Categories
house construction

Jill’s House 27Feb

Jill has left, flying off to Texas and SoCal. She is expected back in early April. I have taken it upon myself document the progress AT makes on her house. Here is the progress made as of Monday February 27th.

Exterior view from the North.

View from North

If you zoom in you can see the bedroom window to the right of the door. To the left of the living room window you can see a piece of wire that will run out to the mini-split compressor.

View from the South is next.

View from South

From the South, you get the views of the pond, the horses, and in the distance, Evansville and Mount Casper. We will wait until closer to Summer to decide what kind of shading will be required. Shading will be required because the heat gains from all the windows will be impressive. On the right is a sample of the blue siding that will be on Jill’s house. Visible in the background are my solar panels and the corner of my house.

Going inside, to the left is the bathroom, laundry, utility room, and closet.

Bath and laundry room.

Note the round shower is awaiting assembly. Below the window is the electric auxiliary heater. It will provide additional heat when showering, and additionally, when the temperature goes below what the mini-split can extract. To the right on entry is the bedroom.

Open bedroom.

The bedroom is open to the living room. Right now it is mostly storage during construction. Next up is the living room.

Living Room

The spot in front of the opening to the bedroom is where her sofa (currently in C-Can) will probably go. In the center of the ceiling is the fan (less blades). The white strips are the lights, and they can be remotely adjusted. On the East side of the main room is the kitchen.

Kitchen

This is a view looking Eastward into the kitchen. The hanging light over the sink is one purchased on our trip to Ikea in the Denver area. The cabinets are along the East wall and North wall of the kitchen, with a corner cabinet with rotating shelves. a better view of the cabinets is below.

Cabinets in Kitchen

Jill ordered a farm sink to fit in the open spot in the counter under the window. It arrived today.

Farm Sink

The farm sink will require some understructure to support it. AT’s plumbers have refused to install/warrantee them because of the those complications.

That’s all for Jill’s update for Feb 27th.

Categories
Uncategorized

Happy Birthday, Sis

This last Weekend, Jan, Mike, Jill and I managed to surprise our oldest Sister for her 75th birthday. Dawn has moved into the big old convent in Rochester, MN that once housed all the nuns who staffed the Mayo Clinic. We discussed when she was visiting before she went that it was only a 12 hour drive from Casper.

Sometime this winter we decided that the 4 of us who lived in Casper could surprise her on her birthday this year. And it was a complete surprise. We left on Thursday early morning (about 4:30 am) and hit the road. We spent about 13 hours on the road (and lost an hour halfway across South Dakota) and rolled into town about 8:00pm.

We checked into a hotel and got up the next morning to meet our co-conspirator (Ramona) and set up the surprise. We were ensconced in the Walnut Room, and she went up to get Dawn on some excuse. She came in the room and looked around with a puzzled expression and a blank look for a couple of seconds (since we were all wearing masks) and then started jumping up and down shouting her favorite expletive. She has declared it the best birthday ever.

We spent two days celebrating her birthday, exploring some of the most unique dining ever. The highlight was Twig’s, a unique restaurant attached to a small hotel. Twigs specialty is a thick slice of granite, heated to 650 degrees. It is served with slices of raw beef, pork, scallops, and shrimp. You then slap the meat on the granite and cook to the desired doneness. (See Jill’s Facebook pages for pictures of food).

On Sunday morning we packed up early and headed home. On the way home we drove through Sturgis, SD and stopped for dinner. We ate at Knuckle’s, a noted eatery during the motorcycle rally in the summer.

We pulled into home about 8:30 pm after a fun & exciting trip.

Categories
house construction Solar Power weather

February Update

I apologize for the time between updates, but things are in quite a state of flux. My house is basically complete, other than finishing up the interface between my backup power and Jill’s house.

Jill’s house is progressing nicely. The electrical work is mostly done, most of the wallboard installed and roughly half of the mudding & taping is done. The ceiling fan has arrived, and the mini-split unit is waiting in the C-can to be installed.

The well water reverse osmosis plant remains an issue. While I was down in So. Cal at the end of December the mini-split unit was powered down and somehow did not get restarted. As a result, the reverse osmosis plant froze, and significant damage was done due to freezing. I’ve exchanged emails with tech support at RainDance Systems and we’re looking at $500. – $2,500. for new pumps, filters, etc. I was considering just replacing the entire system (~$13,000.) but got a surprising amount of pushback during the weekly call on Saturday evening.

For the past few weeks, I have been driving a couple of miles down to Yellowstone Hwy to the fresh water supply point and getting 4-500 gallons of water for $5.00 and pumping it into the FW supply tank in the C-can. It’s turned into about a weekly process and is fairly routine (when the weather isn’t into negative numbers). I could continue that for the next couple of months while we make progress on Jill’s house and other possible developments on the site. I may just continue as we are for the short term and wait to see where we go from here.

The other issue going on is modifications to the solar power installation up on the hill. I am modifying the solar collectors to attach to the sides of the C-cans. That is the optimum angle from sunrise to ~ 10:00am in the morning, and on the other side for evening. That will free up some square footage in the Orchard and Garden areas, as well as providing room for possible expansion of the barn area assuming we remove the trailer as planned this summer.

New Position for Solar Panels

Amplifying info to follow.