We will be building in the spring of 2012

For those of you familiar with RVing, you already know there's the always necessary chore of emptying holding tanks. This is my least favorite part of the whole "trailer park girl" experience. The first time we had Priscilla's holding tanks pumped out was a particularly bad experience. The absolute inexperience of the guy who showed up that first day has scarred us both for life. All this fellow knew how to do was pump out porta-potties. He had only been on the job for two weeks when he showed up at our place. His boss was supposed to give him the rundown that morning on what to do to pump out an RV, but that never happened. The list of things he didn't know how to do ranged from not even knowing where Priscilla's clean-out valves were to not knowing how to operate his truck. Ras couldn't take it anymore and pretty much ripped his gloves off his hands and finished the job herself. Total exasperation! His incompetence did buy us one free pump-out the next time though.

Imagine a few interior decor additions and voila...
designer Outhouse! How cute is this?
                                                              photo credit

It seems like the holding tank for the toilet holds about three gallons. Now, I know that isn't true but the time between visits by our now much more experienced pump-out guy seemed very short...and very expensive! There must be a better way. An outhouse is an option but we would have to go back to the conservation authority for another permit, hire the LoEG to dig us a pit and build us a house over said pit. Rest assured, I would not be attempting to dig a hole this big with my pry bar and pickle jar. I would need a much bigger pickle jar to be sure!

We have decided to go the composting toilet route. No permit required, no need to dig a pit and no visits from the pump out guy necessary.

While wandering through the Cottage Life Show a couple of years ago we found a fantastic unit that requires no electricity and can be enclosed in a cute little house that we can build ourselves. Then once the cottage is finally built we can move the outhouse a little closer to the dock, although not too close...we wouldn't want to get the conservation authority's knickers in a knot. Hmm...maybe we can make it a dual purpose building, with two doors, one opening into a storage space for some tools or water toys.

Needless to say, we can hardly wait to start building our little designer outhouse in the spring. Not to wish time away, but we are already missing Turtle Falls. It's certainly not helping that the weather has been absolutely gorgeous this week. It would be way more fun sitting on the dock, looking at the lake and the surrounding fall colors, than sitting in our little backyard in the city looking at the hole in our hedge that looks out onto the soon-to-be-built monster home next door.

I shamelessly ask for your comments if you feel so inclined. I have been having so much fun with this blog and hope you have been enjoying it too.  Please click on the tiny little "0 comments"  link in the grey box at the bottom of each post, right beside "Posted by Mimi at..." My goal is to see something like "49 comments" or some similarly great number rather than just zero. We have loved your comments you have sent to us via email. Even better would be to leave your comments right on this blog so that they stay connected to the blog forever, rather than getting lost in our email inbox.

I hope to continue posting throughout the winter with some of the things we will learn about passive solar design and living off grid from our research and the courses we intend to take over the winter.


Thanks for...and please continue...reading!
Mimi

Closing the gate on the 2011 season at Turtle Falls

What country property worth its salt is without a gate at the entrance? A gate, for our situation, is most helpful at keeping out the curious waterfront property seekers. The "SOLD" sign certainly doesn't deter these people. It amazes me to no end how people will drive up just at the moment you've stripped off all your clothes to enjoy an outdoor shower with Mother Nature. The other 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day when fully clothed...no curious property seekers. Stinkin' damn Murphy!

The lack of tool selection at Turtle Falls makes for some very odd choices when it's time to tackle certain tasks. Take digging post holes for the gate, for instance. I decided to attempt to dig the two holes for the gate posts. If I hit rock, which is very likely on this land, then we would make a call to the LoEG and have the holes dug by machine. I had to try, at least.

Digging post holes with a pry bar and extracting the dirt with a pickle jar...definitely not the speediest way to dig a hole.

The shovel worked well for the first foot of the needed 3ft depth, but then it loses its usefulness because of the narrowness of the hole. Then I changed to a borrowed post hole digger and that didn't work because the dirt would completely fall out of the thing before I could lift it out of the hole. Hmm...now what? I have an old, borrowed, and extremely heavy pry bar that did the trick of breaking up the dense clay very nicely. But then the only thing I could find to get the dirt out of the hole was a pickle jar....didn't need to borrow the pickle jar. You read that right, I dug two 3ft deep holes with a pry bar and a pickle jar. Worked like a charm!

 Ras mixes concrete for the post holes near the water supply. The gate installed and the 3 tools that got the job done.

Setting the posts in concrete and installing the gate itself were easy by comparison. Here's hoping our efforts will make for outdoors showers with a whole lot more privacy from now on, although we will have to wait til next season to find out. This is, sadly, our last project for the season. Priscilla has been given the winterizing treatment and the new gate will stand guard now until the ice is off the lake in the spring. The winter months will be spent learning about passive solar design, solar panels and energy efficient appliances. I can only hope time flies as fast over the winter as it did this summer.

By the way, the Turtle Falls moniker found favour with 77% of voters in last months naming poll. Thanks to all the readers for helping us choose the name. Click here to read about how the name Turtle Falls came about.

