New Water Tank, Gas Lines, Heater

All our snow was just about gone because of warm spring weather, but we got a good little blast of snow the other day. I like it. It will make things nice and slimy and prolong the work life from getting busy for a little longer. Things were actually starting to get pretty dry out there.

I spent $200.00 on fire extinquishers the other day. One for my rental unit, one for the garage, and one for each floor of the house. Thats 5 extinquishers. I guess, just knowing that soon there will be real propane flowing through the gas lines, and also getting closer to playing with electricity, I just thought maybe I should have a fire extinguisher in the area.

I was pretty busy today with all the gas lines. Just getting them all to fit and all that. I still have to take them all apart and apply teflons tape or pipe dope and tighten things up. Just wanted to see what it all looks like before I make it too permanent.

I also hung the north heater. This is the second one I installed. Still gotta install the vent system for this one. These babies are meant to be more of a backup heat system if I am away for longer periods of time in colder weather. They are probably not the most energy efficient heat source that one could be running, but it is nice to have them there in case. I'll be doing alot of experimenting with the heating systems next winter. (I hope). lol.

I bought a new 81 gallon water pressure tank. $450. I have been looking at this tank for quite some time now while trying to find a better deal. It'll work, but now I want to buy another one just like it. The more the pressurized water storage, the less the pump cycles. And this way, I can wait till the sun is shining then hit the water pump switch to stock up for the evenings. I have tanks of different sizes that I want to have in the system and as far as I know it should all work together, but it is possible that it could cause some problems that may need to be ironed out. We'll see, I guess.

So I am still kinda trying to get myself all back into the groove of things again. I'm going to get a bunch more supplies in town tomorrow, and then I just might go to work a little later on at the pay job just to try and get that all over with. Still got a little catching up on truck and trailers.


Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.

Hot Water and Heat

It has been a busy winter for the truckin man. That would be me. I hav'nt really had much opportunity for working on the house all winter long, but spring has sprung and I am just trying to get myself all motivated for building again. I still have a little bit of stuff going on at work in the shop and then I'm hoping to go pretty steady on my acerage project for awhile. Time sure seems to fly when you got stuff going on, I find.

Today I was doing a little bit of gas line arranging, and working on my heater vent and I also hung the hot water heater. I'm kinda concentrating on trying to get all the gas appliances plumbed in so I can get it inspected and have some kind of heat source going on. Then I can start the mudding process I guess. I might even get some quotes on that and maybe hire the drywall mudding out, just to help speed up the whole process a bit. They could be doing that while I am doing some other things outside. But it will all depend cost I guess. We'll see. I totally plan to be in this house before winter. I know, how many times have I said that. lol. I know I am slow.

Anyway, there will be two of these space heaters in this same room in the basement. These will be the main heat source for the house while I am away for prolonged periods in the winter time. They should keep all the water lines etc from freezing up. I can run an optional fan with them, but they do not need the fan to operate, so it don't matter if there is a malfunction with the power system, I should still be unfrozen. I do plan to have a forced air furnace also, but being off the grid and making my own power, I don't want to rely on that by itself as there will be a fair bit of power demand for it to operate. The forced air furnace will be more for middle of the night use in the winter time as the wood stove dies down, and it will probably be the main heat source for the spring, summer and fall seasons where the days are warmer and longer and more power being generated. When I am home in the colder weather, the wood stove will be the most utilized heat source.

I purchased the on demand hot water heater on ebay. It is the item to the left hanging on the wall in the above picture. It is new, but still, I sure hope it works. They sell this same unit at Home Depot in Grande Prairie for $999.99 for a natural gas one under a different brand name of course, but it is generally the same unit. And the vent system is roughly $200.00.If I ordered the water heater for propane, it would be about another $200 extra, which sure seems rediculous to me. Would probably be close $1500 when all is said and done. This one I bought on ebay costed me about $800 for everything. It is supposed to be able to supply a house with 3 bathrooms. It won't ever have to work very hard at my house to keep up. It has input of 180,000 btu, but I can hardly see that ever being utilized.

There is the direct vent for the propane space heater hanging on the wall.

And a close up of it. There are two pipes going into the heater from the outside. The 5" pipe supplies the combustion air from the outside, and there is a 3" pipe that runs inside the 5" intake pipe for the exhaust. Soon there will be another vent beside this one for the hot water heater. It will look a little different, but it is direct vent also and works the same as this one. With direct vent appliances, I am not using up air from inside the house, and so I am not creating a negative air pressure inside and don't need to bring in more makeup air. It's something we gotta worry about with the tightly wrapped homes in my area. My wood stove and dryer will be using air from inside though.

