Archives for category: Projects

PEI Gardening Tips (from a Novice)

August 16, 10 //

Cameron seems to think it’s my duty to tell you what’s going on in our garden. Therefore I share my PEI gardening tips from yours truly, a novice in the vegetable garden.

Already we’ve learned a lot for next year when it comes to growing vegetables.Here are my PEI gardening tips from an idiot. Please feel free to correct me.

1. The growing season on PEI is relatively short, so you may want to start seeds indoors or in a greenhouse, which we didn’t this year because of our distastrous results last year.

2. Get your plants in sooner rather than later. I thought we should wait for June 1st-ish, but I have come to learn that many people seem to plant quite a few seeds and seedlings outdoors here on Easter weekend.

3. Potato bugs are evil and they eat your potato plants! If you have a lot of space plant your potatoes far away from the rest of your veggie patch because those potato bugs are scary. Be sure to harvest your potatoes before the bugs get ‘em.

4. Weeds are a problem. What the…?? How does one deal with the weeds?? To be determined.

5. What is with broccoli and cauliflower?? They won’t grow heads?? They are just all…leaves?

6. Kale is a fast grower. Lettuce is a slow grower.

7. Resist the temptation to pull up your carrots before they’re big. You’ll regret it if you don’t! (Can you just put them back in the dirt? I doubt it, but it’s worth asking, ok. I said I was a newbie!)

8. Beans are delicious and easy to grow! Pick and sprinkle with herbs = healthy chips.

9. Get your seeds from Vesey ’s Seeds. And order them from the catologue because it’s more much fun that way. Preferably take your seed catalogue with you to public places and circle your preferred varietals with a big juicy Sharpie marker. Onlookers will think you’re a hippie.

10. Your corn will grow more slowly than the corn fields that surround your neighbourhood. Try to curtail your jealousy when passing others’ fields. Take deep breaths and repeat, “They are professionals. They are professionals.”

11. Weeding your garden is a perfectly pleasant way to spend a Friday evening (well, the first Friday evening was pleasant.. But the novelty has worn off, I must admit!)

There you have it, my incredibly random PEI gardening tips from my heart to yours.

Pouring a Concrete Foundation Under an Old House

May 23, 10 //

Oh, to be a blogger. To tell stories as they unfold. To keep you in my pocket as we ride this adventure that is life. To tell you, “Today I” and “This morning we” and “We’re about to.” It all takes courage, don’t you know?

But, you see, I am not that brave. I delay stories a little. I usually don’t write here until the wost is over. That way you don’t have to come down to the depths of despair with me. Instead, I can say, “We did XYZ, but, don’t worry, everything turned out just fine.” (I have no desire to give anyone, especially my parents, heart palpitations brought on by worry. Besides, I worry enough for the rest of us!)

So now that the worst is over of our foundation project, I can come here and report, “It was crazy but we survived it!” It’s certainly not over, but the foundation has been poured and so far everything’s looking as good as could be expected at this point.

Since I last wrote, a giant hole was dug underneath our house.

Then, Cameron built footings (cement pads on which the new walls will rest upon).

Once the footings were complete, hollow wooden walls had to be built, which would later be filled with concrete.

Once the hollow walls were up (concrete “forms” they’re called), then we called the cement truck and thousands of dollars worth of wet cement was dumped into the hollow wooden walls. Then, we removed the temporary wooden walls, which reveal the finished product, cement walls on which the house will sit.

We still need to have the house lowered down about a foot so that the house will sit on the new concrete walls. This should happen this coming week.

The project has gone pretty smoothly, although, like any big project, there were low points. But nothing a new inspirational quotes couldn’t handle. (Inspirational quotes are very important to this household!)

One of the most important lessons learned thus far is that you can never accomplish anything on your own. No matter what you’re working on, you need inspiration, encouragement, tips, wisdom and helping hands. This project has had a lot of everything I’ve just listed, and for the people who have stopped by to share wisdom and work we are deeply grateful.

