The Tiny Voice of Reason

RV Homesteading: -13 F! I Have No Idea What The Windchill Is, Yet, Still Warm!

Thursday Jan 24 2013

The forecast last night said the temperature outside would get down to three degrees fahrenheit.  Around 5 PM we noticed the temperature was already down to eight degrees, by 7 PM it dropped to two degrees and by 8 PM it was negative three degrees.  It was still four hours until midnight and we were wondering just how cold it was going to get.

At 10:30 PM we were staring at the thermostat as it read negative ten degrees and dropping until it finally stopped at negative thirteen degrees around somewhere around 3 AM.  It stayed that temperature until 9 AM this morning.

It was a nice and toasty seventy five degrees fahrenheit inside.  

 

 

RV Homesteading: Winter RV Insulation, Don't Forget the Floor Vents!

Our forced air furnace conveniently died a sudden, okay it took maybe a good five minutes of shuddering, death a month after we turned it on.  No one around knew who could fix it so we switched to medium room electric space heaters.  

 

Tue Jan 22 2013 Winter RV Thermostat

We are finally in the throes of a standard winter for Western New York State where the temperatures are hitting the single digits and below at night.  The heat was doing great when the inside temperature took a ten degree dive.  The outside temperature was negative one and the inside temperature was hovering around fifty-eight and sixty-one.  We went all over the travel trailer and finally located the heat loss; the floor vents.

 

Our dog, who basically tried to tell us to go screw ourselves on the going out to pee idea, dug out the floor vent covers.  Okay, I will confess to doing those covers myself with insulation and duct tape.  Once I put them back as they were the temperature shot back up to the nice toasty mid seventies.  What can we do, huh?  We're from downstate.  So, don't forget those drafty floor vents if you're not using the built in forced air furnace.

Now, if you will excuse us, it seems our heat is working a bit too well.  If we're reading this right, my thermostat says it is eighty-three degrees in here and we're not fond of being cooked.

 

Wed Jan 23 2013 Winter RV Thermostat

 

UPDATE!  Temps dropped below zero tonight.  Looks as though it is holding steady at negative ten degrees fahrenheit.  I am very happy about the inside temperature. 

Wed Jan 23 2013 Winter RV Thermostat -10 F outdoor temp

 

RV Homesteading: Staying Warm At 4 F With A Windchill of - 15 F in WNY State

 

RV Homesteading Winter

It has been a very weird winter so far.  We have had temperatures as high as 63 F in the middle of January 2013 and now the temperature has dipped into the single digits.  I kept a close eye on our inside temperature last night into this morning and actually did not have to turn up our space heaters as 62 F was adequate.  

RV Homesteading Winter 4 degrees

 

At the moment the temperature outside is a brisk 9 F while the windchill is hovering around - 11 F and our inside temperature is at 64 F.  This weather will be repeated until Saturday, then it is back to the weirdly warm weather with highs back close to 60 F again.  Hot, frigid, hot.  

We have our cold weather house clothes on in layers.  Undies, thermal layer, t-shirt, sweat shirt and pants, fleece hoodie and wool mix socks, snuggled under 3 blankets.  Our 2 dogs are snuggled in with the kids so I'd say the temperature around our bodies is hovering in the 70s.  A hot drink and some food also provides enough fuel for our body's internal HVAC.  It is what most of our food does; fuel the body and keep it at the optimal temperature for survival.  Life.  All the insulation I mentioned in a previous post seems to be working. 

Keep warm; we are.

 

Gallery (December 26th 2012 Nor'easter temp in 20s windchill in teens.) 

 

        

Memories: A Child's Perspective on Death

When I went to live with my dad's family at age 4 my grand dad, who was a preacher and very strict, was an average healthy guy. Didn't smoke and loved his Guinness. He was a shoemaker with a fiery temper. Then he started to get tired. That's what I remember. The fatigue. Being unable to eat solid food. Bedridden. The adult diapers, bed pan and this lingering smell I now associate with death.

I think I was 7 or 8 when my grand-dad died at home in bed. He looked like a skeleton with papery skin. Like those pictures of the grim reaper. My grand-mum knew he was about to leave, so we kids were called in to kiss him goodbye. I was petrified. Where do you look? Should you touch? He was lying there gasping and I wanted to run. I thought the sudden silence was worse until the coroner came for his body. 

The house only had 5 rooms at the time and they were small. We kids stood and watched as they rolled his body out of the bed and into a black bag. It looked like one of those garment bags my dad had his suits in. Then they zipped it up right over his face. They came to get grand-dad's suit. 

Did you know blood moves in dead bodies? I found that out at that age waiting for the coroner. Blood gives you that "alive" look. Keeps your skin looking plump and moist and alive. It moves when you die. Slowly receding like a tide and follows gravity towards the ground. Lack of blood makes you look less alive. Like you are leaving.

It starts in the eyes. That receding blood. Maybe it's those tiny blood vessels. I don't know. Maybe it's because it feels as if they're staring right at you when it happens. When the heart stops. It just starts to seep away as you are staring right back.

I kept thinking of that song, My Grandfather's Clock. That's what it was like. The second hand stopped ticking for him. "and the clock, stopped, never to go again, when the old man died." 

Tonight I found out it was cancer that killed him. I never knew. No one ever said. No one ever explained. I only got to watch. I never forgot. I can't ever forget.

RV Homesteading: Landscaping Progress...

There won't be many words in this post, just before and after pictures.

Before:

         

  

After:

     

  

 

 

 

RV Homesteading: Haven't Watered the Hugelkultur Raised Beds in Months!

