Last time I said I would tell you about our power alert system.
Don’t get worried, this isn’t going to get too technical.
I realized early on that not being at Our Country Cottage all the time would leave us open to some major problems if something was to fail to work properly, especially if power was to fail. Seems a little funny to be talking about this now, after an undetected power failure. But anyway.
The original thought was to have some way that our cottage could tell us if power fails. To that end, I found our phone company had devices that work from cell phone signals that would provide internet access. I didn’t want to spend a lot of cash for internet up there so this seemed like a perfect solution. For very little cash we got very little data, 100 meg. Just right for the odd email. It has been working flawlessly. Cell phone signal at our country cottage is a bit hit and miss. If you have your phone in the right place , I know of 3 or 4 places cell phones will work in the living room and a couple of places you can lean your phone to send or get a text. The place I put this device seems to work all the time. Up high on the kitchen cabinets, against an outside wall closest to where I think a cell tower might be.
OK, that gets us limited internet. There are several single board computers out there that are very inexpensive. One is called a Raspberry Pi. This runs a free operating system called Linux and can be very easily programmed using a scripting language called Python. The Raspberry Pis are run headless, that is to say without monitor or keyboard. I use my laptop to connect to them via a local WiFi and a Windows program called remote desktop.
I built a small circuit that would let the Pi detect if there was or was not AC power. When the Pi detects power has failed it is programmed to email me and tell me so. A big part of this system is an uninterruptible power supply. It will provide power for a short time after the AC power has failed to keep the Pi running and the cellular internet device powered so that the email will be sent.
This system saved me a couple of times last year. Once when a breaker was tripped and disconnected the generator from the cottage (a value was set too low and was easily corrected) and once when the oil level in the generator got too low and the generators self protection system stopped it from starting (topped up the oil and it started right up).
There were a couple of problems. Every so often the program just seemed to stop running. I would just manually start it up again and it would carry on but I would not know that unless I was there and tested it. The big mistake I made was only knowing when there was a problem. No problem, no email. This is the main reason for the freeze up issue of late. The system was down for about eight days before I stumbled on it.
To be a bit more proactive I now have two Raspberry Pi systems and two uninterruptible power supplies. So if one fails the other will work.
Each system now emails me on alternate days, twice a day, to let me know it is OK and the temperature at the time of email. (I added a temperature sensor to them so I have an indication that it’s getting close to freezing inside).
The power fail program is different from the OK program and originally had to be started manually. I now have it set up to run the program automatically on boot up. So if a Pi resets for some unknown reason, the power alert program will start by itself.
They both should email me if power fails.
But, you ask, what if the cellular internet device fails? There is only one of those. There is only one of those, but if that fails I won’t get my, all is OK message with the temp and I will know something is wrong within half a day or so, max.
I just got an email from Our Country Cottage, by the way, saying all is OK and the temp is 7.5 C. Must be cloudy today. Remember, there is no heat in the cottage at the moment, so not too bad.
Feeling confidant in my alert system again.
And now….
In The Beginning
This is the section that I try to remember how it all began, this time the cottage design, or at least how we got to the final design.
Way back, it started as a sketch of a compound, with a main house and numerous out buildings. One for every one of my “hobbies”. This included a recording studio, a guest house for recording artists, a photography studio including a dark room (I told you it was back a ways), an electronics lab, and a small movie theatre. There were probably more that slip my mind at the moment. My significant other was/is still is not aware of most of them. Dreams dreams.
When we started working on the design together, things got a bit more real. We were first drawn by the kit log home ads found in many magazines. Then came home and garden shows along with log home shows and on and on. There was always one exhibitor that had the “How to Design Your Dream Home” kit. Cost was somewhere from $10 to $25 or so and included the latest shiny full color catalogue of their products built and finished by masters. Beautiful! And then there was the pad of squared paper to draw out floor plans and a getting started guide, some included a pencil and a design template so you could quickly place your fridge, stove and sink. What they didn’t include was your final design and an indication of the pain it would take to get there.
I am now looking at, what is probably, the last planning kit we picked up. There is “A Step-by-step Guide to Bring Your Dream Home to Life”. Actual title. Its 4 pages long with the first page being just a picture. Yes there is a pencil.
Did we get anything out of these kits. In the long run they did manage to keep the fire lit and fueled our enthusiasm. So maybe not a complete waste.
