Our House

Rocket mass heater workshop

I attended a rocket mass heater workshop last weekend.  It was fun and educational.  Seeing all the young people who want to live “green” was amusing!  Imagine them wanting to do the things I did growing up . . . living with wood heat, slaughtering their own meat, raising their own vegetables . . . really cute in a retro kind of way.  We did it growing up because we had to to survive.  These people are making it a life-style choice.  More power to ‘em.  I like raising my own veges, I like heating with wood.  I am drawing the line at going back to slaughtering my own food.  In my early years I had enough of that to last me a lifetime.  It’s enough to know I have the knowledge.  I can milk a cow, skin a deer, cut up pig, chicken, turkey and beef.  I have wrapped enough meat for the freezer.  At this point in my life, as long as I can comfortably afford to purchase my meat in tidy plastic wrapped packages at the local grocers, I’ll stick with that method of supplying my protein.

I scored some stainless flue liner to act as the thermal mass ducting for my rocket mass heater.  This is pricey stuff and I am absolutely delighted I was able to find some free.  Now I’m waiting a nod and smile from the rocket mass heater geeks in the forum

I am a member of our local freecycle list and picked up a hinged mirror that will work awesomely well as the bathroom mirror with the wings acting as corner cupboard doors in our proposed guest cottage bathroom.

With the mirror over the sink the hinged wings of the mirror will be able to act as cupboard doors for the corner cupboards.

I’ll have to scale back the depth of the two corner cupboards, but that won’t be an issue.

The mirror has nice piano hinges holding the wings.  The frame of the mirror is not solid wood.  I think it might be press-board so I’ll have to sand the frame down really well, seal it with a good quality primer and paint it to ensure it holds up to moisture in its new position over our future bathroom sink.

Saturday we had a lovely visit from my brother and his wife.  ‘Twas great.  While Vala and I worked on a website to show off their award winning Mastiffs, Dan and Wadly unloaded all the lovely stuff Dan brought me.  I have plastic 25 gallon barrels, lots of different sized plastic and poly pipe, fittings and other lovely stuff.  Dan also brought a stainless shaft for my papercrete mixer that matches the shaft size on the gearbox.  He’s going to make a sleeve to connect the shaft to the gearbox.  That gets me one step closer!

Yesterday Wadly and I got the awning over the garden window and glass door to the deck covered with polycarbonate.  Progress!  The flashing’s on and most of the gutter.  I have a two foot section of gutter left to install as well as a down spout and some magic with billboard vinyl to handle end runoff.  The way it is now will greatly improve things, but it does need the final touches to finish it up.

I’m not expecting much more progress for a while.  Terry’s old boss called and wants Wadly to work part time.  <sigh>