In this episode I will get you more up to date with the goings on at OCC and there are changes at the web site.

On with the OCC update.

When last we talked I had basically shut OCC down by draining the water, putting RV antifreeze in sink and tub traps.

The toilets were drained of water but then filled with RV antifreeze and then flushed. This ensured no water was left in the mechanism and the bowel had only antifreeze in it. The toilet shut offs were the only taps I closed. If I left them open the antifreeze in the tank would siphon out. Any liquids that might freeze if the generator failed were collected and removed. I was running an experiment leaving the boiler on and only having the thermostats for the two bathrooms operating.

My first day trip of the year had me almost going off the driveway, gad.

I noticed when I entered OCC I could smell a sickly sweet, maybe, odour. It was the RV antifreeze in the toilet bowels that would evaporate over time and require adding some more to keep the trap full. I took a chance and floated some plastic wrap on the liquid in the bowel, not knowing if it would dissolve or leave a nasty mess. Time would tell.

Both bathrooms were at their set temperature of 9.5 C. So that was working, but the hours on the generator had not shown the reduction I was hoping for so I turned off the boiler till I got a chance to run the numbers.

The batteries got topped up and all data logs and system control logs along with the generator log was collected.

I have been using my phone as my camera on these short trips but have come to realize it doesn't like the cold. The battery dies very quickly. This is a bit unnerving as it is my only source of communication with the outside world while I am at OCC. Once inside and on the charger the battery springs back to life going from the red, dead indicator, to close to 50% charged within minutes …

I cleared the driveway with the snow thrower and when I left, the sun was shining and the batteries were fully charged.

Ten days pass the batts were at 99% and the gen hadn't run since before my last visit. That sickly sweet odour of RV antifreeze no longer hung in the air. The plastic wrap was doing its job with no signs of dissolving.

Both bathroom thermostats were calling for heat but the boiler was off. Understandable. I put them in standby mode.

The trail cam by OCC was dead again. Looks like the unit was starting to act up.

Took the system and gen logs. Noted that the tracks in the driveway, from last visit, still looked fresh. So no snow and very little wind.

It was a full month till my next visit to Our Country Cottage. It had been very cold but it was time to top up the batteries. They were very thirsty.

My phone died again while trying to take pics of the propane gauge.

I noticed that the generator had not run since the beginning of the year so I fired it up from inside OCC and it started right away. The batteries were now at 100% when I put the gen back into Auto and it shut itself off after the programmed cool down period.

Like I said it had been very cold. The battery room was down to +5C ( first time I had seen it below 10C) and the utility room was at +1C (and the first time I had seen it below 7C). I had heard a report that a local town measured frost down to 18 feet below ground. Water pipes were freezing all over the place.

I was starting to get concerned about the state of OCC. The pipe to the well, runs under the driveway and is, I think, at least 10 feet down. Also I had left the hot water tanks full in the utility room. As noted the temp down there was just +1 degree. Lots to think about.

That trail cam was dead again, recording only 1 file. Some of the trail cam batteries were below .1 of a volt. Maybe a short circuit in the camera. The tie wrap even snapped when I went to secure its door.

I ordered a new cam a couple of days later in the city.

Armed with a new trail cam I was back at OCC a couple of weeks later.

The driveway was blocked with a berm of snow that someone pushed into the entrance. I dug a path just wide enough for my vehicle to get through and had one of the sketchiest drives to OCC, but I made it. I had to plow and snow throw the driveway, it was deep.

The snow thrower decided to throw its chain while I was moving snow in front of the garage, luckily. It just took time to put it back and retention it.

Then onto something easy. Change the trail cam. Well not so fast. All my trail cams are secured with those cable locks. When I went to take this one off I found that several years of tree sap had been running into the key hole etc. I could get the key in but it would not turn. Yes, I had the right key.

So after about 45 minutes and a fair amount of WD40, I got it open, replacing the camera with the new one.

I was pretty fed up by this point and just wanted to go home. I texted my partner from the gate, as I normally do, to say I am on my way, glad to get going.

Well the gate is round a corner from the driveway exit to the road and as I rounded the corner I saw a horse trailer parked in the driveway blocking my exit. No truck, just the trailer. I honked my horn for a while with no response.

Did I tell you I was fed up already. With little option I started digging on the most promising side of the trailer to see if I could squeeze, and it would be a squeeze, by. Not sure it would have worked at all. But after about ten minutes of digging a pickup truck came out of my neighbours drive with three horses in tow.

My neighbour hadn't been staying at his place this winter so I was surprised to see anyone. It wasn't my neighbour but a friend who had been keeping some horses there.

He told me he put his trailer there because he never saw anyone use it. I pointed out that it was my driveway access to my property. I also pointed out that I had just cleared the snow and that should have been a clue…

Oh well I asked him not to do it again and all was OK. Funny thing is, that if I hadn't had snow thrower problems and problems with the trail cam I would have been gone a couple of hours ago and never would have seen him or his horse trailer.

It was a two beer night at the bar, that night.

Just over two weeks pass and I am trying not to slide off our kilometre of fun, again. Had to do one of those stop and back up slowly things.

With the well weighing heavily on my mind I fired up the well pump to see if all was ok. And it was. There is a valve where I can turn the water off to the house but fill the pressure tank. I let the tank fill to the operating pressure then turned the pump off and drained it into the sump. I know that if the pump draws about 2K watts, as shown on the solar control panel, it was working normally.

Collected the usual logs and the SD card from the new trail cam. All looked good. Ran the gen for ten mins or so and put it back to auto. Except for the exercise I have been giving the generator, it hadn't run at all.

Much less stress this trip.

Nine days pass and I am back with three containers of distilled water. Took awhile to clear the snow off of the battery room hatch, just to get in.

Topped up the batteries…

Cleared snow in front of garage and turned on the heat tape, under the grate, to help any water drain. There were large pools of standing water here and there.

The driveway was cleared of heavy wet snow.

In the utility room I noticed that the water in the sump was a couple of inches over the top of the weeping tile outlet. Hadn't seen it that high before. I tested the sump pump and it ran perfectly giving me a bit of assurance that all would be OK.

Did the usual data log collections. Some data loggers needed new batteries, so they got changed. I always try to keep spares on hand. Special batteries that I order online.

Turned off the heat tape and left somewhat later than I usually do. I have now developed anxiety when I turn that corner after the gate. Pheww, no horse trailer.

Forty days and forty nights later I return to OCC. Enough time had past that most of the snow on the driveway had gone. What was an iffy drive along with time spent clearing snow had turned into nothing. As it does every spring.

Our turning circle was clear and for the first time I was able to take a stroll around it, finding two deer grazing just to the south. They didn't stay long once they saw me, even though I waved.

The batteries were almost fully charged but very thirsty. Didn't even have to clear any snow off of the hatch, just went right in and topped em up.

Swapped the SD card on the new trail cam but found it dead. Hmm it had new batteries last time. The only other thing it had in common was the SD card and the tree it was mounted to. I ruled out the tree. Could the SD card be the problem all along. Something else to think about. I put a question mark on the card.

This trip I brought our smaller vehicle to change the tires from winter to summer. And that got done, and left at about 2.

Two weeks go by and I return for my first overnight stay of the year. The snow was all gone with the grass greening up nicely. On my way up I picked up a couple of water test kits. Something that I had been putting off far too long. In fact I then put them in a bag wrote the year on it and put it under the counter, removing a bag with a couple of water test kits which was marked two years ago. This year for sure.

Got to get water back into OCC. I turned the well pump on and let the pressure tank fill to pressure ( the pump shuts off) I then empty the tank into the sump till the pump turns on again. I do this four times, should be enough.

Then I partially open the valve to the rest of OCC. As water fills the pipes and pushes the air out I start at the lowest tap (the outside tap) and watch it till the water runs clear then turn it off. Next downstairs bathroom, sink, shower.

I take the plastic wrap out of the toilet. It was in good shape, not a sign of it failing. So that seemed to work OK. No nasty RV antifreeze smell and the level was kept well above the trap without having to top it up. Good stuff.

Turned the shutoff valve to the toilet on, let it fill and flush. All looked good. Onto the kitchen sink then the upstairs bathroom. Same deal with the plastic wrap there too. All was looking good and OCC was back. Water wise anyway.

It was still a bit cool so I built a fire. I lit the kindling, then quickly opened the chimney flu then opened the fresh air inlet. Well I tried to open the fresh air inlet. It was solid, not letting me turn the control at all. The fire was lit but without fresh air, it smoked and went out.

Now the fresh air flap is below the grate at the back of the fire box. To get to it I had to remove all the wood, some charred, all the kindling, some burnt some charred, and remove the grate. Great!

I almost had to crawl inside the firebox to see down to the fresh air inlet. I was not obvious what was holding it closed so I started poking at it with a fire poker while trying to turn the control handle.

Now a point of interest. The fresh air inlet control is a rod that comes out of the hearth in the middle of the bricks with a right angle bend in it, making the control lever. The rod goes way to the back of the fire box to the flap. It was installed during construction. If it ever broke or the flap came off I have no clue how it would get fixed. My efforts to free it kept all this in mind.

It took 30 to 45 minutes to get it free. First a little bit then a bit more and a bit more till it was operating like nothing had happened. The fire wood was all replaced with some fresh kindling and the fire was started without any other problems.

Meanwhile, back with the water recommission, I noticed it was not holding pressure. There was a leak somewhere. Gad.

A mad run around to the obvious places revealed the downstairs shower was running. Hmm, the tap was in the off position but it was still running. I took the handle off and a couple of plastic pieces and I could rotate the control 360 degrees and sometimes the water would stop, but not always in the same place. Very strange. I played with it for a while, confirming its inconsistent behaviour and took several pictures.

I was planning to go to a local town for supper anyway and they had a couple of very good hardware stores. So maybe I could find some answers there.

After explaining my problem to the gentleman behind the counter and showing him the pics he presented me with a new cartridge. I asked how much and he told me that the brand I have is guaranteed for life and there is no charge. Best news I had all day.

Returning to OCC, after a less than spectacular supper, I installed the new cartridge, like I knew what I was doing. It worked right away, well after installing the handle in the wrong position and having to redo it that is.

With all these fun and games during the day I hadn't got round to cleaning up the bedroom and changing the linens. I slept on the couch, well love seat, in front of the fireplace. It was only a couple of feet too short. Not a good sleep.

I think I will leave it there with two nights left for this visit. Tune in next time to find out, is the water situation fixed, why did I cut two big holes in the wall, do bear bangers scare off bears, and will I get the sheets changed on the bed.

As promised last time (not that that means much in some cases) the web site has changed, the layout, sort of, and new pix. Year two of construction pix are now ready for viewing.

So check it out at

https://www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com

If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected].

Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :).

If you are on the "Friends of OCCaN" mailing list and had enough, just send me an email at [email protected] and you will be released.

The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released.

Till next time….

In this episode I will get you more up to date with the goings on at OCC and an OCC Year In Review, remembering some of what happened last year.

So on with Episode 28 OCC update.

As usual I left the last episode with some unanswered questions. Once again our trusty generator was not so trusty, refusing to start.

Three days before my next visit we had a major snow dump in the city. I think I shoveled the walk 3 maybe 4 times that day. It just kept coming. The next day, taking my life into my own hands, and on summer tires, I ventured out onto snow clogged streets in an attempt to get a new battery for the generator. Two positive things were in play, 1- the generator supplier had just got a new shipment of batteries and 2- they had moved closer to where I lived in the city. Even though they were closer it was a sketchy trip but a new battery was acquired.

My main country vehicle was now in the shop, undergoing major surgery for the foreseeable future, so I was going to use our other vehicle which was good but not as solid as my main one and it was running summer tires. I keep its snow tires at OCC and figured all I had to do was get in to OCC and put on the snowies and the return trip would be no problem

Giving a couple of days for them to get the roads cleared, up by OCC, I loaded up our vehicle with all the snow emergency stuff I had, traction mats, shovels, tow ropes, come-along, kitty litter, snow shoes and on and on.. and off I went. Oh yeah, I had the new generator battery too.

As I got closer to Our Country Cottage it became clear there wasn't anywhere near the amount of snow we had got in the city. I didn't need any of the emergency stuff I had packed at all. Sort of like when you carry an umbrella it doesn't rain. But better to have it and not need it than, need it and not have it.

Arriving at OCC I didn't even need to clear the drive, just drove straight in. On my last visit I had turned the boiler off so the batteries would not be drained. With the days getting shorter, not much sun, and that pesky gen not starting I though it was the prudent thing to do. I hadn't accounted for the sudden season change we just had.

Now, with winter coming early in the city and temps dropping all over I was genuinely concerned that OCC might have frozen. A quick check inside OCC revealed the batteries fully charged and no frozen toilets. The living room was at 12 C just on the power of the sun. I turned the boiler on.

Outside I checked to see if the gen would start. Nope, it had not magically fixed itself while I was away. A quick battery swap and she fired to life with little effort.

The solar control panel showed the gen charging at 5.2 KW but with no load at all and the inverter light was off. I guess with the OCC batteries fully charged the gen was just supplying power to the boiler, etc. Hadn't seen that mode before.

After about ten minutes or so, I put the gen into Auto at the generator and it stopped right away. Then, at the solar control panel, I pressed manual start and the gen started right up, so I put it in Auto and the solar control unit shut it down with the usual cool down routine. And with no internal fan fail errors, all seemed to be working normally.

Snow tires were put on the vehicle ready for the next big snow dump here, or in the city.

Before I left I checked that the boiler was heating where it was supposed to be heating and, again, all looked normal.

I took the opportunity to drop the defective battery off at the generator supply shop on the way home. It might still be under warranty. Rrright.

Two weeks pass and I am back to check on things. What little snow there was, was just about gone. Good thing I had the snow tires on. Looks like the generator had run a couple of times since my last visit. A good sign. The propane was just under a half.

It was over a month till my next visit, this time with my main country vehicle and its newly rebuilt heart. It now ran smooth and quiet. The main reason for the rebuild was a tick/ knock that had developed over the years, sometimes being so loud you could not hold a conversation by it while it was running. It was to the point that I was expecting something to come flying through the hood whilst on route to or from OCC. It was all good now.

After having received an invoice for propane, earlier in the week, I checked the tank gauge to make sure it was my tank they had filled and sure enough it was up to 80%. 80% is the max you are allowed to put in these propane tanks. It allows for expansion etc as the outside temperature changes.

I had brought with me some driveway markers that I found on sale and I devised a tool from a cast-iron pipe, a cap and a piece of felt, to drive them into the ground. I was going to place them around the turning circle and at the edge of the drive where I slipped off with the vehicle or tractor before. Yeah, well just a bit late. The ground was frozen. I tried one and it stands as a crooked testament, on the far side of the turning circle, that time and frozen ground wait for no man. Next season.

The OCC batteries got topped up and data logs and solar control logs were taken. A trail cam SD card was also swapped out. Mental note. Need more distilled water.

When I left the batteries were fully charged.

Over the next week I was contemplating the pending shorter days and colder weather conditions. I had not improved our generators living conditions, IE I had not built it any sort of enclosure to help ward off the cold. I kept thinking of last years gen failures to start due to extreme cold.

I think I have mentioned once or twice, how fast this summer seemed to pass. One minute I am mowing grass and putting tasty weed killing salt and vinegar on the vegetation and the next minute up to my boots in snow, not being able to drive a thin road marker into the frozen ground.

A decision was made and seven days from my last visit I am at Our Country Cottage to basically shut her down for the season. I will still have to go up every so often to top up batteries, check data logs etc, but the terror of the frozen toilets and drained OCC batteries with its, "Power Has Been Lost", emails will be abated.

The biggest part to shutting Our Country Cottage down for the season is draining the water out of the place. First let me explain that I had picked up a couple containers of RV antifreeze, when they came on sale, a month or so ago and have been waiting, in the utility room, to be pressed into service since then.

I started by draining the pressure tank then worked from the highest elevation down. So with the well pump off and the pressure tank draining into the sump, I started with the upstairs bathroom by opening all taps. You can hear the water getting sucked out of the pipe by gravity. I then turned off the water feed to the toilet and flushed it I then filled the tank with antifreeze and flushed again. This replaces all the water in the toilet workings with antifreeze. I pour a bit of antifreeze in the sink, tub and shower drain to replace the water in the traps.

Downstairs, I do the same in the downstairs bathroom. I also turn the tap on in the kitchen sink and put some antifreeze down that drain too. Our washer dryer machine has a small lint trap that also has to be drained. And lastly the outside tap gets opened.

A bit of an experiment this time. I didn't drain the domestic hot water tank or the pre-heater tank, heated by the solar collectors on the roof. I figured that they were below ground, in the utility room and therefore should not freeze. I am also leaving the solar collectors running to heat that little radiator in the back hall. I had inadvertently turned them off last year when I shut the boiler and the thermostat, not realizing they were on the same breaker. Live and learn.

Again as an experiment I decided to leave the boiler on and turn the thermostat off for the living room. The thermostats for the bathrooms were left on. I hope to see a big reduction in energy usage.

Last year I was trying to keep the temp above freezing in the cottage for the winter but the gen failed and I shut the boiler off. This year I am trying to limit the heat in OCC so that the generator would run less while keeping it online. Give it a shot, anyways.

I collected all liquids and took them back to the city.

My next visit was three weeks later. The batteries were at 90% and the living room was at 10C. Just a bit above where it would have been if I had the heat on. The bathrooms were at the thermostat setting temperature. Good stuff.

The generator had run just over fifty hours since my last visit. Now normally that would be a good sign. From previous years anything under 100 hours a month, this time of year would be great. But this year the weather had been particularly mild, so I am not sure whether I am winning or loosing.

The only thing I can say is that I am glad I have collected all the data I have over the years. Stuff like generator hours run, data loggers, gen logs etc along with the notes I make for each trip. It might seem useless at the get go but it gives me lots of info to go over to see if OCC is on track or not. Well at least it does most of the time. When you have a year that is warmer, in this case, than the norm it kinda makes you think a bit more.

