Construction

Today and yesterday have been grey and dreary. Casey and his dad worked together on finishing the walls yesterday while I went into Study Butte to do laundry and other chores.  Casey and Bob worked very hard despite the cold, wet, and windy weather, and now all that is left to close up the house is the door and the roof.  



All last night the rains came and went, and sunrise was little more than a drizzly, pea-soup fog slightly illuminated from behind.  El Sol barely showed his face all day, in fact, and temps stayed in the 40-50 degree range.  Casey and Bob spent the day inside Arick's cabin building the parts for the two wall trusses while I found things to cook (and therefore heat the cabin). Sprocket tried to make the most of the day, but spent the better part of the morning sitting in front of Arick's sliding glass window, looking outside.  Days like today are why we have loofa toys and rawhide chews...

Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be beautiful, and I really hope the NOAA comes through for us on that forecast, because Bob is planning on leaving Monday morning. We'll miss all the help he has given us, and we hope to finish the rafters and roof sheathing before he departs since it really is a three person job.



We have our windows framed out, but not installed yet, and a big six foot gap for the sliding glass door.  The window spaces are sheathed with OSB, but the door really needs to be installed soon and we still haven't sorted out all the problems with it.  Adding to the dented tracks, the wheels are missing, and we are generally disappointed with it.  We are hoping we will be able to exchange it for an undamaged one, but it needs to be done soon!

For water, we have been using mostly small containers and carting several gallons from either the Terlingua Ranch Lodge or the Study Butte Water corporation. While we do own a 305 gallon water storage tank, we don't have a transfer tank. In the past we have borrowed our neighbor's tank and trailer, but we are currently in the process of "making" our own transfer tank.  We purchased a 100 gallon hard plastic stock tank and one of our rainy day projects today was finishing the lid we have fashioned out of OSB and PVC pipe fittings. Once the lid is finished and secured to the tank, we will be able to haul water to our house!


We still haven't had Big Bend Telephone Company inspect our off-grid homestead for their power requirements, so we haven't gotten any closer to having the phone and internet installed.  We are really frustrated by both the requirements and our own procrastination on this task.  On Saturday we are planning to pour a small slab of concrete for the batteries under the house, and then we can start carting the batteries and solar panels up there.  We have most of our wind turbine ready to be assembled, but we are still waiting on some free blades and need to buy a pole to mount it, as well as some wire. We have the location picked out and will be using the treadmill motor from our hydroelectric project.