Jacking Up A House

May 4, 10 //

On Monday morning our house looked like this. See the photo above? Normal house. Almost level to the ground.Monday afternoon, steel girders were slipped underneath the house… See above?And by Monday evening, the house was jacked up in the air and dangling four feet above the ground.

Thankfully, like the driveway project, we’ve recruited experts to help us with this jacking-up-the-house phase. (But, of course, Cameron is still involved.)

When I’ve mentioned in passing conversation that we’re jacking up our house, onlookers tend to ask me where we’re staying while the house is dangling in the air.

“Um, were still living there, of course,” I answer.

In all honesty, it never dawned on me to do anything else.

We just use a ladder to get in.

Open Letter to Our Steep Roof

September 4, 08 //

Dear Steep Asphalt Shingle Roof,

For fifty years, you’ve been ignored; you grew weathered and ugly.

For fifty years, you’ve been leaking your teary sadness into the attic.

But, in 2008, we came into your life. We heard your silent cries and vowed to do something about your misery.

So we stripped you bare. Exposed you, naked, to the elements.

We wanted you to be the best that you could be, so we cut out your worst parts. But we hurt you in the process.

You were angry. Enraged, you called forth the weather gods and brought the worst August rain-fall this province has ever seen–over triple the average.

Prince Edward Island set a record for rainfall for August this year. This August 240.2 millimetres of rain fell, easily beating the previous record of 227.9 set in 1979. Normal rainfall amounts for August on P.E.I. are just about 80 mm. (CBC)

Your rage included freak thunder and lightning storms that drenched our hallway floor in seven minutes–the time it took us to put our hammers down and throw tarps on top of you.

In spite of the fight you gave us, we still loved you.

We cut you new clothes.

We sewed your seams as snug as possible; we bound you together with more tar than you dared dream of.

But, still, you resisted us.

You encouraged in us our fear of heights. You saved the worst for last–revealing rotten wood and mysterious secrets at your very peak. You made it difficult for us to help.

But slowly, you began to see.

You warmed to a woman’s frightened but hopeful touch.

You felt how smooth you could be.

And now the last nail has been hammered.

Are you okay?

We think you look beautiful, and we hope you’ve finally found happiness.

Yours Sincerely,

Your Humble and Exhausted Servants

Dinner at the Old Mill

August 29, 08 //

Person 1: “Let’s have gourmet pasta for dinner, shall we?”

Person 2: “Pasta sounds good, but there’s one problem.”

Person 1:Â “And what problem is that, pray tell?”

Person 2: “Our one and only pot is upstairs in the attic catching rain.”

Person 1: “Oh. Right. Corn flakes for dinner?”

Person 2: “I’ll get the bowls.”

Shingling a Steep Roof is Not (Quite) as Scary as it Looks

August 17, 08 //

When we purchased our home, we knew that the roof was ancient and leaking.

Even I, who knew little about home renovation when we first moved in, could tell that the shingles were drastically deteriorated. Although I suppose it doesn’t take much to recognize that if a windy evening means that you’ll wake up to roof shingles littered throughout your flower beds, you’ve got a problem. (Not that we have any flower beds, but you know what I mean.)

We took possession of the house in the height of Winter, so we had legitimate reasons for putting off the re-shingling of the roof. Whenever Cameron would mention us doing the work on the roof ourselves, I would grit my teeth and say, “Remember, we do not talk about the roof! I can’t handle this topic!”

Because, seriously, have you seen our roof?

The pitch is 13/12, which, other words, means that it is extraordinarily STEEP and there in no possible way to walk on it unassisted.

This project is all the more complicated because neither of us are fans of heights.

Example: I once lined up to go on the Big Dipper roller coaster in Santa Cruz, California. I thought I might like it.

I didn’t.

By the end of the roller-coaster ride I had a headache, a stress pimple, and had said my last rites. Look at me, clinging on for dear life with a frightened half-smile.

