January 2012 Status Update

I have started to feel a little guilty that I am not out here every week putting something up. I am just not motivated right now.  :(

The felled trees are still not done and we have gone up about once a month for the last two to chop, chop, chop some more wood off of them. We are getting to the bigger stuff that is testing the limit of our chain saw, so it's not motivating. We will continue to work on that in between storms and as our work schedules allow.

The House Plans are almost done!!!!  We are enlisting the services of a friends wife who will render them in 3D so that we can see what we have done before we hand them over to the counties Living Building Architect for a once over.  Our plan is to have submitted the drawings and gotten tentative approval for our design by summer 2012. Our house is going to be so awesome.  In case I haven't mentioned this, it is based off of the 1995 Life Magazine Dream House design by Architect Dennis Wedlick.  He just completed the Hudson Passive house to rave reviews and acclaim.

Here is the summary:  Basement (subterranean but in the heating envelope) housing the water room, electrical and the train room. First floor which has three sections:  a garage with a mud-room leading through double doors to a passageway that is transitional between outside and inside leading through a large door into the heated envelope housing the kitchen, dining room and living room. There is a wide stairway leading to the second floor that houses our bedroom, Shaelyn's bedroom the communal bathroom and the laundry room as well as a Pullman Car room located centered over the garage. All of the second floor is in the heating envelope except a large storage area adjacent to the Pullman Car room.  Both the first and second floor are passively heated with hydronic radiant floor supplement as well as a soapstone wood stove centrally located on the first floor. The chimney affect will be utilized for the first and second floors as well and the house will be zoned so that we can seal off certain areas when not in use. The house is large but there isn't a single place in it that is wasted space.  It really is awesome and we hope that the architect thinks so as well.

Loan:  We have paid off 17% of our loan to date. That's in 10 months and we are pretty happy about that.  By spring 2013, we are on track to be able to break ground and start with the underground cistern, the ICF and maybe even start framing.

Dorothy Rest In Peace

Early Monday morning, November 21, just before 1 AM, our smallest and most vulnerable duck suffered a tragic accident.  Something had been visiting the greenhouse at night and was raiding the ducks eggs. Dorothy appears to have fallen into the center of the greenhouse and landed wrong, breaking her leg.

Ryan found her and after much agonizing thought and many difficult phone calls, decided to put her down. She went very quickly and by the time the decision had been made, appeared to have accepted what was about to happen.  We buried her the next morning in the garden.



Dorothy (middle) at several weeks old

Dorothy in Front



The property is starting to look like itself again

October came and went. It finally feels like Fall. Ryan and I completed work stripping off the branches this week. The property is starting to look like it did before we had four huge trees drop upon it.

The house plans are also coming along as we started working on the second floor which will house the Master Bedroom and bath, Shaelyn's room, the Pullman Car and another bathroom. That's going to be a lot of composting toilets for one house!

October 2011 Status Update

Ryan and I are re-evaluating where we stand money-wise at this point. I was up for a job that had a good wage and got pretty far in the recruitment, so far in fact, that we started thinking that I had it in the bag. Alas, it fell through. :(    This sets our timeline back probably a year or so. That's not the worst thing in the world. In fact, it gives us more time to plan the house. We expect to break ground in spring, 2013. 

Currently we are:

• Continuing to process the felled trees. (Expected completion summer 2012)
• Finishing work on the first floor design and starting on the second floor.
• Paying off the property as fast as we can in order to be able to start buying the house systems. The first system will be the water cistern. 

Future posts will continue to focus on the Petal Requirements and details of the systems that we will be using to be in compliance with the Petals.

One last note:  We have decided to get animals (mentioned earlier) to maintain the yard and provide rich compost and fertilizer for the garden and grounds.  As well as provide fiber, companionship and to create a peaceful, farmlike setting full of wonderful chores and experiences that seem to have gone bye-bye in recent times. This will be good for Shaelyn (our city-raised, soon to be 7 year old) and the new neighbors child. None of our neighbors have farm animals and we understand that at least some of them are looking forward to animals in the neighborhood.  A barn has been added to our plans to facilitate these animals.

The animals we are getting are 2 or 3 Pygora Goats from Hawks Mountain Ranch.in Gaston, OR. We were hoping to get a pair of friends that were having a hard time getting adopted but I am proud to report that Chip and Ralphie have found homes.

