Chicken Coop Day

  

This is Michael Mancuso, happychickens@hotmail.com. He makes chicken coops out of reclaimed fence materials that would normally go to the chipper. The main frame is new redwood but all the siding is old fencing. Rad. The roof is reused corrugated metal which is a bit harder to come by. The hardware is all new. 

 

For now, this coop will live at the place we're renting since the chicks need a lot of daily oversight right now.  The box hanging off the right side is the "egg box". It has two nesting boxes and a neat little door on the side to get at the eggs. The box to the left of the ramp is a flower box. There's also a small shelf on the left side.

 

The view from our back door. The kids are stoked and Jula's so ready to collect her first egg.

 

The chicks are a bit overdue for new digs. I think they would have liked to move outside last week but things didnt line up until today. The brooder worked out pretty well.

  

 We had a few things to prep before hand but the kids could barely wait. 

 

They were both excited to pose with the coop, can you tell? :)

 

After they got used to being in the coop a bit Jula was able to let them out, which is to say, one flew out and the rest caught on that that was one way to get out of the coop. Jula followed them around for the better part of an hour while they harvested bugs and grass from our yard.

Getting them back into the coop this evening was something else though. They've never walked up a ramp much less lived in a box outside. They were not too hip to the idea of walking up the ramp or going into or staying in their new coop. Getting the first 5 in was easy one at a time but the 6th, an Australorp decided to make a break for it. When I cornered her she hopped thru an obscure gap in our fence and into the neighbors yard, So with little else to do I scaled the fence, re-cornered her, put her over the fence into our yard, re-climbed the fence and then re-re-cornered her to get her back into the coop. :)

Electrical work continues

 

The field is growing long. We're looking for someone with grazing animals that would like to eat it all down.  

  

Back in the attic. This is the view from the attic looking at the new subpanel in the utility closet. That metal junction box is from the original construction and soon to be removed.

 

Here's Joel working on the new subpanel. The subpanel that the previous tenants had installed was a bit small for our needs only having 12 breaker slots. We replaced it with the next model up that has 20 slots. 

 

Here are some new wire runs from the extra rooms, across the mudroom and into the main house. The yellow is 10/3 (10 gauge and 3-wire) for most of the electrical needs. The white is the 12/3 that is required for the hard wired smoke detectors.

 

This is the wall opposite of the room that will be my office for a little while. These two outlets get their own circuit, whee!

 

The other side of the wall, inside my office. Electrical receptacles to be installed.

 

This is the kind of thing we've been removing. This particular junction box was the cause of half the circuits going out. We bumped it getting into the attic and it shorted and had a little fire party inside it. You can see some of the charred electrical tape. This box had 7 separate wires coming into it. It was a little too cramped it seems.

 

 This is the kind of thing we're replacing it with. My first junction box. Joel said I over-twisted the wires a bit but it would pass inspection. Woo!

Big Dump Run

If all goes as planned, next week PG&E and the building inspectors will be out at our place to shut off the power and allow us to replace the main breaker panel on the outside of the house. Before the inspector comes we wanted to get the place cleaned up as much as we can to avoid any unwanted attention to other parts of the house. I've been putting off going to the dump again, partly because it's un-fun but also because we don't have a truck to haul with (yet).  

 

Again our awesome neighbor Rob came to the rescue. I mentioned needing to make 4 or 5 dump runs soon and he offered to leave his dump truck at our place and then take it to the dump after we fill it up with trash! Time was slim last weekend but I managed to take the kids to the farm for the day,  get several dump piles loaded into the truck and take the kids for a plant walk in the forest too!

 

Jula has discovered the Sierra Nevada Field Guide which we've been making extensive use of. She's able to identify about 10 trees by sight and she's learning more all the time. Hearing her say "That's a ponderosa pine tree dad!" makes me so proud :)

Here's the dump truck after we loaded up the big pile that was building up in the carport and another pile of scrap construction wood. Later on fter much trial and error Joel was able to drive the truck over to the workshop to load up more debris.

 

The kids were both really stoked about the dump truck being there, especially Tenzin. Here they are watching as Joel moves the truck. The pile in the foreground is all the wire we've pulled out of house which is worth taking over to the recyclers.

 

At some point I was trying to talk the kids into going for a little walk with me and Tenzin declared loudly "Tenzin stay here with the dump truck!" while holding one hand on one of it's tires. :)

 

Here's the truck after loading up the dump pile from the workshop. So thankful that it's all going at once! 

Electrical Nightmares!

 

Ok so it's not electrical. Jack had used this sign to line part of the utility closet as "fireproofing" for the wood stove he had installed in there. Road sign as building material? Wood stove in a closet? These are the work of Jack, the last long term resident here. I need to write another blog entry just about Jack. His handiwork is everywhere. When he needed to fix or amend anything he made do with materials, tools and knowledge that he had on hand. All of his work is functional but all highly irregular and in the case of his electrical work, dangerous! So it's all coming out. We're ripping out all of jack's electrical and rewiring the whole house. It's a much bigger project than we thought we'd be tackling this year but it has to be done and we're blessed to have our awesome friend Joel helping us navigate the whole process.

