Hi.
I know it's been a very long time since my last post and I do apologize if by any little chance someone has been waiting. I guess one could say I took a break. I can actually remember a fellow blogging friend, John (The Analog Man), requested a certain post about solar power usage and statistics etc. I hav'nt forgotten about you John, I will get something together sometime soon. I got kind of lazy in the building department there for awhile, but now, I am starting to get a little tired of looking at all the same ceiling joists in the kitchen and insulation up in the loft where I sleep at night. I think I need a change. I started the loft more than a month or two ago.
The above picture is what is done in the loft so far. It is the largest area of ceiling in the house. The total area of loft to do is 504 sq feet. I have 156 sq ft done and that leaves 348 to go. I'm just about 1/3 done the loft. lol. This stuff is pretty slow putting up, especially when doing it by yourself. The store ran out of this stuff after I started and I could'nt seem to find the same stuff in town anywhere. However I did finally find pretty close to the same in a different store now. Totally different packaging and brand etc, but it sure does look like the same product. I bought enough to do the main floor ceiling and I compared the loft with that. I think it will work. I'll have to go buy that store out too I guess.
Above pic shows the kitchen ceiling I just got done today. That is about 100 sq ft. And that leaves the living room (another 100 sq ft), and the bathroom (roughly 36 sq ft), and the rest is open to the loft.
In other news, I went on a little road trip recently from Feb 14-Feb 28.
The map above shows all the places we stayed over night. We were in Las Vegas for 3 nights and the rest were one nighters. The furthest north dot is Grande Prairie, Alberta, the starting point. Then we rolled clockwise until we got back to Grande Prairie again. I really liked that trip, and about the only thing that was wrong with it is that I'm not still down there. We've been in 8 US states and 2 Canadian provinces.
This is JoAnn my travelling partner and her car. The gas on this trip costed a little over $600, which I thought was pretty decent. Rooms were not too bad either, as we were splitting the costs. We would usually book rooms one day in advance finding some good deals on expedia.com or booking.com.
I'm looking at the Pacific ocean in the above pic. It is far away view from here, but it was my first look at any ocean and it was a pretty special moment for me. lol. We eventually did get closer looks and even walked some beaches. Watched some elephant seals, and even saw signs of whales. Anyway, I went from temps of 22c-28c. (71-86 F) here in the states.
To this again at home. The morning after I got home, it was -38c (-37f). What a difference. I am planning on spending some more winter time in the south in the future. Not sure if it will be next winter for sure or not, but sometime.
Before I left on our little journey I had to do some preparations as my house was going to be left all alone for 2 weeks in very cold and snowy weather. The first thing was to empty out the deep freeze that is in the house. And then simply shut the power off. Just a push of a button. The bar-b-que became the freezer for a day or two until I put them into moms deep freeze before we left. Never know if a chinook is going to blow in or not. When I got back from the vacation, I used the bar-b-que to keep my frozen goods frozen again as there was really no point in running the deep freeze until the weather got warmer, and it eventually did. I haven't started the generator since February 12 2014. That's over a month now. I'm pretty much on the free power plan now until about November again, except for maybe the odd bad weather spell.
