The Straw House Blog - Home of Glen, Gil and Declan Hunter

Starting to feel like home

Simon from Generation Solar came by Monday morning to give us an overview of the system and all the various intricacies of the inverter and charger. Being the way we are Dad and I had been messing around with all of the various settings and variables but it was nice to have a pro go over the whole thing with us. One of the most frustrating aspects of the whole solar/wind inverter/charger setup is that there are no good monitoring tools available. Neither the inverter nor the charger save any kind of logs and only the inverter has a serial out for computer logging. The controller for the wind generator doesn’t even have an analog meter to let you know who much power the wind generator is producing RIGHT NOW. Dad and I are bit heads - we want sophisticated logging tools! Simon knows of two tools for monitoring one is a $500 box and the other is a $1200 box. Yeah right. Or we could use the Trace stuff and leave a computer ON next to the inverter, wasting power just to track our usage. Ah… no.

Monday was -25C when we woke up and really it didn’t warm up much past -18C. But the sun was out and it was gorgeous in the gallery.

We had lunch with Pete and Tina (thanks guys!), and Pete showed us some samples of his plaster with marble dust added. We took two of the samples to the house and we’re gonna go with the white (vs. buff). It’s gonna look stunning.

Now I know I’ve asked a lot of all of you, but we’re aiming for an Easter move in, so if you could all just quietly, once or twice before you go to sleep, give us a little “In for Easter, in for Easter.” Well that’d be really appreciated.

Posted by: Glen: March, 04, 2003

Drywall Part Two & fun in the snow?

Taped and mudded today. Joanne came up from the city in the morning. The first coat is done. The second tomorrow, if we have time.

Monday, Simon’s coming up first thing to give us a lesson on the off-grid system. Then we’re up to Pete and Tina’s for lunch. Pete’s done some examples of his stucco with marble dust for us to check out. We’re hoping we can get that done soon.

We had many guests today. Paul came by with his friends Jill and John. He wanted to check out our progress. He promised Jill and John a pleasant snowshoe around our land. What he didn’t tell them is that we got another six inches of snow last night and that we don’t exactly have any groomed trails. Even with snow shoes it’s not easy going. The extra snow certainly didn’t make things any easier for the dogs. Both were porpoising around just to get anywhere.

When we got back Mike Cooper and his wife Karen were there. Mike hasn’t been to the house since before the New Year. He was pleased with what he saw, and gave us some advice for the drywalling.

That’s it. I’m about as tired and sore as the dogs.

Posted by: Glen: March, 02, 2003

Drywall Part One

Saturday. Beautiful day. Sunny, warm (-2C). The panels were pumping out 10 amps (which is about the max). We ran the generator all day to refresh the batteries. The timer seems to be working, Dad ran the generator on Monday, and it wasn’t run again until today. The batteries seemed to be just fine.

I got lucky again at Eurolite, somebody returned five of the lights we wanted to use in the kitchen, so they gave us a deal. Earlier we lucked out with the fans. We like Eurolite, they’re good people.

So today I hung the first kitchen light to see what they’ll look like. I’m going to Photoshop in all five at the proper heights, I might post the pic. We also took delivery of this really fantastic Italian florescent fixture, two 4’ skinny tubes and one hell of a reflector makes a bright bright light. Plus an electronic ballast for low noise. So I put that in the battery room and it really helps.

Mom continued her taping, she’ll be happy when that job’s done. Dad worked on the bathroom doors. And then, after lunch, we drywalled. Yessir, nothing says fun like drywallin’. We got one wall and the ceiling done, taping and mudding tomorrow. We’re thinking of doing the entire west wall in tongue and groove cedar. After we got home Dad and I spent a couple of hours planing and jointing some of our cedar. It looks like we’ve got enough for the west, north and south walls. “But Glen,” you say. “What will you do behind the shower?” Hey all of that boat building experience hasn’t gone to waste, we’re going to put a layer of fibreglass and epoxy over the wood in the shower stall.

This morning and this afternoon I took the dogs for a walk. Apparently all of the rain that we got in Toronto last week was snow up here. The snow is up to my knees in the bush. That’s a serious impediment to the dogs. They are exhausted.

Last, but absolutely not least, a big congratulations to Steven and Laurie who just gave birth to their first child, an (undoubtedly) beautiful baby girl named Malaika. Way to go guys!