I changed the oil and filter in the generator, back bladed about a third of the drive, more for me than the drive, and collected the solar control log and the generator log.

When I left the batteries were fully charged. I had been driving for about fifteen minutes when I got the feeling that I hadn't put the generator back into auto after changing the oil etc. And, no, I hadn't taken a picture. It was too risky to leave it in manual as the gen would not be able to start if it needed to and the batteries would drain and I would get a terrifying "Power Has Been Lost" email.

I turned around and went back. Sure enough it was in Auto. So it would have been fine. I took a pic.

As it turned out that was the last visit of the year and a good place to conclude this episodes OCC update.

And now for the first time ever

The Our Country Cottage Year In Review

A lot of things can happen in a year. Good and bad. A lot can also get forgotten. So this is my attempt at collecting all of the highlights and lowlights in this episodes OCC YIR. Info collected from over 60 pages of notes, hundreds of pictures and revisiting previous OCC podcasts, distilled into YIR.

The year actually started with OCC sending my power lost emails. Very cold temperature had caused the gen to fail then the heating system started acting funny. Heating areas that shouldn't be heated and not heating areas that should.

So that's how it started.

This is how last year breaks down, hmmm, poor choice of words…

seventeen- 1 day drop ins one- 7 day, 6 night visit one- 4 day, 3 night visit five- 3 day, 2 night visits

The first solo overnight stay (2 nights) by my partner And 4 overnight (3- 2 night and 1- 1 night) stay while I wasn't there.

And one unexpected, furry, overnight guest in the garage.

I went off the drive, getting stuck, half a dozen times, about 50/50 between my vehicle and the tractor, one time both on the same day. I almost went off the road several times. That included, heading toward the ditch and the wheels just catching at the last moment, and heading to the ditch and managing to stop just in time and backing away slowly.

I had to snow shoe in once, almost walking off the road because the lighting was so flat I couldn't see where the edge of the drive was. And I fell a few times but my standing up procedure, in snow shoes, improved greatly.

The batteries were topped with distilled water 8 times. Trail cams collected 17 times. Solar control records collected 17 times Temperature data loggers collected 6 times Generator logs collected 6 times The generator oil and filter and the house water filter were both changed 3 times.

Weed killer strategy was changed after finding out how bad the commercial weed killer was. The homemade stuff turned out to be not as effective as I had hoped. Something to work on.

The solar equipment had its fan problem, but was easy to fix once it failed for good. I still get corrupt files from the controller from time to time. Not a big concern.

A section of the loft deck railing, failed and was fixed. This gave us the incentive to check the rest of the railings, which exposed several other places that were missing a screw or two.

The tractor mower grass chute duck tape repaired for less than a tenth of the cost of a new one.

The generator gave me some problems, not starting when it should and starting when it shouldn't.

The heating system had issues as noted above along with the hot water not being so hot.

A new BBQ assembled and working but not without issues. The old BBQ recycled.

Some good meals were BBQ'ed after all.

The Quonset got its skirt flap covered with gravel after being held down with only snow for several months.

I had some very relaxing moments, too. Waiting for the six o'clock fox to show up, Casually looking out the window and seeing deer elk and moose, etc. Just being able to take wildlife pics from the living room couch is so cool. Listen to some good music with some good adult beverage while watching the trees in the valley. Gazing at the stars slowly revealing themselves in the sky as the sun set. Then there was the time I captured a solar eclipse with my camera, indirectly, from a quickly improvised pinhole projector.

Well those are most of the highs and lows of last year. Nothing major. Our Country Cottage present a completely different set of challenges than I encounter in the city. As they say, a change is as good as a rest.

For more details check out episodes # 23 – 27.

Gad, I averaged less than 1 podcast a month. When I started I thought I would be able to do at least 2 a month.

Heading the list of things to do this year are

1-An enclosure or something for the generator

And

2-Pull the shoulder of the driveway back up.

These two things, alone, would help with two big issues, the generator reliability and sliding off the driveway, getting stuck.

At the moment I am not sure how to do either but I will give it a good try this summer.

Then there is that weed thing, that trap door thing, that other thing etc etc etc.

So that's Our Country Cottage, Year In Review done and dusted.

For those of you that check out our website, there are some changes coming. The foundation that it was built on has changed, so, the site will change as well.

I will attempt to do this in the next week or so. Dare I say that this might include new pictures, no I better not.

Tune in next time for episode #29 and another OCC update. How is the new year treating OCC so far well at least the days are getting longer.

For pictures, and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com

If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected].

Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :).

If you are on the "Friends of OCCaN" mailing list and had enough, just send me an email at [email protected] and you will be released.

The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released.

Till next time….

In this episode I will bring you up to date with the goings on at OCC and, as promised, the ITB wrap up.

Finally I can close the book on ITB, In The Beginning. No more confusion with episode numbers and ITB progress month numbers. Hey, it was getting confusing for me.

*******On With In The Beginning Wrap Up******

It was at the end of month 27, (no, lets not go there again) two years and three months, that there was a logical point to finish with contractors, etc. and take sole claim of Our Country Cottage.

Not everything was finished but enough was enough and we decided to cut the cord. As reported last episode, keys were returned and good byes said. Now the only thing left was to pay the final bill, but how much would that be? Changes had been made, there was that bill that was only partially paid by the first site supervisor, incorrect items delivered costing more to install and on and on.

I don't mind telling you I lost a lot of sleep trying to figure all this stuff out. I had kept notes, records and receipts so I could have gone through it item by item… It would have taken a long time and forced me to relive all the problems we had had over the past two years, plus. I really didn't want to go there. Everything was still very raw and I just wanted to see the end of that phase of the project, construction etc, and start the next phase, the phase where we start enjoying OCC.

So instead of turning up to the final meeting with the project organizer with a pad of paper listing every item of contention, I came up with an alternate concept. With some of the bigger items in mind I arrived at a figure that I would be comfortable with. It was more of a gut thing. I know people who would have gone through every item, every receipt and done a full accounting so as not do pay one more penny than absolutely necessary and probably end up still unhappy, thinking someone had fooled them to pay more.

I remember back a few years there was this one person who was looking to buy a house and came to me to ask if I thought it was a good deal and did I think they could pay less somehow. Not being a house appraiser or even seeing the property, I asked if the property was worth it to them and left it at that.

Well that's how my mind works anyways….

I am going to take this opportunity to tell you how the Our Country Cottage project was organized, financially speaking.

There was a contract drawn up with expectations of cost. In all fairness the hard costs for the building package were accurate but things got added and changed which was partly reflected in the construction plans.

Once we had settled on a floor plan and made the modifications to make it our own and once the plans had gone back and forth several times, (I just checked, and we were up to version 5)the final version had to be sent to the manufacturer with a deposit. Shortly after, there was a production deposit. Then the project company, who was going to assemble OCC and organize all the trades, etc, needed a deposit. These deposits were required by the various companies to add OCC to their schedule boards.

The balance of the cottage package was due on the delivery of the kit to the site, there abouts. It was the delivery of said kit that started the "In The Beginning" instalments, by the way.

Soo around the kit delivery month, the well was drilled and paid for and the solar power system required a deposit. A couple of other items requiring money were the septic system and getting setup with a propane tank. A bit later the folding doors between the sunroom and living room and the masonry heater required a financial injection. These were some of the extras I was handling myself.

Back to the nice neat payment schedule that was laid out by the project co-ordinator\ company. These consisted of five payments that would be made on the completion of certain stages,

1- When the foundation was complete 2- When the framing was complete 3- When OCC could be locked up and the exterior was complete 4- When drywall was complete 5- The possession and occupancy stage

For all these there was a 10% hold back on each stage that was payable 45 days after possession in one lump sum, all being agreeable.

Just to add to the confusion, the project company adds a percentage to anything that went through them or that they arrange. Towards the end of the project, and with full knowledge of the project company, I started dealing with the contractors myself, which helped with the costs. Actually the project co-ordinator suggested it, as we were getting into areas, for want of better terms, that were not on the plans.

This resulted in another series of invoices that had to be paid separately from the original contract. Custom work by the contactor and eves troughs (as reported in the last ITB) would be some examples.

I was nervous going into that final meeting, not knowing how my proposal would be received. I guess he was as anxious to finish the project as I was and after a bit of explanation and going back and forth a bit we arrived at a number, the check was written, hands were shook, and that was that.

It was actually an odd feeling knowing that I wouldn't have to go back to that office again and that OCC was bought and paid for. I slept a lot easier that night. There have only been a couple of times where I started second guessing my financial decisions but they were quickly alleviated remembering the rational that got me there.

Yes, parts of the Our Country Cottage project cost way more than expected but there was value added. The first amount set aside for contingency was blown through at an amazing rate and at least two more contingency allotments fell but at a slower rate.

One thing for sure, don't go into your dream cottage in the woods project with just the bare costs covered. Have a healthy percentage set aside for the unexpected and try to anticipate where costs could be cut back if required.

Also, try to get as much completed by your contractors as you can. It is easy to say, Oh I can finish that myself. But in reality it will take you way more time and effort than you expect and in most cases become a lingering item on that list of things to do that will keep you away from enjoying your new retreat.

For example I decided to paint the loft over the garage myself. For me it was a major undertaking. Filling and sanding the ceiling and walls. Wiping them down, ready for paint. Balancing on the very top rung of a ladder trying to reach the peak of the ceiling and limit the amount of paint getting on a clear coated beam. Then on my knees doing all the same sort of stuff for the baseboards. Trying to neatly cut in all the window and door trim.

Save money, maybe. Reduce stress and enjoy OCC nope. I still have items to be done….

Well that wraps up the ITB wrap up, now on to the

****** Our Country Cottage Update ******

I will start this update by answering some of the questions I posed at the end of the last episode.

The fan error, ahh the fan error, was it just a software glitch. No. The fan was causing more and more errors but it would still work, up to the point where it didn't. More on that later.

The deck railing did get fixed and some other weak points were strengthened.

The duct tape repair on the mower grass shoot worked out pretty good. I think little repairs from time to time will be required.

The summer seemed to flash by with the second half starting with a three day visit. Grass was mowed and weeds were wacked.

During the second day, I was in OCC when I heard a familiar sound. Poking my head out the back door I found the generator had decided to start itself. Hmmm, this was just before noon with the sun shining brightly and the batteries were fully charged. No reason for it to run at all. I tried to shut it down from the solar control panel inside OCC but it would not turn off. There were no errors or any type of event logged.

I ended up going out to the generator and turning it off at its control panel. It co-operated and shut down. Once shut down I put it back in to AUTO and all seemed normal.

Now, the generator itself produces a log, so later, I looked at that and found it ran as an exercise event. Most of the time this type of generator sits in an urban backyard waiting for the power to fail so it hardly ever runs. Under these circumstances you would want to run, exercise, the gen every so often to make sure all is ready to go.

My application is different. My gen gets a real good work out. It doesn't need exercise. The only way I could figure out not to have exercise time is to program exercise in, lets say, a couple of years in the future. Well looks like it had been a couple of years since I set that up and I just happened to be at OCC when the event came due. Wow you can't write this stuff, um, I just did, but you get what I mean. Wonder if I will be on site in a couple of years for the next exercise.

Oh, and the exercise stuff is all generator stuff so the solar control panel would not have been aware of it.

I sprayed another couple of batches of home made weed killer. Remember I was making this stuff with vinegar, salt and a bit of dish detergent. I am really loosing faith in its ability to kill weeds in the long term and I am beginning to think the salt might be drawing in the wild life as I have been seeing deer graze closer and closer to the areas where I spray. Hmmm vinegar and salt, wild life salad dressing anyone.

During this visit I did some of the usual chores. Topped up the batteries, collected the temperature data logs, solar control logs, and a trail cam SD card. The batteries had died in that cam so new ones were installed. Always keep spare batteries on hand.

The next visit was a first time ever solo visit by my partner for a couple of nights. Must say very brave and very successful.

During the visit the Solar control panel generated an error again with the internal fan. I was starting to get a feeling about that fan.

The first solo visit ended well with no other problems.

A couple of weeks go by and my partner and I go up for a one day drop in.

When we arrived I figured I would run the hot water to alleviate the lack of hot water issue we had before. To that end I turned both showers on and let them run. There was plenty of hot water.

I then got an internal fan failure followed by an over temp error on the solar control panel. Then the AC went out. I turned the boiler off and it didn't take long for the Over Temp to clear and I was able to restore the AC.

The solar control panel actually told me what inverter had overheated and by how much. This is how I found out I had a left and a right inverter in the one inverter case. Live and learn. Each side had its own fan. Looked like the left one was now down for the count. I confirmed this by turning the system off and then back on again. Normal start up routine has the left fan run and stop, then the right fan run and stop, then both run and stop. I was perched on top of a step ladder with an eagle eye on the fans when it did the test. Yup, the left fan didn't even twitch. She's dead Jim.

I would later send a report to my solar guy and he passed it on to the manufacturer. It was covered under warranty and a replacement fan would be sent.

We had brought with us 3 LED floor lamps, purchased from that flat pack store, to replace my home made cast iron pipe floor lamps. The home made ones worked OK if you didn't touch them or didn't mind glaring bright light in your face. The new ones were more elegant and less obtrusive. The home made jobbies got delegated to the garage loft.

It was during this trip that the railings were fixed. My partner held the ladder while I added reinforcement screws to the outside of the lower deck railing on the loft deck.

Shortly after that visit one of my adult children and a friend stayed for a night. No hot water as the boiler had to be turned off till the fan was replaced, but they muddled through.

It took the better part of a month before the fan showed up. During this time I had figured out and confirmed that I could do the fan replacement myself. Not a big deal at all. The fan was held in by four bolts and connected with an easy to get at connector. The hardest part would be removing the two dozen or so screws holding the main cover. Also, I had to turn off some breakers and try not to touch anything you don't have to.

The next visit was another three day event. One of the first things I did on arrival was to change the fan. During the swap I had to have the power off so I used one of those LED lights that strap to your head. If you are responsible for your own power you need to get one. You get light where you are looking and two free hands to work with. Very handy.

The replacement presented no problems at all. Well, the back of my hand brushed against something and I became aware of some residual power on one of the circuit boards. Just a little tingle.

Anyhow, on start up the left fan ran and stopped, then the right fan, then both. I was a happy camper. Breakers were reset and power restored. The solar control unit even indicated the "Internal Fan OK".

I topped up the batteries and feeling rather good went to make sure the generator was ready for the cold season ahead. Propane was good, oil level was good. I hit the start button and it gave me about a quarter crank and stopped. The control panel reset itself as though it had lost power. I went through this routine several more times with no improvement. And this was the same generator that decided it wanted to run all by itself for no reason just a few weeks ago.

The battery was measuring 14.1 volts not bad for a 12 volt battery, but there was no power. I cleaned the battery clamps, no diff. As a last ditch effort I dragged an old battery booster box out of OCC. The box showed only 30% charge but I tried it anyway. Clamped it on the gen battery and hit the start button. The generator cranked a bit and then fired up. The starter battery had gone defective. Gad.

OK next, I went into Our Country Cottage to turn on the boiler. I was looking for it to start heating the in floor radiant heating, as I had the domestic hot water turned down at the tank. It seemed like it was heating the domestic hot water anyway. Hmmm, I removed the cover to make sure the tank was turned down and it was. Out of frustration I tapped the relay with the handle of the screw driver and I heard a click and it turned off. Hmmmm.

I built the first fire of the season that afternoon and another just after supper.

The next day started with me building another fire and after breakfast I did the tractor conversion from grass mower, to snow thrower, with a rear blade.

With the conversion behind me I changed the sediment filter on The OCC water system.

Later that afternoon I got some nice pix of a doe and a stag on the south clearing. The stag was a bit of a challenge as he was looking right at me as I tried to position the camera, etc. The first few were out of focus because I couldn't look through the viewfinder. I didn't want to spook him.

The last morning of the visit rewarded me with a doe and two fawns on the south clearing lit by the rising sun, magic hour. The sky was clear, so clear in fact that the panels started charging only a half hour after sunrise.

I had also not built a fire since the morning of the previous day. Plenty of residual heat in the masonry fireplace which was helped by the clear sky and ever intensifying sun.

I think I will leave it there as the weather changes drastically before my next visit and my main vehicle goes into the shop for some major work.

Tune in next time for episode #28 and another OCC update. Will a new battery fix the problems with the generator, is the internal fan problem finally fixed, will the snow thrower get used and did the toilets freeze again. I tell you the weather took a real nasty turn.

Also, what will I replace the ITB, In The Beginning, segment with?

In the normal episode ending I refer you to the website for pictures and new ones coming soon…

OK, hands up all those believing the "new pix coming soon" bit.

Yeah, I thought so. I have been trying to find a better way to display a gallery of pix and have even spent money on a promising plug in, but to no avail. There always seems to be a gotcha somewhere.

So until I find a better way or give up and carry on with the old way I am just going to leave that part out.

Sooo

*************************************

For pictures, and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com

If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected].

Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :).

If you are on the "Friends of OCCaN" mailing list and had enough, just send me an email at [email protected] and you will be released.

The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released.

Till next time….

