In this episode I will get you caught up to date with the goings on at OCC and ITB, In The Beginning, well, this might be the last one.
Lets start with probably the most action packed ITB yet.
***In The Beginning, Month 27, October ***
ITB is the part the podcast where I use pics, my log book, texts and emails along with any other mind jogs I can find to give you the most accurate recollection of the creation of OCC. I even referred to an old check book record this time.
Looks like we had five, three day trips, to Our Country Cottage this month. In the last ITB I had noticed a boom loader, or Zoom Boom had been parked by OCC ready to go. The first day of the month did not disappoint.
The crew arrived early and went to work moving all the construction extras to a predetermined area near the Quonset, away from OCC. This included leftover bricks from the masonry heater, lots of dimensional lumber, siding, trim, metal roofing and about 50 lengths of powder coated rebar that for some reason was grossly miscalculated for the deck railings.
Keep in mind that all this stuff was bought and paid for and on site. To toss it out would be a great waste of material even though there were no plans to use any of it. As long as you have a place to put it so you aren’t constantly looking at it or tripping over it. With 160 acres or so, we had room.
It did take some time to organise it and move it and the contractors doing it were on the clock, so it did cost a bit. But, it got done and tarped over, out of the way.
The following day a dumpster was dropped off and the grounds started to get cleaned up. Concrete pathway slabs were being placed on the ground at the base of the deck stairs. Two loads of gravel were dropped of and spread in front of the garage and around the turning circle, making it look much more like a real driveway.
OCC hadn’t looked this good, well, ever.
A few days pass and I return to find the septic guy back to finish off the septic mound. It needed to be covered with dirt and the ground leading to it required tidying up too.
The next morning the contractor returned and started using the zoom boom to add the bits and pieces of trim and siding that had been missed for any number of reasons. The following day saw the zoom boom being put to great use installing decorative cedar beams in the gable ends of the roof.
Interesting story bout these inserts. They were on the detail drawing, as part of the building and the material was on site, but the contractor tried to convince us not to do them for some reason. If it was up to me I probably would have let it slide but my partner insisted that they should be done. And done they were and in retrospect I am glad. The detail, it added to the roof, really helps make the looks of Our Country Cottage.
I think the contractors were as fed up as we were and just wanted it to end.
While they were doing that I was laying some rubber patio squares in front of the generator and propane tank. I had built up the ground so I would be well out of the mud when checking either one. They also looked way better than the shipping pallets that they replaced. Less rustic.
By this time it was the middle of the month and I was back for another 3 day visit. The contractor was painting the edge of the metal roof where it had been cut so it wouldn’t rust.
I was looking at the tractor and contemplating the winter, snowblower rear blade, conversion. I was told that the mounting brackets for the mower and the snow thrower could co-exist but in order to have both mounted at the same time longer bolts were required. After careful measurements taken and sketches made in the log book, I picked up the required hardware from the local dealer the next day. The following day I mounted the brackets permanently and did the winter conversion. I took copious amount of pictures for future reference. Just before I headed back to the city I noticed some corrosion on a pipe in the utility room.
Five days pass and I’m back. In the utility room I notice water on the floor by the pressure tank. Looked like the water was coming from around the pressure relief valve. So with that and the corrosion I found last visit, I arranged for the plumber to come out for a visit.
It was at this time the contractor passed me a pile of invoices reaching back six or so months for work that he had done for me outside the building contract. For the most part. Stuff like moving the construction extras down to the Quonset, gravel work, sidewalk paver work and finishing stuff not on the OCC contract. There was also stuff that was on the contract, like those roof details and installing the blind in the skylights. The blinds that were to be factory installed but weren’t. I made notes.
The zoom boom was picked up and the grounds were smoothed over and everything was looking nice and tidy. Very encouraging.
The final visit of the month was yet another three day visit.
The plumber came out on the first day and replaced the leaking pressure relief valve and redid the joint where I had noticed the corrosion on the pipe.
A picture taken that day, show the grounds all cleaned up, even the dumpster was gone.
The next day I busied myself putting an insulating blanket on the domestic hot water tank and putting those pipe insulating foam tubes on all the pipes I could get to.
On the last day of my visit the contractor came out and we did a walk around of Our Country Cottage discussing potential problem areas on the, yet to be installed, eavestroughs.
He then returned his set of keys to the property. We shook hands, a few awkward goodbye moments passed, and his part of OCC was done. I won’t lie, I still get a bit emotional when I think about it. We had been through a lot together. Yes there were the days, weeks and even the odd month when he wasn’t working on OCC but still. I run into him every so often, in that small town nearby, and we have very pleasant conversations.
Well that was my last day of the visit for the month but it wasn’t the last day of the month. The next day, the last day of the month, one of my trail cams caught a hardware panel truck pull up early in the morning. Three people got out and proceeded to swarm all over Our Country Cottage and the garage installing the eavestroughs and downspouts. From about 9 in the morning to about fifteen minutes after five in the evening, with hardly a noticeable break for lunch the video revealed ladders going up and down and moving all over the place, people on the ladders, the roof and in and out of the truck. A long section was put on with the braces every 16 inches appearing, sequentially, as if by magic.