This is a brand new baby Pygora

This is Brinn. Isn't she gorgeous??

And  one, possibly two, Llamas from Sijama Llamas out of Mulino, OR

Here comes the Rain!!

Not too much to report this week. Ryan is off of vacation and we have both had to work so we haven't been to the property in a few days. Yesterday it started to rain which I am excited about because our 1000 gallon rainwater tank at the house was almost empty. If we get occasional rain, it will fill the tank and then we will hook it up to the washing machine until next summer. Rainwater makes your clothes very clean.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the weather. We hope to build our first fire tomorrow night and catch up on some TV. Tuesday is our 5 year wedding anniversary and we want to visit a Llama Ranch that day to get some information about what Llamas need as far as space and accommodations.

More to come as I have time to put it here. Thanks for visiting!!

Meet our animals

This weekend I attended the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival in Canby, OR. To those of you who like to spin or knit, or who just think that animals are cool, it is something that you should really try to check out.

A couple of months back, Ryan and I were researching the lawn. Right now we have a neighbor, Mike, who mows the property for us. Once we are out there however, we don't want to have to spend a few thousand dollars on a big lawn mower. That would kind of defeat all of the good that we are trying to do by having one of those. To address this we have decided to add to our brood once we get to the property. I will tell you what we have decided in a later post but at this time, I feel it appropriate to introduce everyone to our current animals and more importantly, why we have them.

On our 75' X 100' lot here in Vancouver, we have a lot of animals already. Well, I should qualify that.

For years and years and years, we had two dogs. Period. Our dogs are all rescued. Lacey is rescued from the big Burns, OR, cruelty case that you all may have read about a couple of years ago. Lacey will never be normal because she was deprived of food and shelter for the first two years of her life. She will always be scared but we are working on her self esteem. Ginger was an accident of a breeder / hoarder and she is the Viking Explorer of the group. Fearless and feisty. She will protect her yard against all invaders that are at or near her size. Ginger and Lacey are each others safety, as it should be. Best to have a friend. We all need at least one good friend, don't you think??

Why so many animals now???

Recall my next door neighbor. You may remember him from the Clothesline post. The guy with the Tyvek.. Anyway, about 5 years ago a screw came loose in his head when it came to me and I became afraid. I was afraid for 4 years. Then, due in part to my relentless recordkeeping and sheer strength of will, he suddenly stopped doing what he was doing. Four years of being scared to go in my yard affected me deeply.  Ryan and I decided that we live here too and we should be allowed to do what we want and to not be scared to do what we want anymore. What we wanted to do was to have a couple of chickens so that we could have fresh eggs and so that we could cease having to use fertilizer on our lawn. It is expensive and I was always a little worried about the dogs getting it on their paws and maybe poisoning themselves.

Well I don't know anything about chickens but it seemed pretty easy. We figured that we would just eat them after they were done laying and that we wouldn't really care one way or another. While researching what the best chickens to get, I stumbled upon this duck site ( Live Ducks ). I am a water person, I have always liked ducks and ate them once ( they tasted weird). I started talking to Ryan about getting Ducks too because their poo is just as good as chickens, they eat the same food as the chickens and they are super cute. Ryan was worried that they would fly away but I didn't think that they did and once I found proof that they were not all going to disappear, he as willing to try them out. We figured that if they didn't work out we would just eat them and that would be the end of the "Great Duck Experiment".

I ordered the ducks from Metzger Farms (see Resource List) and we set about to get the chickens. We picked up the chicks from the Urban Farm Store in Portland. The baby chicks were cute and everything but they were ravenous feeders. They would attack your hand when you got near them. I saw that it was going to be easy to eat these chickens. They seemed like little serial killers in a feather covering.  The ducks were arrived the next week. I think Ryan finally came on board when he told our mailman to be on the lookout for some ducklings and he replied, "You'll be the first this year."  That signalled that this "duck" idea wasn't as "out of the box" as he thought. The ducks arrived and Ryan was in love.

