This episode I will tell you about my recent encounters with Our Country Cottage and as promised In The Beginning, month 20 I will tell you about one of the more trying months of the build. I found out that the month wasn’t all bad though, it just seemed like it. Also, I will talk a bit about back up generators, in particular, ours.
On with ITB, In The Beginning, month 20, March.
This is where I try to figure out what happened using the pictures, emails, texts and invoices I kept from that month. To give you an idea I received 47 emails and sent 35, just in that one month and just relative to OCC.
I also paid 12 visits to OCC including every day from the 25th and a couple of days into the next month.
If you remember, from ITB month 19, we have just managed to get water into Our Country Cottage.
I had left the utility room in a mess, just dumping the hose and whatever down the hatch and leaving. So the next day, and 1st of the month, I went back to clean up. Upon entering I found the control panel with several errors flashing away. They all seemed to clear, OK. Clean up in the utility room had the hose being much easier to handle, now that it had warmed up a bit. There was a fair amount of water on the floor mixed in with plastic that been used to protect stuff from the fire retardant that was sprayed on the utility room ceiling. Shop towels and rags were used to clean up and I noticed some water dripping from a large nut near the bottom of the pressure tank. I figured, how bad could it be, with the pump turned off.
I was now in the habit of building a fire or two every visit and I had graduated from taking the pre-packaged bundles of firewood, that I was buying at the gas station, to the “Winter special” from the company that supplies the gas stations. Same bundles, but, at a lower, quantity discount, cost. While I was picking up the “winter special” I noticed large containers of fire wood at a very much lower price. That would have been great if I could have transported it somehow, but I couldn’t, as the “winter special” was all I had room for.
After building the fire I noticed that the boiler was on. An indication that there was a call for heat. It wasn’t obvious which thermostat was the culprit, so I turned them all down a degree or two. Keep in mind that the temp I had set them to wasn’t for comfort, 21C or 70F, but about 12C or 54F, just to stop the place from freezing. The boiler decided to turn off. This would turn out to be the beginning of an investigation into the various zones and intricacies of thermostats, that would last for several months. Just when I thought I had it figured out, I would find the boiler heating some zone for no apparent reason. Anyway…
I didn’t go up the next day but my contractor called saying that he had just dropped in to pick up a bit of his equipment (it was Sunday) and found the house without power. The batteries were down to 36%. He started the gen but it quit almost immediately. His second attempt was more successful and he left the gen in manual mode. That means it would run 24/7 until it was manually shut off.
I went up to OCC a couple of days later to find the generator running, trickle charging the batteries, which were at 100%. Hmmm trickle charging was probably not the best use of a 20 Kilo Watt generator. Propane was at 39% and the hour count on the gen was 1151.7. I took it off manual and put on auto.
On the plus side the lower part of the railing, up to the bedroom, was now in place, but still waiting for the hand rail cap and the dishwasher was in place. In the utility room, there were signs of progress for the back hall radiator.
A few days go by and the solar guys were at OCC reporting that the batteries were at 100%, oh joy, and that the radiator, in the back hall, was up and running, supplying some decent heat.
Two days pass when I go for my next visit. There were several vehicles parked in front. One of those rare times. Batteries were at 90% and the gen had run about 45 hours in the past 7 days.
Lots had been done inside. The hand rail cap was on the lower part of the railing. The fridge was now in place. A bit of a tight fit, but it works.
The laundry washer/dryer unit was in place, so all of the major appliances that had been in the garage for the past several months are now in the cottage.
In the bathrooms, glass shower surrounds had been installed and looking great.
The cheapy ceiling fan, I had picked up locally, had been installed in the sun room. I reasoned that if the fan needed to be turned on in the sun room there would be plenty of sun to run it, so the expensive low power units we had in the living room and bedroom were not necessary.
The back hall radiator was indeed working and the control box for it in the utility room had been clearly labelled. While in the utility room, I noticed an alarm had been installed for the septic tank.
