Tuesday, April 3rd 2006
The holidays are almost over!
I hope your winter was as nice as ours? It was really a case of hibernation and adaptation to our new dwelling. A rhythm got going and although winter and its shorter days lends itself so well to a well deserved rest, we stayed quite active. The huge windows that let the sun all the way into the back of the room in the middle of the season helped a lot.
ALain carried wood, cut up and split wood, piled and protected it so it would dry some more and eventually carried it indoors so we'd have dry wood in the morning when we woke up. To our astonishment, the floor's and walls' temperature rose through the cold season. Just heating the place with our old woodstove and the little sun we got were enough to slowly raise the degrees so that even on cold mornings, it around 14C indoors. This week with the warmer weather, we only light a fire in late afternoon to prepare dinner and keep the day's warmth which easily reaches 20C.
As for me, I wrote the article I talked about in my last chronicle and it's just out in the newsstands, in the spring edition of "Maison du 21è siècle". I also got back into baking sourdough bread every week. This time, I dared to make my own starter with only flour and water. It was a complete success, the bacteria in the air in Chertsey make an superb bread, very mild and fruity. It's a great joy to take a whole day to feed the starter, kneed the dough, watch it rise and finally stoke the fire to get the oven hot enough to bake the mouth-watering bread.
We also took the time to welcome family and friends that dared come all the way up here in the snow. They were all relieved to see our cosy little nest and how much we enjoy it. On a more technical note, we noted a few improvements that are needed, one of them being the height of the chimneys and roof vent that's too low. There's also a flashing that isn't perfectly watertight. Because the ceiling is not done yet, we were able to notice some traces of humidity on the Kraft paper liner when the ice melted around the roof vent. It took a few days to dry and as soon as it's all melted up there, we'll go up and fix it to avoid bigger problems later.
We had decided when we bought the PV system, to get only 4 batteries, knowing that we had about a year to figure out if it was enough. All the calculations to size the system are made using standards that can prove not suited to a particular situation and the differences become even more real with such a small system. In our case, 3 days of self-sufficiency in December isn't enough, All the more so that when the sun shone, the batteries refilled quickly. We found that with 3 panels of 110 watts and the minimal sun we got in winter, we were better off doubling our battery bank. We now have 8 batteries that supply 700 amps of 12 volts DC.
ALain modified a bunch of our small equipment so they could run on 12 volts DC, in fact most machines that use a transformer can be converted. He made some nice little boxes that contain electronic circuitry to lower the voltage to the one used by the device. That way we avoid going through the inverter that changes the DC from the batteries into AC and then back to DC through the transformer. You have to understand that there's a loss of energy with each transformation. We also fixed two noise problems. We bought a small 175W inverter so we wouldn't have to use the 2000W that runs with a fan. We use the bigger one only for the vacuum cleaner, the drill or the toaster.
The second problem was completely unexpected and it took us a long time to figure out what to do about it. Between the solar panels and the batteries, there's a controller to prevent a surcharge. There also has to be a fuse or breaker going into and out of the controller. We had an electrical panel, you know what I mean: that grey box with the breakers down in the basement... but with only 2 breakers. Not only was it ugly, but as soon as the controller would reduce the incoming current because the batteries where full, the breakers would start making an annoying high-pitch hum. ALain replaced the awful box with two fuses installed directly on the wires and protected by sharp looking transparent casing; gone is the noise and we gain a lot of room. Who would have tought that we'd someday find some usefulness to the modified car industry, that's where that hardware comes from!
These days, we watch the snow melt and we dig channels to keep the water from coming into the house. Last fall, we didn't get around to doing the landscaping. Anyway, in front of the house there's still half of the roof trusses that we'll install this summer so we couldn't dig there in order to grade the terrain to divert the water away... Luckily, once more the weather is cooperating and it was melting slowly enough until last Wednesday. We had to install a temporary drain inside the house and then we dug some more trenches into the ice and frozen ground on the east side of the house. Everything turned out fine and there are no damages to the house or to our belongings. Only about one more foot of snow to melt. It's surprising to see that Montreal has been rid of snow for over 2 weeks now!
Real soon we'll be unwrapping the back section. We have to organise a temporary roof in order to keep rain from coming into that middle wall while we finish the walls and put the permanent roof on the back room. As it was last summer, it's hard to tell when we'll be doing what since it all depends on so many things outside of our control: the weather and the number of people coming to help in particular. But we should be able to finish filling tires in June so take note if you wanted to try it out, don't wait too long before paying us a visit! It's true that you may get other chances to do so if you miss this one since we met a future earthshipper who is in the process of asking for the changes to the construction by-laws in his town. And also a couple who are still looking for land... and they're all in Lanaudiere; what a nice region...