In this episode I will get you caught up to date with the goings on at OCC and ITB, In The Beginning, well, this might be the last one. Lets start with probably the most action packed ITB yet. ***In The Beginning, Month 27, October *** ITB is the part the podcast where I use pics, my log book, texts and emails along with any other mind jogs I can find to give you the most accurate recollection of the creation of OCC. I even referred to an old check book record this time. Looks like we had five, three day trips, to Our Country Cottage this month. In the last ITB I had noticed a boom loader, or Zoom Boom had been parked by OCC ready to go. The first day of the month did not disappoint. The crew arrived early and went to work moving all the construction extras to a predetermined area near the Quonset, away from OCC. This included leftover bricks from the masonry heater, lots of dimensional lumber, siding, trim, metal roofing and about 50 lengths of powder coated rebar that for some reason was grossly miscalculated for the deck railings. Keep in mind that all this stuff was bought and paid for and on site. To toss it out would be a great waste of material even though there were no plans to use any of it. As long as you have a place to put it so you aren't constantly looking at it or tripping over it. With 160 acres or so, we had room. It did take some time to organise it and move it and the contractors doing it were on the clock, so it did cost a bit. But, it got done and tarped over, out of the way. The following day a dumpster was dropped off and the grounds started to get cleaned up. Concrete pathway slabs were being placed on the ground at the base of the deck stairs. Two loads of gravel were dropped of and spread in front of the garage and around the turning circle, making it look much more like a real driveway. OCC hadn't looked this good, well, ever. A few days pass and I return to find the septic guy back to finish off the septic mound. It needed to be covered with dirt and the ground leading to it required tidying up too. The next morning the contractor returned and started using the zoom boom to add the bits and pieces of trim and siding that had been missed for any number of reasons. The following day saw the zoom boom being put to great use installing decorative cedar beams in the gable ends of the roof. Interesting story bout these inserts. They were on the detail drawing, as part of the building and the material was on site, but the contractor tried to convince us not to do them for some reason. If it was up to me I probably would have let it slide but my partner insisted that they should be done. And done they were and in retrospect I am glad. The detail, it added to the roof, really helps make the looks of Our Country Cottage. I think the contractors were as fed up as we were and just wanted it to end. While they were doing that I was laying some rubber patio squares in front of the generator and propane tank. I had built up the ground so I would be well out of the mud when checking either one. They also looked way better than the shipping pallets that they replaced. Less rustic. By this time it was the middle of the month and I was back for another 3 day visit. The contractor was painting the edge of the metal roof where it had been cut so it wouldn't rust. I was looking at the tractor and contemplating the winter, snowblower rear blade, conversion. I was told that the mounting brackets for the mower and the snow thrower could co-exist but in order to have both mounted at the same time longer bolts were required. After careful measurements taken and sketches made in the log book, I picked up the required hardware from the local dealer the next day. The following day I mounted the brackets permanently and did the winter conversion. I took copious amount of pictures for future reference. Just before I headed back to the city I noticed some corrosion on a pipe in the utility room. Five days pass and I'm back. In the utility room I notice water on the floor by the pressure tank. Looked like the water was coming from around the pressure relief valve. So with that and the corrosion I found last visit, I arranged for the plumber to come out for a visit. It was at this time the contractor passed me a pile of invoices reaching back six or so months for work that he had done for me outside the building contract. For the most part. Stuff like moving the construction extras down to the Quonset, gravel work, sidewalk paver work and finishing stuff not on the OCC contract. There was also stuff that was on the contract, like those roof details and installing the blind in the skylights. The blinds that were to be factory installed but weren't. I made notes. The zoom boom was picked up and the grounds were smoothed over and everything was looking nice and tidy. Very encouraging. The final visit of the month was yet another three day visit. The plumber came out on the first day and replaced the leaking pressure relief valve and redid the joint where I had noticed the corrosion on the pipe. A picture taken that day, show the grounds all cleaned up, even the dumpster was gone. The next day I busied myself putting an insulating blanket on the domestic hot water tank and putting those pipe insulating foam tubes on all the pipes I could get to. On the last day of my visit the contractor came out and we did a walk around of Our Country Cottage discussing potential problem areas on the, yet to be installed, eavestroughs. He then returned his set of keys to the property. We shook hands, a few awkward goodbye moments passed, and his part of OCC was done. I won't lie, I still get a bit emotional when I think about it. We had been through a lot together. Yes there were the days, weeks and even the odd month when he wasn't working on OCC but still. I run into him every so often, in that small town nearby, and we have very pleasant conversations. Well that was my last day of the visit for the month but it wasn't the last day of the month. The next day, the last day of the month, one of my trail cams caught a hardware panel truck pull up early in the morning. Three people got out and proceeded to swarm all over Our Country Cottage and the garage installing the eavestroughs and downspouts. From about 9 in the morning to about fifteen minutes after five in the evening, with hardly a noticeable break for lunch the video revealed ladders going up and down and moving all over the place, people on the ladders, the roof and in and out of the truck. A long section was put on with the braces every 16 inches appearing, sequentially, as if by magic. A very impressive day of work caught by trail cam and very effective. I have had no problems with any of the eavestroughs or downspouts since. Well you still have to clean them out every so often. Squeaking in on the very last day of month 27, two years and three months or 810 days, into a project that was supposed to be "240 to 300 days" long. I just dug out the contract. Our Country Cottage was now solely in our hands and our responsibility. Yikes! So that wraps up the ITB, In The Beginning, section of this episode and future episodes. The contract was completed for the most part with only the final payment to be made. I will talk a bit about what that involved next Episode. *********Now on with an Our Country Cottage Update********* Just give me a minute…. OK I'm back… If I remember correctly I was telling you bout the domestic hot water supply not being up to snuff. I started off this next visit trying to figure out what was going on. I was draining and refilling tanks and noticing things that I thought were abnormal. Thinking about it and redoing the process, not a lot made sense. The grass needed cutting anyways. Three or four hours later, I was done. Did some laundry and called it a day. Next morning I used the trimmer and cleaned up the grass around the cottage, garage, propane tank and generator. Looked much better. I noticed that I had not received my usual cottage email to tell me that all was OK. I get them even when I am at OCC. Now would be the time to fix it if anything was wrong. But first, on a hunch, I called my parner back in the city to check my computer and see if I had left my email program open. And sure enough I had. When it is open from time to time it will automatically download my email and when this happens at my main computer I have it set up to delete the mail from the server. If it is deleted I won't see it on my phone when I check it. Problem solved. It also turned out that the hot water issue was, in this case, easy to fix too. After talking to my supplier of the solar hot water pre-heater I was told the best way to clear any sort of blockage, aside from using some form of cleaning aid, was just to run water through the system by, say, turning on both showers for five minutes, several times. This I did and the hot water improved greatly. This is one of those things that if used regularly would not be a problem but, as this season is turning out, infrequent visits can cause problems. The other idea in the back of my mind is that the boiler is micro-processor controlled. This lends the possibility that it tries to optimize itself by remembering behaviour. With it being turned off for a while and sporadic usage the optimization could be not optimum. To correct this I have started leaving it on with the domestic hot water turned up as well. Might be a case of the device being too smart for my own good or it has nothing to do with anything. Fun to think about anywayz. That being said I had a great, hot, long shower the day I left. Back to normal, maybe. That week end our two adult kids went up to stay at Our Country Cottage for a couple of nights. During that time, my partner went up for a day trip with a friend. All went OK with no problems or issues reported. On their last day, they even sent me a pick of the solar control display and the well pump switch in the off position. Good stuff. I take these pictures myself when I leave. The amount of times I have turned around and gone back to check the pump switch or even to see if I remembered to close the garage door. I tell you, it is a lot easier to take a quick pick to refer to if needed. The funny thing is that the act of taking the pic fixes it in my mind so I rarely have to look at the pic. I am almost completely over my anxiety of having people at OCC when I am not there. That first trip without me was a ruff one. Anywho…. The next trip up to Our Country Cottage and the last one for the month, I was all set to try a new, homemade weed killer. Weeds just love to grow in the gravel and drive around the cottage and it is a constant battle to keep them down. It is downright dangerous to use the edge trimmer on them. Rocks go flying all over the place. A face shield is a must. The hard hat I wear while using the edge trimmer and on the tractor has both hearing and face protection. I arrive with a new spray unit and the ingredients to do some major weed damage, but first, upon entering OCC I notice the solar control panel is looking strange. Only the top and bottom lines of the display are there. The space in between is blank. Gad. Now what? Unplugging it and plugging it back in reset it and all seemed normal. The error log, however, reveals several "Internal Fan Failure" errors that have seemed to correct themselves and carried on. Hmmm. With that running circles in my mind, a batch of weed killer was made. Vinegar, salt and a sup son of dishwashing liquid. The kitchen smells like fish and chips or maybe that flavour of potato chips when the bag is freshly opened. Not necessarily a bad thing. In short bursts. Mental note, get a new wooden spoon. That smell is not leaving anytime soon. With some effort the new sprayer was assembled and filled with, what I hoped was, weed death. The reason I was so excited about this concoction was that up to this point I had been using a commercial weed killer that my family gave me killer attitude every time the subject came up. First indications were amazing. The plant leaves turned brown and started to look sickly within a couple of hours. More vinegar was put on the shopping list. So while the weeds were taking their last, um, photosynthesis cycle I moved into the garage to try to fix the mower side discharge chute on the tractor. When I was at the dealer last I asked how much a new one would be and was told around $250. I calmly stated I would see what I could do with $50 worth of duct tape first. I had the tape, extra heavy duty, triple thick duct tape at that. A little back history. The chute I am about to try to repair is a spring loaded, heavy duty, plastic chute, mounted on the side of the mower deck, that was slowly disintegrating over years of mowing that kilometre of fun that is our gravel drive. It had redirected anything from gravel to goodly sized rocks that hid in the grass. After about an hour of using a metal scraper to remove the years of build up, I was ready to apply the tape. And tape was applied. The broken edges regained their strength and the holes were patched. I used black tape to match the original colour, so it looked good too. The test will come the following day. The next day arrived and buoyed on by the continued wilting of the weeds from the previous days spraying efforts, two more batches of home brew death were administered in other areas. And now for the mower chute test. It held up pretty well, but a couple of larger rocks did some damage in the taller grass. Really got to clean up those rocks. I think some more tape will do just fine. And the after mow shower was nice and hot, too. The last two days of this visit I changed the cottage water filter, weed wacked, greased the skid steer ready for action and did some minor chores during which time I noticed a rather large moose on the south of the clearing. And yes I did use the new BBQ without any animosity this trip. I only had two visits to Our Country Cottage the next month. There was some personal stuff going on in town that took my attention and would affect me more than I realized at the time. Anyway…… So my first visit had me doing some data collection to figure out what was going on with the "Internal Fan Failure" errors. I had found out it could be one of two things, a failing fan, or a software issue. The first course of action was to verify the current version of software. Which I did. I had the new version of the software ready to go but when the time came a few questions popped up that I needed answers for before I proceeded. I had had bad experiences doing this before resulting in me reverting back to the old version of software to make things work. I didn't want to do that again. The solar display panel was behaving itself so nothing more to do till I got a reply. My enthusiasm for my home made weed killer quickly ended when I saw weeds where I had sprayed. It could be my imagination but they looked like a meaner type of weed, more pointy things etc. I had brought more ingredients for several more batches but I didn't bother. Thought I would give it some more time to kick in. Oh well. I then collected all the trail cams. One hadn't been collected since last year, two others had last been collected six months earlier. To my surprise all the cameras were still working with plenty of juice left in the batteries, even the one that hadn't been checked for well over a year. It would take a while to go through the one or two thousand (if not more) of pics on each camera. OK, of the three I am telling you about, #1 had 2068, #2 had 2400 even and #3 had 3276 pics. I will look at each one, note the frame and what was captured. I quick look at one found a night shot of a cougar close to the solar panels, within days of a visit. The next day I noticed that the railing around the entrance to the garage loft was not right. The railing around OCC were made with an upper and lower bar of cedar with the verticals made of black powder coated rebar. A very rustic cottage look. On one side of the entrance railing the lower bar had dropped letting the rebar fall out at odd angles. I managed to raise the fallen beam while inserting the nine or ten lengths of rebar back in position, one at a time. A few pieces of wood were put underneath to keep it in position till I get some more screws. I noticed that screws had been put in only from the top on this section and the wood had just been pulled through. Most of the other railing sections had screws put in the side as well as the top making them much stronger. I did find a few others with just top screws and I am planning on adding the side screws when I get them. A few extra strips of duct tape were put on the side chute of the mower deck and I gave the kilometre of fun a quick mow along with the clearing around Our Country Cottage. That night the new BBQ and I resurrected our differences. I put my steak on and turned the controls down from full on. The temp dropped quickly to almost off like it had run out of propane. I had half a thousand gallon tank. Thought there might have been a kink in the BBQ connecting pipe, so I rerouted that, I even called the propane supply place to see if inadvertently clipping something under the tank with the edge trimmer might do something. I did some more tests and it heated up to max, no problem. My supper turned out fine. I reported to the propane people that all seemed OK but one of them came out the following day just to check things out at the tank end. And all was ok there, too. It wasn't till almost the end of the month that I returned for a three day visit. The weeds were growing with abandon and the weather was cold and rainy, so no mowing was done that trip. The software did get updated and seemed to be working fine for the most part. Time will tell. This was the first visit to OCC where I did not put on old clothes or coveralls and do some messy stuff outside. I took time to smell the roses, ignoring the large nasty looking weeds covering the gravel, and the rising clover and grass down the drive and in the clearings. I had brought those screws to fix the deck railings but I didn't bother. I read a book, listened to music and reacquainted myself with some software I had been meaning to get back to. Every so often a deer or fox would catch my eye out the window. One of my better stays. Now you are right up to date with the goings on at Our Country Cottage. Tune in next time for Episode #27 and see what is happening at OCC during the lazy crazy daze of summer. Was the fan error just a software glitch, will the deck railing get fixed, will the duct tape hang in there? And now that ITB has finished, its time to see how the final numbers were resolved and what got shuffled off the table and why? If anyone knows of an eco friendly weed killer, please let me know. You can email me or leave a comment on the web site. I really don't want to use that commercial stuff if I don't have to. For pictures, and new ones coming soon,(yeah, right) and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time….