So anyway, I'm just slowly getting started with my little house project again, but I am still at work at for a few more days yet before I am really free to giver fulltime on the house again.

Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.
 

Temporary Propane Line and Cold Weather

Winter has finally arrived in Northern Alberta. It has been a very abnormally mild winter up until now. Now it is all of a sudden, real stupid cold. There don't seem to be such a thing as in between weather, which would be perfect for winter in my book. Me and my poor little dog almost froze to death last night. Actually I was pretty toasty under all those blankets, but the little dog woke up shaking pretty bad. For the first time since we been chumming together, I actually had to bring her in under the blankets with me, and keep her warm. I kinda felt like a mother hen there for awhile. But we survived. The thermometer on the wall read 8 celcius, but it is mounted high on the wall, pretty close to the ceiling. It was much colder than that down below. I have decieded that this is my last winter in this little shack. I don't mind the little, but that cold, just aint good.



A few days ago, I finally hooked the shack into the big 1000 gallon propane tank. And just in time too. The hundred pound bottles don't last long in this weather and are a pain to be changing all the time. It has been in the minus 30's all day today, and tonight is supposed to get right close to minus 40 plus a wind chill factor. I heard them saying on the radio wind chills of minus 50 or colder. That will defianately put the propane situation to the test. So far so good. Anyway, I got a piece of 30 foot pipe from a brother of mine. It costed me a 40 pounder of Gibsons Gold. I needed something to protect my propane line as it crossed the driveway.

I scraped some of the packed snow and ice off the driveway, with the backhoe, where the pipe was to be. Then I brought in a bucket or two of gravel that I have stored away for emergencies. I raked the gravel in there so all the pipe would be supported from movement when I drive over it.

Then about 3 buckets of gravel over top. The finished product. If you look close enough, you will see the propane hose coming out the end of the pipe, ready to be hooked up.

Then the hose coming out the other end and over to the wood pile.

Then from the wood pile to the tank. That is 150 feet of 3/4 inch propane line in all. (Three 50 footers). I went in to get a permit to do this, and it costed $150.oo. Did'nt really expect that to happen, but it did. Pleading and arguing did'nt change their minds. lol.

This is the only picture of this post that was taken today. After discovering how cold it was in the shack this morning, I decided to go to town and get some syrofoam insulation for the floor of my shack. I know it aint pretty, but it sure does feel better than that cold floor. I had a pop explode on the floor once this winter at about 3 in the morning one night. Scared the daylights outta me. Im not quite done with the floor yet, but it does make a little difference so far.

In the basement of the house, I have been trying to get my gas lines all done, but I hav'nt had a whole lot of time. This heater is one of two that will be down in the basement. I am hoping that these two heaters will keep things from freezing up when I am away for prolonged periods of time.

There's a glance at the wood stove that I am getting real eager to be stokeing up. I don't even care if I have to get up a couple times in the night to do that, as long as I am nice and toasty. I love the warm and I'm really starting to hate the cold. I'm not going to spend another winter in the shack, I just decided that. I will either be in the house or migrated south with the geese.


Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.

Some Stuff

I hope everyone had a good Christmas holiday. I finally had a few days off from work myself for a change. It was good. I hav'nt done a darned thing on the house since the last blog, however I did find some new aquired items. I got my 1000 gallon propane tank and the next day it was filled to about 75% full. 80% is the maximum allowed, but it was a pretty cold day, and just incase I don't happen to use any of it by the time summer rolls around, I kinda thought we should maybe hold back a bit and allow for expansion on the hotter days. I kinda wanted to buy my own used tank and I will be kinda keeping my eyes open for a good deal some day. This one costs $180/year to rent, and $175 to bring it out. That price includes the haul away I understand. It costed $2142.66 to fill the tank to 75%, including taxes. That is 2967 liters of propane. Usually a fill from empty to 80% would 3200 liters.

This is my honda 2000 generator that I have been using ever since I moved out here. I actually purchased this baby brand new on ebay and it came from somewhere in North Carolina if I remember correctly. I managed to save myself a little over $300 on it by the time all the shipping and importation fees etc. were all said and done. They are expensive for the size, but they are quiet, and very reliable. It is the inverter type generator also. It hardly ever gets used in the summer, but this time of the year I start it up quite often as the sun is pretty low and not out for very many hours in the winter up here.

I managed to get my Drolet woodstove home. This sucker weighs about 375 lbs.

