I'm Going To Quit For a While

We had high winds come through lastnight and about $70 worth of insulation was blown down and torn up. It's going to take a lot of work to dig out the wall (behind the garage) so that I can put new insulation up. That's more work than one person can do. I've been doing it alone for a while and I'm sick of it. I'm going to take a break and not work on the house for a month or so and maybe I wont be so depressed and I can start again.

I was sick today and didn't go to work, but I'll probably go this evening. I didn't sleep much lastnight. We lost a kitty cat yesterday. She was 13 years old. I miss her. I buried her in a good spot on the property so that I can look out and see the spot and have fond memories of how wonderful she was.
It hurt to have to bury her. Even if some people think she was only a cat, the thing is, she was a little partner. She laid on my feet in the evenings. She was close by most of the time. That's the way she wanted it. She sometimes drove me crazy by purposely walking right in front of me. She just wanted to go where I went. I'll miss her.

When and if I resume work on the house, I'm going to have to see if I can get some adult help. Josh can't work unless he's micromanaged. We have a 28 year old that wont work unless it's convenient for him. I need someone I can depend on and that I can give tasks to, and can work on their own; a responsible person. I'm not sure if this type of person exists and I'm not sure what this type of person would have to be paid. I just know that I can't do the work myself and the thought of having to dig out and start again behind the garage depresses me beyond description.

Nothing Done On My Day Off

Today is Presidents Day. I had the day off work. I had planned to work on the house, but I haven't been feeling well for the past few days and felt worse today, so I didn't do much today. I did unload the truck. There was some conduit that I bought yesterday and I unloaded it, but that was just a five minute job.

I also planned to go in to the office and work a little bit on a project that I've got a deadline on. I didn't do that either. My head hurt. I ache all over. I probably have what's been going around in our area that the locals call "the flu". I'm not sure if it's an influenza or what it is, but I feel badly enough that I stayed indoors most of the day.

It really was depressing to have a three-day weekend and get nothing done on the house. And we've got more rain coming during the week, so it's doubtful that I'll get much done before the weekend. It's really not a happy time for me, although I do have something fun scheduled for March 1st. The downside is that it's a Saturday, which means I'll give up working on the house that day, and then the Sunday will be spent driving back, so I'm likely not to get much done that weekend either. It will be a good break for me though.

PS. When Rachel got home, I was reminded that in addition to not doing anything on the house, I also did not wash dishes. She gets frustrated that she gets stuck washing the dishes most of the time. Honestly, I was sick today and just didn't think of it. I didn't think to eat either, so it's not like I was watching tv all day and eating bon bons (I'm not even sure what bon bons are, but I'm pretty sure they're not good for me).

Weather: Not Much Done This Weekend

Is this a recurring theme or what? We got very little done this weekend. This time, it was the rain. We got several inches of rain. It was cold and windy and we just weren't set up for working in it. I'm still trying to recover from being ill this last few days, and so I stayed inside.

I am doing some planning for the garage. I'm feeling an urgency to get that closed in so we can buy building materials and store them some place secure. So we need to get the utilities in and then the slab poured, and then we can get the garage framed in where necessary and the doors put in to secure it.

We met with a plumber over a week ago, but haven't heard back from him. I'll call him tomorrow to see what's up with that.

As far as electrical, I'm trying to plan for the future and thinking that if we (or some future owner) ever want to convert the garage into a bedroom or two, that we want the ability to add an additional circuit (or two). So I'm going to put a sub-panel in the garage. I'll have a feeder line from the main breaker box. Originally, I was thinking that 8/3 would work. This would support a 40 amp sub panel. Two 20 amp circuits could come off that, but now I'm thinking it might be better to plan for a little bit of overkill, so we'll go with a 60amp sub-panel, which I think will require a 6/3 feeder. I think that'll go inside a 1 1/2 inch conduit from box to box. From there, it'll be 12/2 for the individual circuits in the garage. That's pretty standard.

Bear in mind that I'm not an electrician, but I can read and I'm going through the NEC standards as well as coming up with initial plans. Talking them over with experienced electricians, I'll refine as necessary. I see no reason to hire an electrician for this kind of work, as we're on a budget and I feel reasonably comfortable with it. And I'm not too proud to ask questions.

I bought some schedule 40 conduit and hope to run some of it tomorrow. I have the day off, but most people have to work. I'm hoping that maybe I can get some of the errands done tomorrow that I normally can't do on days that I'm stuck at the office. Because of these errands, I'm probably not going to get a whole lot done with the house, but the planning is progress. We might be slow, but this gives us time to mull things over.

Worked In the Dark This Evening

In anticipation of lots of rain and bad weather this weekend, I put in a tiny bit of work this evening in the dark. It wasn't a lot, but it was better than letting the weekend be a bust. The tractor has headlights and I had a flashlight, so I went out to the house a little bit after dinner and got some work done.

One of the garbage bags that I had covering a vent on the roof had blown off, so I went on the roof and re-covered that to keep the rain out. I really don't have to cover those chimneys and vents, but I prefer to keep as much weather out of the house as possible, so I covered them.
I got on the tractor, turned the headlights on and started moving dirt behind the garage. Some of the insulation I had put up last weekend had been moved around in the wind, so I had to dig out gravel and/or dirt and get the insulation back into position like I wanted, and then I rebraced them.