In this episode Our Country Cottage finally breaks free of winters grip, entering the summer months while In The Beginning, ITB, reveals some progress. ***In The Beginning, Month 26, September.*** ITB is the section of the podcast where I do my best to remember, through pictures, my log book, texts and invoices, well basically anything I can get my hands on.During this period of little getting done, it seems I also did little with my log book. That is to say sketchy notes. The second month of year three of the creation of Our Country Cottage started with our contractor calling to say he won't be back for another two weeks. If you remember, the previous month we didn't see him at all. So you could say, things are looking up. It appears that the month was broken into three, and a bit, trips. The first trip was generally rainy and cold. I tried out the in floor heating for the first time but didn't keep it on for long as there was hardly any sun. A fire was built to take the edge off. There was a trip to a nearby town to check on cell phone boosters. My partner came up for a day and we went to visit friends in the area. The next trip up wasn't until the middle of the month. We were definitely at the peak of fly season when I arrived, running the fly buster 2000 down a couple of times trying to clean up. The "spray and go away" tactic was then employed. Put out a good fog of anti fly stuff and go to town for supper. The shop vac was used to collect the, um, remains upon return. My log book indicates that, between visits, there were warnings and errors along with low levels and generator start faults reported by the solar control unit, but all appeared normal. Hmmmm. The next day Our Country Cottage had its first official guests for lunch. A good time was had by all even with the flies peaking in number in the afternoon. Ahhh country living. The dishwasher was run with a full load for the first time. I recorded the time and power used for each cycle it went through. Bottom line the batteries were at 99% at start and at 98% upon completion. And this was after sunset! Finally, the following day saw some Cottage items taken off of the to do list. The electricians showed up early and went to work. Among a long list of things done was, a wall switch in the mudroom to turn the well pump on and off. This was really handy as up to that point I had to flick a breaker in the utility room. I never leave OCC for any length of time without turning the well pump off. My reasoning is that if anything fails, only the water already in the tanks would escape. They ran an Ethernet cable from the generator to the utility room so I could get data inside OCC. Network cables were run from the utility room to the loft, over the garage, and to the kitchen. They fixed the ac plugs in the master bedroom that were not working. They installed heat tape in the drain in front of the garage. They installed all cover plates missing and installed the tracks for track lighting in the loft. By the time the electricians were done, most if not all of the electrical deficiencies were taken care off. Best day in months. Five days pass and we are back at OCC again, this time to receive the new furniture that we had been shopping for in the city over the past little while. Here is a bit of a cautionary tale. When the truck showed up the head dude proclaimed that they didn't realize how far they had to come yahda yahda yahda. They wanted more money than the original estimate, of course. Always get a firm cost in writing for these sort of things and be very clear what is expected etc. etc… In our case we thought that we were covered but the trucking company was hired by the furniture company was an independent and a few loose ends crept in. Not being totally heartless and seeing that they put the furniture in OCC where we wanted it, including a very heavy piece in our upstairs bedroom (they worked hard) we settled on a price. It seems there is always something with moving or delivery costs. When I had the new cover for our Quonset delivered to our city house, the driver wanted to just push it off the back of his truck. When I insisted he use the power tailgate he told me it would cost more, well at least he did up to the point I produced the invoice clearly stating the use of his power tailgate was included. OCC was coming together. My partner and I spent the next little while tidying up and putting things where they belong. Like the futon, that was being used as a couch in the living room, could now be shifted to the back bedrooms as intended. Our contractor showed up, briefly, to drop off his work trailer. Great stuff, I thought, we are definitely getting some momentum going here. Well not so fast. Early the very next morning he was back to get his trailer as a problem had cropped up over night on another site. But we still have our furniture! Another five days fly by until OCC sees us again on the last day of the month. Our contractor and his trailer are back. There is also a large boom loader and a skid steer on site. There is still leftover construction material and garbage all over the site, but with prospects of things getting cleaned up, dare I say soon…. So with positive thoughts in mind, that evening, I sat on our new couch with a fire on one side and four or five deer grazing on the other. Scotch, anyone? ***Now on with the OCC update*** When last we spoke I was having difficulty just getting down the drive, in fact, the last reported visit had me snow shoeing in. See Episode #24, the details are too painful to go into again. It was actually so painful that it took me almost a full month before I could convince myself to go back to Our Country Cottage. 28 days pass and my partner and I return to OCC. There are bare spots on the driveway. Gravel showing through, a very welcome sight. There was still plenty of snow in the woods but the drive was drivable. When we got to the cottage I turned on the heat trace that was in the drain in front of the garage. This would start the thawing process going so that water from the melt would go into the drainage system. I ran the well pump to clear any sediment build up. Remember I had turned the water off to the cottage and put RV antifreeze in the toilets and traps. When I ran the pump I hooked up a hose to the bottom of the pressure tank and drained it directly into the sump. The house was still turned off and the hose connect point was before the sediment filter, so it wasn't clogging up the filter for no reason. While this was going on my partner was vaccing up the flies, etc. The batteries were topped up with distilled water. Make a note, need more distilled water. The generator had run less than an hour in the past 2 months. A quick check on the progress of the heat trace in front of the garage showed the ice had thawed around the trace and water was flowing. Once you get it started it will improve by itself so I turned it off and we left. Two weeks pass and I go back to OCC for a one day visit with the main intent of turning the water to the cottage back on. It had been a while since the temperature had dropped to freezing for any duration so I felt safe. When I got there the batteries were fully charged and it was 21C in the living room. I changed the water filter and turned on the water. This I did with all the taps open. I then went to each tap, starting from the lowest (outside hose tap), turning them off as water started to flow, to the top bathroom taps. I reasoned this would be the best way to get the air out of the system. There were no apparent leaks, verified by running to all the places leaks might happen to check and the pressure seemed to hold, once all the taps were closed and the toilets filled. The true test would be to see if the pressure would hold over time. At the base of the pressure tank there is a pressure gauge that shows the pressure in the tank and, with the valves open, the cottage water system. I took a note of the reading, wrote it on a piece of masking tape and stuck it to the well pump switch to check next visit. I turned the pump off and left. The next visit to OCC was about ten days later, but for the first time, it wasn't me. One of my adult kids with a friend was going to camp on the property but ended up inside OCC instead. Detailed instructions on various aspects of OCC were passed on, along with, what was for me, the most important. Check the water pressure before doing anything. This was done and the pressure hadn't dropped at all. The cottage water system held, as in, not leaking. OCC could hold its own water. Ok OK…. The only thing was that the domestic hot water was not turned on. So heating water on the cook top was the way to go. Their visit went without incident and the place was left in great shape, as I found out when I went for my next visit only a couple of days later. This trip was to be a full week long and had been planned for a while with the purchase of a new BBQ to replace the one up there that was on its last legs. Best recollection was that it was over 20 years old, and not easy years. Dragged across gravel pads, knocked over by marauding cattle (OK I think it got bumped off of the deck by a cow, once). Basically, an inexpensive BBQ treated with little respect. It was time. The new BBQ came unassembled in a box that just fit in the back of my vehicle. When I arrived I found the batteries fully charged, 25C in the living room and thanks to the previous visitors, no flies to vac. Happy, happy. I backed my vehicle up to the deck on the south side of OCC with the tailgate down, which lined up perfectly. After pumping up the tires on the hand truck I slide the BBQ over the tailgate straight onto the hand truck. With the aid of some improvised ramps I rolled it into the sunroom ready for assembly. That night I went to the nearby town for supper and supplies. The next day I started the BBQ assembly. It didn't go well. I could blame the instructions but I seemed to be doing everything twice, once the way I though the instruction said, then once the correct way. I gave up about half way through. I decided that I would change the tractor from winter, snow thrower, rear blade mode to summer, mower deck mode. This was one of the harder conversions I remember doing. Things weren't lining up. Clips and pins were hard to get out and in. Hmmm, first the BBQ now the tractor, maybe it was me. Well I got it done and tested. A little late in the day to start mowing so time for a nice hot shower. I had turned on the domestic hot water when I arrived the day before so should be good to go. Firstly it wasn't very hot, in fact barely warm and low pressure to boot. Hmmm I turned the temp up on the hot water tank. That night, sitting on the couch I saw one maybe two red foxes go down the toboggan run. The next day started with great expectations of a BBQ supper on the new BBQ. Meat was taken from the freezer to thaw. I had some maintenance to do on the tractor and mower deck, grease etc. Then on to the first mow of the season. Three hours later I was ready for another shower. It was a bit better but still not great. It was now time to finish off the BBQ assembly. It went a bit better than the day before but took much longer than expected. In fact by the time it was complete and I heated it to 600 degrees for 20 mins to burn off the manufacturing coating, let it cool and season the grills, I was done and the meat went back in the fridge. Not happy. But the evening red fox did cruise by, allowing for some quick pix from the couch. The next morning the batteries were solar charging at 6 AM. I love this time of year. I got my camera ready for the, now deemed, six o'clock fox. While the red fox was a regular show in the evening it was also a regular show in the morning, too. He or she did not disappoint, and I got some good pics given he or she was only in view for less than a minute. The domestic hot water was becoming an issue and I started doing system flushes while observing pressure irregularities. I noticed that while draining hot water from the hot water pre-heater it would start off great then the pressure would drop substantially. I called my plumber and he suggested a blockage might have formed, but I couldn't figure out where. I came to the conclusion that the pre-heater might be giving me grief and made a note to call the supplier from the city when I got back. I spent the rest of the day picking up bits and pieces in a larger nearby town. The following day I finished off the Quonset cover. If you remember, last year we changed the cover on the Quonset. The Quonset is a metal frame structure covered with a heavy duty fabric of some kind. Where the fabric meets the ground there is about 2 feet of material that rests on the ground that you can put dirt and or gravel on to seal the bottom of the walls. I hadn't put the dirt and gravel back on the skirt as it was late in the season and I figured the snow would hold it in place till I was ready, and it did. Some of the work I could do with the skid steer and some I had to do by hand with a shovel and rake. I finished off by smoothing out the ground with the skid steer and I and the Quonset were done. After moving one of those metal fire pits from the Quonset to the cottage with the skid steer I had one of the better showers of my visit. Long and hotter. Maybe the hot water just needed using more. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to used the BBQ that evening. I did manage to get some more fox pics later on though. The next morning I decided to treat myself to breakfast in town. When I opened the garage door the box that the BBQ came in, the large heavy box that I had carefully placed on the woodpile, was on its side on the floor. I then began to notice other items that had moved. A tire had rolled out from its resting place to the tractor, another box on its side. Then I saw him. A black furry being with a pointy nose about the size of a small house cat. It wasn't a house cat. More like a wood chucky kind-o-thang. I approached with caution only to have him run under the stack of firewood. I tried to flush him or her out by making noise but nothing so I headed off to my breakfast while leaving the garage door open. When I got to our gate I realized I had forgotten the empty diesel containers I was going to take with me to get filled. So back I went. A close inspection under the log pile and with a look around a bit it became clear that he or she had taken the opportunity to escape. Fare enough. This time I'll close the door. Well I would, if I could. For some reason these critters love to chew on wires and the wires that connect the safety beam at the bottom of the door had been broken. Five to ten minutes later, with the wires twisted together I was able to close the door and go to breakfast. The remainder of the day was spent getting the old BBQ ready for its final road trip, back to the city and back to where I had bought the new one from, with a promise that they would recycle it for me. I mistakenly started the process in the sun room, soon realizing that it was a dirty nasty job, with spiders, that would be best done in the garage. As I was dragging it down our gravel drive to the garage, a wheel came off and the BBQ took a header, spilling its lava rocks, grills and racks as a last comment to its last moments. Lovely. That evening I had my first supper cooked on the new BBQ. I think I might have had a few adult beverages to take the edge off, too. The last day of the visit was overcast and rainy. The box, that the new BBQ came in, was ideal for transporting the old one back to the city. A few cuts here and there and it slipped into the back of my vehicle perfectly. Batteries were topped up, a trail cam SD card was swapped, logs were taken and the solar control info was collected. I headed back to the city. Before going home, the old BBQ was dropped off at the BBQ place for recycling. They also took the modified box. Good stuff. Still have a few more visits in the old log book to tell you about, but am going to save them till next time. So tune in for Episode #26. Will I get the domestic hot water figured out, will there be anymore furry overnight guests in the garage and will my relationship with the new BBQ continue to improve, adult beverages aside? Also, ITB month 27, will my proclaimed optimism be rewarded or kicked to the curb like so many times before. At this time any promises of new pictures on the web site seem unfounded. Apparently I lie. For pictures, and new ones coming soon,(someone has hope) and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). Find out when I get the new pix posted. The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time….

In this episode Our Country Cottage has not finished sending me power failure alerts and In The Beginning, ITB, covers the first month of year three of construction. In The Beginning, month 25, August. This is the part of the episode where I go through pix, emails, logs etc to give you the best recollection of the construction of Our Country Cottage. I had three visits to OCC this month. Each was three days long. The first visit, I had a load of those flat pack boxes from that store, known for its assemble yourself furniture. My collection promised that they would turn into two closet organizers for the master bedroom closet. The instructions had a picture of two characters putting them together. Seeing that I was by myself, I took it as a handy suggestion and proceeded to do it with the, unwritten, one character option. More challenging, but more rewarding and much less debate as to what goes where etc. I found a picture with them assembled and in place. Proof positive that just cause it ain't written in the instructions, doesn't mean it won't work. Our cook top was used for the first time to make breakfast. Also, due to very heavy hail our vehicle was parked in the garage for the first time, but not without acquiring some new contours. I seem to remember running around outside with pieces of cardboard protecting my head from the hail. Yes, cardboard cut from those flat pack boxes. The last day of this visit was a gorgeous, sunny day and I took the time to do a photography project with my phone. 30 pix in 30 minutes. Got some cool shots. So this part of the podcast ,ITB, is supposed to be about how the construction was proceeding not what I was doing by myself. Spoiler alert. Nothing happened for the whole month. After spending alone time at OCC, I called the project coordinator to see what was going on. Turns out our contractor had been very ill for a time, hospital stuff, etc, but he was doing better and should be back soon. While back in town, more furniture evaluation trips were made to flesh out Our Country Cottage. My next three day visit saw the grass getting cut, some brush getting wacked and my partners first overnight stay. The last visit of the month, yes three days again, gave me pix of starry early morning skies, drainage round the septic tank area, a gravel pile and those piles of construction leftovers. There are a couple of lovely pix of the front of OCC with the lights on at night. I printed some of those pictures from that 30 pix in 30 minutes project and put them in a multi pic collage frame sort of thing, and that got hung on a wall. A note in my log book informs me that there were 4 deer and two elk on the front clearing at the same time. A regular zoo. So that's it for ITB, month 25. Will next month pick up? Tune in next time for, "Its month 26, do you know where your contractor is?" Now on with the OCC update While winter has been refusing to loosen its grip on Our Country Cottage, my visits have evolved into a one day trip, every other week. The month started with, what has become, the regular "Power has been lost" email from OCC. A check to see what local weather condition were at the time of failure revealed that the temp had dropped to -35C (-31F) that night. So understandable. I was not concerned about anything breaking in the cottage as I had drained the water a while back and was in no rush to go up. In fact, it was ten days later that we went up. In that time span Our Country Cottage emailed me 110 times to let me know that power had failed. You would think that once it failed that would be it. Remember that OCC is primarily solar powered so when the generator decides it does not want to work until someone presses its buttons, to clear errors, the batteries get charged by the sun on clear days. So here is what happens, power fails, sun comes out and charges the batteries until they reach a certain level to turn the power back on. Once the power is back on the boiler sees a demand for heat and turns on, putting a large load on the batteries. If the sun is shining brightly there will be enough to run the boiler and charge the batteries. If there is not enough sun, like on a cloudy day or at night, the batteries will drain and I will get a, "power has been lost", email, or 110 of them over 10 or 11 days. Anywayz, my partner came with me on the next visit. The county plow had left a nice pile of snow at the entrance to our kilometre of fun that we had to dig through. The bottom of our vehicle left a mark in the snow for the full length of the drive, even when I had set the suspension to its highest setting. Yes, my vehicle has height settings. When I first got it, people were messing with me, calling the lowest setting, the handy bus setting. When we arrived, my first test was to see if the garage door opener would, um, open. It did not. AC was out and the batteries were at 34%. Without power I could not start the generator from inside the cottage. I flipped off the boiler and boiler control breakers in the utility room, working with a flashlight. No power, remember. I then went outside and started the generator from the generator control panel, after I cleared the error. It cranked a bit but fired up. All seemed OK. While I ran the snow thrower up and down the drive, my partner cleared a path to the generator and propane tank along with the stairs and a path to the battery hatch. Clearing the drive was slow going but when I got back I checked the generator. It was at 1541 hours.(I said 1514 hours in the audio, should have been 1541) That was 131 hours since its last oil change. I shut it off and changed the oil and oil filter. The new oil filter wrench I had brought up before worked much better than the strap wrench I had been using. The new wrench was more like a wide mouth set of channel lock pliers, and really grabbed the filter. A check of the propane showed we were at 48%. With power back on I was able to start the generator from inside OCC. I put the gen back on auto. I then took the system controller data and the living room data logger info. Before we left, my partner noticed that the radiator in the back hall was cold, even though the sun was shining brightly. Down in the utility room I found the solar collector system was off. On a hunch, I flicked on the boiler control breakers. The solar collector system fired up. Still learning stuff. Now don't confuse the solar collector system with the solar power system. The solar collector system has two panels on the roof that heat glycol (a liquid that won't freeze) and circulate it through the domestic hot water pre-heater tank or the radiator in the back hall. The solar power system has 30 solar-cell panels (photo voltaic panels) mounted on two poles, that generate electric power. Umm, not the poles the panels….. Anyway.... I had decided to leave the boiler off for the rest of the cold season, so we collected all the liquids to take back to the city. The batteries were at 58% and the generator was running when we left. Two weeks later, and not one power fail email, I went back up. Turning the boiler off was the key. On the way in, my vehicle slid off the road and into a ditch. It took me about 45 minutes to get it out. The vehicle is a very capable four wheel drive unit but very heavy as well. With a lot of digging, a traction mat under each rear wheel, a blanket under one front wheel and a tow rope wedged under the other I got it out. The traction mats weren't doing it alone, it was warm and wet. The tires were just slipping on them. When I got to the cottage the batteries were fully charged at 100%. The drive needed to be cleared and I didn't want to go without the shovel and traction mats. Now if you remember I was trying to figure out a way to attach those items to the tractor with a bracket or clamp system or something. In desperation, I had brought a set of bungee cords with me and within ten minutes I had them all attached in a very workable way. Talk about over thinking a problem. Good thing too as I got the tractor stuck while trying to clear snow, apparently a bit too close to the gate. This one took me about an hour and a half to get out. At one point the guide bar that is mounted on the snow thrower, to show you where the edge is, got between the bars of the gate. I don't know how that was even possible. I just looked up and there it was, in the gate. I didn't think twice. I just grabbed the guide bar and bent it out of the way. So as soon as I noticed the tractor slipping sideways toward the ditch I put the, now readily available, traction mats under the back wheels. The tractor just slid sideways towards the ditch. I ended up using the snow thrower to lift the front wheels off the ground and put the mats right underneath. With the front wheels pointing to the centre of the road I was able to creep forward a bit at a time. I had to reset about 6 or 7 times before getting out of the gravitational pull of the ditch. I finished clearing the drive. Back at the cottage I topped up the batteries. They were very thirsty, and, I checked the generator. It had only run 5.7 hours since last time. Propane was at 47%. I had a feeling that in my rushed last visit, when I changed the oil, I might have put too much in. Too much oil can blow out seals and cause a lot of damage. So, indeed I had. All still looked Ok, though, with no pools of oil etc. I grabbed my oil pump and sucked some out. Much better. When I left the batteries were still fully charged. Just to put a period to the day, I almost went off the drive just past the gate on the way out. The vehicle started heading to the side, I was going very slowly (5 mph or kph your choice) as it was, but I stopped and backed away slowly from the ditch. Gad! Two weeks pass and my partner and I go back up to Our Country Cottage. On the way we stop for coffee and just across from the coffee shop there is a pet store. We went in and got a bag of kitty litter to put in the rear of the vehicle. For some reason, I have become very traction oriented lately. The kilometre of fun, our drive, was covered in heavy wet snow, but the vehicle managed to make it to the cottage, just. While I cleared the drive, the path to the gen and propane tank was also cleared. Upon inspection, it was revealed that the gen had not run at all since the last check and the propane was still at 47%. The batteries were well into the green. Solar power system data was taken and some snow was pulled off the roof over the battery hatch. For some reason when we left I didn't take my normal set of pictures. Another two weeks pass. No power failed emails had been sent. I go up. Supposed to be warm and sunny. Well the warm part was right. Clouds obscured the sun and gave very flat light. When I got to the start of our drive there was the usual berm left by the county plow. I got through that and came to a slow halt. The drive was covered with more heavy wet snow, more and heavier than last time. I could get the vehicle in just a couple of car lengths before the weight of the snow stopped forward progress. My snow shoes were in the back. It had been a while since I last used them, but I decided to give it a try. Looking at the drive I couldn't really tell how much snow was there. As I said, the lighting was really flat. Figured I would go as far as the gate and reassess. The snow shoes worked great. I only fell once when the tip of one shoe got caught under the crust of the snow and down I went. Took me a bit to figure out how to stand up again. The gate was hard to open, what with hard packed snow round the bottom. For the rest of the trip I was very conscious of the potential of bear and cougar encounters. I had two pointy ski poles with me to fend off any ill will doers. Singing and making a lot of noise along with stops for a careful look around for sneaky critters. Yeah, lets go with that. Not to over emphasise the flat light conditions but I almost walked off the drive into the ditch a couple of times cause it all looked the same. White! When I finally arrived at OCC I found the batteries fully charged, 100%. I had been meaning to run the well pump for the last couple of visits but not got around to it. So I shut the water feed to the house, after the pressure tank and turned the pump on. It filled the tank with no problem. I was worried that sediment would build up, due to lack of use, and stop the pump from working. But it was OK this time. I got ready to clear the drive. I grabbed my ski goggles that had yellow lenses. That helped a bit with the flat lighting, so that I could see where the drive was. But first there was a big mound of snow in front of the garage that took me several runs at with the snow thrower to get out. Once on the driveway I found it was very slow going. Just crawling along. The snow was so thick and heavy, from my vantage point, in the tractor seat, it looked like there was a large ball of snow just rolling along in front of the snow thrower blades. I finally made it back to my vehicle and parked it on the road while I cleared out the entrance. I then proceeded to clear on the return trip. I would go to a point where I thought my vehicle would have no problems going from a full stop situation, hop off the tractor , walk back to the vehicle and drive it up to the tractor. Then back on the tractor, and so on. There were six or seven of these routines. On the last or second to last I got too close to and edge and got the tractor stuck again. Did I mention, very flat light….. oh and I had given up on taking my goggles on and off so I wasn't wearing them. Only took me bout 15 minutes to get out this time. I'm getting better. I didn't take my vehicle anywhere near the garage when I got it to OCC. The sun was now out and the snow was really starting to soften up. I was concerned I might have a hard time getting out. I went in to OCC to empty the pressure tank and to top up the toilet bowels with RV anti freeze. Over time that stuff evaporates and if the toilet trap becomes empty it will give an excellent path for all those fragrant fumes from the septic tank. I also remembered that the generator hadn't been run for over a month or so, so I fired it up from inside the cottage and it ran fine. After I put it back on auto it shut itself off, as expected. Then I left. The drive out was tricky but I managed to keep it going. So basically the whole trip was spent just getting in and out of the place. Well, if nothing else, I proved I can do it if I have to and I am really looking forward to when the snow goes and I can just drive in and out without it being a major pain. This has been the worst year for getting stuck than I can remember, and I keep notes. On the drive back home it occurred to me that the reason I might be having so many problems is because the edges of the driveway have become rounded off. It was in the back of my mind, last year, that I should pull the shoulders back up on the drive, to reclaim some of the gravel, and this gives me another reason to do so. Just got to figure out how to do it. Well, that brings you right up to date with Our Country Cottage. Next episode, will I still be talking about snow and In The Beginning, month 26, will anything happen? Last time I promised to get some new pix up on the web site and failed. This time, for sure, new pix before the next OCCaN podcast release. For pictures, and new ones coming soon, and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage a Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). Find out when I get the new pix posted. The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time….

