfortunately it was raining so we couldn't get everything we wanted. We did find another counter that we will pick up when it is nice out. We also found a bathroom sink for our vanity. Remember we bought one from HD but it was damaged so we needed to get another one. All in all it was a good day. Saturday 10-11 We worked on the bathroom today. First we had to cut the holes in the vanity for the drain pipe in the bottom of the cabinet and also the hot and cold water lines through the back of the cabinet. It's always fun cutting different holes without any mistakes. There are no second chances. We got that all done and put the sink on top of the vanity to check it out. The sink looks great. Then we go to install the faucet with no luck. They now make different sized faucets for bathroom sinks and the faucet we have fits the damaged sink top. Life was so much easier when we didn't have so many choices. Sometimes I wish companies would just leave things alone. "If it ain't broke don't fix it". So now we need to get another faucet and more plumbing. We then installed the mirror medicine cabinet above the sink. That went well. Now we have tons of storage above the sink. Sunday 10-12 We had a really good and busy day. Mike started working on the roof first thing this morning. We have to connect the vent to the water heater and bring it through the roof to release any gases. We went inside and measured where the pipe has to go through the roof. Now, on top of the roof, Mike cuts a 4" hole to insert our pipe. This is the pipe going through the ceiling from inside the house. Mike installing the collar.  Our vent pipe and cap are done. While we were on the roof we also checked all the screws and found one hole, oops. Mike also cleaned the gutters and added more sealant. Back into the house. Here is Mike working on the gas water heater. The water heater is now done except for the gas hook up. Next we started working on the electric for my washer and dryer. Mike is running a separate line and outlet for this. Then Mike started doing the plumbing for my washer. We never installed sheet rock behind the washer because we wanted it to sit "in" the wall. Mike has everything hooked for my washer. I can't wait to start using it. I got the most energy efficient one I could find but it is still huge compared to the one in the motorhome. This washer only uses 142 KWH per year and that number is based on doing 8 loads of laundry per week and using an electric hot water heater. So for Mike and I this washer should hardly use any power. Both of our wind generators are going. Check it out. Two things I don't get about the wind generators. One- it is recommended that you put them very high for more wind and two-the smaller one should be easier to turn. Well we have 2 opposites. The larger wind generator was moving more than the smaller one and the larger wind generator isn't as high as the smaller one. I guess the books are wrong about that. And they are only about 15 feet apart. Here is a picture I took from the roof of the house. We started to fill our big tank with water for the first time and everything we did works. Mike went down to the house to hook up the water pump, prime it, and test the water lines in the house. This is always really scary because now you see of there are any leaks. We have also never used pex for plumbing before so we are a little nervous. Well he got the water running through the lines and we found one small leak in the water heater connection. Thankfully that was an easy fix. The toilet and shower both work, Woo Hoo. There is only one other problem. The water pump is going on too often which means there is another leak somewhere. Mike thinks it is the water pump itself. When he hooked it up he noticed a part was broken. So we may have to exchange that water pump and install one that isn't broken. It was getting too dark to do more so we called it a day. The house is almost livable. The furniture should be coming this week or next. We still have to hook up the sinks and also install the 6 new solar panels. Lots to do but we are getting there. I hope you all enjoyed This past week in the life of Mike and Lisa. Have a great week and I will write again next Monday. Lisa