Waiting for things to fall into place

It's all perspective

We first listed our house in May of 2011. We firmly believed that within a few months we would be up in Cochrane building our dream. As you may or may not know we had our house on the market for 21 months, listed with 5 different agents before we had an Agreement of Purchase and Sale via our For Sale By Owner kijiji ad. That deal closed on Friday. Now we are waiting for the weather to warm up slightly before we make our final move and begin the build.

How often have you heard we are exactly where we are suppose to be? Well,  it has been quite a ride these last few years and many times we wondered why were we  being held back, why were we going through so many agents without offers? It was frustrating to put it mildly. Then the offer was made with a close date of March 28th.

We were hoping for a closing date a couple of months later so that we could move directly to the property and get started. This offer meant we had to find a place to live for a couple of months. We took that in stride. Surely it was not going to be difficult to find someone to rent us a place for 2 months. That was the first surprise. Generally landlords are looking for long term tenants. We were very lucky to find a couple of guys who were willing to cut us some slack. To Adam B and Adam W, thank you for being so generous to strangers.

We decided, to make things slightly more appealing to a landlord, that we would rent for two weeks prior to the close date. Well that's what we thought was the why at least. As it turned out moving out of a house that you have been in for over 15 years is quite daunting. It was so very nice to have those two weeks to move in a little more gradually. If you have that option we would highly recommend taking it. 

We thought moving in March would be horrific. Once again things worked out in our favour. The Saturday that we chose to make the move we were able to do so with no coats. The next few days were bitterly cold. This long winter gave us a beautiful moving day and for that we must say thank you. 

As we begin to go through our packed boxes again, to lessen the load even more, we are once again surprised by exactly how this ride is moving along. An extra walk through of our stuff has made for donations to help others. We are always grateful for that chance.   

             

The timing of the close began as being considered another obstacle. We look back and see with gratitude how wonderfully everything turned out. 

Now we have two months to put all our ducks in a row. Building a home with no experience is not the life path chosen by many but we pride ourselves on going slightly off the beaten path in most life choices. It makes for a journey with a view that is seldom seen and one that is extremely exciting.

Getting ready to move

A practice session helps

This process began a couple of years ago when we decided we were ready to list the house. There was a lot of purging done or so I thought. We packed up a storage locker full of items we were not ready to part with but realized we would not need in the near future. This was done in an effort to  declutter the house for showing purposes. We never expected the sale to take almost 2 years. That turned out to be a blessing  as we have realized that much of what we thought was important is now so much easier to part with after it has not been around for so long. We did have to make our build  plans smaller than we had originally thought so a go through of our 'stuff' is required to lessen its amount after the reduction in home size. It is still a daunting task to pack your whole life into boxes.

The fact that we are moving into an apartment for two months while we wait for the warmer weather does make things different.  As we prepare to move on Saturday we have found a very easy and inexpensive means to mark boxes. For us we have boxes that are not needed until the build is complete, we marked them red. Boxes that may be wanted before the build is complete but are not necessities are marked blue. Finally boxes that are required while we are building we marked green. We made sure to mark every side of the box so the mark is visible and it was easy to know what type of box it is regardless of how it was stacked. And what did we use? Bingo dabbers! You could use them to sort for each room if that is what you needed. Much better and cheaper than markers.  

This practice move is helpful but I would not suggest it as a preferred method. Moving an entire household three times in 7 months is not something I ever want to do again. Putting the building of a house in there is looking like crazy when it is in writing but this is going to happen and we are crazy enough to share it with all of you. Hope your comments can keep us inspired. :)

Sourcing Material for a Passive Solar Build

So You Want To Build In The Bush.

As we near the closing date of our house sale, March 28th, the reality of the build has really begun to sink in. Our circumstances (unheated living at a northern build site) means a two month apartment rental here in Hamilton before we head up to the property. That means in addition to packing up our household contents, while attempting to pare them down, we are trying to source out the build materials and the obstacles of our location are becoming clear.