This episodes OCC update will get into why power was lost on the last day of last year and what has been going on with me and my relationship with Our Country Cottage. In The Beginning, ITB month 24, will close out the second year of OCC construction. I am beginning to think that doing ITB is not helping my attitude towards OCC. I don't know if it is cathartic, with a positive effect, as I thought it would be or it's just dredging up all those memories and reopening the wounds, so to speak. For now we'll go with the first one, Sooo In The Beginning, month 24, July. This is the part of the podcast where I try to figure out what went on during the construction of OCC by going through pix, texts, emails and the log book I kept. It appears the log book was the first to be neglected when things weren't going well. Unfortunately, that is the exact time when notes should be taken to help in the future. Human nature I guess, well at least mine. Case in point, I have sketchy follow up notes to an ant invasion I went through. One day I showed up and found them crawling all over the living room and sun room floor. I stepped out of the sun room onto a mat outside on the deck for a breather and to plan what to do. Looking down I noticed the whole mat was moving, absolutely covered with ants. I don't know what happened next, notes not there, but within a day or so I returned ready to unleash chemical warfare. I had an outside pesticide that I sprayed the full perimeter of both the cottage and garage twice a year. I also have a gentler pesticide I spray inside round the base boards and windows etc. This one also helps keep the fly population down as well. I tried a more natural method using borax mixed with sugar and soaking cotton balls with the solution. Not very effective I am sorry to say. Again sketchy notes. The one note I have is that a hand held vacuum previously nicknamed the "fly buster 2000" was renamed the "ant buster 2000", for a time. Anyway, on with In The Beginning I was starting to stay over a bit more regularly and beginning to get routines established. Topping up batteries, collecting data logger info, collecting power system info and collecting trail cam images. In the beginning, as this was, everything seemed very complicated and took a lot of time to do. As time passed I got more comfortable with things, to the point where it's not that big of a deal. Just got to get through the early days. The beginning of the month had me hanging ornate mirrors, my partner had sourced, in the bathrooms. Made it look a bit more complete. The grass was patchy and garbage still was spread out. Trying to mow the drive I got the tractor stuck in the ditch. With the mower deck on, there is not a lot of ground clearance, so when you drop a wheel off the side of the drive, you are stuck. I had to walk back to the cottage to get my vehicle to tow the tractor out. Then I drove my vehicle back to the cottage and walked back to the tractor. Did I mention the drive is a kilometre of fun? On the positive side of things, the damp corner had dried up in the crawl space and the track lighting had been installed in the loft over the garage. We were then out of town for a week and I did not make it back to OCC for several days after that. Upon my return it was obvious that nothing had been done. The grass needed cutting again but at least the ant problem looked like it was under control. I went to a nearby small town for supper and picked up some supplies along with an AC tester. You know the kind. You plug it into a wall socket and lights come on to tell you if all is OK or not. When I got back I checked every socket in the place. Good thing too, I found four in the master bedroom that didn't have power and marked them with blue tape. Barn swallows had built a nest at the top of one of the deck posts, under the overhang. They were very protective of the nest and would dive bomb you if you got too close. I could stand about a arms length away from a corner post and they would actually fly between the post and my head. I could hear the air crack from their wings as they did so. Some times I could feel the air move on my head, they were that close. Ahhh, country life. During the last night of the visit I was treated to an amazing show of lightning. I managed to take some very cool pix and will try to get some put up on the web site soon. Back in the city, we went furniture shopping for Our Country Cottage. Pix were taken and a budget was agreed to. Again, your phone is your best friend while shopping. A pic of the item, another of the price and maybe several while holding up a tape measure for the major dimensions. My last visit of the month started off all too familiarly. Nothing had been done. There is a note in the log book that I called the project head to see what was going on. No note was made for the response. I measured the upstairs closet for a shelving system and assembled a set of rolling shelves for the pantry. The pantry had the only access to the crawl space, through a hatch in the floor. So the pantry has to be vacated to get to that hatch. The rolling kitchen shelves made this easy to do. The next day my partner came up and we started setting up the place. Glasses, cutlery, dishes and pots-n-pans were put in their new home in the kitchen. Towel racks and toilet paper holders were installed. And with the items they were meant to hold put in place, the bathrooms were done. The last day of the month and the visit had me playing with the generator. Starting it from inside the cottage and seeing what happened and again leaving it not knowing if an error that was generated was a problem or not. And you thought the generator only generated power. Well it generates power and errors along with frustration, relief and a full range of emotions. Who knew! The rest of the visit finished with me trying to figure out my laundry machine. Next ITB will start year three, as we careen to the completion of OCC. Just kidding. Now on to another Our Country Cottage Update When last we spoke, the cottage just informed me that, on the last day of the year, power had failed. I was in no rush to go up as I had drained water and put antifreeze in problem areas. I assumed, for some reason, the generator had failed and without intervention would not try starting again. There could be a number of reasons. Out of fuel, low oil pressure, a broken starter, like last year. And a pile of other reasons I have yet to become acquainted with. But bottom line was, the generator was not, generating. The cottage emailed me several times, telling me that power had failed. I knew this was the cottages way to tell me it was trying, that is, the solar panels would charge the batteries and when they got to a certain level the power would turn back on. The boiler would then turn on trying to heat OCC but without the gen running or enough sun, esp at night, the batteries would drain and the "power lost emails" would be sent. Two days after the first email I went up to see what was going on. When I got there the sun was shining and the garage door opened when I hit the remote. We had power. The batteries were only at 53% and were being charged by the sun. The boiler was on trying to get heat into the place. I turned the boiler off to give the batteries a chance to charge. I then turned my attention to clearing the drive of and I quote from my log the " deepest/heaviest snow of the season." Once done it was back to figure out the gen problem. Propane was at 29%, getting low but still plenty. The oil level in the gen was OK, too. There was an "Over crank" error on the display in the gen. I found out that this means it tried to start and didn't. It would try three times and if still not running would throw the error and not try again until looked at. I cleared the error and hit the run button. After a few seconds it fired up and ran. Inside OCC the system controller showed the generator was charging the batteries and all was happy happy. As to why the unit failed to start a couple of days ago, well the temperature that night got very cold, actually down to -38 C. The generator uses low pressure propane to run and when temps drop that low, so does the propane pressure and there probably wasn't enough pressure to feed the beast. Temps go back up, pressure goes back up, and no problem. Well until it gets that cold again, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I calculated that the gen had about 122 hours on it since its last oil change so I took the opportunity to change the oil and filter while I was there. Mental note, pick up more filters. Handy tip, with a felt pen, write the hours and date on the filter after its installed. This way you don't have to go through piles of notes and scrap bits of paper to find out when to change em. I also take a picture of it as well. When I left the batteries were at 78% and being charged by the sun. As the forecast was for warm temperatures, I decided to leave the boiler off to give the batteries a chance to fully charge. Three days later I am back for another one day drop in along with 6 new shear bolts I needed for the snow thrower. (See last episodes OCC Update.) The batteries were at 98%. Good to see. The sun was shining brightly so I turned the boiler on. Now the next part is a bit confusing for me, still. There were heat zones that should have been calling for heat but weren't and zones that shouldn't have been calling for heat but were. I ended up physically disconnecting the thermostats that shouldn't be calling for heat and were. Yup took the wire right off them suckers. Then I reset the thermostats that should have been calling for heat but weren't. That got em going again. By the time I left the boiler had turned off and back on by itself and the batteries were at 86% and being charged by the sun. The cottage behaved itself for the next 10 days or so with the emails it sent me reporting temperatures well within the expected range. I decided to drop in to see how things were going. When I got there the sun was shining and the batts were at 90%. The living room was at 12 C. Not bad at all. Oh yeah, I had also remembered to bring up a six pack of generator oil filters. It was so nice out that I decided to clean up the drive a bit. Run the blade down both sides, which moved snow into the center then one pass with the snow blower down the middle and done. All in all a very pleasant task, this time. Something told me to look into the battery water levels. I had notes that said it was about due. Well with the extra energy being used to heat OCC the batteries were very thirsty. Good thing I checked, good thing I listen to those little voices in my head. OooKaaayy…. Then on to see what the gen was up to. Propane was down to 20%, better give the propane guys a shout. The gen had 52 hours on it since last checked and a quick look at the dipstick revealed the oil was down to half. I topped up the oil and moved inside. I collected the Solar Power system data. Or at least tried to. The transfer hung up again. I had suspected one of my SD cards was flaky even though it passed all the tests I gave it. I knew this was the problem card because I had put a question mark on it with a felt pen. This one will not be used again. In fact I took a pair of clippers to it and cut it up when I got as much data, as I could, off of it, back in the city. The following day, back in the city, I called the propane guys and told them we were down to 20%. As it turned out they had already visited about 2 or 3 hours after I left the day before. The invoice was emailed to me the next day. Good guys. Two weeks pass before my next visit. Batteries were at 100% and the living room was at 13 C. Remember that I set the thermostat to 9.5 so anything extra is passive solar gain. The drive needed clearing and I figured it was time to collect the trail cam cards by the drive. I couldn't remember the last time I had done so. (a quick check tells me it was last May. Where do the time go. Gad) I decided that they both might need a new set of batteries, Ya figure! Well one was still taking pics and one had only stopped three weeks prior. New batts all around anyway…. The day started to go sideways. I got the tractor stuck just outside the gate. The better part of a kilometre to walk back to the cottage and get what ever I needed. Didn't want to do that so hand digging the snow packed underneath the tractor and using my large winter gauntlets, one under each front tire for extra traction ( it was the rear wheel that got sucked into the ditch) and about a half hour later, the tractor clawed its way back onto the drive. Drive cleared, trail cams serviced, I checked the generator. The propane had been filled but it was already down to 54%. The normal fill is 80%. Did the gen run that much. What the… There was another 40 or 50 hours on it, but… I topped up the oil and carried on. Putting the tractor in the garage I finally took those shear bolts off the bench and put the in the tractor tool box. My notes told me that the temp loggers were just past due, so I had to do them. One small problem, there was a sizable mound of white stuff on the battery room hatch. When I tried to shovel it off it became clear that it was mainly ice. Getting pretty frustrated with the way the day was turning out I dug out the handle and with one mighty yank flipped open the hatch sending the ice mound off the side. Just to add to things, one of the loggers needed a new battery. This sort of stuff never happens when you have time. A new one was retrieved from the utility room. And the crowning touch to the day. When I leave I take a series of pics, one of the cottage with the garage that shows the garage door is closed, another of the solar panels and the drive, and various others including the Quonset etc. Well, this time while taking a pic of the solar panels the front wheel of my vehicle got sucked into the ditch and I was stuck for the second time that day. I keep traction pads in the back for times like this. The traction pads are pieces of gnarly hard rubber bars held together by heavy cable and rolled up in a case thingy for storage. Even using two of these it took 20 minutes, hand digging and eventually using one of the cases under a third wheel to get out. This was the last thing I needed. So I have a set of these for the tractor as well but I have yet to figure out how to carry them on the tractor. One thing I did learn, though, was that after you use them they are full of ice and snow and need to dry out before you roll em back up into the case. So I am now trying to figure out how to mount two of them, unrolled, on the tractor. Since then I have picked up two collapsing compact trunk shovels. One for the vehicle and one for the tractor. I know, I have to figure out how to mount that to the tractor, too, but digging packed snow from under a vehicle, with your hands, gets old very fast. And before I finish off this section, that propane level being so low after fill up was bothering me, a lot. Back in the city I checked the propane invoice for the amount delivered, along with info from my first ever fill, did some math and concluded that the tank wasn't filled to 80%. I called the propane people and confirmed that it was only filled to 60%. At the time of delivery the cost of propane was spiking a bit, so in hopes of saving me money they didn't fill it. The thinking was that the price would come down and I could top er up then. Well that wraps up the first month of the year, but wouldn't you know, another "Power has been lost" email and a big dump of snow greets us for next month. Oh, and my printer broke. I'll tell you all about it in episode #24 of Our Country Cottage A Narrative, along with ,ITB, looking at the beginning of year three, month 25, of construction or, what ever you want to call it. Will anyone show up? Before I go.... Lately I have been thinking of OCC more as Our Country Chore than Our Country Cottage. And it's true that going up for one day at a time doesn't leave much time to smell the roses after you shovel the snow to get in, clear the drive, try to understand why the mud room is nice and warm while the living room is cold. And that stupid SD card… I keep reminding myself that this is probably the hardest part of the year to get through. Cold, snow and minimal sun aren't really conducive to off the grid solar powered fun. Our generator hasn't helped much either. Yes, and like I said about doing ITB, it isn't relieving any of the grief that building the place brought as I thought it would. Well at least not yet. Maybe it's like antibiotics. You have to complete the whole prescription to get the benefits. At this point I see less than a year of "medicine" left to go. On the plus side looking through all the pics for ITB and seeing the lush greenery and remembering the warm sun with no lack of power does help. Just look past the garbage and mud, etc. And it was fun to go through the seven or eight months of trail cam pics I collected (ten to eleven thousand of them). I saw deer grow up and a cougar with a growing offspring. Deer sticking its tongue out at the camera, a fox catching dinner. I saw snow come and go and come back again. I also took some time to look through lots of other warm sunny OCC pics. It is so nice when it is nice. You just have to remind yourself, over and over, of the good times. The bad times will take care of themselves. For pictures, and new ones coming soon, and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). Find out when I get the new pix posted. The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time….