I have no pictures of the baby, but I did take pictures at the house.

Posted by: Glen: March, 01, 2003

What’s Going On?

We got snowed in on the weekend. Went to a wedding on Saturday of some good friends (congrats Mike & Alex). One of the best weddings that Jo and I have ever attended, nice ceremony, great food, fine company. When we left it was snowing somewhat and we decided to wait and head up Sunday morning. Big mistake. We woke up and there was a winter storm warning in effect. So we lost a day.

Fortunately/unfortunately I’m going to have more time to work on the house in the immediate future. My largest client is going through some tough times and has released me (and all other contractors) from my contract. Bummer. So I’m going to take this as an opportunity and try and get as much work done as I possibly can before I have to start looking for work in earnest. That said if anybody come across any web or UI gigs… I’m your guy.

On the agenda for this week is drywalling the bathroom, checking out stucco samples at Pete and Tina’s, and installing lights. Oh, and I’m using my spare time to work out some stuff with my various web-sites, I hope to have comments working tonight on the blog. Dad’s apparently been busy planing cedar which we’ll probably use on the bathroom walls.

Posted by: Glen: February, 26, 2003

Noxious Fumes Redux

We had a great day today. I caulked the outside windows. Dad and I put the second pane of glass in the front door. Dad is building a little hut for the generator so that it can sit outside and be locked up safely. We’ve been charging the batteries with the generator over a fairly thick 100’ extension cord. By putting the generator outside of the battery room we can use a shorter length of #10 wire. So what? Well there was a 10 volt drop across the 100’ cord and we could only charge at 15 amps. With the #10 cable we get no voltage drop and can charge at 25 amps. That makes a big difference when you are charging the batteries.

Mom and I worked most of the day on cleaning up the floor in preparation for sealing the remaining area. We finished the remaining three back bays, the kitchen, dining/living rooms and the gallery. So the whole slab has been sealed. I expected that we would only get half done today and we’d do the rest on Sunday. This means that we can start drywalling in the bathroom.

Monday we’re heading up to see Pete and Tina to see about the finish coat of stucco for the inside. Pete’s got some samples where he’s added marble dust to the stucco. Sounds very cool.

Posted by: Glen: February, 21, 2003

More dead stuff

Nothing takes the edge off a really really crappy week like working with incredibly noxious chemicals. You betcha. We started sealing the concrete slab this weekend. This is the first chance that we’ve had to get it done, we had to wait for the heat to be working to apply the sealer. So now the fun starts. There’s months of marks on the floor as well as all kinds of stucco that spilled on the floor from the straw bale. So we vacuum, scrape the floor, sand and brush off any marks, vacuum again, and run over the floor with slightly damp towels. Then we apply the sealer. Only two of us can work because we only have two good masks, so Dad and I take care of the sealer and Jo and my Mom take the dogs for a walk. We do the sealer last, right before we leave, the fumes really are that bad.

We seem to have brokered a detente between the radiant system and the inverter. The radiant system is on a timer and is only allowed to come on every other hour. This saves us around 50% of the power but doesn’t seem to affect the heat. The catch is that we have to leave the inverter ON. Normally you leave the inverter in search mode, but unfortunately the relay in the timer requires line voltage to trip and the search pulse isn’t sufficient. We need to find a timer that is 100% battery controlled, one must exist, every timer we’ve found so far requires line voltage to trip the relay - or keep time.

The inspector stopped by on Saturday to check out the insulation, vapour barrier and our progress in general. He was happy with everything he saw. We had another neighbour show up this weekend as well, an older fellow, he and his wife moved to the farm about 6 lots east in 1945. He told us that he has kitchen cabinets in his house made from two Butternut trees off of our land. He invited us by to check them out. We rarely have a weekend go by without somebody popping in to check things out. Apparently we’re known in town as “The Straw House”. I’m sure we’ll be known that way for years and years. “Those city people with the straw house.” I’m looking forward to that.

The winter carnage continued this weekend. We found an owl by the side of the house, it looks like he might have flown into the big side window. It was a nice looking bird, I’ve never seen an owl up close before. So naturally, in our currently morbid fashion, I took a picture.

