Posts from the ‘Home Projects’ category

The grass grows greener over the septic tank

It is not all mountain grandeur and pristine lakes and rivers in rural Montana…

Rural life includes a well and a septic system…not connected! – that must be maintained. The septic tank and drain field are down the small hill behind the house.

While there are no monthly charges for water and sewer as in the city, I do pay for the electricity to run the pump and maintenance on both systems. I have wonderful water from a well that has, so far, had no problems. The septic system is old but healthy and working. I am highly motivated to keep it that way. If it ever did fail, the engineered system that would be required as a replacement is in the $20-30K range – yikes! Yep, highly motivated. Ian from Shur-Clean Action Pumping drained and inspected the tank and system for me 3 years ago before I bought the property and today’s visit was scheduled maintenance, i.e. draining.

The outlet baffle needs repair and the guy that does that will be here tomorrow morning. You might be relieved to read that I will not post photos. I might add some notes to this post for future but I think this post is probably more than enough on septic. And for any who see an error in the title/expression, you are correct. It is not the tank over which the grass grows greener, but the drain field…

An unrelated note – the Chimney sweep was here yesterday. I spared the nice man that does the sweeping from a photo session…I did it last year: Chimney Sweep 2008

8/2/2009 Addition

Bill Morton referred by Ian of ShurClean replaced the outlet baffle. Exposing the outlet baffle, turned up a problem with the line to the drainfield. The original line is orangeberg, a paper-like kind of pipe that had deteriorated. About 8 feet of it was removed and replaced with PVC. The joint where the PVC connects to the remaining intact orangeberg is 11 feet from the center of the outlet baffle lid, at about a 30 degree angle from a line from the sewer cap to the outlet baffle.

Raking Rocks and the Spring switcharoo

Today’s raking involved rocks. It is impossible to plow the driveway and not gather a few rocks along the way, particulary at the end near the road which has some uphill bits. There is a window of opportunity for raking the flotsam back into the drive as well as filling in the wheel path with rocks from the “median” – that time when the loose stuff is not yet embedded and is easily moved. I hit it pretty well – it was fairly easy raking. We are to get a bit of rain later this week. After that between the Jeep, UPS, FedEx and the motorhome, the loose stuff will settle in.

Next was the Spring switcharoo – moving the snowblower to a back corner of the garage and bringing the mower and trimmer to the fore.

At the same time, I gave the garage a bit of a clean out via my least favorite implement, the blower. Much as I dislike the thing, it raises less dust than a push broom and also makes quick work of getting pine needles off the roof of the house and garage – that task is on the list for maybe Tuesday after a bit more heat and drying out.

Yesterday, I thought I saw a bit of new green in the larch…

I did! – It was very evident today. The larch, that look like dead trees all winter, are preparing to show their new needles…more green on the way.

Saturday

The photo above was taken just a bit ago, this evening, but the blue sky, sunshine – that was how the day started.

With just a bit of snow left and a bumper crop of pine cones, pine needles and sticks, today’s agenda included raking the yard, along with a bit of a clean up of the motorhome.

Starting to look like a real yard.

By 1:00 I was done with yard and motorhome…and also done! Took a shower and tried to stay awake waiting for friend Kris, who was due for an afternoon visit. The first Spring workday was a bit tough!

I joined Bob on the front porch after Kris left. I plan on a couple or 3 or 4 Advil and then bed shortly, but it was a perfect Saturday – beautiful day, good things accomplished outside and ending the day listening to a soft breeze in the pines…from the front porch.

Catching up

A few loose ends to catch up in the various sagas of life “from the front porch“…

Last we left the motorhome, I had just finished tearing off the steps by navigating too close to a stump with steps that would not totally retract. I had been on my way for propane in my desire to keep the motorhome stocked and ready to roll. After the step incident, I emptied all freezable items for that night. The next day, the roads were still in no shape to go out. I looked at the weather for the next week and finally sighed, squared my shoulders and realized that for the sake of my budget and sanity, I needed to abandon the idea of keeping things ready to go. The last thing to do was empty the fresh water tank – 75 gallons of water to go somewhere on frozen ground…my own private ice rink I thought. So, I opened up a bit more of the turnaround with the snowblower – which was still working then! -backed the motorhome into that area away from anywhere anyone had to drive or walk and drained the tank. Not as bad as I thought – the water was warm enough to sieve into the ground and there was no ice rink after all.

As for the steps, my insurance company will pay for the steps, the body work and any other damage underneath (less my deductible). I just have to get the motorhome to Missoula, 110 miles away. Thankfully, the agent is in Missoula and fully understands the difficulty so it will happen when it happens.

The snowblower is still in the garage waiting pickup if we get a break between storms. Adam is plowing my driveway and the up side is he shows up and it takes about 15 minutes and I’m watching from inside. The downside is my driveway is getting narrower each time. So is the road. The nature of plowing when you can’t plow a “shoulder”.

My roof…

Friday, I shoveled the porch and up to the bath vent. I looked up there several times during the day at the amount of snow…and looked again at the weather forecast. 3 storms due back to back and the 2nd and 3rd due to be a rain/snow mix. You can see that the original cabin was the back half and had a normal roof. When the front half was added, the roof was extended instead of redone …too flat.

Even the snow bird’s house had a lot of snow, but they have a proper pitched roof for snow country!