In this episode Our Country Cottage reaches out to say it has lost power, the solar control unit stops logging and snow. In The Beginning, ITB, Month 23, June, standing water and a walk through inspection. In The Beginning, month 23. ITB is the part of the podcast where I collect all my emails, texts, logs, notes, pix etc to try to give the best recollection of the early days of OCC, Our Country Cottage. It seems to be getting harder and harder to figure out as the changes are getting smaller and smaller and sometimes none at all. I have vivid memories of arriving at the site and finding nothing had been done. Finding no one there was now getting common place but there was always hope that you just happened to miss them and stuff was getting done anyways. The next few months seemed to be the worst. Shure I had spent my first nights there but always in the back of my mind I had to be ready just in case someone showed up to do work. At this point OCC really didn't feel like ours, yet. If you recall I ended last podcasts, ITB, still at OCC on my first two day stay. The beginning of a new month had me trying the downstairs shower for the first time. There seemed to be plenty of hot water, as I took my time with no signs of it cooling off. Happy, happy. Toast and coffee for breakfast and I took notes as to how much power the coffee maker and the toaster took. Outside was muddy and wet. I had planks on the mud to get to the generator and propane tank. I put down a couple of those wooden shipping pallets, one in front of the gen and one by the propane tank, to stand on. A rustic look for sure. With the grass and weeds starting to show an interest in growing I started looking into what it would take to convert the tractor from the winter snow moving configuration, to the summer grass lowering configuration. The tractor had been delivered in winter mode, with a promise the dealer would send someone out to help with the first conversion. Manuals were read, pix were taken and some loose ideas were mocked up with the idea of putting the heavy attachments on moving dollies so that I could wheel them around easily in the garage, once they were taken off of the tractor. The garage offered a nice smooth cement floor. And thus ended my first ever stay at OCC. I was back for a one day visit, 4 days later. There were signs of snow and standing water, still. I topped up the batteries and took the data from the temperature loggers. There was an increase in temperature in the utility room that coincided with me turning up the temperature on the hot water tank. Another 4 days pass and I was back for another overnight stay. Things were greening up, but there was a lot of mud to contend with. That damp corner, in the crawl space, was back adding urgency to getting the land, outside, to drain better. That will have to wait till we get a dry patch. If you think things get messy when to walk in mud, try driving a tractor through it while attempting to move some of it with a blade. It could only end badly. On the bright side, I got my first deer pics standing in tall grass to the south. Capped off the day with some moon images. The next day the project co-ordinator and the site supervisor were up for a walk through and to see what was left to do. This produced three pages of notes of items such as, marks on floor, dings in cabinets, missing light fixture or two, rusty roof edge, missing bits of siding, footings for deck stairs, broken window trim and on and on. Like I said, three pages of stuff. The project head had his own list which ended up with 17 or 18 items to be seen too. Some overlapped. His form was titled the Pre Delivery Inspection form. PDI for short. There was a place for the builder and a place for the home owner to sign. Neither were filled in that day. He did take those skylight blinds, that were the wrong size, with him, though. Handy tip, take pictures of paper work, use your phone, you then have a date stamped copy to refer to. I ran the dishwasher for the first time after turning on its water and setting a few things. On the last day of this visit I saw a red fox cross from the south and through the mud to the parking area. It was this day that I did the first load of laundry in our combo washer/dryer unit. A lot of manual reading and informed guesses got the job done. It actually produced some dry, clean items. A week goes by and I go up for a one day visit. The generator hadn't run for awhile so I decided to start it manually for exercise. It fired up right away but was not charging and produced a "Start Fault" event. I cleared the error and put it back into auto. The gen stopped by itself five or ten mins later. Not sure what to make of it I left it. The site supervisor and helper showed up to drop off their work trailer and promised they would start working, again, the following day. It had been a while since much had been done. Another week passes and I am back for a longer stay. I managed to get pix of a large woodchuck on the stack of leftover bricks from the fireplace. Yup, leftover bits a pieces from construction were still scattered about adding to the ambiance of Our Country Cottage, in the mud. If you remember when I purchased the tractor I was told that they would send someone up to help me with my first conversion from winter to summer mode. That is, replace the snow blower and rear blade with the mower deck. Now, at the time of purchase, I was still under the impression that all I had to do was drive off of one and drive onto the other. Those TV commercials made it look so easy. And yes, I have to admit, there was a lot of wishful thinking going on there. With the passage of time and the reading of manuals etc, I became more aware of the reality, that it was much more than that. Good to their word, the actual guy that sold me the tractor, was the one that came up to show me how it was done. Try to get that in the city. I had already removed as much as I felt comfortable doing in prep for the visit. So the actual snow blower with its hydraulic lift kit and the rear blade were out of the way on customised movers dollies. The smooth cement of the garage floor made pushing these thing around easy. The salesman/tech arrived on time, with his own tools and went to work removing the driveshaft extension and a couple of mounting brackets. He then hung the auto connect unit for the mower deck and adjusted it. It was now time to drive the tractor onto the mower. He instructed me how to line it up and then drove it on, can't remember if he did it or I did it, but it hooked up with no problem. There were some other minor adjustments but that was that. When I engaged the blades, it sounded like a jet engine spooling up. Needless to say I wear a hard hat with hearing protection while mowing. Already to mow the next day but it rained. It was while I was sitting on the couch watching the rain fall that I saw that red fox approach from the south again. This time I was ready and got some great pix while sitting on the couch. You can't beat wildlife photography that you don't even have to stand up for. I had been running my emergency alert system for a bit with various degrees of success. During this wet day I started looking into the code to see if I could make it work better. Being very power conscious I checked the performance and found it was running the main processor at 100% and consequently using more power than it needed to. OK it doesn't use a lot of power anyway but every bit you can save helps. Bottom line, with the addition of a couple of lines of code added I got it down to 35%. At last, the last day of the visit I got to mow our one kilometre of fun. Pix were taken of the tractor and its new appendages along with pics of the drive with freshly mowed sides and centre. I also noticed that the baseboards and window trim in the loft over the garage had been installed. That wraps up ITB for month 23, a soggy June for sure. Now on with OCC, an update. With two and a half months since my last update, in some ways a lot has happened and in some ways not so much. The last podcast has my partner and I loading up the utility trailer with trash ready for a dump run. It wasn't clear when a run to the dump could be done as the weather was getting colder and colder and chance of snow getting greater and greater. A flash of inspiration told me to put the loaded trailer in the garage ready to tow. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, my alert system told me one cold morning that Our Country Cottage was colder than norm. It was down to 2 and a quarter degrees C, just above freezing. I decided to go have a look. When I arrived I found the mud room was warmer than the livingroom along with the master bedroom being toasty as well. The thermostat in the living room was showing the temperature well below what it was to but it was not calling for heat. It was like the zones swapped. Very confusing. I checked and readjusted the settings for all the thermostats. That seemed to kick them into action and they were now calling for heat. Not very reassuring. I built a fire to help get the temp back up. There was snow on the ground about 4 or five inches. Didn't have the time to clear the drive but I did use the roof rake to get about three inches of snow off of the solar panels. Always amazes me that the snow collects on them at that steep an angle. I topped up the batteries with distilled water and then collected all the data I could. The data loggers and the solar control system logs. I found that the logging for the system had stopped about a week earlier. Great, again with no data for the time period I need. Packed up and headed back to the city. Two days later and another alert system email. This time no power. Did the generator fail, again? So back I went. A nice sunny day. The batteries were down to 38% and the solar panels were charging at 7.2 Kilowatts. That's the rated max for the array. Good stuff. The solar control reported that the generator had a "Fault No AC" error (IE generator was running but the system did not see any power). That being said the temperature inside was OK. Outside the gen showed no errors and the oil level was good. Propane was good at 68%. Hmmm. In the battery room I found the input breakers from the generator were tripped. I reset them and went back into OCC. At the solar control panel I pressed the manual start button for the generator and it fired right up. The only thing I can think of is that every so often different demands on the system line up and draw just a bit more that those breakers can take. It happens so infrequently (this is the second time ever) I don't mind living on the edge. I collected the data again. This time the controller had been logging. Starting to suspect a certain SD card as causing the problem. The gen was still running when I put it back into auto and with the batteries at 69% continued to run as I left. Nine days pass with no more heart stopping emails, only the good emails telling me that the inside temps are holding ok. I decide to go up for a couple of nights. Another nice sunny day. My fave. The batteries were at 79% and being charged by the sun. Yes, the generator had stopped. After building a fire, I vacuumed OCC for the first time in a long time. I then plowed the drive. Back in OCC, wearing long undies and a tuque, I built another fire and had supper. Going to bed that night was a challenge. Even with long undies on, the bed was very, and I mean, very cold. The next morning brought snow and another chance to clear the drive and the panels. Oh joy. The last day of this visit had me topping up the oil in the generator and checking the propane level. 62% ok. This visit was somewhat miserable with the weather being mostly grey and overcast and not being able to stay warm inside. Also, with the trash trailer still parked in the garage my vehicle had to stay outside in the cold and snow. I was starting to think of where else I could put it in the future. Anyway, it didn't help. With a masonry fireplace, a three day stay is not enough. The real heat was probably starting to happen the night I left. That's probably why I was staying a week at a time before the gen broke last year. It was just over two and a half weeks before I went back again. I took up some more distilled water and topped up the batteries. I also checked and topped up the generator oil and noted the propane was down to 58%. Two days later, a break in the weather gave us the opportunity to take the utility trailer out of the garage and to the dump. Over eight hundred pounds of recycling and trash were disposed of. The empty trailer was then stored in the Quonset freeing up space in the garage. There was another longer delay before I would return, almost two weeks. Prepping for the holiday season had some part of that I guess. Anyway I had decided that OCC was not going to interrupt my xmas and to that ends I decided to drain OCC of its potential toilet tank bursting water and add RV anti freeze to the tender parts. The driveway, that kilometre of fun, demanded to be cleared again and at a point far down the drive I broke a shear bolt on the snow blower. The purpose of the shear bolt is that if the snow blower jams because of ice or rocks etc the bolt would break before the impellers would bend or the snow blower transmission would strip out. A lot cheaper and easier to replace a small bolt. Anyway, I had to go back to the cottage for the tools I needed to make repairs before I could carry on. I now had only one spare shear bolt left. Mental note, get more. While driving back I had an epiphany! Why not keep the two wrenches required to change the shear bolt in the tool box that is on the tractor? How many years has it been? Well that's where the tools are now! Gad. When I left the batts were at 100%, propane at 51% and I topped up the generator oil again. Our Country Cottage was well behaved during our merry making days, but on the very last day of the year I got an ominous "Power Has Been Lost" email. Dah Dah daaaaaaahhhh! So, this update does bring you up to date to the end of the year. Tune in next episode to see what the New Year brings to Our Country Cottage. Also in the next episode, ITB, In The Beginning, month 24, will anything get done, will there be progress to the completion of OCC. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time…. Happy New Year and don't forget to smell the roses.

In this episode I will tell you about getting to a project that was some five years past due and In The Beginning, Month 22, almost 2 years in, and still going at it. And an OCC update, well, brings you up to date. ITB, month 22, May. In The Beginning, is the part of the podcast where I recount the birthing pains of Our Country Cottage. Pictures, emails, texts and my log book have given me a memory refresh to present the most accurate information of the time. 22 months in and the big things are pretty well done and now we get down to the details. One important detail that happened this month was that we got Our Country Cottage's "Occupancy Approval" certificate. Basically a piece of paper that lets us legally occupy Our Country Cottage. Any who, on with the ITB blow by blow. When I left Our Country Cottage last month ITB 21, the weather was warming up and most of the snow had gone. Remember, I got my boot stuck in the mud. My first trip of month 22 found the snow was back. I even had to plow the drive. The generator was showing 29.5 hours on the clock. That was double what it was when I left last month. Well, at least it was working. Inside, I noticed a stack of blinds in the sunroom. Now just in case I didn't mention this before, we have two skylights in the living room and three skylights in the sun room. There was an option to have blinds installed during manufacturing, ready to go. I thought blinds were a good idea as it would give some control to the amount of sun coming in, also they would provide a bit of insulation while closed. You guessed it, the blinds came separately, and not only that, some were even the wrong size. Keep in mind that all these were delivered 22 months ago and only now just being found out. Emails to the project co-ordinator, measurements taken and retaken and discussions over, did I pay, should I pay, would I pay, and who would pay to have them installed. It took a while to sort out but the correct size replacements did show up. Installation came later, several months later. Back outside I had had a propane line run from the tank to the front deck so that a BBQ could be set up. I figured with a thousand (actually 800 gallons) of propane already there, why futz about with the little tanks. The pipe had been run and came up in the most likely place I would position the BBQ and terminated with a locking tap and end plug. I took pics and measurements hoping there would be an easy hook up thingy. I will check out the BBQ store in the city, when I get back. Handy tip. Instead of trying to balance a pen and paper on some dubious writing surface to make a note of your measurements, grab your phone with one hand and hold the tape measure with the other hand, next to what your are measuring. Align one edge with the nearest inch or centimetre and take a pic. Not only do you have a record of the measurement but what and how you measured it. A pic is worth a thousand words and much better than a crumpled piece of paper with some chicken scratches on it. My next visit I had made arrangements to meet up with the generator tech at Our Country Cottage. But before he showed up I was busy digging in the dirt again. This time it was not as muddy. It was by the battery room hatch where I was told the end of a buried pipe was. This pipe was run at the same time the propane line was run and was to accommodate any extra wires I wanted from the generator to the cottage. The one I had in mind was a data cable that would relay generator info inside the cottage. With the aid of some software that I had purchased with the generator there was the promise of internet communication and maybe even email updates. Anyway, back to the pipe end. What I remember of the pipe unearthing was me kneeling on a bit of plywood, digging a hole with a garden trowel and being very relieved when the red cap on the pipe came into view. I exposed some more pipe and covered the hole with said piece of plywood, ready for the wire to be run. At some point during the digging the generator guy showed up. Now, the generator was running fine but a few of the extras were missing. The extras that would making starting in the cold easier, battery blanket, pre-heaters etc. These items either didn't, or couldn't, be transferred from the previous gen. There was also an inside cover that was broken during installation, that needed to be replaced too. I was hoping to get an Ethernet cable run from the generator to the cottage. Turned out that he wasn't equipped to run the wire but the other stuff was taken care of. Oh, and this was the visit I got my finger caught in the garage door, slash, room divider, while I was showing it off to the generator tech. Please see Episode#15, Doors and Dividers, for the gory details. The following week, when my finger had settled down a bit, I found myself at Our Country Cottage doing the first water test of the well. Samples were taken and had to be delivered to a collection station that I would pass by on the way home. I didn't have that much time to spare. Just enough to notice the depressing, soul sucking, and boot sucking, mud that surrounded Our Country Cottage. In fact after I dropped off the water samples I started looking into grass seed at a farm supply place. Aside from grass seed, these farm supply places are full of neat and strange things us city folk rarely get to see. After browsing through the horse medication and grooming supplies and talking to someone, I was offered pasture grass seed at a good rate, along with several other types and mixes of seed. The topic of grass seed had come up between my partner and my self before. There was an option of seed containing all local and natural varieties, almost an artisan mix, very environmentally correct to say the least. I often wondered if used that we would be just supplying a high end, gourmet, birdfeed. I was also looking into what it would take to spray seed on. You know, like by the highway. Bare dirt is sprayed with some kind of green solution and some form of grass appears a short time after. Did I mention, mud is depressing? The next few day visits only seemed to emphasize the mud issue with the last bits of snow disappearing into pools of standing water. Pools of standing water I took pics of so I would know where to work on the landscape to get the water flowing. I couldn't even think about doing anything till it had dried up. I kept busy by clearing out the loft over the garage etc. It was about this time that the locks were made operable on the doors and sets of keys were to be had. That was a nice diversion from the mud and the ever more growing awareness of the garbage and debris previously hidden under the snow. At the end of the month and bolstered with the water test results being a go, I decided to stay overnight for the first time. The fridge was turned on for the first time. The stereo system was set up. Gotta have tunes. The second futon was setup in the living room as a couch while the first one was in the back bedroom as a bed. Can't remember much from that first night but an entry in the log book noted the futon was not kind to my back. Next morning I was up early and turned on the domestic hot water. After about an hour I had my first bath, watching birds land on the peak of the roof of the sunroom while soaking in luvly hot water. The rest of the day I spent moving furniture, etc from the shed down to the cottage. This included kitchen table and chairs, an old waterbed frame, a home made side table, and an old BBQ. On one of these trips I met a young deer heading toward the cottage. Later that day, while I was setting up the BBQ, a couple of motorcycles rolled up and parked. They were from the flooring/tile company and had come up to correct some grouting problems. Our experience with this company wasn't the best. In fact I wouldn't have been surprised if they hadn't have showed. Anyway they did what they could and left me playing with the BBQ. I managed to get the necessary propane fittings to go from that propane pipe on the deck to the BBQ. The pictures really helped me get the right stuff. All hooked up and with soapy water I did the bubble test. No bubbles, no troubles. Barbecued pork chops for supper along with a can of beans I had to open with a multi tool. That night I woke around 2 am to see an amazing display of stars, far from the city lights. Now, that wasn't the end of that stay but it was the end of that month. And now An Our Country Cottage Update. I promised to tell you about my longest stay yet this season at OCC. and about a long overdue project that got done so lets begin. Mid to late summer brings lots of unwanted guests to OCC. Flies appear from every where and for some reason wasps showed up in the downstairs bathroom. I think they built a nest in the bathroom vent. Gad. Any who with a little chemical help, most if not all of these intruders are x intruders, intruders that are no more, leaving their remains littered on the floors, showers, tub, window seats and window ledges. Sometime I will find areas with just wings and legs, you know the picnic leftovers of our arachnid friends. Insects are one of the truths that were revealed to me early on in the OCC process and I have become much more tolerant and a lot less freaked out by them. Lets face it, when you put your cottage smack dab it the middle of their home, you will get "guests". So after cleaning up after the "guests" I got down to that long overdue project. The Quonset. Way back, back before OCC, when we just had a trailer and a skid-steer, we put up a Quonset to house my big boy toys. It is 24' by 24' in size with a metal tube frame and a fabric cover, complete with a roll up door. If I recall the fabric was supposed to last somewhere between 5 and 10 years. We were now going onto 17 years, and it showed. Stitching was letting go and the door was just barely holding on. The fabric had become quite thin in places with lots of pinholes. We got our moneys worth for sure. Back during the construction of OCC, I realized the cover would have to be changed and I ordered one from a company, out east, that makes these replacement covers. It had been sitting patiently at various locations for the past 5 years. In the garage in the city, then the garage in the country, then in our utility trailer in the Quonset. A year or so ago I actually unpacked it for the first time and discovered there was no easy to follow instructions. And to my dismay the roll up door was not attached to the wall like the original. Lots of questions and lots of searches online trying to find any info or picture on this kind of cover. The original cover had pockets that the frame work went into during assembly, not really an option for a replacement cover. The replacement had straps through grommets that laced the cover to the frame instead. I ended up calling the replacement cover company for any help they might be able to give me. They were abit surprised that the door wasn't attached, too. I really didn't expect much from them, as it had been several years since the order was placed. I felt lucky that they were still around. The Quonset cover is in three pieces, two end sections and the main cover. I consoled myself with the concept that it could be done in sections, leaving the door till last, if I couldn't figure out how to attach it. I pressed on. You can imagine that a 24 by 24 storage space will accumulate some stuff over 17 years and it did. My first task was to empty the Quonset out. During the trailer days we had built a couple of decks to sit on so we weren't always dealing with gravel and mud etc. These decks have been basically abandoned since OCC took over. I repositioned these decks to put that 17 years of stuff on. I had three sections, stuff to go back into the Quonset, stuff to put somewhere else and garbage. The utility trailer, with the new cover still in it was positioned by the decks, just across the drive from the Quonset. The bottom of the Quonset cover has a flap that has to be weighed down with dirt and or gravel, to make a seal from the weather. After 17 years this original gravel and dirt seal turned into a grassed over berm. Several hours of careful skid-steer bucket work managed to scrape back and expose the flap. I did get caught a couple of times, ripping several feet of the flap before realizing what was going on. Our youngest and her friend came up and stayed a couple of nights during all this. They helped me position the trailer and other heavy things. The day of, my partner, our eldest and a friend came up for the big day. Thankfully the wind was co-operating. It was a long and hot day. There were times I didn't know what to do next. Some preconceived ideas worked, some didn't. Everyone pulled together and it got done. I am thankful to my family who recognized when I was starting to loose it and called timeouts when needed and put up with my project attitude. A project with uncertain outcome, but an unmistakable need to be done had been weighing on my mind for literally years, was now done. Just some tweaking, adjustments etc, easy stuff remained. The next day, when our youngest and her friend left, I was joking that I put a fresh blade into my utility knife for a clean cut. Yeah well within a half hour of them leaving, while cutting a slit in a pocket of the cover to put a strap, I partially removed about the top third of a finger. I remember looking at it and thinking, "That's not good". So be careful of what you say. And as far as the door goes, once everything was more or less in place, a method for attaching the door with some ratchet straps became apparent and worked out very well. So, sometimes, just going ahead with no idea other than it will be fine, works, sometimes. The rest of that visit had me trying to adjust the Quonset cover and other light tasks while favouring my finger. Putting tools away, tidying up and laundry, that sort of stuff. Just over two weeks passed before I went back up to Our Country Cottage. My finger had settled down and the Quonset need some work that I was unable to do with a damaged digit. The visit didn't start out well. I was cold and it snowed. When I arrived I plugged in the cold weather stuff for the generator. Battery blanket, block heater etc. This will give it a fighting chance when the temp drops. Fires were built and flies vacuumed. The next day there was snow on the panels and the batteries were down to 70%. The gen was set to start when they reach 67% but I couldn't wait. In manual mode, I started the gen from the solar control unit with no problem. Once it was running for a while I put it back on auto. In two and a half hours the batteries were at 90%, the level the system was set to charge to, and the generator turned itself off. A good sign. I have the generator stop at 90% because the closer the batteries get to full charge the less the generator charges. It tapers off. IE at 98% the system will only be asking the 20 Kilowatt generator for less that 1 Kilowatt. It is not worth putting the hours on the gen for that. So far I found that the 90% level is a good trade off. Now this is also the reason I couldn't wait any longer to run the gen in the first place. I was giving the system a chance for the solar panels to charge the batts the rest of the way, and I needed daylight to do that. So its 2:30 pm and the batts are at 90% and we still have several hours before the sun sets. The following day was also cold and overcast. Another fire. I busied myself tidying up and sorting boxes of documentation. Documentation that was collected from the beginning of OCC and beyond, err, before. All the manuals for appliances, equipment, snow rakes, pressure tanks, pumps, Ikea assembly instructions, everything. The living room was a mess. Papers and stuff spread out over any and all flat surfaces. If I wanted to sit down I had to move something. One tricky thing is trying to figure out how much heat is enough. Like I said I built a fire in the morning cause it was cool and there didn't look like there was a chance for much sun. That evening, when the masonry heater started radiating the energy from the morning fire, it was so warm, I was in a t-shirt and spending my time at the kitchen island, away from the heater. When I woke the following day the batteries were at 79% so I ran the generator manually again. Remember, I am still trying to regain confidence in this thing since it failed last year and froze OCC. I put on a load of laundry and went to the Quonset to finally do what I originally came up for. Snow was holding the flaps down. I managed to put on the extra straps that were needed and adjusted the fabric panels so that everything was square. Then I cinched up the ends of the Quonset and snugged everything down. Just have to put the gravel/dirt back on the flaps and take care of all the stuff on the deck that came out of the Quonset. All that stuff was covered with a large green tarp so I wasn't overly concerned about leaving it for a while. Besides, it was covered with snow. I think I took the next day off. My log book only indicates there was a clear sky and that snow was covering about one third of the land that I could see. There is also a series of pictures on my phone documenting the work I had done on the Quonset the day before. Hey I deserve a day off. After my day of rest, I managed to get all the papers and stuff covering the living room sorted and put away. Clear flat spaces again! You have no idea… I then decided it was time to convert the tractor to winter mode. Off with the mower deck, on with the drive shaft extension, front hydraulic unit, snow thrower and rear blade. Everything gets greased before it goes on. No problems this time with the exception of the four hydraulic couplers that had lost their color identifier caps. They fell off when I did the conversion in the spring. The blue to blue, red to red, yellow to yellow and black to black got replaced with a little trial and error and we are back in business. The last day of this visit had me topping up the batteries, mental note - get some more distilled water, swapping the SD cards from one of the trail cams and collecting the logs from the solar control system. Since day one I have been using a net book for these collections. For those of you that are unfamiliar with net books they are a cheap, under powered, under resourced laptop. Lately mine has been giving me more and more problems. I have to carry an external card reader with it because it is so old the built in reader won't recognize anything over 4 Gig. The USB port takes about 5 to 10 minutes to recognize the data loggers and the unit is so slow I don't try to read the solar control logs until I get back to the city. I have waited over an hour for anything to pop up. This trip was the last straw with the net book. I vowed to get a new laptop when I got back to the city. OK I had been looking into it for over a year now and had been through a couple of back to school sales and those Dad day, Grad day, sales and everything in between. I started watching those email sales announcements closer and closer. About 2 weeks later, my next visit was with a family friend, who just happens to be an arborist. When you own a natural piece of land with trees on it you have to keep your eye out for potentially dangerous trees. Dead trees that can fall across your drive or on you during a wind storm or just when they decide to. Anyway I had noticed about three dead trees down by the Quonset that could inflict major damage to life and property if they decided to fall. Another had fallen in the spring across the drive. I think I mentioned that one in a previous episode. Dead trees are very dangerous to fell by yourself. Handy tip. Don't do it, don't even try to do it. The trunk could be rotten and you would have no way of controlling the direction of fall. Also limbs of a dead tree have a tendency to break off and fall on people at the bottom of the tree while they are being cut. They don't call them widow makers for nothing. Our arborist had a slingshot contraption that he used to launch a line high up in the tree of choice to haul up a heavier rope to guide the fall. I held onto the rope at a suitable distance while he cut and wedged the tree. I could feel the tree react through the rope to everything he did at the base. I was also keeping a close eye on the branches at the top, just in case. One tree he managed to dislodge a sketchy branch with the slingshot thingy. In all cases I could feel the tree give up and start to fall toward me as he worked his magic. They all fell in the desired direction with out me having to do much at all. Two smaller trees were dispatched, down by the gate, without my help. The day went without incident and I learned a lot. Before our next visit I had found a good sale, ordered and received a new laptop. Setting up a new puter is a challenge on its own, so suffice to say, after several days and several Scotches later, we were ready to go. I keep the snow tires for one of our vehicles at OCC. I figure if I am up there and get a major snow fall … well you know. Some don't agree but ... The next trip was another day trip and my partner came with. Flies were vacuumed. Snow tires were put on. Computers were tested and all went well. Collecting data had never been so easy or speedy. Oh yeah, I was worried that the week prior to coming up the inside temps were getting a bit cool, a couple of times down around 9 degrees C (48 degrees F) or so. I had not checked the thermostats since OCC had been back in operation so I took the opportunity to check and reset them. They were set to 9.5 degrees so all seems ok. I noticed that one of the temperature probes was by a window. I think I pushed it over so it wouldn't keep getting caught in the cupboard doors. I repositioned it to a more central position in the kitchen. I also noticed that the generator had run a couple of times since my last visit. A good sign for sure. And examination of the log files showed no abnormalities. A week later and my partner and I were back at Our Country Cottage this time to sort out and clear off the deck from all that Quonset stuff. It was a long day but we managed to get the trailer loaded with garbage, etc, ready for a trip to the local dump. And all the other stuff got taken care of as well. The decks have been cleared! And that brings you up to date with Our Country Cottage. Again I am having to remind myself to take time and smell the roses. It is hard to do while all your concentration is on spreading the fertilizer to get them to grow in the first place. Getting the Quonset done is a large weight off of my mind, also I don't have to look at those dangerous dead trees and speed up as I drive by anymore. Only small things are left to do, so maybe a rose smelling trip is in the near future. Next time Episode #22, will roses be smelt? And ITB month 23 is still wet and muddy but now the grass needs to be cut too, and does anything get completed on Our Country Cottage. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one.