Posted by: Glen: February, 16, 2003

I See Dead Porcupines

House wise, today was much like yesterday. Mom kept sealing up the vapour barrier and Dad and I did a bunch of odd jobs around the house. We labelled all of the circuit breakers and tested that they all had power. We sealed some of the front windows and worked at removing the ends of the window shims that are still exposed. I vacuumed up the gallery area, and finally got around to cutting off the extra window gasket. Periodically we’d go to the utility room and stare in a perplexed manner at the inverter or boiler. Something’s going on between those two, and I don’t like it.

My parents left around 3:30 and I took the dogs out for a walk, or rather they walked, I snowshoed. There’s a couple of feet of snow in some spots, more in drifts. With the freezing rain we got last week there’s a hard crust and then powder underneath. This is not the best walking terrain for the dogs. They tend to punch through the crust but then because the powder is so deep they get sort of ‘hung-up’ with all four paws down and their chests against the crust. I feel bad for Gator when the snow’s this deep, as a certain part of his anatomy tends to carve its own groove through the snow. That cannot be comfortable. Gator spent most of this walk following in the path of my snowshoes, stepping on the tail of one now and again just to keep me alert. Ceara just wanders around looking for new kinds of shit to eat.

Today we walked the southern boundary of the property and up the east side into the coniferous bush. It’s neat walking around this time of year since you can cruise over the swampy areas that are impassible most of the year.

I saw a deer, or at least the ass end of a deer, it’s hard to be stealthy in snowshoes. I think I found where the turkeys live, or at least where they spend a lot of time. And I came across a dead porcupine. I think the poor fella froze to death out in the fields a couple of weeks ago. In Peterborough it was getting down below -30 at night, and doing anything let alone foraging for food is dangerous at that temperature.

Yup, pictures. WARNING!! There is a picture of the dead porcupine, if you’re squeemish cover your eyes before clicking on the link!

Posted by: Glen: February, 09, 2003

The Problem with Three-Ways

So the fun with wiring continues. Dad and I keep disagreeing on how to wire up three-way switches. Dad thought there was a problem with a switch and re-wired it but while it worked, it wasn’t right. This morning we set out together and we re-wired every single light and three way switch in the house. We now have working lights in the back rooms, and the mud-room, plus proper switched power to the front and back door exterior lights. Paul (the architect) lent us a book about the electrical code and we just wired everything up with the book open in front of us, saved arguing, and everything works. We’ll hook up the other lights as we acquire them.

The heat is lovely, we leave it set at about 17 degrees, and even though we’re having some troubles with the inverter, the house can stay warm through the night with no heat. Which is good since both Dad and I have walked into the house in the morning and found the inverter off and displaying an unknown error. However, after a quick look through the manual (RTFM ya’ know), Dad discovered that there is a way to display the type of error that has occurred. So maybe tomorrow, if there’s a problem again, we’ll be able to figure out what’s going on. Now wouldn’t that be exciting?

We’re just working on small stuff around the house these days, for a whole variety of reasons we’ve sort of slowed down while we get a grip on things. We’re nearing the end of the project and there’s not quite as much money left as we’d hoped, and we feel like we’ve been on a runaway train with rushing to get everything done. Now that we have heat we can slow down, take stock, and get all of the last stuff done right.

So Mom’s been taping the seams in the vapour barrier, Dad and I are working on electrical, caulking, the bathroom, and figuring out how all of of new high-tech systems work.

The next goals are sealing the concrete floor, doing the final coat of stucco on the inside, and running the conduit around the perimeter. Then we have to finish the plumbing, finish the inside the bathroom, and then the kitchen. After all that, maybe, just maybe, we move in. It doesn’t seem that far away now…

Posted by: Glen: February, 08, 2003

The obligatory thermostat picture

Got up to 14C in the house today. Hoo-ray!! I love winter, but this -20C stuff gets pretty damn tiring.

No I don’t know why the thermometer is showing LL.L as the outside temperature. It probably froze last week.

Posted by: Glen: January, 30, 2003

Sometimes when you do it yourself…

We have heat. In the end the whole problem with the boiler was caused by the plug for the boiler being wired out of phase. Apparently the boiler is really picky about that sort of thing.

I wired that plug.

There aren’t enough expletives in the English language for how I feel right now.

Posted by: Glen: January, 29, 2003