Monday, November 9, 2015

On November, Part 2.


One couldn’t ask for a better segue into this month. The days are sunny and temps hover in the 50’s; we’ve only started to nip on the heels of the overnight frosts, and there’s less than a week to go before we can cross off half the month. Soon enough this’ll all feel downright tropical…better make hay while the sun shines.

And make hay, we did. Since this year was one of a maintenance-mode (no major construction), it’s meant I’ve gotten a little soft in crossing off the to-do items. Oh, I still update the spreadsheet daily, and try to at least chip away at the projects that are due, but there’s been no hard and fast schedule to dig a trench by a certain date, nor play beat the clock with the weatherman over getting a roof on the place. Since I rely on setting goals and crossing them off the list so I can sleep well at night, lately this has posed a problem. If I were one of those types that took serious satisfaction in my corporate office job, this wouldn’t be an issue, but I have a hard time equating 8 hrs in front of a computer with the same mental planning and physical effort of framing a wall. That’s not to say one is inherently more virtuous than the other, it’s just that lunch tastes better when you’ve worked up a sweat.

So this was a welcome weekend where I was able to cross all the to-do’s off without exception. Saturday morning I decided to defrost the Deepfreeze..first time it’s needed doing since I brought it home and since it wasn’t 200F inside I figured I had half a chance of knocking it out without the ice cream turning to mush. A little heat gun action and a bucket to haul off the ice chunks and we were back in biz. Love that pre-war Deepfreeze…. I also got it into my head to vacuum the upstairs, grab the shopvac to get all the Asian beetles and boxelders swarming the clerestories, then go after the bugs that so love the 18’ garage door windows. Plus a good downstairs sweeping. What a difference! And let’s not talk about the flies…

Sat PM I could start on the work, and this involved cutting, edge priming, drilling and installing more siding on the west side of the Annex. I’m really beginning to rue siding work, especially with all the gyrations of fetching planks, crawling up ladders, using the picker bucket, painting ends, etc. I managed to wrap it up by 5PM, leaving a couple courses of siding left that will have to be cut to follow the slope of the roof. This gave me time to clean up before Ben stopped by at 5:30 for a trip to the OP in Waverly. Note: Good food, extremely busy, too damn bright. But it was a nice night and despite each of us only eating half our orders, I think we still required rolling to the car.

It seems I have a tough time on weekends these days. I wake up far too early, still tired, but not wanting to go back to sleep. The sun is up so I screw around on my phone for a while, say enough is enough, then get up and get dressed. Sunday was no different. So after a quick breakfast, I proceeded to juggle the chargers on the picker batteries, got the compressor and charged it, then blew out the yard hydrant lines. Next was man-handling the old 16’ gate, and the 18’+ long 6x6 timbers once used for the drive-in screen. The pickup handled them with ease, along with the post hole digger and shovels. After a few trips to the tractor shed for pea gravel, I was set. Cara came down to lend a hand and we installed the cut down 6x6’s on each side of the driveway on the east side of the tracks. A third 6x6 went in to form the slat reinforcement for the hinge side of the gate. Prior to digging, I decided a smaller gate would better suit us, even if we had to go buy one. The 16’ would be unwieldly in the snow and force the posts too far apart…then there was the matter of weight. We ended up getting everything placed and backfilled before 12:30, though I still need to pick up a 12’ gate to hang.

Next was the unenviable chore of sealing the front cement deck on the lodge. This is a yearly chore to help keep ice from damaging the cement. Last weekend I replaced all the butyl rubber in the expansion joints as part of this two-pronged attack. The trick is to roll out the sealer without allowing any of it to run or drip off the cement edges, yet all top surfaces have to be coated. It went fairly well this year.

Finally, a vintage light fixture was installed at the pole building up at the road. This is in preparation for a 100w solar photovoltaic system I’m planning on putting in this month. Just a simple, single panel arrangement with charge controller and deep cycle batt. Depending how the install goes, I might expand the system with a modified overhead door opener so Cara can get in and out with her car this winter without the “fun” of a manual door in sub-zero temps.

However the big news will be next weekend…the current plan is to rent a trencher and put it to work. 500’ feet will need to be trenched for some Cat-5e cable to run to a telephone down at the gate (as well as future connection for a camera, low-v lighting, etc). Then underground 12-3 cable from CS3 to the Annex. Then a trench from CS3 over to the Pump House to finally get CS3 on the grid. Dropped into the same trench in ¾” poly pipe will be network and coax cables tying CS3 to the Lodge. Cable and other items have been ordered and are enroute but the biggest obstacle is the planning. There are already enough underground cables and pipes that we’ll have to tread carefully in some areas, which means lots of hand digging.



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