A couple of visits back I was informed that some glowing embers from the masonry heater, which had fallen from the grate to the ash pit, were getting close to bouncing out of the clean out hole in the crawl space. At the time it was just an opening with no door or hatch on it, until now. A friend of the contractor fabricated a decorative frame with a sliding door and that was installed, too.
It’s the middle of the month and I am back at Our Country Cottage. Everything seems to be running OK and a quick check behind the new ash pit door shows very little build up, so not to worry for a while.
Getting more confident in the system I let three days pass before my next visit. The batteries were well charged, along with more hours on the gen and less propane in the tank. The sun was shining and the inside was looking great. Clean and tidy. There was one of those net bags of wood leaning against the masonry heater with a label that stated “Traditional Firewood”.
The new, heavy duty breaker had been installed in the battery room so having cottage power failure due to that breaker tripping should be a thing of the past.
The last remnant of our first site supervisor, the one that had died, was gone. The travel trailer he stayed in while working on OCC had been picked up by his wife with help. One of the problems she had moving the trailer was that the trailer was towed by the vehicle that was demolished in the accident that took her husband.
So with everything coming together, and working, and bits of the past moving on, along with the sun shining brightly it looked like Our Country Cottage was turning the corner and heading down the stretch.
With great optimism I took a bit of a break and waited a full week before my next visit. I had brought with me, a box of window cranks and the last bit of track and connectors for the loft. Small things, to finish stuff up.
Little did I realize that this was the beginning of nine consecutive days of trips to OCC.
What I found when I arrived was red lights flashing and the control panel telling me that the batteries were at 4% yes 4 and dropping. The sun was shining and trying to charge them at 5K but the boiler was on and taking 5.2K. I don’t know how there was power in the place because the inverter should have shut down long before.
The gen had died about four or five days earlier. It was running but not putting out any power. I called the generator people, at the time, and they told me that they could have another one there by the next day. I turned the boiler off and the batteries started to edge up. They managed to reach 22% by the time I left. I informed my contractor of what had happened and asked him to put off the cleaner as there was very little heat in the place.
The next day found the batteries still at 22% with snow on the panels and very little charging. Clearing the snow off of the panels got me from .4K to 1.4K charging. Every little bit helps.
And true to their word, the new generator showed up and was installed. Only problem was that they couldn’t get it to run. After several hours of diagnostics and long phone conversations it was determined that a factory tech would have to come out and have a look. By the time I left that day the batteries were at 35% and I had built two fires.
The generator factory tech came out the very next day. Turned out to be one wire had a loose push pin and signal wasn’t getting through.
OK, the generator is now running and putting out power, but the system is not reading it. With the generator factory tech finished and gone I still didn’t have power charging the batteries even though it should have been.
Phone calls and texts to my solar guy had me digging deep into the inverter case taking measurements and such. Bottom line was that there was something wrong within the inverter case, some part of it, that someone from the solar company would have to come out and have a look at. That wouldn’t happen for another six days.
The day at Our Country Cottage, ended with the batteries having staggered up to 55%. Thanks to solar power. Fires had been built and the temp inside was passable. Hovering around 10C or 50F or so.
The next visit ie the next day and subsequent days till the solar expert could make it up I would go up just to build fires in the masonry heater and make sure the place was warm enough.
Another “winter special” of “traditional firewood” was taken up.
One day I decided to tackle a problem the ceiling fan in the living room had. It was making a tick-tick noise as it turned. The electrician had told me that it was probably just a connecter under the top cap that had flipped up. The fact that it was 18 feet in the air made it a bit of a challenge, but there was a scaffolding set up in the living room for painting purposes. I just had to overcome my fear of heights, and I did, sort of, and the problem was indeed as described and easily corrected.
It was during this dark period that I managed to get the electricians to put a switch in the mud room for me, so that I could turn off the well pump. It was lot easier than going down into the utility room and flipping breakers.
It took 5 days from when I found the batteries at 4% to get them back to 100% just by sun alone. And when it got there I turned the boiler on temporarily to add more heat to OCC.
The last day of the month was on a week end and my eldest daughter and a friend came up with me to keep me company while I built the fire etc. It was a beautiful sunny day and they took turns using the tractor to clear the parking area of snow.