It was decided that we would like to be as eco friendly as possible and we were lucky enough to find a couple in town that design very efficient and eco friendly houses that could and should be off grid. Their town house is a marvelous example of what could be achieved within the city limits. Very cool.
We hired them to design an eco friendly off the grid cottage for us on our property. It started with the question, what do you want the cottage for? It took a bit of soul searching and pondering to come up with an answer. My sole mates concepts were somewhat different than mine, on the get go, and possibly to this day. We replied with a two part answer with some overlap and went from there. After many meetings and generating many design revisions a set of construction plans were drawn up and the design was complete. Except for one thing. We didn’t like the overall look of the place, even though it was designed for maximum efficiency and eco friendly up the whazoo. We didn’t like the look.
It reminded me of a shoe box from the outside.
So, after a deep breath, we started all over again, right from the beginning… Log home shows, dealer show homes in our city, design kits.
I mentioned magazines and there are plenty out there. They can give you a view of what could be yours in their main article, show casing spectacular and spectacularly out of reach properties. But, also in these mags are ads for more modest samplings. This is where our next idea came from.
One day we saw something that was completely different to us, a circular house.
A little research found one within a two hour drive, and not to far from our property. We went for a visit. A very neat home. So neat we went to visit the factory where they were made. It was a six or eight hour drive, so we made a week end of it, saw the facility, got the latest and greatest info on these unique domiciles, and had a good time. It took a while for us to come to the conclusion that the design although different was not us either. That being said we have become friends with the couple that owned the home we visited.
Again, we started from the beginning. Frustrating or what, but not giving up. We visited one of the remaining kit show homes in our city. This time we looked at it differently. The actual show home, that is. If we just flip the design, add a few things here, take away a few things there, compress this expand that and there you go. It is a lot easier to modify something you can look at, and stand in, than to start from square zero.
The salesman also ran a construction company that was experienced at building these things. A big plus for me. I wouldn’t have to be the site manager trying to arrange all the trades etc. He also gave me some valuable advice, when we got down to it. I had always envisioned putting the cottage on a pad. That is to say no basement at all just a concrete pad. He persuaded me to put in a crawl space just for ease of plumbing etc. The footings had to go below the frost level, anyway, it was not that much more to add a floor for a crawl space. This expanded to our full height utility room and the full height battery room. I have not looked back since. Another one of his ideas was to use powder coated rebar for out railings outside. They look great.
And, yes he warned us of the ice and snow sliding off of metal roofs but we went with metal anyway.
So that is how we ended up with what we have.
Back to the present.
I have been thinking a lot about the failure at Our Country Cottage and have come to a few conclusions.
I some respects it is good that it happened like it did. Now I know what will happen if power fails again in the cold of winter. Sure I am looking forward to a new and much better generator. It should be way more reliable than the previous one, but sooner or later all things fail.
Now, because I have seen first hand what happens when inside temps get too low, I know what to do. Get the water out of the toilet tanks, turn off the well water and drain as much as you can. Open up all taps. Relocate all freezable liquids and on and on. Maybe keep a gallon or so of RV antifreeze around to pour in the sinks and toilets.
I still haven’t seen the end of this but I won’t be so panicked if it happens again.
By the time you hear this I should have some new pix up on the web site. They will include what frozen toilets looks like and how I dealt with them along with some winter wonderland Our Country Cottage pix. Yup there are still roses to be smelt, just don’t put you tongue on them :).
Also, if you would rather read this stuff, or read along, go to the web site under Podcast. The formatting is much more readable there. I don’t know, but iTunes just mashes it all together and I think the other two aren’t much better.
If you go to the website at our countrycottageanarrative.com you will find four headings.
Home – the home page where you start at
Our Country Cottage – this is where all the pix are
Podcast – you can listen to, and or, read the podcast notes there
Contact – easy place to send me an email
Please note that the pix under Our Country Cottage have several layers so take time to explore.
Next podcast I will let you know why I am seemingly, so willing to give up on the generator so quickly, and “In the Beginning” looks at the first days of construction.
And again
For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at “ourcountrycottageanarrative.com”
If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the “Friends of OCCaN” Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at John@ourcountrycottageanarrative.com.
Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :).
The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes , Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released.
Till next time, have a good one.