Cheers,
Mimi

Giving phantom load the boot

Now that summer is over, our focus will turn from outdoor projects to the larger task of choosing the type of house we want to build and sizing a renewable energy system for it. Our goal is to build an off grid home with all the modern conveniences we have grown accustomed to over the years. The thought of this was a bit daunting at first having read that the typical off grid home runs on the same amount of electricity per day as the typical clothes dryer uses to dry one full load of towels. Having a look at our hydro bill, I thought it can't be done. If this little house we live in averages between 17 kWh/day in the summer to 39 kWh/day in the winter, there's no way we will ever reach our goal to have a self-sufficient renewable energy home.

A little research and a little knowledge can go a long way in taming fear. Doing more with less is the driving force behind living off-the-grid. Doing more with less does not mean doing without; it means being more efficient. A few months ago I started the exercise of determining the amount of energy each electricity-sucking item in our house consumes and where we could trim some excesses. I was nicely shocked to find out how easy it was to reduce 6,336 watts or 6.3 kWh per day without reducing the quality of our lives or adding extra workloads. Our last hydro bill, compared to the same billing period from last year, showed a reduction of 399 kWh, bringing our summertime daily average to just over 11.5 kWh/day.

The following chart lists what I changed and how many watts were saved each day. The yellow high-lighted items are strictly phantom loads that were reduced simply by switching things off or plugging into power bars that can be switched off. The next biggest reduction came from changing the type of light bulbs used in the rooms where we spend most of our time. I have the small added task of hanging one, maybe two, loads of laundry on a drying rack once a week...no biggie. The two question marks in the chart are there because my energy meter cannot be used to find the usage of the oven because of the oven's plug size.

Having seen the results of using energy more efficiently, and taking into consideration our house was built in 1938 with its lack of insulation in the walls and terribly inefficient duct work, I'm starting to believe that it will be possible to run a properly built, energy efficient house with the same amount of electricity our dryer uses for one load of laundry.

Some may look at a daily reduction of 6.3 kWh as a drop in the bucket and why such a big deal is made about saving approximately $200 per year. It's about taking a step in the right direction to reduce the amount we consume unnecessarily. If every household in North America were to take steps to eliminate just the phantom loads in their homes then there would be no more need to build new coal-fired or nuclear generating stations. These steps are easy and the benefit to homeowners is immediately measurable. The benefit to the environment will be massive.

Read this CBC article about the difference using electricity more efficiently can make.

"Studies show time and again that for every dollar spent on conservation there will be a $2 or $3 return," says Ben Chin, formerly vice-president of communications at the Ontario Power Authority. "Since 2006, we have spent $1.7 billion on conservation programs — and that has saved $3.8 billion in generation costs and has saved 1,700  megawatts."                                                                                               -CBC News, March 2011

Enthusiastically eliminating phantom loads everywhere,
Mimi

Rock jockeys

I can't believe it's already fall, as of today, and it will be soon time to close Priscilla up for the winter. That's a very sad thought. It seems like just last week that Priscilla rolled onto the lot and the whole summer was ahead of us. We got the things on our priority list achieved...dock, internet and hydro. The last item on our wish list for this year was to make the walking path to the dock a little less treacherous. I suppose the path is not that scary if you're a squirrel or a chipmunk but we have all ages and agility levels walking, sometimes running, to the dock and all it would take is to step on one acorn to roll you over the edge of the rock and it's 911 time. The pictures below show the path as it was. On the right, the grass at the top of the rock is the same patch of grass that Holly and Gary (Holly's hubby) are on in the left-hand picture. Gary's chair is on a good tilt there. Add some tequila to this mix and for sure there will be some spills in the future. This cannot be allowed, for the humans nor the tequila!

To solve the problem we had another extraordinary gentleman with a backhoe do a little digging for us. He uncovered a whole pile of rocks of which he made into a new pile of rocks but his pile of rocks was not nearly as pretty as Mother Nature's pile of rocks. Yikes...now what do we do?

First, I asked my sister for help. She loves landscaping with rocks...and she's as strong as two men, as my mom always says...and she has a dolly to help move the big rocks around more easily. Holly was a great help getting the flat stones in the ground for a walkway. Thanks sister! The walkway will be a work in progress as we find more flat rocks.

Next, we decided to build a retaining wall to use up the rock pile and disguise the exposed earth left behind by the excavation. Ras began by digging out a section of the remaining hill area where we want to have a bench. This is a perfect spot to enjoy the morning sunshine with a coffee. It's the perfect spot for getting out of the sun in the afternoon on a really hot day or the perfect spot to get out of the wind when it's too chilly to sit on the dock on a blustery day. It's just an all 'round perfect spot for a bench.

Ras worked like a trooper to dig out the bench spot, encountering numerous rocks and roots of all shapes and sizes. Half way into clearing the space she hit a monster rock which may have stopped a lesser woman...but not Ras. She and her trusty hammer pounded and scraped away at the dirt around that rock until she achieved her goal. The rock was too big for us to move from its place by the time it was finally unearthed because we were pretty tired so we waited for Holly's next visit. Who needs a backhoe when you have my sister, Holly? She didn't even need to use the dolly!