It has been a year now and I have a lot of chores out in the yard,. This has helped me with my fear and been very helpful in getting me to feel like myself again. I always liked being in the yard and the birds are a very good reason.  The ducks are teenagers now and have a pond. They tried to have a family this spring but we didn't let the eggs hatch. The chickens have grown up and are as friendly as can be. One of them, A Buff Orphington called "No-Name" is just like a dog. She follows us everywhere,. She helps me with the gardening and she is a very pleasant chicken. The Silver Wyandotte called "PJ" (for Paige Jr.), is just a little bitch. She is moody and just seems on the verge of having a nervous breakdown most of the time. We named her Paige Jr. because she was so fearless and independent as a chick. She didn't hang out with everyone else and did her own thing... just like me. I have to admit these last 5 years have made me a bit moody and sometimes I wonder what else is going to happen to me. So maybe I can identify with how PJ feels a little bit.

Either way, we don't even think about eating anyone now and are, in fact, excited about the possibility of Mabel and Bob having some little ducklings once we get to the property. Bob spent two months on her nest this year and she just seems to really want to be a little mother. We are going to let her do that. Dorothy is the runt of the ducks and we don't know if she will ever feel like being a Mom. We are currently hoping that she makes it through this winter. She seems to be the more sensitive to cold and illness and she was slow to understand how to take care of her feathers.We watch her everyday and cheer her on as she preens and tries to keep her feathers waterproof. The test will be this winter.  Bob and Mabel seem to be old pros and we know that they will make it. Luckily, we have a friend that will help us if it comes to that.

So now that you are up to speed as to why we have animals, it is time to meet them...

Introducing Bob, Mabel and Dorothy.  Welsh Harlequin Ducks

Swimming

Grazing

                    And No-name and PJ, the Chickens...

Not to mention Ginger and Lacey, the dogs...

Did I mention that this week we rescued a cat? Ryan has always missed having a cat.

Everyone, meet Otis. He was taken in by one of my clients on a fixed income. He is so friendly and mellow that the kids in the complex often threw Otis up in the air, and down the slide in the playground... because they could. Otis is lucky that they never broke his legs. He is the most mellow and friendly, not to mention smart cat that I have ever met and we feel lucky that he likes us. Even Lacey and Ginger (who hate cats) seem to be getting used to him.

Work on the Trees continues... status update on many things

Seems like I look away and another week has past.

Ryan and I are busily trying to get to Washougal every chance we get to cut on the trees some more. We are making steady progress. We have just started to get into the trunks of both trees and have at least a cord of wood in our pile already as we have been taking the time to cut up the branches as well.

This is where we were at as of a few days ago. We are trying to be fastidious so that we don't have to revisit areas once the wood has been cut. I think this also helps Mike navigate with his mower better.



Other than that, Ryan and I are slowly letting ideas percolate in our heads for the house. In the last few weeks we have revisited the entire first floor layout to address an issue of providing a buffer space between the entry and the living space, this led to the total relocation of the stairs going into the basement (AKA Ryan's new train layout) as well as positioning of the mudroom in the garage instead of in the house.

Moving the stairs and the mudroom creates a condition where we can completely seal off the heat envelope of the main living areas from the "transitional" areas where there will be a lot of movement from inside to outside. I will be posting the layout of our house on this blog at some point once all of the major changes have been made.

We are also researching quite a few things for the house and yard. The Living Building spec  (of which I have not posted all of the Petals yet. My bad  :( ) wants us to locally source as much of the materials as possible. However, the "ideas" for what we are planning can come from anywhere in the world. I like that.

We were contacted by Barry LaDuke of LaDuke Radiant Sales. He is a resource that can get our grubby little hands on an actual Daikin Altherma, now that we have decided that that is the way we want to go. His website has a lot of cool stuff on it, so check it out. He has also introduced us to a product created, developed and manufactured in Tualatin, OR. Barry will be sending us a sample and we are excited about reading into the Ecowarm Panel

A while back, I had helped my friend Allen Poole install the tubing for his radiant heat flooring. His method was to use plywood sleepers to hold down the tubing and create a surface to attach flooring to as well as absorb and redistribute heat from the tubes to the room. The Ecowarm is the same idea except that the sleepers use a smaller tubing, there is a recycled aluminum layer that more efficiently distributes the heat from the tubes and the tube size can be smaller. Thinking about it, it sounds like a no brainer, but we are eagerly awaiting the sample and want to consult with Allen to get his opinion on what he thinks as well.

Isn't this ingenious? Allen's Kitchen floor

Allen, I continue to be blown away by your project. Just looking at this picture makes me smile because when we installed this tubing, it just seemed like this is how everyone should have their floors. Who needs a bunch of noisy forced air vents everywhere? Why aren't more people doing this?  YOU are an inspiration to me.