So, no, I did not think that re-shingling our steep roof was something that I could handle.

Once the weather started to warm up, the roof conversation began to come up again. “Silence!” I commanded.

Eventually, the topic had to be discussed, because August started to tick by and there are only so many sunny days before the rain and snow is set to begin again. And so we started to do research about steep roofs.

We came across this site about shingling an old house with a steep roof, which ended up serving as inspiration for us. If I must admit it, it was this picture that put me over the edge:

There’s something about this woman that made me feel that maybe I could do it too.

And so we agreed to try it.

First, we rented “roof jacks” and boards; these refer to the horizontal boards that are attached across the bottom of the roof in the picture below.

Sadly, once we installed these boards, I discovered that there was no way on this green earth that I could will myself to get up on the boards.

No matter how much I wanted to (or needed to) I could not make myself stand on the roof via these horizontal boards.

This led to much worrisome discussion because Cameron, who is not that comfortable with heights to begin with either, would have to tear off the old shingles, repair roof boards, attach tar paper, and hammer thousands of shingle nails by himself without a trusty helper.

That night, we went inside worried. I tried to psych myself up as best as I could, but it just wasn’t going to happen–no matter what the pep-talk.

Thankfully, some time that night, Cam came up with an idea that saved us and our roof.

He built railings.

Without railings, walking along the boards was like balancing high on a balance beam. There is no way to reset your balance, and there is no feeling of security (for someone like me, anyway). Without railings, all of my concentration was focused on shuffling along, er walking. I could do nothing else.

With railings, I was able to walk comfortably along the plank with my hand resting on the railing. It gave me a sense of safety and something to hold onto. I could reset my balance by just touching the railings.

And so I got up. And we got to work.

The unfortunate and untimely thing is that my old Canon Powershot A60 digital camera has finally given up the ghost, so at the moment I have no way to share our further progress with you.

Just believe me when I say that since these photos were taken, we have both touched the peak of the roof, and we (ahem, Cam) just hammered the last shingle into place on the above-pictured side of the house. This means that we are half-finished re-shingling our entire roof!

We’ve set up another set of jacks with railings half-way up the roof, and there’s an elaborate and sturdy home-made stair system linking the two.

I must say that once again I am amazed at what we have accomplished, especially when I think about that first day when I thought there was no way in the entire world that I would be touching the peak of our roof. It’s like anything else: baby steps!

(Post-script: On this project, Cam does 98% of the work; I usually just hand him stuff.)

Places to Sleep

August 6, 08 //

This afternoon I wrote about places to sit; now I tell tales of places to sleep.

Our house has three bedrooms. All three rooms have been stripped down to the studs. Two bedrooms are still in stud-form: one bedroom is packed to the seams with our stuff, since we haven’t unpacked anything but the necessities since we moved in, and the other bedroom serves as a work shop/tool storage area at the moment.

The third bedroom shines as a beacon of sanity. This room will eventually be our spare bedroom, and for now it’s where we sleep.

Here you can see the spare bedroom as it was a few weeks after we moved in. This photograph actually makes the room look quite cute, but believe me when I say that hideous surprises lurked in every nook and cranny.

Before this photograph was taken, we removed the 1950s linoleum flooring and killed upwards of 200 large house flies in this room alone. Elsewhere in this very room the wall paper was peeling off the wall, and underneath the wallpaper slept literally hundreds of large dormant house flies who had made the room their home during the cold winter. We spent a few days vacuuming and smashing as many huge house flies as we could. We would think that we’d got them all, then, two hours later, the room would be swarming again.Â And let’s not talk about the mouse houses.

Of course, we needed to insulate the room, so out came, well, everything. We did salvage the original trim, but we’re using it in other parts of the house.

It’s also interesting to note the changing of the seasons through the window!

While we were working on this bedroom, we were sleeping outside in our car in the middle of Winter, so you can imagine our motivation.

Here’s the finished product. Simple, simple, simple, but clean, clean, clean.

