Friday, December 19, 2003
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's becoming difficult to work outdoors, in the last week over a foot of snow has covered everything. We did manage to fell a good number of trees, the rest will have to wait for spring.
Denis visited a couple of times. He was able to get a guy to do an estimate for the excavation costs for both of us. A well-sinker also came to give my brother an estimate for his well.
Alain discovered that a family member is a dowser. He specializes in identifying magnetic fields that interfere with the comfort of homes. We sent him a plan of the land with the indication on where we want to build and he returned to us a drawing that he needed to explain quite a bit. It seems there is an underground river, about 15' deep and a good distance to the north-east of the proposed building. That could be useful and doesn't cause any problems with the house. On the other hand, there is underground-water, 18' deep, immediately to the right of it. It creates all kinds of distortions and we can't have water within 20' because it would leach heat from our thermal mass. The solution would be to move the house a few feet west. The dowser proposed to come check things out more precisely this spring. He also looks at plants and bugs to determine what is going on underground!
There's the problem of black and grey waters that's haunting me still. I spoke to people involved in designing a new composting toilet that would be perfect for an earthship. I'll stay in touch and see where they're at when the time comes to make that decision. It's interesting because the system uses gravity, reeds, worms and other bugs directly inside the home. They are now looking for a research team and some money in order to start testing and eventually get the certificate that would recognize it as a acceptable sewage treatment solution. In the meantime, I'm reading "The humanure handbook" by Joseph Jenkins and I'm more convinced than ever that it's the way to dispose of our manure, not by using drinkable water and sending it into the ground water. As for grey water, it's more complicated, I can't determine how to legally use it to water my indoor plants short of not having running water officially installed.
I feel like I'm going around in circles these days, I don't know where to begin with the project. I would like to draw more detailed plans but there are too many decisions still to be made. Vouli, the architect, is suppose to meet with me during the holidays and early next year, that should help straighten me out. We're suppose to prepare a preliminary proposal for the town officials in order to see how they'll react.
Enough mental anguish for one day. There are still some gift wrapping to do and we promised ourselves to go see "Lord of the rings" this afternoon. Maybe we'll find some more building ideas for our hobbit hole, we've already decided on a round door…