So used the backhoe to shove it into the house. I did'nt take it down stairs yet, just incase there may be some reason that it may not pass the inspection for some reason or another. Maybe it's too big or something, who knows. I don't think so, but it's just better to be safe than sorry I guess. I think I can get it downstairs myself easy enough, but bringing it back up could be a bit of a chore.

I went auction saleing again and purchased a new generator. I looked up powetek on the internet, but could'nt find it, although I think I figured out that this is actually quite a popular generator, just sold under alot of different names. $600.00. I see the same thing advertised quite aften ranging from $1200-over $2500. It is diesel and is supposed to be quite quiet when in action. It is not the fancy inverter style generator, but I'm going to try it out and see how it goes anyway. I was kinda planning on a Honda eu65000, but they cost over $5000.00 new. That just don't seem very frugal to me, unless I get a real good deal on one someday.

There she is out of the box. A little more power for when I am in the house to charge a much larger battery bank than I am using now.

I also bought some other goodies at the auction. The contents of these 3 boxes is propane hose and electrical cables. A big industrial camp company was selling out the Grande Praire, and Grimshaw divisions of their company. This trailer load costed me $55.00.

Inside one the boxes is these hoses. It is alot more than I will be needing, but better to have too much than not enough, I guess. I am planning on running some hose from the 1000 gallon tank to my shack temporarily. 200 feet of 1/2 inch above ground lpg hose would have costed me over $300 to buy new in town. I feel that I have done pretty well on this purchase although, I still hav'nt run any propane line yet. It will be alot more simpler and cheaper to run propane from the big tank. When I fill the 100 pound bottles it costs me .945/ liter compared to .6878/ liter from the big tank.

Anyway, country life is treating me real well still, even though I am still living in the shack. Don't think I could ever go back to town living. I don't know how busy things are going to be in the new year, but I am sure looking forward to spring so I can get right after my little project again. I may find time before spring to get some things done, but I really can't say for sure. Surely this has got to be my last winter in this shack though. I hope. Happy New Year.


Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.

My life. November update.

I appologize that I hav'nt been on here much lately. Just incase anyone is so curiously waiting for an update. There really has'nt been much to blog about lately. The summer is gone and I'm still not in the house. But hey, thats ok. With me it is anyway. Whats the panick, I'm already living the dream. I have now lived totally off grid for 2 years as of Oct 25, and I am just coming into the 3rd winter of living in the shack. I'm kinda starting to feel like Richard Proenneke. Not quite though, he did'nt have an interenet connection.

Anyway, I really did'nt get a whole lot more accomplished on the house project since my last post. I have been fairly busy at work. I have had time off, but you just don't feel very ambitious after all the work at times. I have always worked the busy times, and holiday, play or do my own thing in the slow times. Gotta grab it when it is there. I do have plans in the near future to be pretty much done with bustin my ass working my life away. I'll always do a little here and there, once in awhile probably, but I would really like to be more of an independent homesteader type guy. I have big hopes and dreams. I've practicly got it all planned out. I just hope it goes kinda like it is all planned. That's kinda weird just saying something like that, because usually my plan is to have no plan. You know, just kinda go with the flow, but I do have a plan. I am starting to get real eager to get into the house for now though.

I am trying to get at heating. The above picture is the pad I built for my 1000 gallon propane tank that should be coming tomorrow, (Nov 16 2010) The last couple times I filled my 100 pound tanks for the shack I noticed that propane is cheaper now than it has been all summer. I'm thinking I want to buy propane now, before it goes up. That being said, I wonder if it will drop more for some unknown reason. Like maybe the double dip recession that you sometimes hear about possibly happening. I suppose it could, but I think I will take a chance on it anyway. It will probably cost me somewhere in the area of $2200.oo CAD to fill the tank, but I'll know more when I see the bill I guess.

I managed to smuggle some prime firewood home one day. We had a hoe sitting out on a job that was pretty close to an old log deck that people were bucking up and taking home. I threw a few scoops on the lowboy and brought it home. I don't think they were planning on salvaging this stuff anymore. I was told to help myself, so I did.

I went auction saling and picked up a turtle tank to haul water in. I'm not hauling water yet, but when I do, this will be handy to just leave in the pickup at times. Whenever I happen to be going by the water station, I'll just bring a load home.

Then my boss had these big ones. I can't remember, but I think they are 4500 hundred liters or more. It costed me a big bottle of vodka for both of them. My plan for these is for summer storage of water for general yard use. Livestock, garden, fire fighting or whaterver. Sometimes the creek runs and sometimes it is just a trikle, but when it is running, I will fill these for dryer times and convenience. I suppose I could use one for hauling to the cistern. Two of these full would probably fill the cistern. The cistern is about 3500 gallons.