This bedroom gets the most glorious morning sunshine right across the bed, and I envision this room as a great place to read a book in the mornings.

At night, while lying in bed you can look right up at the stars; when it’s clear, you can see HUNDREDS of stars. In July, there was a star so bright that we thought it had to be something of another world. After much research, it turned out to be Jupiter, the gigantic planet–the planet that has a storm on it that is bigger than Earth! (I can’t think about that too much or it makes my mind explode.)

One night the moon was so bright that we tried to read by its light alone; it was just a smidgen too dark to actually make out any words, but it was almost possible. We both kept trying to just focus a little harder with our eyes, but we never quite got it.

When we lived in the city, I wasn’t too keen of a star-gazer, but it’s impossible not to be fascinated by the stars when they keep you company at night.

Fun With Numbers: Hybrid Car Edition

August 5, 08 //

This post was written by Cameron!

I’d like to introduce a new series here at Whimfield: Fun With Numbers. Often during my research looking for new ways of reducing our cost of living, I crunch numbers. I often find it fun to come up with different statistical scenarios, crunch the numbers, and see how things pan out–the results are often very surprising.

Hybrid cars have been around for a few years now and are gaining in popularity. Governments here in Canada are starting to see the benefits of Hybrids and are encouraging citizens to buy new Hybrids and “green” vehicles by providing cash incentives and rebates. Sounds good right?

Well, it does sound good yes, more people driving Hybrids should mean less gas consumed, less oil demand, less pollution. But, I often wonder about what sort of cost there is to this “new is better” type of attitude–after all, there is a cost to manufacture a new Hybrid, how much does that account for in terms of gasoline consumed?

Ok, lets have some fun. Lets see how much gasoline will be consumed over a 7 year period (assumed age at which owner sells new car to buy another, the new car ownership period–see below) by looking at our old reliable 1982 Toyota Landcruiser, and three 2008 Hybrid vehicles.

General Assumptions

Average miles put on a car per year: 10000 (16000 km)

Median age of all vehicles on the road: 9 years

Median age at which a new car buyer sells to buy another new car (new car ownership period): Â Couldn’t find data on this one.Â It has to be less than 9 years as that figure includes all used cars with N previous owners, lets assume 7 years.

Energy in a gallon of gasoline:Â 115,000 BTU

Estimated energy required to produce a brand new hybrid vehicle (as modelled with GREET):Â 38,650 BTU per lb of curb weight

Calculations

1982 Landcruiser BJ60 Diesel

Curb weight: 4200 lbs

Fuel economy: 28 mpg mixed (as measured by myself)

Gallons of fuel used per year:Â 10000 miles / 28 mpg = 357 gallons

Fuel consumed if driven for another 7 years: 2499 gallons (9460 litres)

2008 Toyota Prius

Curb weight: 2981 lbs

Fuel economy: 48 mpg city/45 mpg highway “estimated”–lets be optimists and say 47 mpg

Gallons of fuel used per year:Â 10000 miles / 47 mpg = 213 gallons

Energy used to produce this hybrid car: 2981 lbs * 38,650 BTU = 115 million BTU = 1000 gallons of gasoline (4.5 years of driving!)

Fuel consumed for 7 year new car ownership period: 2491 gallons (9429 litres)

2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid

Curb weight: 4500 lbs

Fuel economy: 27 mpg city / 26 mpg highway “estimated”–lets take 27 mpg

Gallons of fuel used per year: 10000 miles / 27 mpg =Â 370 gallons

Energy used to produce this hybrid car: 4500 lbs * 38,650 BTU = 174 million BTU = 1513 gallons of gasoline (4 years of driving!)

Fuel consumed for 7 year new car ownership period: 4103 gallons (15532 litres)

2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid

Curb weight:Â 5617 lbs

Fuel economy: 20 mpg city/20 mpg highway

Gallons of fuel used per year: 10000 miles / 20 mpg =Â 500 gallons

Energy used to produce this hybrid car: 5617 lbs * 38,650 BTU = 217 million BTU = 1887 gallons of gasoline (3.5 years of driving!)