And that will wrap up month 20. Stay tuned for ITB, month 21. Will the solar power system get sorted out? How many more winter specials of green bagged traditional firewood must I go through…?
And now an Our Country Cottage update.
I have stayed at Our Country Cottage several times since the last episode. Trying to get back into the swing of things.
When I arrived on my first visit the batteries were fully charged and when I turned the well pump on it didn’t run. This meant that it had held pressure for over a week. I had supper in a nearby town and picked up some diesel fuel. I have two 20 liter diesel containers (they are yellow) as both the tractor and the skid steer use it.
That night I had a drink of water and thought that it tasted a little, um, musty. I made a mental note to change the water filter first thing in the morning.
I did so before breakfast and that cleared up the problem. Since I have started Our Country Cottage up after the shut down there has been a fair bit of sediment coming out of the well. I now have a bit of hose connected to the pressure tank inlet, before the water filter, which lets me run water to clear the sediment before I put it into the cottage water system. Probably only have to do it a couple of more times.
The rest of the day had me finishing off mowing the tall stuff and touching up the shorter stuff that had been growing.
I fired up my skid steer for the first time this year. No problems, once I found my manual with the lock code etc. I needed it to remove a tree that had fallen across the road a month or so back. At the time I managed to just pull it to the side so I could drive by, but now it was in the way of my mowing. You wouldn’t believe the amount of extra branches and limbs that came down with it but was hiding in the tall grass. Took an hour or so just to pick that stuff up. I then took my brush cutter down to the gate and cut back the vegetation that was getting a bit thick. After that I took my box grader out and reconditioned most of the drive.
The box grader has two grader blades at an angle between two vertical sides. It goes on the front of the skid steer and if you get the angle right it churns the gravel on the road, clearing vegetation that tends to grow down the centre and sides of a gravel drive. The angle of the blades tends to push the gravel to one side and, again, if done right puts the crown on the centre of the drive. This is important for drainage. Of course if not done right you can screw up your drive badly.
It was a good day. I got to play with most of my toys.
The next day I updated the solar controller firmware and all went well, I thought. If you remember that last time I tried to do it my laptop threw a fit and wouldn’t let me copy any files. The laptop is OK now. I had a talk with it, in the city.
Anyway, I did some other chores, cleaning etc., then went outside to fix up the turning circle.
So, that box grader does a really good job on straight parts of the drive and gentle curves. The turning circle is somewhat more challenging to my present level of skill. I managed to leave various sized piles of gravel here and there on the circle drive.
No problem, I thought, I’ll just back blade it with the tractor. So I removed the mower deck and attached the blade to the back of the tractor. Well apparently my present level of back-bladeing leaves something to be desired too. I did smooth it down a bit but left a ridge of gravel on the grass in the centre of the circle. So I took the blade off and the mower deck back on and parked it in the garage.
That night I had my first BBQ of the season, Bratts, good stuff.
In unrelated news, the upstairs toilet was showing tendencies to run on. Hmmm
My last day, of this visit, started with me using a device I do have enough skill to use to clean the gravel off of the grass in the circle, a hand rake. Only took an hour or so.
I had just returned inside for a break when a couple of fawns, still with their spots, went booting it cross the mowed area south of the cottage. I was just out there less than 15 minutes ago.
Before I left for the city I started to look at the generator. I jiggled some wires and hit the run button. The all too familiar clicking of relays and nothing.
Ah, the generator. If you remember it became iffy last winter when I found Our Country Cottage frozen up. Frozen/broken toilet tanks etc. At that point the generator did run when I asked it too, but became less and less reliable until it just stopped after only running for about twelve minutes one day while I was up there cleaning up the those icy toilets.
Shortly after I firmly declared that I was kicking that gen to the curb and gave some very valid reasons in an earlier episode of this podcast.
Well, time has passed and my attitude towards our old generator has softened a bit. Remember that this is the second gen as mentioned in this episodes’ In The Beginning. The first generator had 1212 hours on it when it was deemed un-repairable and replaced.