I'll admit to being a lazy gardener.  I have this idea that my garden should take care of itself just like I never have to water the weeds.  I started out with my abbreviated version of mini hugelkultur raised beds.  Some with edging stones and others with cinder blocks, filled with layers of cardboard, old bills (soy ink), sticks, twigs, leaves, garden soil, peat moss, manure and mulch.

 After battling the chipmunks for garden space, as they kept tossing out my seedlings in favour of planting their jaw fulls of seed from my bird feeders, I got a few transplants from the garden center.  Who knew chipmunks were farmers?

I planted roses, rosemary, sage, bell peppers and tomatoes in June, spent the better half of three weeks watering everything before having to leave it all for two months for an impromptu trip.  Two months without watering anything in four heat waves of triple digits.  We thought we would find nothing but wilted, browned, dead plants.  When we pulled into the driveway it looked as though the plants did not miss me at all, the green bastards!  Every thing was blooming, buzzing and fruiting.

It is now a day away from October and I still have not watered anything.  The garden has been existing on rain and is still going strong even though the temperatures got down to 34 degrees F at night, since we are two hours from Toronto.  I've got some 1/2 inch pvc pipe to make mini hoops over some of the beds.   I bought an indoor/outdoor thermometer which I'll use to test the mini hoops this coming winter to see how they do before I plan next years winter garden.

 I also got a shock by finding this huge pumpkin vine in the dog run.  That will teach me not to toss pumpkins onto a compost pile.  I had no clue what it was at first since I know I did not deliberately plant it.  I tripped over this monster pumpkin and that clued me in  pretty quick.  The roses, which are non-toxic to dogs, are almost five feet tall now.  When we left it was a mere half foot high with two roses.

I had no interest in cutting the blooms so I let the rose flower, be pollinated and it is now forming some nice rose hips for the birds
to enjoy.  The hips are now starting to turn a pale blush colour and should hopefully be red soon.  I cannot believe how many people have never heard of rose hips or knew that roses had a "fruit".  

RV Homesteading: Landscaping Gone Wild

   After the well was put in all that was left was this barren wasteland around our well.  Every day I walked past I would cringe and try not to look in that direction.  "Eventually the grass will grow back", I said to myself.  Then that know it all voice just had to pipe in and say, "Yeah, sure, it took you two years to get the grass back the last time the land got scalped."  Ouch, the truth really does hurt.  

I went out and got some landscaping cloth, then some blocks, then some mulch and I really don't know what happened after the mulch.  I think one of the garden gnomes hit me over the head and ran off with my debit card.  Either way, I regained control, banished said gnome to the back 2 acres for mutiny and our front is looking very nice.  

Well, I'm off to mow what is left of the "lawn".

RV Homesteading: Well Water, Finally!

     It has been two years since we have turned on an indoor tap and saw water running out.  It will probably still be a few months before that is a reality.  Today was a good day.  We woke up at 6 am and tottered around our RV like any ancient being in their mid-thirties and late forties would, according to our six year old, then called the well drilling company to see how close they were.  Ten minutes was
the reply.  Our digital camera batteries were fully charged and raring to go and after bundling up in our layers of winter clothes for the brisk ten degree windchill, out we went to greet them.  It took midday for our camera to catch on that today was the ninth of February 2012 and not the 8th, poor thing.

We were not expecting to see such massive trucks.  The space I had cleared in what will eventually be our front garden looked miniscule.  The well drillers greeted us with enthusiasm, popped out with shovels and quickly moved our three blueberry bushes and one lone rhododendron out of
the way.  I briefly wondered if they might perchance do a bit of gardening.  I laboured over moving just one of those plants with it's frozen soil.

The drill was up and running by nine, with it's drill tower reaching further up than our utility pole.  I tried not to look up at it with all those clouds moving about as the illusion of it swaying in the breeze made me quite queasy.  Vertigo really does suck.  The noise was also very loud, not deafening, just loud and you could feel the ground vibrating through your feet.  We received an estimate for an eighty foot well, water was struck at sixty feet then another twenty feet were drilled to ensure it was perfect.  

We don't retain oil or mineral rights in this state so even though we pretended we struck oil, we were
perfectly happy they did not as we really do not wish to move or whatever happens when you do not own oil rights. There was one barrier that was put up around the drill site and we soon found out just how messy it is drilling for water.  The barrier, which was already filled with excavated dirt from the hole was now flooding with water and turing into mud.  A second barrier quickly went up utilising my garden edging stones as temporary weights.  Those edgers sure are versatile, aren't they?

The casings were prepared soon after with some welding to do what naught.  I have no idea what the naught was, then installed in the well and sealed with casing seal.  I initially thought the bags were cement until I read the sides.  They added a contraption at the top of the well which reminded me of There Will Be Blood since it had that wheel like thing on top.  There was a piece of casing which was welded off and leveled in a way so the water began to pour out of it.  Can you believe I ran out of batteries on our digital camera right when it was gushing like a broken water main?  I had to run inside for my spare duracell and charge the lithium ones.  I did not succeed in getting the "gusher" shot as I think of it, though I did get a "steady flow" shot.

After that, the well was capped and out the drill truck went before the casing truck backed up, turned around and followed.  Until tomorrow when a trench will be made, pipes will be laid, a water tank installed, perchance a water pump if it's not in there already and eventually a standpipe.  Our job is to build a room around the water tank and provide a heater to keep it well insulated, or so I have heard.  
Either way, we will keep you posted with blog posts and pictures.  There are so many of them I'll just have to pick the most relevant ones.