Here is a partial list of materials/services for which we are trying to source out local connections and the associated hurdles. We must preface this by saying that when we first looked at our property we knew no one in the area. But, thankfully, we have made a few friends, and continue to make more through the wonder of social media, who have been extremely helpful in our search to find locally sourced items.

The first hurdle we have to overcome is that our road has weight restrictions for vehicles after the Spring thaw. That could be removed as late as July 1st. At this point we are not certain of exactly what materials that are to be delivered to our build will be delivered via a vehicle that is on the weight restriction list. Once we have that worked out we can begin to schedule deliveries.

The next hurdle is getting small items to the build site. We are on the lookout for a reasonably priced used 4x4 pickup to allow us to do our own small deliveries.

On site water delivery - As easy as that is down in Southern Ontario, in Cochrane there is only delivery for non-potable water. We may have a connection for potable drinking water now thanks to our new found social media friends.

Solar panels, batteries and other electrical - we have tried to connect with local installers but they seem most interested in grid tie-in. They do not appear to have an interest in selling small off grid systems. Looks like we may be much better off building our system from scratch ourselves. If you have any connections to suppliers of solar systems/parts please leave us a comment.

A few other considerations for the interior of our home. 

Bottles and cans - our plan is to use the local schools as a point of contact.
Appliances - we are planning on a wood cookstove, a freezer and a freedger (a term coined by Shane of Canadian Dirtbags for a chest freezer converted to a fridge).
Hot water - working out the details of a thermosyphon with our cookstove and an electric water heater tied into the battery system overflow.
Composting toilet - at this point we are looking at a build your own.
Plumbing - thankfully we have a plumber in the family.

Here are some general build tasks/materials we are still sourcing. 

Hiring someone to clear the building site 
Wood for frames

Finding someone who does spray foam insulation Insulating materials for under the structure 
Sand 
Bags for building 
Materials needed for inside the bags

In Cochrane proper, which has a population of 5,500 and is about 25km away, there is Castle Building Supplies and Canadian Tire. Many of our materials can be purchased through these vendors. Timmins is the closest large center being about 105 km away with a population of close to 45,000. There you can find what are known as 'big box' stores however we choose to stay away from these vendors whenever possible so will avoid purchases in Timmins if other local sources exist. Kapuskasing is another small town, at just over 8,000 people, that's about 120 km away. We have actually chosen to use the U-Haul drop off depot there, for our rental moving truck, over Timmins mostly due to the more pleasing drive.

As we have no building experience we are extremely grateful for all the guidance we have received and will continue to share our experiences as guidance to those of you inspired to consider what's possible

Passive Solar Off-Grid Building - So many options, so little time.

How we got to this point.

Our journey to our final choice of building structure has taken a few years. The first type of building we considered was an Earthship. That is the name given to a type of structure developed, in the 70's, by Mike Reynolds in Taos, New Mexico. The basics of an earthship are a building that is constructed using rammed earth filled tires as bricks, which are then parged to make the load baring walls. Interior walls are made using bottles and cans along with cement. This is why the movie explaining the journey of Earthships is call Garbage Warrior. You can watch the entire documentary on YouTube. The structure is also bermed on the north side as well as a major part of the east and west sides. The entire south face of the building is windows which allow for solar gain during the day. This heats up the interior thermal mass (all those earth filled tires) which then releases the heat throughout the cooler night. We researched this building option at length. Purchasing books, watching videos, even attending at a few earthships built in Ontario to see how it was done.

Why an Earthship? 

We gave serious consideration to this type of structure because many of the materials used for the build are recycled - tires, bottles and cans. That is important to us. We try to be good stewards of the planet. Additionally an earthship provides an efficient means of dealing with your grey water (the water from your kitchen and bathroom sinks). We did not want to incur the cost of a septic system. We believe that everyone should recycle their water, a precious commodity, as much as possible. It is important to get the most use of your water before it goes back to the ground. The Earthship design includes an interior grey water recycling planter system. This planter allows for growing food and in a colder climate that can be quite useful. It can be used for starting plants as well as lengthening the growing season, giving you free food. Built correctly and given time to acclimatize an earthship does not require additional heat, although cooking and fire for ambiance can provide additional warmth if desired.