Fuel consumed for 7 year new car ownership period: 5387 gallons (20392 litres)

Conclusion

Hmm, that old 1982 Landcruiser is looking pretty good. The Landcruiser’s fuel consumption is statistically equal to that of a new Prius over its 7 year new car ownership period.

But if compared to vehicles of equal size, our Landcruiser would use 40% less fuel than the 2008 Highlander and 54% less fuel than the 2008 Tahoe. Wow.

Now, obviously I have made a lot of assumptions here, but I believe the general outcome to be true–old cars can be considered “green”. I wonder if I can take this data to the government and request a “green” vehicle rebate? I can picture it now, “What? a 4200lb 1982 S.U.V. ? Are you kidding me?”.

The reality is that Toyota has been making efficient diesels capable of 30-45mpg since the early 80ties and there are plenty still around. Thanks for playing!

Low-power server

August 2, 08 //

This post was written by Cameron!

One of the main goals we have with our house is to make it as cheap as possible to live in. With the cost of electricity being the most expensive in all of Canada here on PEI ($0.19 kw/h + $30 per month flat fee), we are looking for ways to cut back on our electricity usage. Our ultimate goal is to consume 0 watts when the house is idle–that is, when we aren’t using anything, we shouldn’t be paying for electricity.

After tackling obvious things like, how do we heat our hot water, we went on to other, less weighty, but still sizeable consumers. One of these consumers was our old, noisy, dirty, and dated headless server, Kibo. Kibo has been in our family for many years, acting as our network server. Kibo allowed us to share our files, centralize our email, download torrents while our laptops are preoccupied, etc. Kibo was great.

But the unfortunate thing with Kibo is that it sucked up a lot of power with its two IDE drives, dual P3 processors, and decade-old technology. Kibo cost us roughly $170/year in electricity. Too rich for our blood.

After toying with the idea of replacing Kibo with a cheap router and losing functionality, I decided that there had to be a better way. The solution I came up with for this problem was to look for a router that could run OpenWRT and supported external storage. The router of choice was the Asus WL-500g Premium with its two USB ports. Combining this router with a 2.5″ laptop HD in a USB enclosure seemed like a good solution, so we bought the USB-powered 160gb Seagate Freeagent GO.

Like most USB-powered external HDs, the Seagate Freeagent GO came with a Y-cable with two USB heads. The reason there are two heads on the cable is that the USB specification only allows for 500ma of current to be supplied from any one USB port. This is where it gets tricky. Sometimes this limit is not enforced, but sometimes it is. Seagate claims that their HD may need upwards of 1A to spin up, so, even though one head may be sufficient on one computer, two heads may need to be plugged in on another.

However, when I researched this subject I wasn’t at all concerned about the USB power issue as the WL-500g Premium convienently came with two USB ports anyway.

Once the router and HD arrived I spent a few hours setting up and installing OpenWRT. I was sure to plug both HD heads into the back of the WL-5oog Premium, to ensure it had sufficient power.

Well, it didn’t work! Nope, the HD just sat there clicking away–it didn’t have enough frickin power to spin up. What’s the point of having standards if manufacturers can’t even follow the specs, I thought to myself. After looking around online for a bit, trying to find a solution to my problem, I realized that this setup was a little too obscure and I wasn’t going to be handed a solution on silver. So, I came up with my own solution.

I had a hunch that the Seagate HD was consuming a little more than 1A on spin up, and with the Asus WL-500g Premium being a low-power device, I was guessing that it was going to be pretty strict about the 500ma restriction. So, the first step was to reduce the power consumption of the Seagate HD.

I disassembled the HD’s case and ripped out the huge crazy-glowing-alien-like LED. I mean, come on Seagate, what a waste of power.

After ripping out this atrocity, I attempted to try the HD again. No dice, but it was definitely a lot closer to spinning up.