Oh ya, by the way it snowed here and it is pretty cold, I think winter has arrived. Today I finally shut off the fridge in the RV. Seems things in the fridge were freezing and things in the freezer where thawing, so I guess it is time.

I purchased a wood stove awhile back, but it had to be ordered in. It's not here yet. After I purchased it, I realized that you can't hook combustion air right to the stove from ouside. Something I kinda wanted in a woodstove, but oh well, I'll bring in some outside air another way I guess. I'm also wondering if I should have got a bit smaller one. Sometimes I get thinking the little house is a mansion. I know it will seem like one when I compare it to the shack anyway.

I will try to be on here more often. We sometimes do have a bit of a slow down this time of year, before the real winter work starts up, so I might concentrate on getting some heat in the house soon. Thanks for not deleting me from your friends list for being absent for so long. We'll talk to ya in a bit.


 
Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.

Caribou

I sure don't see many of these critters in my travels usually. Actually this is the second one I've ever seen in my life. A caribou. aka: reindeer(I think). I was a fair distance away, so the pictures are'nt the greatest. I put on three pics, but it was just the one animal. Moose, elk, deer and black bear are all pretty commen to see on a weekly or daily basis, but this guy was quite a sight.

It has been very busy with working out in the bush the last two weeks. I don't even need a house as I just seem to live in a peterbilt truck most of the time. I even had to sneak into a camp and borrow the shower one night. We have a big oilfield job in the Grand Cache area and it really keeps us truckers smokin trying to get all the equipment there.

Since my last post, not a whole lot got done on the house. I did manage to get a little more drywall up though. It sure won't take long to finish hanging drywall if I ever get around to it.


Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.

Starring Contest

After having supper, I got up to get something from the kitchen area of my shack, and to my surprise there was a deer standing on the top of the hill right outside the window of the shack. It kinda caught me by surprise at first. The deer was looking at me as I was very still trying to remember where the camera was. When it started eating some weeds on the hill I made my grab for the camera. We had a bit of a starring contest, but obviously, I won. I am always looking over my shoulder and checking around before going outside from the shack. That could have easily been a bear, which if it was would more than liking run away at the sound of me opening the door, but you never know.

The following pictures are in no particular order, just a bunch of random pics since my last post.

Since my last post I did find some time to build, but I did work at the pay job a fair bit too. I just had a pretty good splurt of work and today was the first day back building for awhile.

I finally got the loft all insulated and the vapour barrier up. I also managed to get a little more drywalling done. Still a bit more drywall hanging to do yet though, but it is getting narrowed down. So far I have purchased 66 panels of drywall. I did'nt think a small house like this one would take that much. I might even have to get a little more yet, but I'm not real sure yet.

All the heavy rainfall that we have been getting has sure been taking it's toll on the creek banks. I've owend this property for probably over ten years and have never seen anything like this. Build a house overlooking the creek and guess what happens. lol. I'm not real concerned at the time, but I do have plans of doing some kind of erosion control for future flooding. If it were to rain like this for a few years straight, I would probably start to worry a bit if I did'nt do something. The water level is'nt overly high in this photo, this is just some of the aftermath.

I have been doing a fair bit of trucking lately. When I snapped this photo, I was kinda stranded out in the middle of no where for a bit. There is four belts on this truck, and for some reason they all blew off. I suspect one broke and caused all the rest to derail. I managed to salvage one belt for each set of pulleys to finish hauling what I had to haul and then get home. Alot of squealing was going on when the fan kicked in. So I managed to finish the day with half the belts anyway.

The insulation in the loft ceiling is R40 value. I thought would take a shot of the space above the insulation which will be the ventilation space. You want to have some ventilation above your insulation. On my house the air flows up through the soffits under the roof over hang and goes out through the vented ridge cap. That's what it is supposed to do anyway.

Just a shot of some of the wetness we've had around here lately.

Before I did my drywall surrounding the tub, I wanted to test it for leaks. My first test actually failed. What a mess downstairs. So I redone the drain and overflow installation, and this time it was good. But, as I was pumping the water out of the tub, I accidentaly bumped the drain plug with my pump, and I made another mess down stairs. I don't have the tub completely connected in the basement yet.

Disclaimer--IMPORTANT


This is a personal blog, mainly for my own use. I am building a house with my own two hands, but I am learning alot of things as I go. I do not claim to know what I am doing, or if anything I do is even close to being done correctly or safely. So please, if you are planning on using any of my ideas or methods for your own use, please get professional advice before actually following through with your actions. I will not be held responsible for any injuries or damages of any kind caused by information or comments from this blog.