A very impressive day of work caught by trail cam and very effective. I have had no problems with any of the eavestroughs or downspouts since. Well you still have to clean them out every so often.
Squeaking in on the very last day of month 27, two years and three months or 810 days, into a project that was supposed to be “240 to 300 days” long. I just dug out the contract. Our Country Cottage was now solely in our hands and our responsibility. Yikes!
So that wraps up the ITB, In The Beginning, section of this episode and future episodes. The contract was completed for the most part with only the final payment to be made. I will talk a bit about what that involved next Episode.
*********Now on with an Our Country Cottage Update*********
Just give me a minute….
OK I’m back…
If I remember correctly I was telling you bout the domestic hot water supply not being up to snuff. I started off this next visit trying to figure out what was going on. I was draining and refilling tanks and noticing things that I thought were abnormal. Thinking about it and redoing the process, not a lot made sense.
The grass needed cutting anyways. Three or four hours later, I was done. Did some laundry and called it a day.
Next morning I used the trimmer and cleaned up the grass around the cottage, garage, propane tank and generator. Looked much better.
I noticed that I had not received my usual cottage email to tell me that all was OK. I get them even when I am at OCC. Now would be the time to fix it if anything was wrong. But first, on a hunch, I called my parner back in the city to check my computer and see if I had left my email program open. And sure enough I had. When it is open from time to time it will automatically download my email and when this happens at my main computer I have it set up to delete the mail from the server. If it is deleted I won’t see it on my phone when I check it. Problem solved.
It also turned out that the hot water issue was, in this case, easy to fix too. After talking to my supplier of the solar hot water pre-heater I was told the best way to clear any sort of blockage, aside from using some form of cleaning aid, was just to run water through the system by, say, turning on both showers for five minutes, several times. This I did and the hot water improved greatly.
This is one of those things that if used regularly would not be a problem but, as this season is turning out, infrequent visits can cause problems.
The other idea in the back of my mind is that the boiler is micro-processor controlled. This lends the possibility that it tries to optimize itself by remembering behaviour. With it being turned off for a while and sporadic usage the optimization could be not optimum. To correct this I have started leaving it on with the domestic hot water turned up as well.
Might be a case of the device being too smart for my own good or it has nothing to do with anything. Fun to think about anywayz.
That being said I had a great, hot, long shower the day I left. Back to normal, maybe.
That week end our two adult kids went up to stay at Our Country Cottage for a couple of nights. During that time, my partner went up for a day trip with a friend. All went OK with no problems or issues reported. On their last day, they even sent me a pick of the solar control display and the well pump switch in the off position. Good stuff.
I take these pictures myself when I leave. The amount of times I have turned around and gone back to check the pump switch or even to see if I remembered to close the garage door. I tell you, it is a lot easier to take a quick pick to refer to if needed. The funny thing is that the act of taking the pic fixes it in my mind so I rarely have to look at the pic.
I am almost completely over my anxiety of having people at OCC when I am not there. That first trip without me was a ruff one. Anywho….
The next trip up to Our Country Cottage and the last one for the month, I was all set to try a new, homemade weed killer. Weeds just love to grow in the gravel and drive around the cottage and it is a constant battle to keep them down. It is downright dangerous to use the edge trimmer on them. Rocks go flying all over the place. A face shield is a must. The hard hat I wear while using the edge trimmer and on the tractor has both hearing and face protection.
I arrive with a new spray unit and the ingredients to do some major weed damage, but first, upon entering OCC I notice the solar control panel is looking strange. Only the top and bottom lines of the display are there. The space in between is blank. Gad. Now what?
Unplugging it and plugging it back in reset it and all seemed normal. The error log, however, reveals several “Internal Fan Failure” errors that have seemed to correct themselves and carried on. Hmmm.
With that running circles in my mind, a batch of weed killer was made. Vinegar, salt and a sup son of dishwashing liquid. The kitchen smells like fish and chips or maybe that flavour of potato chips when the bag is freshly opened. Not necessarily a bad thing. In short bursts. Mental note, get a new wooden spoon. That smell is not leaving anytime soon.
With some effort the new sprayer was assembled and filled with, what I hoped was, weed death. The reason I was so excited about this concoction was that up to this point I had been using a commercial weed killer that my family gave me killer attitude every time the subject came up.
First indications were amazing. The plant leaves turned brown and started to look sickly within a couple of hours. More vinegar was put on the shopping list.
So while the weeds were taking their last, um, photosynthesis cycle I moved into the garage to try to fix the mower side discharge chute on the tractor. When I was at the dealer last I asked how much a new one would be and was told around $250. I calmly stated I would see what I could do with $50 worth of duct tape first.
I had the tape, extra heavy duty, triple thick duct tape at that.