Why not an Earthship? 

As a test Ed decided to pound a tire. After almost half an hour of hard work he looked rather done in.  Knowing this would need doing close to a thousand times for our home we thought this was better suited to the younger crowd not a couple in their 50's.

 








What other options are out there? 

Having decided against using tires for bricks we looked into other options. One that seemed doable was drystack block building. Our thinking was, at our age, we could handle hauling cinder blocks around more easily than tire pounding. There is more cost involved with this type of building over an earthship however many of the same design principles can be utilized as we would still be building a passive solar, off-grid structure. This site is where we found most of our information on this type of building.

Along the way we also found information on dirtbag building. This method of building uses 50 and 100 lb feed bags filled with a dirt mixture which is wetted, tamped and put down in rows, with barbed wired between them, to make walls. We felt this would be a little easier on the budget than drystack blocks. Once again videos, books and blogs were the best sources of information. A special inspiration and turning point was when we found the Canadian Dirtbags blog. By reading about the journey of this couple we felt we had found the perfect style of build for us. They have been extremely helpful. In fact without their expertise and experience we would have gone with our original design plans and never have been able to complete the build in the required time. You see Cochrane has a rather lengthy snow season that we need to work around. We now have a reasonably sized build planned, about 700 square feet, with the option to add on over the years. Thank you B&S!!

So here we are. Packing up, prepping for a summer of unknowns. Excited beyond words to begin this next stage.


Addendum

In case you think this earthship thing is just for hippies. We had a hard time convincing some of our friends that we weren't crazy. Some still think we are. Or if you believe that you have to do without to live this way. It is all about choice. Have a look at the build done by Dennis Weaver on YouTube

The evolution of "The Shed"

As I was considering pictures to include in the initial post of this blog the building that is on the property was on the short list. Once I began to think about posting I realized the evolution of this building was a post on it's own

Our first exterior look at the hunt cabin 

When we first went up to look at the property we had no idea there were structures anywhere on the 75 acres. Pulling up and seeing a building took us by complete surprise. On first glance this looked like the kind of cottage I grew up with - 4 walls, a roof, a couple of windows and a place to sleep. Nothing like what people consider a cottage today, more of a wooden tent. There was an interesting 'porch' on the front and stepping inside of that gave you a good indication of what it might look like on the inside. The door was not secured shut, in fact it was wide open. The rather large front window was broken. There was an old stove, old cans of paint that had exploded and assorted bits and pieces of just about everything sitting in that porch. Then we looked inside.

I cannot put into words what we saw in a way that can give you the visual that this video allows

At the time of this recording Ed and I both given in to this building being junk. As we saw it there was no way of making it liveable. We shut the place up as best we could and left the building as it had been.

Fast forward a year. By the time we travelled up the following April we found the porch had finally given in to the heavy snows of a Northern winter. It was trashed. Plain and simple.

Ed and I pulled down what was left standing of the porch. Once again closing it up as best we could and hoping for no further damage.




Thankfully we had the company of our dear Kristina along on our next trip in July. She was a great help. Having given thought to where we could store our possessions while doing the build, we began the enormous task of cleaning up the inside of the cabin. We had, what I deemed, our Hazmat suits - white, zip-up, full coveralls with hoods, goggles and filter masks. I knew to be careful because we had animal droppings to remove. Although Ed was still not convinced that we could make the place liveable he worked along side.

To fully appreciate this transformation you really must have watched the video above.

The three of us managed what Ed now calls 'an amazing job' and I would have to agree. We pulled enough plywood off from the bedroom dividing walls to allow us to close up the side door and cover over the 'bathroom'.  We screened the window opening after removing all the broken glass. Pulled all the furniture, broken dishes, old carpet and tile out of the building. It did look like a completely different place.





All finished inside we boarded up the front window and secured the front door in the hopes that no further damage would occur over the next winter. Thankfully that was the case as we returned the summer of 2013 and actually slept comfortably, on an air mattress placed on a bunk, in what has now been dubbed 'The Shed' since it will be used for storage after the build is complete.

March 2013