The present generator has 1141 hours on it. I must say these 1141 hours were a lot kinder hours than the 1212 hours on the previous generator. Our present gen, gen #2, has had much more regular service and upkeep than the previous one, gen#1, had a chance to get.
If I remember correctly, gen #1 was over 500 hours before the first oil change. It was also run 24/7 many times. It took the abuse given out by winter time construction. Did I ever mention that construction would have gone a lot easier if it was done in any other months other than the winter months. Gen #1 also took the abuse of system set up, getting the right settings so that the sun would charge the batteries when it could. I can’t count the times, OK, I don’t want to count the times, I showed up on days with beautiful, clear, sunny skies and the gen was running. Adjusting components, like that relay that would trip preventing solar charging. And don’t forget that little yellow heater that was the only thing heating the cottage before the photovoltaic’s were ready. That pressed gen #1 into hard service right out of the box.
Now, some of you may be thinking that the hours I keep mentioning don’t seem all that high. 500 before first service etc. So to put some relevance to them I noticed that my average speed driving back to the city was about, 80 to 90 Km/h.
The manual suggests oil change every 150 hours. If that was your vehicle averaging say 50 Km/h that would be 7,500 Km and if you were, say, on a cross country trip on highways averaging 100 Km/h that would be 15,000 Km. Given that, Gen #1 went somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 before its first service. Your vehicle would probably be showing some signs of distress if you treated it like that. Yes, my bad, but in my defence all this stuff was new to me. If the generator was the only thing on my plate I might have read the manual and found this stuff out.
Back to Gen #2. Like I said, time has passed and I am starting to think a little more rationally towards gen #2. What if it was a small, inexpensive part that had failed? What if it was something easy to fix? I then came up with an amount I would be willing to pay/invest to fix it. Having a service guy come out to have a look, would put cost over the limit right away. With that in mind and the looming, very high cost, of replacement with new upgraded version, I decided to have a closer look myself, to see what I could find. In fact I dedicated the next visit to just that, staying up a couple of nights.
The first day had me mowing for three hours straight in order to have a full day to play investigator.
I had acquired a service manual online and had been studying it for a while. It became clear to me that the error that was always present on the display could mean many things but primarily it meant that the generator was not turning over when asked to.
I verified that the controller was indeed asking it to start and followed the path to the starter. Starter relay OK. A shame, because it was the easiest to change and cheapest as well.
Next in line was the starter solenoid and then the starter. This required the generator housing to be removed. Ironically, I was boiling under the direct gaze of the sun in a clear, blue, sky while previously I was freezing in the winter’s wind the last time I peered under the hood.
Long story shorter, I identified that the starter solenoid wasn’t functioning. When I bypassed the solenoid with jumpers the starter spun up quickly. The solenoid is mounted to the starter and I came to terms that they both might have to be replaced together. Either way the cost was below my limit. I packed up the starter combo and the gen control unit, just in case, and took them with me.
When I got back to the city I spent a lot of time online looking into replacements etc. I had to wait for the first day of business of the week before I could call my gen guy to find out what hell I would have to go through to get a replacement. The week end passed with me formulating plans for various scenarios that might unfold.
The day came, and to my surprise, it turned out to be very anti climactic. My generator guy had one and would let me have it, only charging me for it, if I was happy with it. I picked it up within the hour and made plans to go to Our Country Cottage the next day to install it.
And the next day I did just that. Leaving out all the cursing and swearing one runs into while performing open generator surgery under the hot windless sun, the unit was installed and……
I pressed the run button and it cranked and started.
Not out of the woods yet, but I can see the clearing.. I still have to figure out a way to test the generator under load as the batteries are constantly fully charged these days. I have a couple of ideas.
Yet another issue that has to be resolved. Remember I said I updated the solar control panel and I thought all went well. Well it appears that the logging function has stopped working. This is the same logging function that told me the gen only ran 12 minutes the last time etc. It records second by second what is happening to all parts of the system. It is an essential part that I require to figure out what might still be wrong with the gen.
I will be looking in to that and more on my next trip to Our Country Cottage.
Next podcast, Episode#20 More Gen#2 stuff and ITB Month 21
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Till next time have a good one.