A little back history. The chute I am about to try to repair is a spring loaded, heavy duty, plastic chute, mounted on the side of the mower deck, that was slowly disintegrating over years of mowing that kilometre of fun that is our gravel drive. It had redirected anything from gravel to goodly sized rocks that hid in the grass.
After about an hour of using a metal scraper to remove the years of build up, I was ready to apply the tape. And tape was applied. The broken edges regained their strength and the holes were patched. I used black tape to match the original colour, so it looked good too. The test will come the following day.
The next day arrived and buoyed on by the continued wilting of the weeds from the previous days spraying efforts, two more batches of home brew death were administered in other areas.
And now for the mower chute test. It held up pretty well, but a couple of larger rocks did some damage in the taller grass. Really got to clean up those rocks. I think some more tape will do just fine.
And the after mow shower was nice and hot, too.
The last two days of this visit I changed the cottage water filter, weed wacked, greased the skid steer ready for action and did some minor chores during which time I noticed a rather large moose on the south of the clearing.
And yes I did use the new BBQ without any animosity this trip.
I only had two visits to Our Country Cottage the next month. There was some personal stuff going on in town that took my attention and would affect me more than I realized at the time. Anyway……
So my first visit had me doing some data collection to figure out what was going on with the “Internal Fan Failure” errors. I had found out it could be one of two things, a failing fan, or a software issue. The first course of action was to verify the current version of software. Which I did. I had the new version of the software ready to go but when the time came a few questions popped up that I needed answers for before I proceeded. I had had bad experiences doing this before resulting in me reverting back to the old version of software to make things work. I didn’t want to do that again.
The solar display panel was behaving itself so nothing more to do till I got a reply.
My enthusiasm for my home made weed killer quickly ended when I saw weeds where I had sprayed. It could be my imagination but they looked like a meaner type of weed, more pointy things etc. I had brought more ingredients for several more batches but I didn’t bother. Thought I would give it some more time to kick in. Oh well.
I then collected all the trail cams. One hadn’t been collected since last year, two others had last been collected six months earlier. To my surprise all the cameras were still working with plenty of juice left in the batteries, even the one that hadn’t been checked for well over a year. It would take a while to go through the one or two thousand (if not more) of pics on each camera. OK, of the three I am telling you about, #1 had 2068, #2 had 2400 even and #3 had 3276 pics.
I will look at each one, note the frame and what was captured. I quick look at one found a night shot of a cougar close to the solar panels, within days of a visit.
The next day I noticed that the railing around the entrance to the garage loft was not right. The railing around OCC were made with an upper and lower bar of cedar with the verticals made of black powder coated rebar. A very rustic cottage look.
On one side of the entrance railing the lower bar had dropped letting the rebar fall out at odd angles. I managed to raise the fallen beam while inserting the nine or ten lengths of rebar back in position, one at a time.
A few pieces of wood were put underneath to keep it in position till I get some more screws. I noticed that screws had been put in only from the top on this section and the wood had just been pulled through. Most of the other railing sections had screws put in the side as well as the top making them much stronger. I did find a few others with just top screws and I am planning on adding the side screws when I get them.
A few extra strips of duct tape were put on the side chute of the mower deck and I gave the kilometre of fun a quick mow along with the clearing around Our Country Cottage.
That night the new BBQ and I resurrected our differences. I put my steak on and turned the controls down from full on. The temp dropped quickly to almost off like it had run out of propane. I had half a thousand gallon tank. Thought there might have been a kink in the BBQ connecting pipe, so I rerouted that, I even called the propane supply place to see if inadvertently clipping something under the tank with the edge trimmer might do something.
I did some more tests and it heated up to max, no problem. My supper turned out fine. I reported to the propane people that all seemed OK but one of them came out the following day just to check things out at the tank end. And all was ok there, too.
It wasn’t till almost the end of the month that I returned for a three day visit. The weeds were growing with abandon and the weather was cold and rainy, so no mowing was done that trip.
The software did get updated and seemed to be working fine for the most part. Time will tell.
This was the first visit to OCC where I did not put on old clothes or coveralls and do some messy stuff outside. I took time to smell the roses, ignoring the large nasty looking weeds covering the gravel, and the rising clover and grass down the drive and in the clearings.
I had brought those screws to fix the deck railings but I didn’t bother. I read a book, listened to music and reacquainted myself with some software I had been meaning to get back to. Every so often a deer or fox would catch my eye out the window. One of my better stays.
Now you are right up to date with the goings on at Our Country Cottage.
Tune in next time for Episode #27 and see what is happening at OCC during the lazy crazy daze of summer. Was the fan error just a software glitch, will the deck railing get fixed, will the duct tape hang in there?
And now that ITB has finished, its time to see how the final numbers were resolved and what got shuffled off the table and why?
If anyone knows of an eco friendly weed killer, please let me know. You can email me or leave a comment on the web site. I really don’t want to use that commercial stuff if I don’t have to.
For pictures, and new ones coming soon,(yeah, right) and more info, you can visit our website at www.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 :).
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Till next time….