 

This is right inside the utility closet in the hallway. That "outlet" in the middle is wired to the subpanel and it's just hanging there. It's labeled "KIT." The cord plugged into that outlet goes up the wall, down the length of the utility closet and through the wall to something in the kitchen that I haven't discovered yet. The off-white box is a junction box for the old phone line which goes out to the eve and then wraps around the house in a strange long path that doesnt make any sense.  I ripped all of that out :)

 

This shiny subpanel box came with the house. The renters that lived here after Jack knew a thing or two and tried to fix things up. You can see the mix of new and old, crusty, scary wiring. Somethings about this new panel were done right and some not. Ultimately we decided that we needed a panel with more breaker slots. This one only has 12 so we ordered the next size up that takes 20.

 

New wiring in the washroom.

Recently I've spent most of my time up in the attic. As attics go, it's not too shabby with a nice wide rat-run down the whole length of the house. This is taken from above the extra rooms looking back towards the main part of the house. The square hole is an opening to the attic space of the original house. Having all of the insulation removed was really key to making the attic workable. 

 

 Fancy new ceiling fan mount and new wiring. woo!

 

 Here's another great example of Jack's work. The thick black wire and the metal junction box are most likely from the original construction in 1942. Over the years Jack made so many little modifications that most them are like little puzzles to unravel and then remove. From the metal junction box there are three more runs to other parts of the house. This work is comparatively really good as he actually used twist caps on the wires. Bare twisted wire is sadly a common sight in other parts of the house.

 

 Another attic shot. This time from above the living room at the opposite end of the house. The light in the middle of the photo is right next to the square opening in the previous attic picture. The yellow light (lower middle) is coming up from the utility closet which has no ceiling right now. 

  

More of Jack's work. This run starts at the subpanel in the utility closet in the middle of the house and runs all the way to the chimney (here) where it connects with two other runs, one which was cut and coiled up and another which ran all the way back to a light bulb above the utility closet.

 

This is Joel. He is awesome. We are blessed. 

 

This may not seem like much but I'm quite excited about it. It's the new phone line that we ran from the new AT&T box on the side of the house. Right now it ends at phone jack box on the floor. Eventually I want to wire the whole house with ethernet and bring the runs back to the utility closet for networking. For now this new line means I'm one step closer to being able to hang out on the farm and still work my day job (DSL required).

 

 Round 1 of house wiring was dedicated to new hardwired smoke detectors in every room. Here's the open ceiling of the utility closet. The smoke detector will go in one can and the new light will go into the other.

 

 This is the ceiling of the wood-paneled bedroom with it's newly installed smoke detector wiring and receptacle. Next will be replacing the main panel on the outside of the house. More to come next week!

Spring is here!

 

White Trilliam! These flowers are native to the Sierra Nevada and we're lucky to have a few on the farm. These are right next to one of the forest trails.

 

The field is very lush now. The few weeks of rain that we've had and the warming spring weather have really sent everything into bloom. This photo is actually a bit old and the field has a wide covering of dandelions now :)

 

  The pear trees are really starting to blossom too. I'm so glad that we had them pruned when we did. They all seem to have enjoyed the haircut. 

The road makes a nice circle right by the house. With all the warm days we've had this month we've been doing a lot of hanging out and barbequing right here :)

 

This is the view from the bathroom. There's something that I really like about looking out on the barn from here. 

Busy weeks!

We've had a few really busy weeks on the farm. The powerline falling opened an electrical rabbit hole in the house. Everything leads to something else, you know?

Any solution to the springhouse power line issue was going to incur the need for a permit to change out the main breaker panel, it was unavoidable. The need for a permit and subsequent inspection means that we have to comply with current CA building code which mandates *hard wired* smoke and CO2 detectors in the house. Putting in new smoke detectors meant that we needed to get into the attic to run wire. This is where the rabbit hole got a lot deeper. The attic was full of vermiculite insulation including a few full and unused bags of the original stuff. This was fortunate as we were able to quickly determine that this particular insulation has a lot of asbestos in it. (yikes!) Fortunately the vermiculite was confined to the attic and for under $2000 servicemaster came out and removed it all with a big big vaccum.

So! Now we have no ceiling insulation but it's clear to do the electrical work that we need to do. On top of the insulation drama we are also going to have to do a lot more electrical work than we thought. I spent an entire weekend ripping out really terrible electrical work that had been installed there over the years. We know the water pipes are at least partially galvanized too. So the plan now is to hack into the walls, repair everything we can, replace the water pipes and all the electrical.  That's the bottom of the rabbit hole at the moment.

As heavy as all the news inside the house is, the news from all the outside space is really stellar. Our cedar cleanup efforts are really paying off. The forest is starting to look like it should and you can actually see thru the trees to see the really big oaks and ponderosas. The cottonwoods that were threatening to fall on the barn and house have all been hacked down (fortunately we didn't have to cut the one with the big hawk's nest). Over all being outside on the farm really rejuvenates all of us, especially the kids. :)

We've been making slow but steady progress towards building a cedar-pole pavillion, having logged the 8 main upright poles and moved them down the hill. So much more needs to be written about that project, it will have to wait until another entry.

Chicken love

 

Both our kids are in love with the chicks. It's pretty hard not to be, they're pretty cute :)