My next step was to try and give the HD more power. Use a self-powered USB hub you say? Yes, that would work, but then one needs to use another wallwart, another lossy AC/DC transformer, inefficient I said! I found a better way–subvert the USB spec altogether. The WL-500g Premium just so happened to be powered by 5V, the same voltage USB uses.

I took the router’s adapter and spliced in a female USB connection connecting the red wire to the adapter’s +5V wire and the black wire to the adapter’s GND wire.

With this setup I was able to plug the Seagate HD’s first head into the Asus WL-500g Premium as I had it before, but I was also now able to plug the second head directly into the female USB connection, giving the HD all of the additional power that the adapter was able to supply.

It worked! The HD spun up and I was able to access the drive. After I disabled the Seagate FreeAgent GO’s lovely internal 5 minute auto-spindown “feature” to prevent OpenWRT from barfing out pages of IO errors, I was off to the races.

The little router has 160gb of shared storage, it acts as a firewall, a switch, a wireless router, and it is more than happy to run all night downloading our torrents while our laptops are turned off. Sweet!

If you were able to read the specs on the WL-500g Premium’s power adapter above, you would have noticed that it’s only capable of supplying a maximum of12.5 watts. You may have also noticed that it is a switching adapter with CEC efficiency level IV. What does that mean you ask? Well, it means that the setup is very efficient. I have yet to measure the actual consumption of the setup, but I estimate that it consumes roughly 6-10 watts on average during normal usage. This translates into a yearly consumption of approximately 70 kw/h–an electricity cost on PEI of only $14 a year and over $150 a year in savings over our beastly Kibo. And, best of all, the savings came without sacrificing any functionality.

So tonight we will say goodnight to our old friend for the last time. Good night Kibo.

Simple Wooden Shutters: How To

July 10, 08 //

We made shutters out of CHEAP lumber in a couple of hours! You can too!

We bought a bunch of 1×4s (which look like standard 2×4s that have been sliced depth-wise). A 12 foot long piece was $2.69.

First, you cut your lumber! Very, very, very easy if you have a mitre saw, which is the greatest investment ever because it makes straight cuts instantly.

With the mitre saw it is ZIPZIPZIP and you have three 1×4s cut to the same length as the window pane.

Next, we cut two cross-supports out of the same wood, and screwed six screws (in total) through the supports and into each board (while making sure that the screws were long enough to attach them together, but not so long as to poke out the back).

And this, my friends, is a decorative shutter; the shutters are simple and to the point, just the way we like our home improvements!

So that the paint will have something to stick to, we primed them first.

Then came the paint!

Installation was as easy as banging four super long nails into the shingles (made easier by the fact that we already had scaffolding sitting right there, of course).

And there you have it!

Jobs like these are so much easier with the right tools.

Cameron simply cannot bring himself to buy a new tool if he can make do with some crazy 1970s tool that has been broken and screwed back together seventeen times, has a bent blade, and has scraps of wood wedged inside it to keep the whole thing together. I am not sure why he does this, and I guess it is kind of sweet really, but sometimes it drives me nuts.

For the first two months of our house renovation (during which we worked every day for at least eight hours per day, cutting hundreds of pieces of wood), any straight cut that was made in this house was either done by hand with a dull hand-saw or cut free-hand with a skill saw that,

a) was already ancient when Cameron inherited it from his parents ten years ago (yes, Paul, your old silver skill saw, it lives!); and

b) has NEVER HAD ITS BLADE REPLACED IN THE TEN YEARS I HAVE KNOWN THIS TOOL TO BE IN CAMERON’S POSSESSION, (may it rest in peace).

Thankfully, after two months of hand-sawing and skill-sawing, we came to a mutual decision that something had to be done. And so, we took the plunge and purchased a mitre saw for $150.

Thus, we were able to make these shutters with the proper tools!

And skip ahead a couple of months…and here are snow covered shutters! The final product.