I had picked up a flyer at the grocery with a number for a guy who shovelled roofs. I called. He and a helper showed up on Saturday.

Roof shoveled and the snow cave got bigger.

The other situation that was getting a bit grim was the state of my firewood supply. Most of “this year’s” 3 cords of wood was waiting to be split…tarped, but lying under nearly 3 feet of snow. The various work and other committments of mine and my friends’ who are helping got away from us. I had about 2 weeks of firewood left on Saturday. I am not dependent on firewood for heat. My little house has electric baseboard heaters which are efficient, clean and quiet. I like the wood heat, though and I like having backup heating and cooking ability should we lose power. I was facing not burning wood and keeping the 2 weeks firewood as my backup.

I headed into Bigfork on a quick errand. At the shopping center there are often 2 or 3 pickups with firewood waiting to be sold. I noticed this day that there was a particularly nice looking load – split in sizes that I wouldn’t have to split further.

Randy and his son Boaz followed me home. They have the absolutely nicest log rack I have ever seen! Also the best truck I’ve ever had deliver firewood. The first time I bought firewood, the delivery truck had no hood and no muffler. The second time, the guy had a pet bobcat with him. And so on…it has always been interesting. Randy and his son have a small building company. The wood came from a job site – more than they needed for their family.

My firewood situation is not quite so desparate now. This is 10-12 weeks supply and hopefully, I’ll be able to get to my stash if this runs low before spring.

Karl and Bob – they had some catching up to do also:

Bob catching up on the chow and Karl on his napping…

… on his increasingly closed in front porch.

Big John’s

Never say never or last or always…

I wrote in the previous post, not that long ago, that it was my “last post for 2008”. But shortly after I hit “publish”, I received a call from Big John’s. Big John’s is the shop that had my snowblower for tuneup/repair. I decided on Sunday that the snowblower needed a tuneup at the very least. Big John’s is closed on Mondays. I phoned on Tuesday, gave all of my info and was told that their pickup/delivery person would call me “sometime” about picking up the snowblower.

That afternoon, when I was in Kalispell on my pre-storm supply run, I received the call. Dave was about 1/2 an hour from my house. I was 2 hours from my house. I gave instructions to get into the garage and when I returned the snowblower was gone. I put a note on my calendar to call Big John’s on Tuesday next week and see if they had any guess as to when I might get the blower back. I calculated that given the extreme cold and heavy snow, there might be a LOT of snow blowers needing service and snow machines and 4 wheelers, etc. – all the purvey of Big John’s.

Dave phoned me early this afternoon and said they would deliver the blower back to me in an hour if that was ok.

Yippy, Skippy and A-OK with me. I was beyond happy.

Dave and his assistant played with Karl whilst I got a check for the whopping sum of …..drum roll please: $61.50 – which included the pickup and delivery. I had expected $150 plus.

Karl was disappointed when they left.

I am now the president of Big John’s fan club.

A day in the woods

Ok, not really “IN” the woods, but on the edge of the woods – my (by the Grace of God) woods. I never “traded” before moving to Montana, but since I’ve been here trading has been part of my life and a wonderful part! My first trade was a hot tub for a snow blower and we were both very happy! The hot tub needed some work that I could not do and I really needed a snow blower.

Circa October 2008 – I’m talking to my friend Kris and lamenting the fact that I have this pile of dry logs and some dead/dying trees and have been unable to find someone to cut for a split of the wood. Kris puts forth an idea for a trade – she and her carpenter husband, Hal need some computer/photography help and Hal is waiting for a job to start…match made in heaven! Someday, I will tell the story (part anyway) of Kris and Hal and how they came into my life, but for now the important thing is that they came to my woods yesterday and Hal cut up the logs – Kris and I moved and stacked – in preparation for another day of splitting and stacking.

Current state of the firewood supply… – not enough for Winter!

Logs that were not sellable or did not fit on the last truck after Logging ’07.

More logs that didn’t fit on the truck.

It was a beautiful day! – golden larch against blue, blue sky. I didn’t get the exposure quite right – in “person” it was a much more vivid contrast. The larch are approaching their peak of vibrant gold!

That smoke??? – the smoke of an 80’s vintage chain saw starting….the BIG saw, the saw big enough to handle the logging remnants.

I learned about a new tool – a peavey. It is a handle with a sharp point and then a kind of sickle shaped extrusion. It works like a lever to move large logs. Hal used it to get the pile of logs parallel enough to cut through several at a time with the BIG saw.

Hal cut a few rows and threw the cuts out of the way. At the start, I was back and forth from the computer to the cutting area – taking the cuts to the splitting venue and out of the way. As things progressed, the moving (my part) became more fulltime. Kris arrived with Arrow, their Samoyed. Arrow is 15 1/2, loves to ride in the car and even though they have beautiful acreage to walk in, enjoys a “new” spot. We had a nice long walk and left Hal to sawing. Karl, the beardog, was in the house…he has a thing about chain saws and also gun shots (hunters are practicing???).

After lunch, things stepped up and we all worked until all was cut up and mostly grouped to allow me to put a tarp over and keep it all dry until splitting day.

We finished for the day about 2:30 – I was pooped! Hot shower feels so good after a day working hard – even if it was really only half a day more or less.

Below…the “after”:

A day in the woods – wonderful!