This episode, An OCC update, I will cover the first extended stay of the season, almost back to normal, and ITB carries on with month 21 of construction. Not much happened while the power was down, in some areas. In The Beginning, ITB, Month 21, April This is the part of the episode where I sift through emails, text messages and pictures collected during that month, to give you the most accurate accounting of Our Country Cottages beginning stages. The beginning of month #21 still had OCC without power backup working. The generator was fixed but something in the solar control system, the system that ties everything together, still was not happy and we were still a couple of days from having the solar crew come for a visit to try to figure it out. That leaves me making daily trips, to build fires in order to keep the temperature up in the cottage. I had also found a better firewood supply option to those "winter special" traditional firewood green net bag bundles. There was a company offering clean firewood, of the type I required, and were willing to deliver it to the cottage. How could I not give them a try? One palette of firewood, delivered, please. I got a promise of delivery in a few days. My first trip of the month, April 1st, has me stepping out of my vehicle and spilling my coffee down my front while unloading. Yes it's in the log book. I was the only one there which seems to be the norm, especially during those power problem days. At least the batteries were fully charged by the sun. I'll take this opportunity to mention that the batteries were only able to be fully charged by the sun because I was not using the power to heat the place. And so, a fire was built and I decided to turn the boiler on. I noticed that first for the domestic hot water ran and then the radiant heating. Keep in mind this is still early days for me and the system. I had figured out that by putting my hand on the pump bodies, in the utility room, I could figure out which system was working. There is a picture, on the website, ourcountrycottageanarrative.com, under menu heading, "Our Country Cottage", that's where all the pix are, and then under "Heating", fifth picture down, shows these pumps, labelled, in the utility room. I started investigating the hot water tank controls for the hot water as there was no need for hot water at this point. I was then diverted to the radiant heating system where the upstairs bathroom was calling for heat. The thermostat, in the upstairs bathroom, was set to 17 degrees C. Why it was set to that, I don't know but I used it for a bit of a test. The next day went better. The batteries were almost fully charged by the solar panels and it was warm enough that I didn't need to build a fire. The solar expert showed up and started to dive into the inverter case. Soon its guts were exposed to the world spread out over cardboard boxes in the battery room. Replacement boards were installed and tests done. During this, rather, stressful time, at least for me, a delivery truck showed up with a stack of sheeting, meant for the utility room ceiling. I asked for them to be put on the back deck and they were. Little did I know how long they would be there and their eventual fate. Back in the battery room things were not going great. The specialist had discovered an unexpected failed part that needed to be replaced. He was sure there was one back at the office and could return the following day with it. With that, the day ended, again, with no generator backup. The following day, my tenth consecutive day of OCC visits, started with the batteries being fully charged by the sun. The solar expert showed up and swapped out the defective part. And, poof, we had our generator back up system working. This day, was the day, that the firewood was to be delivered but not till later. I started looking around a bit. Not much had been done in the past week or so, with the power being not the best and it being on the cool side in the cottage. Checking the sump in the utility room, I found the water level higher than expected. I put a tie wrap on the sump pump pipe to mark the level. This was April and kind of spring-ish, that is, it was slowly getting warmer and warmer out even though there was still plenty of snow. I re-adjusted my expectations, too. I started getting texts from my wood delivery guy. Really bad traffic, where he was, and he had forgotten the map to Our Country Cottage. Here is a handy tip. Keep a picture of a map, to your place in the sticks, on you phone at all times so you can text or email it to anyone that needs to find you and has forgotten the directions. I texted him the map and waited. He was running really late and it was dark by the time he showed up with the fire wood neatly bundled and wrapped on a palette in the back of his pick up. I didn't have a palette jack or an easy way to get the palette down from the pick up. The wood was wrapped in easy to manage bundles, so we broke open the wrapped palette and hand bombed them. That is to say, he threw them to me off the truck and I stacked them in the garage. It was a good thing I had outside lights at the front of the garage and on the deck nearby, or we would have been doing it in the moon light. It wasn't too bad 30 or 40 bundles and a few stubbed fingers later and I was set. Gloves, wear gloves! I took some time away from the place and returned five days later. All was fine, with the batts being 97% charged. The sump in the utility room was still full and there was evidence of the sump pump having run. The discharge for the pump was on the west side of the cottage, in the form of a black pipe with a 90 degree elbow facing straight down. The ground directly below had collapsed a foot or two. The water from the sump was being pumped right to the foundation. At the time the only thing I thought might be causing the water in the utility room sump was a possible blockage in the weeping tile. So I got a shovel and a long piece of rebar and went to where it was day-lighted. I shoveled away some snow and poked the rebar up the pipe. Um, 9 feet of rebar vs a few hundred feet of weeping tile. OK, not my best deductive reasoning. Well I made sure it wasn't blocked in those last 9 feet I tell you. I returned to OCC two days later where I found the water in the sump was now over my tie wrap marker. I decided to have a look in the crawl space to see if there was any water getting in, and found the corner by the discharge pipe was wet. If I remember correctly, the site supervisor was there that day and fashioned a long piece of white pipe to divert the sump discharge water away from the foundation. The snow was finally starting to disappear, revealing mud and construction garbage littered about the place. With potential flooding on my mind, I returned the next day to find signs that the sump pump had been running and the diverter pipe had been diverting. The mud had a small channel eroded into it from the white pipe discharge. Checking that corner in the crawl space gave a good indication that the pipe was working as the corner was just damp now. I can't remember if the site super or I asked the plumber to check on the sump pump but it had been raised and adjusted since the last time I looked. It has been run much less, if at all, since. I had a feeling that the water that was being pumped was finding its way back to the sump in the utility room. Four days pass before my next visit. Batts were at 97% and the boiler was on. I checked the generator and found 3.2 hours on it with propane being at 29%. Looks like things were working again. The water level in the utility room sump had dropped to below the weeping tile outlet level. A good sign. Three days later I found the batteries at 70% with the gen running and the sump was almost empty. Unrelated but factual. Another four days finds the gen with 8.2 hours and the propane tank had been added to. It was another, due to the high cost of propane at the time of filling we did a partial fill in hopes the price would soon drop, thang. Gad. It was about this time that we went through the utility room ceiling debacle. That old wrong spray, have to sheet it, can't sheet it, the right spray thang. For the full details refer back to episode #14 A Floor and a Ceiling. So the right spray was now used on the Utility room ceiling and I was tasked with picking up the certification sticker and applying it to the right place and take a picture of it, in place for inspection purposes. My next trip was all bout that. Stick, pic, done and done. My last visit of the month had batts at 98%, the generator had 14.5 hours on it and the propane was going down. That corner in the crawl space was drying up nicely. A cleaner had been hired to clean up the inside of the cottage after construction and make it all look nice. She was doing a great job. While surveying the mud and garbage, outside, I noticed large areas of standing water to the west of the cottage. Ground had settled by the septic tank and other areas that had been dug up for pipes etc. With rubber boots and various shovels and rakes in hand I went to play in the mud, I mean, I attempted to get the water flowing. I carefully laid down planks over the mud to get me where I thought I needed to go. After some success in digging little channels the water started to co-operate. There was a small pool just a bit past the end of the plank. I'll just step quickly on the mud and get it done. Not my finest moment. Have you ever stepped in good quality clay mud? Don't, that stuff gets a hold of you and won't let go. I think I had been stuck for about half an hour and on the verge of saying goodbye to my boot and probably both of them, when the cleaner came out for a break. She quickly placed another couple of planks beside me so I could step out of my boots and get some balance while I dug them out. It took a bit. That about wraps up ITB month 21. Things were working again and looking good on the inside, but the snow was receding and revealing lots of mud and garbage. Quite depressing. It seems, if its not one thing it's another. Now, to bring you up to date with the most recent goings on at Our Country Cottage. Since my last update I have stayed twice at OCC once for six days and once for seven. Suffice to say that Our Country Cottage is getting back on track. If you recall from my last update I just got the generator running, complete with a sound clip of the actual first cranking and first running sounds. That's all I had time for, that day. But with taking longer visits it allowed me to do much more. My first visit had me figuring out why my solar control unit had stopped logging. When working, the logging is set up to take readings every second, and thus, revealing any abnormality that might happen. Logging had stopped after I updated the firmware of the controller. I had been in contact with the manufacturer about this issue and they had given me a few things to try out. The last one being to reset to factory defaults. Something I wasn't really looking forward to. Lots of settings to verify. I had also noticed a couple of bugs reported on the forums associated with the update. I confirmed these bugs were also present on my system now. I tried all but the last suggestions without any joy. Still no logging. I knew that the previous version, of firmware, worked so I reloaded that. Doing these changes and testing takes a bit of time and I am now into day two. And the old version is, now, not logging. Running out of options I reloaded an older config file. The power went out in the cottage and I had to manually turn the inverter back on. Turning on the inverter is no big deal, just a button press on the solar control unit. The power came back on right away. I waited for a bit, then checked if it was logging. Nope. Something told me to walk away. So I did so. While all this was going on I had noticed 3 elk and a female moose wander by at different times. Oh and a squirrel in the drive by the cottage. I also topped up the batteries. This is about an hour or so job. Filling the 12 main batteries with distilled water to the proper level. They take some where between 10 to 15 liters or 2 to 3 or so gallons, total. Sometimes more. The temperature data loggers needed to be done, too. One was dead. I try to keep spare batteries on site for all the devices that need them. Flash lights, trail cams, data loggers etc. The data loggers use a special battery I have to order from the net. Swap in the new battery and it was up and running again. The next day started with me noticing a group of elk had camped out just to the south east of the cottage. Early morning wild life always means a bit of a delayed start to my day as I sneak around inside the cottage, watching and trying to get pictures, through windows, before they go. I checked the solar controller to see if it had started logging. Yes, it was now logging. And here is the confusing part, there are logs going back to when I started the inverter, yesterday. I don't understand. But then again I don't have to. Its logging. With the elk gone and system logging I was ready to test the generator. First I checked the oil level, All OK. I then started the gen from inside the cottage at the control panel and it fired right up. I had figured out various ways to put a load on the system and went from full load to lighter loads and then for something in between for over an hour. I put the gen back into auto, and after a bit the system detected that the batteries did not need charging and shut down. All went well, but I would have to check the logs to be sure. I was starting to feel better about our country cottage, again. It has taken the better part of a year to get back to square one. So I took sometime to enjoy the place. There seemed to be plenty of elk and deer in the mornings and evenings. One morning a young male elk was running about being chased by a female when he made a pass right out of a cartoon. He was actually bouncing across, all four legs in unison. I didn't think they do that for real. Shortly after a fawn showed up and wandered close to the elk. That young male elk wanted to go check the fawn out but an older female was blocking him from getting close. Looked very much like a cutting horse, or sheep dog, in action. And all this was in ultra high res, big picture window 3D. Now that's entertainment. I managed to get up to a local farmers market for the first time this year and renewed our subscription to the local paper. I took some time to clean up some messes I had made while dealing with various emergencies during the freeze up etc. Over the next couple of days I did a load of laundry and ran the dishwasher. Everything worked as it should, with no leaks etc. I also had the time to check the solar controller logs. It takes a while as there is so much info. The generator output showed no abnormalities at all, and the rest of the system was operating as it should. I know it gets a bit confusing with similar power problems in the ITB section and the OCC update section. I didn't plan on them lining up like that. Honest! The last day of this visit there was an eclipse and I spent the morning setting up a hastily built pinhole projector and my camera to record it. The results were somewhat low contrast but results none the less. Nice to think about things other than toilets and generators. My next visit was seven days long and with much help from family and friends we managed to take on a project that had been back burnered for over five years. I will tell you all about that next time. Next podcast, Episode#21 more info on my longest stay this season, with that long over due project, and ITB Month 22 warmer, muddier, lots of standing water, keys, and we finally get some furniture in Our Country Cottage. By the end of the month I have my very first over night stay inside OCC. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one.

