Quote from: MountainDon on March 08, 2011, 12:53:54 AM
web link?

Trying to find one.  It may take a while since we bought it off the shelf at a 'Do It Best' in Tonasket.

K and I spent three days on Pine Ridge. The snow is virtually all gone, just some on north slopes. The final hill up to the cabin, north facing, was still a tad too deep for trying without chains and I did not feel up to chaining up. Since the last surgery, coupled with the cold crud I had just before that I didn't feel like it. Nor did I feel like hiking up the snow covered road. So we drove up the neighbors drive and only had a 15 minute hike across more or less flat ground.

Until now we had only used the propane wall heater as auxiliary heat to assist the wood burner in warming a cold cabin. Then we would turn off the propane and use wood. This time I small experiment was in order. We used one arm load of wood to help get the temperature up Saturday morning. The rest of the time through today we only used the propane wall heater. Once the happy spot was found on the built in thermostat control it maintained the temperature very well. It worked just as well with the blower plugged in or the blower off. Just though someone might find that interesting.

We played log bowling.    We had cut several trees on the south slope in the fall/winter. We left them in 16 or 32 inch lengths. We had a choice of hauling them up to the road at the top of the slope, maybe 150 feet, or down to the road at the bottom of the 30 degree slope about 200 feet. Log bowling was easiest and fun. Some of the sections would bounce quite high off stumps, other would be deflected and stop. Anyhow next time we can stack them along the bottom road.

We cut a dozen trees in the May 2009 fire site (neighbors property; neighbors permission.) They never came back or were still in the process of dieing and mostly dead. The bark has been thoroughly investigated by the woodpeckers and comes loose with little trouble. It has been difficult to find people interested enough intaking it for any purpose, even as free firewood. Mostly too small for sawing into anything. We burned a bunch of the smaller stuff Saturday when it was a nice calm day. That may be what happens to the rest, although I may save some 6 -7 inch ponderosa for "something".

Next time, barring a snow storm we'll be able to drive all the way, even the hill.

Well, there was a deep and shaded spot of snow half way up the hill. About a foot and the ZJeep did not like it. Rather that play at ramming through, considering that a couple feet to the left is a serious drop off, I elected to drive around a couple miles of forest road and go in the back way, the emergency exit. That was good as sooner or later we would have had to check it out. There were 4 trees fallen across the track so we cleared them up.

Wonderful weather! Some clouds and cool but not much wind at all. So we cut down all the dead trees that were fire killed in may '09; there were a bunch! After being rained on several times thay were much nicer to handle. We cut and piled the larger ones in three to four foot sections for future firewood. Top branches and the smaller ones were turned into ashes.



That spot was too crowded anyhow. It will have some very good grasses this summer if we get any rain at all.

Hiked a little in between tending the burn, ran the generator for exercise and equalized the batteries after topping up the fluid. They only used two to three ounces per cell. We even had a fire in the gazebo chiminea and read out there a while.

Cool weekend!

It seems that the base of the trees that were exposed to the greatest heat in the fire are hardened. Three to four feet and higher up the trunk they cut much easier. I've never cut down fire killed trees before so never encountered this until now.

Man how I'd love to have the Woodmizer there!

So, what am I up to now?  Redneck hot tub?

Now that is darn cool, Don..... 

Hmmm.....big gold fish tank?

outhouse built for 8?

As some may have guessed that is a livestock tank; 300 gallons. I got a good price on it. This will be our trial tank for catching rainwater. We are going to try a small garden; not sure how successful it will be because of the 8800 foot altitude and the cool/cold nights.

Last weekend I fitted eves-trough to the south side of the roof. This weekend I'll do the cover and connect the down pipe to the tank. Then we'll do a raindance.

Before I installed the gutter I had to do something about the snow slide potential. After seeing what works in Switzerland I borrowed a page from their play book. I used EMT and screwed the straps down to the ribs. We'll have to wait a few months to see how it plays here.

Looks better than the 2x4's I screwed between my solar panels and looks like it should work too.

Don,  I can't even tell you how helpful all of this is.  My wife and I are your neighbors in a certain secret city 20mi. to the southeast.  We're planning on building at about 8200' in Southern Colorado.  This really helps to make the project look possible.

P.S.  Since when is that spur off the Dome road "rocky but not technical"  I nearly killed a Silverado there last year. 

Thanks again.

Here's the completed rainwater catchment...



The "Y" splits into a line down the south slope 300 feet of pipe, a 80-100 foot drop to be used for watering a small box garden.  The other leg will feed a small pump to water a second veggie box garden up top near the cabin. If the gardens grow and survive the deer, elk and chipmunks we will expand. Details on them next time. (No pictures at present.)

...and the feed from the roof gutter.

Water piping down the slope alongside the path for a while...





Yes that is a rather shallow burial. In places it won't be buried at all. I used PVC electrical conduit as it is UV resistant. I didn't use the black poly pipe as the deer and elk walk all over wherever they please. I did not want to trench deep 300 feet on the hillside to bury the pipe. I thought the elk might damage the poly if they walked on it. The grey PVC worked well for the DC electrical lines from the PV panels up to the cabin. The two pipe runs meet part way down the slope.

The completed and installed (finally) headboard. Walnut panel at top, paduak in the middle and barely visible, pine bottom. padauk left and right verticals.

Very pretty!  I like the way the footboard allows the quilt to show.