Ras was the search and rescue girl throughout this mission, finding and lugging nicely shaped rocks from all corners of the lot...as if there weren't enough rocks in the pile already from the excavation. I had the fun job of stacking...and unstacking...then re-stacking until the fit was just right. There was more than one occasion for bad words to escape into the atmosphere as I repeatedly smashed my fingers between the rocks. You would think after the first time I'd know enough not to do it again. Kids just never get tired of the things they love!!  Here's the result of the worst of the smashings. The index finger is doubly crimson because it got smashed twice. Double the bad words!

And here's the final result of all the lugging and finger smashing. We'll replace the one chair with a tete-a-tete bench of a similar style in the spring. Although I will have my lovely crimson nails for months, it was all worth it. The walkway to the dock is much easier to manage and the time spent overlooking the water from this viewpoint will bring many years of joy. To use one of my mom's quotable quotes, "It's a thing of beauty, and a joy forever."

Looking forward to seeing the fall colours from here,
Mimi

Why the LoEG are so extraordinary

Contractor Mark finally came by to give us copies of these pictures. Mark lives just on the other side of the lake from us and built the floating dock at his place and then "motored" it over to our place. These guys have tried every method of transporting large docks through the water and say this way ranks right up there as the best. Al, the mastermind behind the idea, has been thinking about this for some time and this was the maiden voyage for his plan. Here are some pictures to show this adventure.

Al attaches an old 9.9 hp to one end of the dock

Al and Lee getting ready to launch

Under way and everything is going according to plan

Somehow, this picture makes me think of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn...or is it Deliverance?

Anchored at the rock here and fastening the last of the deck boards after the motor has been removed

We love our League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...very ingenious men!

Cheers,
Mimi

Refrigerator frustrations

You may remember from an earlier post how unimpressed I was with the amount of electricity Priscilla's fridge uses...8 kWh per day, the same amount our whole house in the city uses per day in the summer. We are thankful to have the option to switch the fridge from electric to gas operation. It's hard to determine how much the fridge consumes since it is not the only appliance using gas. We are at least able to confirm that on electricity the fridge costs us approximately $17.19 per month to run. Compare that to the $5.10 per month our full-sized fridge in the city costs us...not good!! On gas, so far, we were able to run the fridge, the stove top and the water heater for 2 months on a tank that we knew was close to empty. It costs $25 to fill a 30 lb propane tank. Even if that's all the info we gather it costs $12.50 per month to run the fridge, stove and water heater on gas versus $17.19 per month, just for the fridge, on hydro. And we know for a fact that a full 30 lb tank will supply the gas use of Priscilla for much longer than 2 months.

Our solar generator on wheels so it can follow the sun

Life is good. The sun finally decided to shine for more than a minute and we are able to run the whole trailer with our solar generator...at least during the day. We decided we would plug into the grid when the sun goes down to conserve our battery for those inevitable blackouts. The 1800 watt generator will only run for so long unless it is being continually charged by the sun. As soon as the sun is up, we resume our off grid status. When the sun is shining brightly the generator even handles the draw from the toaster or the electric kettle. Very cool.

And just like that, life is a little bit less than good for a moment. The fridge has defrosted itself because the pilot light had gone out some time earlier. We attempt several times to relight with no luck. Our only option is to cook everything that is in the freezer and plug into the grid. Yikes!! I think my blood pressure is matching the escalating numbers on the hydro meter. We are definitely not sticking to the agreement of reduce 3 kWh in the city to use 3kWh in the country. Also, we are completely unable to use the solar generator now since there is no way it can handle a constant draw of this size, even if the sun is shining. This is not making me a very happy camper. Ras is secretly happy though because she knows it's only a matter of time until we have a new, bigger fridge at Priscilla.

We try to be sensible about this situation and rationalize that it doesn't make sense to get the new fridge now since we have only a few more weeks before we close the place up for winter. The problem with the fridge is its lack of travel. These old trailer fridges work best when they are travelling, otherwise the fluids responsible for cooling don't flow through the system properly when the fridge is not perfectly level, resulting in no cooling. Apparently Priscilla must be sitting at a bit of a tilt. It stymies us both because every time we take out the level...things are level. Off to my trusty how to fix everything in a trailer websites. Have I mentioned how much we love our new internet tower? I find out we need to burp the fridge! That would be great if all that means is slapping the back of the fridge a few times. No, this means disconnect the ac, dc and propane connections, remove the fridge from its cubby hole and turn it upside down for 24 hours. Then turn the fridge right side up and let it sit for another 24 hours and then return it to its cubby hole and reconnect everything. This will get the fluids moving and everything should work again...but for how long? Until the next freezer load of food has to be cooked all at once, I guess.

Since burping the fridge seemed like a ridiculous waste of time, we headed into town to look at replacement fridges. It turns out there is this fantastic little Danby fridge at Costco that gives us almost 3 more cubic feet of interior space and only uses about 855 watts (0.85kWh) per day...almost one tenth what the current fridge uses per day. This will allow us to use the solar generator again during the day...and bring my blood pressure back down to normal.

We have decided to put the purchase of this little fridge on hold 'til spring. In the meantime, I'm still looking into that dehydrated food the astronauts eat.

Cheers,
Mimi