This episode I will tell you about my recent encounters with Our Country Cottage and as promised In The Beginning, month 20 I will tell you about one of the more trying months of the build. I found out that the month wasn't all bad though, it just seemed like it. Also, I will talk a bit about back up generators, in particular, ours. On with ITB, In The Beginning, month 20, March. This is where I try to figure out what happened using the pictures, emails, texts and invoices I kept from that month. To give you an idea I received 47 emails and sent 35, just in that one month and just relative to OCC. I also paid 12 visits to OCC including every day from the 25th and a couple of days into the next month. If you remember, from ITB month 19, we have just managed to get water into Our Country Cottage. I had left the utility room in a mess, just dumping the hose and whatever down the hatch and leaving. So the next day, and 1st of the month, I went back to clean up. Upon entering I found the control panel with several errors flashing away. They all seemed to clear, OK. Clean up in the utility room had the hose being much easier to handle, now that it had warmed up a bit. There was a fair amount of water on the floor mixed in with plastic that been used to protect stuff from the fire retardant that was sprayed on the utility room ceiling. Shop towels and rags were used to clean up and I noticed some water dripping from a large nut near the bottom of the pressure tank. I figured, how bad could it be, with the pump turned off. I was now in the habit of building a fire or two every visit and I had graduated from taking the pre-packaged bundles of firewood, that I was buying at the gas station, to the "Winter special" from the company that supplies the gas stations. Same bundles, but, at a lower, quantity discount, cost. While I was picking up the "winter special" I noticed large containers of fire wood at a very much lower price. That would have been great if I could have transported it somehow, but I couldn't, as the "winter special" was all I had room for. After building the fire I noticed that the boiler was on. An indication that there was a call for heat. It wasn't obvious which thermostat was the culprit, so I turned them all down a degree or two. Keep in mind that the temp I had set them to wasn't for comfort, 21C or 70F, but about 12C or 54F, just to stop the place from freezing. The boiler decided to turn off. This would turn out to be the beginning of an investigation into the various zones and intricacies of thermostats, that would last for several months. Just when I thought I had it figured out, I would find the boiler heating some zone for no apparent reason. Anyway… I didn't go up the next day but my contractor called saying that he had just dropped in to pick up a bit of his equipment (it was Sunday) and found the house without power. The batteries were down to 36%. He started the gen but it quit almost immediately. His second attempt was more successful and he left the gen in manual mode. That means it would run 24/7 until it was manually shut off. I went up to OCC a couple of days later to find the generator running, trickle charging the batteries, which were at 100%. Hmmm trickle charging was probably not the best use of a 20 Kilo Watt generator. Propane was at 39% and the hour count on the gen was 1151.7. I took it off manual and put on auto. On the plus side the lower part of the railing, up to the bedroom, was now in place, but still waiting for the hand rail cap and the dishwasher was in place. In the utility room, there were signs of progress for the back hall radiator. A few days go by and the solar guys were at OCC reporting that the batteries were at 100%, oh joy, and that the radiator, in the back hall, was up and running, supplying some decent heat. Two days pass when I go for my next visit. There were several vehicles parked in front. One of those rare times. Batteries were at 90% and the gen had run about 45 hours in the past 7 days. Lots had been done inside. The hand rail cap was on the lower part of the railing. The fridge was now in place. A bit of a tight fit, but it works. The laundry washer/dryer unit was in place, so all of the major appliances that had been in the garage for the past several months are now in the cottage. In the bathrooms, glass shower surrounds had been installed and looking great. The cheapy ceiling fan, I had picked up locally, had been installed in the sun room. I reasoned that if the fan needed to be turned on in the sun room there would be plenty of sun to run it, so the expensive low power units we had in the living room and bedroom were not necessary. The back hall radiator was indeed working and the control box for it in the utility room had been clearly labelled. While in the utility room, I noticed an alarm had been installed for the septic tank. A couple of visits back I was informed that some glowing embers from the masonry heater, which had fallen from the grate to the ash pit, were getting close to bouncing out of the clean out hole in the crawl space. At the time it was just an opening with no door or hatch on it, until now. A friend of the contractor fabricated a decorative frame with a sliding door and that was installed, too. It's the middle of the month and I am back at Our Country Cottage. Everything seems to be running OK and a quick check behind the new ash pit door shows very little build up, so not to worry for a while. Getting more confident in the system I let three days pass before my next visit. The batteries were well charged, along with more hours on the gen and less propane in the tank. The sun was shining and the inside was looking great. Clean and tidy. There was one of those net bags of wood leaning against the masonry heater with a label that stated "Traditional Firewood". The new, heavy duty breaker had been installed in the battery room so having cottage power failure due to that breaker tripping should be a thing of the past. The last remnant of our first site supervisor, the one that had died, was gone. The travel trailer he stayed in while working on OCC had been picked up by his wife with help. One of the problems she had moving the trailer was that the trailer was towed by the vehicle that was demolished in the accident that took her husband. So with everything coming together, and working, and bits of the past moving on, along with the sun shining brightly it looked like Our Country Cottage was turning the corner and heading down the stretch. With great optimism I took a bit of a break and waited a full week before my next visit. I had brought with me, a box of window cranks and the last bit of track and connectors for the loft. Small things, to finish stuff up. Little did I realize that this was the beginning of nine consecutive days of trips to OCC. What I found when I arrived was red lights flashing and the control panel telling me that the batteries were at 4% yes 4 and dropping. The sun was shining and trying to charge them at 5K but the boiler was on and taking 5.2K. I don't know how there was power in the place because the inverter should have shut down long before. The gen had died about four or five days earlier. It was running but not putting out any power. I called the generator people, at the time, and they told me that they could have another one there by the next day. I turned the boiler off and the batteries started to edge up. They managed to reach 22% by the time I left. I informed my contractor of what had happened and asked him to put off the cleaner as there was very little heat in the place. The next day found the batteries still at 22% with snow on the panels and very little charging. Clearing the snow off of the panels got me from .4K to 1.4K charging. Every little bit helps. And true to their word, the new generator showed up and was installed. Only problem was that they couldn't get it to run. After several hours of diagnostics and long phone conversations it was determined that a factory tech would have to come out and have a look. By the time I left that day the batteries were at 35% and I had built two fires. The generator factory tech came out the very next day. Turned out to be one wire had a loose push pin and signal wasn't getting through. OK, the generator is now running and putting out power, but the system is not reading it. With the generator factory tech finished and gone I still didn't have power charging the batteries even though it should have been. Phone calls and texts to my solar guy had me digging deep into the inverter case taking measurements and such. Bottom line was that there was something wrong within the inverter case, some part of it, that someone from the solar company would have to come out and have a look at. That wouldn't happen for another six days. The day at Our Country Cottage, ended with the batteries having staggered up to 55%. Thanks to solar power. Fires had been built and the temp inside was passable. Hovering around 10C or 50F or so. The next visit ie the next day and subsequent days till the solar expert could make it up I would go up just to build fires in the masonry heater and make sure the place was warm enough. Another "winter special" of "traditional firewood" was taken up. One day I decided to tackle a problem the ceiling fan in the living room had. It was making a tick-tick noise as it turned. The electrician had told me that it was probably just a connecter under the top cap that had flipped up. The fact that it was 18 feet in the air made it a bit of a challenge, but there was a scaffolding set up in the living room for painting purposes. I just had to overcome my fear of heights, and I did, sort of, and the problem was indeed as described and easily corrected. It was during this dark period that I managed to get the electricians to put a switch in the mud room for me, so that I could turn off the well pump. It was lot easier than going down into the utility room and flipping breakers. It took 5 days from when I found the batteries at 4% to get them back to 100% just by sun alone. And when it got there I turned the boiler on temporarily to add more heat to OCC. The last day of the month was on a week end and my eldest daughter and a friend came up with me to keep me company while I built the fire etc. It was a beautiful sunny day and they took turns using the tractor to clear the parking area of snow. And that will wrap up month 20. Stay tuned for ITB, month 21. Will the solar power system get sorted out? How many more winter specials of green bagged traditional firewood must I go through…? And now an Our Country Cottage update. I have stayed at Our Country Cottage several times since the last episode. Trying to get back into the swing of things. When I arrived on my first visit the batteries were fully charged and when I turned the well pump on it didn't run. This meant that it had held pressure for over a week. I had supper in a nearby town and picked up some diesel fuel. I have two 20 liter diesel containers (they are yellow) as both the tractor and the skid steer use it. That night I had a drink of water and thought that it tasted a little, um, musty. I made a mental note to change the water filter first thing in the morning. I did so before breakfast and that cleared up the problem. Since I have started Our Country Cottage up after the shut down there has been a fair bit of sediment coming out of the well. I now have a bit of hose connected to the pressure tank inlet, before the water filter, which lets me run water to clear the sediment before I put it into the cottage water system. Probably only have to do it a couple of more times. The rest of the day had me finishing off mowing the tall stuff and touching up the shorter stuff that had been growing. I fired up my skid steer for the first time this year. No problems, once I found my manual with the lock code etc. I needed it to remove a tree that had fallen across the road a month or so back. At the time I managed to just pull it to the side so I could drive by, but now it was in the way of my mowing. You wouldn't believe the amount of extra branches and limbs that came down with it but was hiding in the tall grass. Took an hour or so just to pick that stuff up. I then took my brush cutter down to the gate and cut back the vegetation that was getting a bit thick. After that I took my box grader out and reconditioned most of the drive. The box grader has two grader blades at an angle between two vertical sides. It goes on the front of the skid steer and if you get the angle right it churns the gravel on the road, clearing vegetation that tends to grow down the centre and sides of a gravel drive. The angle of the blades tends to push the gravel to one side and, again, if done right puts the crown on the centre of the drive. This is important for drainage. Of course if not done right you can screw up your drive badly. It was a good day. I got to play with most of my toys. The next day I updated the solar controller firmware and all went well, I thought. If you remember that last time I tried to do it my laptop threw a fit and wouldn't let me copy any files. The laptop is OK now. I had a talk with it, in the city. Anyway, I did some other chores, cleaning etc., then went outside to fix up the turning circle. So, that box grader does a really good job on straight parts of the drive and gentle curves. The turning circle is somewhat more challenging to my present level of skill. I managed to leave various sized piles of gravel here and there on the circle drive. No problem, I thought, I'll just back blade it with the tractor. So I removed the mower deck and attached the blade to the back of the tractor. Well apparently my present level of back-bladeing leaves something to be desired too. I did smooth it down a bit but left a ridge of gravel on the grass in the centre of the circle. So I took the blade off and the mower deck back on and parked it in the garage. That night I had my first BBQ of the season, Bratts, good stuff. In unrelated news, the upstairs toilet was showing tendencies to run on. Hmmm My last day, of this visit, started with me using a device I do have enough skill to use to clean the gravel off of the grass in the circle, a hand rake. Only took an hour or so. I had just returned inside for a break when a couple of fawns, still with their spots, went booting it cross the mowed area south of the cottage. I was just out there less than 15 minutes ago. Before I left for the city I started to look at the generator. I jiggled some wires and hit the run button. The all too familiar clicking of relays and nothing. Ah, the generator. If you remember it became iffy last winter when I found Our Country Cottage frozen up. Frozen/broken toilet tanks etc. At that point the generator did run when I asked it too, but became less and less reliable until it just stopped after only running for about twelve minutes one day while I was up there cleaning up the those icy toilets. Shortly after I firmly declared that I was kicking that gen to the curb and gave some very valid reasons in an earlier episode of this podcast. Well, time has passed and my attitude towards our old generator has softened a bit. Remember that this is the second gen as mentioned in this episodes' In The Beginning. The first generator had 1212 hours on it when it was deemed un-repairable and replaced. The present generator has 1141 hours on it. I must say these 1141 hours were a lot kinder hours than the 1212 hours on the previous generator. Our present gen, gen #2, has had much more regular service and upkeep than the previous one, gen#1, had a chance to get. If I remember correctly, gen #1 was over 500 hours before the first oil change. It was also run 24/7 many times. It took the abuse given out by winter time construction. Did I ever mention that construction would have gone a lot easier if it was done in any other months other than the winter months. Gen #1 also took the abuse of system set up, getting the right settings so that the sun would charge the batteries when it could. I can't count the times, OK, I don't want to count the times, I showed up on days with beautiful, clear, sunny skies and the gen was running. Adjusting components, like that relay that would trip preventing solar charging. And don't forget that little yellow heater that was the only thing heating the cottage before the photovoltaic's were ready. That pressed gen #1 into hard service right out of the box. Now, some of you may be thinking that the hours I keep mentioning don't seem all that high. 500 before first service etc. So to put some relevance to them I noticed that my average speed driving back to the city was about, 80 to 90 Km/h. The manual suggests oil change every 150 hours. If that was your vehicle averaging say 50 Km/h that would be 7,500 Km and if you were, say, on a cross country trip on highways averaging 100 Km/h that would be 15,000 Km. Given that, Gen #1 went somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 before its first service. Your vehicle would probably be showing some signs of distress if you treated it like that. Yes, my bad, but in my defence all this stuff was new to me. If the generator was the only thing on my plate I might have read the manual and found this stuff out. Back to Gen #2. Like I said, time has passed and I am starting to think a little more rationally towards gen #2. What if it was a small, inexpensive part that had failed? What if it was something easy to fix? I then came up with an amount I would be willing to pay/invest to fix it. Having a service guy come out to have a look, would put cost over the limit right away. With that in mind and the looming, very high cost, of replacement with new upgraded version, I decided to have a closer look myself, to see what I could find. In fact I dedicated the next visit to just that, staying up a couple of nights. The first day had me mowing for three hours straight in order to have a full day to play investigator. I had acquired a service manual online and had been studying it for a while. It became clear to me that the error that was always present on the display could mean many things but primarily it meant that the generator was not turning over when asked to. I verified that the controller was indeed asking it to start and followed the path to the starter. Starter relay OK. A shame, because it was the easiest to change and cheapest as well. Next in line was the starter solenoid and then the starter. This required the generator housing to be removed. Ironically, I was boiling under the direct gaze of the sun in a clear, blue, sky while previously I was freezing in the winter's wind the last time I peered under the hood. Long story shorter, I identified that the starter solenoid wasn't functioning. When I bypassed the solenoid with jumpers the starter spun up quickly. The solenoid is mounted to the starter and I came to terms that they both might have to be replaced together. Either way the cost was below my limit. I packed up the starter combo and the gen control unit, just in case, and took them with me. When I got back to the city I spent a lot of time online looking into replacements etc. I had to wait for the first day of business of the week before I could call my gen guy to find out what hell I would have to go through to get a replacement. The week end passed with me formulating plans for various scenarios that might unfold. The day came, and to my surprise, it turned out to be very anti climactic. My generator guy had one and would let me have it, only charging me for it, if I was happy with it. I picked it up within the hour and made plans to go to Our Country Cottage the next day to install it. And the next day I did just that. Leaving out all the cursing and swearing one runs into while performing open generator surgery under the hot windless sun, the unit was installed and…… I pressed the run button and it cranked and started. Not out of the woods yet, but I can see the clearing.. I still have to figure out a way to test the generator under load as the batteries are constantly fully charged these days. I have a couple of ideas. Yet another issue that has to be resolved. Remember I said I updated the solar control panel and I thought all went well. Well it appears that the logging function has stopped working. This is the same logging function that told me the gen only ran 12 minutes the last time etc. It records second by second what is happening to all parts of the system. It is an essential part that I require to figure out what might still be wrong with the gen. I will be looking in to that and more on my next trip to Our Country Cottage. Next podcast, Episode#20 More Gen#2 stuff and ITB Month 21 For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the "Friends of OCCaN" Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [email protected]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one.