I moved dirt from the excavation hill (the one from the original excavation in May) to the back of the garage. If I'd had more insulation up on the wall, I would've put a lot more dirt in place, but without the insulation, there's a limit to how much dirt I can get up there so I quit.I might've put more insulation up this evening, but it was dark and knowing that bad weather is in store and that I'll likely be working by myself, I didn't feel I wanted to work on fixing an insulation job in bad weather by myself if there were any problems with it (caused by wind). Working with the insulation is bad enough on your own, but I don't even want to think about trying to work with it in bad weather. And the stuff is expensive so I don't want to risk having it damaged in the wind. If it were up, I'd have to go rebrace and refit if there were wind.

Anyway, long story short is that I limited myself to moving a little bit of dirt, and doing some bracing of insulation to hold it tightly against the wall until I can berm some more. Once the dirt is up at least 4 feet, the insulation is usually fine as long as the upper portion is braced so the wind wont tear it in half.

Last weekend, I bought some cheap 2x4 lumber to use as bracing. I've got a couple of old t-posts, some tree limbs and other scrap lumber that I've been using as bracing. It seems to work.
If I had a couple more people to work with, I'd have the entire wall insulated and probably bermed halfway up. If I had 2 more people working with me, they could be putting the insulation in place and holding it there while I get dirt up on it.

I sure wish I had a couple more helpers. Josh called a couple of nights ago and wants to work again. Unfortunately, the weather will likely prohibit that this weekend. The last forecast I saw was for rain and/or snow both Saturday and Sunday. There is a chance that we might get a break on Sunday. Josh is a decent worker, but if I only had a second Josh to work with him, that would be great.

Not As Much Done This Weekend

I didn't get as much done this weekend as I wanted. I got about half of what I wanted done. This is so frustrating. I would've gotten more done today if it hadn't been for losing a valve stem on the tractor and a subsequent flat tire. No spare valve stems on-site, and by the time we drive to town to get one and back, it would've been colder and starting to get dark, so I did some dirt moving by shovel, but not really much.

Rachel & I did buy some more sheets of insulation because I was almost out. I had started insulating the back walls of the garage and have a small portion of that area finally bermed. I want to get that area covered so that we can protect that waterproofing layer before we have to redo it (all over again).

One bit of progress, if you can call it that, is that we met with a plumber. He came recommended by one of Rachel's co-workers and we called the guy. He came out. This house is different from anything he's ever done, but he was excited about the project.We walked the site and went over the plumbing plan. He took a copy with him and said that everything we talked about doing should be no problem. Even the issue of the garage bathroom having a staging reservoir and sump pump was all things he felt comfortable with. I'm going to have to dig a pit for the thing to sit in though. That's going to be digging into sold rock. I'll do it, rather than having him do it though.

He also recommended that I use a material called DST for the propane line. He said that I can get it from a local plumbing supply company. I recognized the name of the place and have bought from them many times in the past. I need to get that line this week as well as also getting the conduit for the electrical supply line. If I can get some of these things done this week, maybe it'll make up for not getting as much work done today.

It was frustrating having a flat tire on the tractor. It was only on the 2nd bucket load of dirt when it snagged a dead tree limb or something and tore the valve stem off. I heard it and knew what it was immediately. The thing was flat and leaning to one side before I could park the thing. I didn't even take time to dump the load of dirt in the bucket until after it was parked in a place that I could work on the tractor (later). At the time, I didn't know it was the valve stem, but after seeing that, it sure explained how the tire could lose that much air that fast. It was gone in less than 20 seconds.

The good news is that it wasn't the tire. I'll replace the valve stem and air the thing back up. What it costed me is time. I didn't get productive use of the tractor today and I can't do much work during the week (because I have one of those job-like things that occupy my time during the day when it's light outside). I hope to get that tire fixed tomorrow and be back on the thing moving dirt (however, there's a chance of rain tomorrow so that would prevent me from working).

Learned a Costly Lesson

I learned a costly lesson. There've been some in the past and I'm sure there will be some in the future. One thing I'm going to add to my Notes section, is to make sure you learn all of the environmental and shelf life information of the products you'll be using. I only learned yesterday that we have a problem with our waterproofing material.

When we'd opened our most recent bucket of the material, I noticed that a considerable amount of the material (approximately 25%) was in a clump. I e-mailed the manufacturer about it, and asked 2 questions. I asked if there was a way to mix the material and get it "unclumped" and I also asked if using the non-clumped material made it any less effective.

The good news is the answer to the second question is no. The bad news is that the answer to the first question is "probably no".

They told me that the shelf life of the material is about 6 months. They are about to release a newer version of the product that doesn't have this issue, but for now, we're losing approximately 25% (or more) of what we have left to do the job. So it'll probably cost me more money to get more of the material to finish the job.

I wish that Jay had told us that the product had a limited shelf life. If he had, we probably wouldn't have bought it until we needed it. We bought it ahead of time, figuring that we'd have it on hand and that we'd get to the job when we could. Now we're taking an expensive loss. It'll probably cost us around $400, but I'm not sure if that estimate is high or low.