Anxious to see how the rainwater catchment works - hopefully the animals will leave your garden alone...  we didn't have much luck w/the 1st hugelkulture planting Glenn did earlier this spring - the quail ate everything but a few beans.  There are some nice potato & Jerusalem artichoke plants growing there.

Quote from: Sassy on May 26, 2011, 10:42:55 PM
Very pretty!  I like the way the footboard allows the quilt to show.

Anxious to see how the rainwater catchment works - hopefully the animals will leave your garden alone...  we didn't have much luck w/the 1st hugelkulture planting Glenn did earlier this spring - the quail ate everything but a few beans.  There are some nice potato & Jerusalem artichoke plants growing there.

When I designed that I had orders to have as little infill in the footboard as possible, prtecisely because Karen wanted the quilt to sow. 

Re: the garden. We have the animal challenge as well as the challenge of a short growing season at 8800 feet. They are going to be like little greenhouses. Hopefully that will help both issues. Pictures next time we're back from the cabin.

I have almost 2000 feet of waterline to go to our rental kind of like you are putting in- well is almost dry.  I want to be able to assure water as well as have outlets along our driveway and for my cows on the other property too.

Possibly something like Mike Oehler's underground green house with it's air warming sump could be of use to you.

Quote from: MountainDon on May 26, 2011, 09:14:34 PM
The completed and installed (finally) headboard. Walnut panel at top, paduak in the middle and barely visible, pine bottom. padauk left and right verticals.

Nice work! Did your wife make the quilt? We have one that looks very similar that my wife made. 

Anyway nice work! 

Quote from: MountainDon on May 27, 2011, 02:23:31 PM
When I designed that I had orders to have as little infill in the footboard as possible, prtecisely because Karen wanted the quilt to sow. 

Re: the garden. We have the animal challenge as well as the challenge of a short growing season at 8800 feet. They are going to be like little greenhouses. Hopefully that will help both issues. Pictures next time we're back from the cabin.

Written like a true gardener , sow for show 

I see the place is coming along nicely.
Growing at 8800 ft. you are going to need all the help you can get. I wish you luck.
I have done this at 7800 ft.in a green house.
We picked varietys of vegs. that were cold talarent there was a tamato that was from Sibera that grew very well. I wish I could remember the name.

To heat the soil for planting we brought green horse manure into a green house put it in the bottom of our beds and got it cooking nice and hot. We then laid some of that fiberglass coragated roofing over that (It's what I had).
Just needed to block the green manure from the soil and not insulate it.
We then put in the soil and at the right temp we planted.
By doing this we extened the growing season by about 30 days.

  Have fun,W

Very nice looking bed!

Quote from: Whitlock on May 29, 2011, 02:27:32 PM
Growing at 8800 ft. you are going to need all the help you can get. I wish you luck.

Thanks and you are dead on right. I think we will get some squash, zucchini, cukes, kale, spinach and lettuce in August. We've been using parsley and basil.So far the N-sulate cover material has deterred any animals.

Quote from: OlJarhead on May 31, 2011, 12:33:48 PM
Very nice looking bed!

Thank you

Saturday 2nd July, we were working on the south slope when Karen looked down at the meadow and saw a lot of yellow shirted fire fighters down there. We hiked down and found they were a crew making a survey. They were checking on what road led where, what structures were about and which ones were occupied. In case fire came this way they would have a better understanding of the lay of the land. Two were from NM, the rest of the dozen or so were from UT & CA.  One of the CA fire fighters lived in northern CA and off the grid. They started with a similar sized cabin and expanded recently.

Later in the morning they came up our road and had a look around our cabin area. They thought we had done quite well with our clean up and thinning. They did have a couple suggestions; pointing out a few more trees could be thinned. Also they commented that it is necessary to keep pine needles away from structures. Also to watch the ladder fuels. All in all though they thought our property was quite defensible.

We have picked out a few more trees we are going to thin. Karen had started cutting more ladder fuel from the pines using a pole saw as far up as she can reach. That process will continue. We also cut a couple of trees that were close to the porch. I used a rope and come-a-long to put tension on them in the direction I wanted them to fall as an insurance measure. There's some video if/when I get it edited.

We've been lucky as far as smoke. The prevailing winds usually carry the smoke away to the north. We have had a few days when the afternoon skies were clouded by high elevation smoke and several evenings when enough smoke has drifted in low to make it wise to close all the windows.

Sunday the 3rd we had some rain! Wow! It was first rain that amounted to anything this season, this year. It was maybe a quarter inch which is just a start on what is needed. I took some video as it was a very exciting event.

Between the smoke and the rain clouds the PV system has not been able to get the batteries back up to 100% charge for nearly the entire last week. The charge controller never gets out of bulk charge and into absorb. However, it is doing quite well when the batteries are checked with a hydrometer. It pays to oversize the storage capacity. We don't have the generator up at the cabin at present so it is all solar. 

Yesterday there was a flare up in the more or less dormant south end of the Las Conchas fire. Some folks said it was a back burn but the fire info web page stated it was a flare-up. Whatever it was it was close enough to be quite the distraction from relaxing and kicking back.

Highway 4 is now open through to Los Alamos and we took a short drive a few miles east of us. Lots of blackened grass in the Valles Caldera as well as some trees. Longer trip planned for next week.

Glad to hear things are ok at your place.  You've put a lot of work into cleaning up your cabin site.