End of August

The end of August means the end of summer for me. Sure it is still hot. But the heat has lost something.... It's hard to explain, but I am sure you know what I mean. It might happen earlier or later in your area, but summer is winding down. It makes me kind of sad in some ways, but the promise of those perfect fall days that are right around the corner lift me up in other ways.

The kids are going back to school on Monday, and the local pool will shut down on Sept. 10 for the year. We ate the last watermelon (besides the one the crows got because the kids forgot to shut the greenhouse door... grrrr) at the beach, and tomorrow is the last summer BBQ. Of course then we will have autumn BBQs. So that is not such a big deal. So here is just a post full of pictures of what was a really awesome summer. Too awesome to spend much time writing blog posts- sorry about that.

My secondhand greenhouse- tomatoes on the left, watermelon, zucchini, and a papaya in the middle, eggplant, peppers, passionfruit on the right

The volunteer fireman's BBQ party

Our new garage (made of recycled wood) and mini-van. 

His head really isn't that big. It is just the camera angle.

The house before re-staining

And the house after 24 liters of Xyladecor exterior wood stain.
The roof peak was a bit scary on just a ladder. Glad I won't have to do that again for a few years.

And the eldest pwning a watermelon at the beach.

My Greywater System

My homesteading guru and mentor Anna suggested that I write a post about my greywater system.

First, two terms:
Greywater: wastewater generated from domestic activities like bathing, doing dishes, laundry, and so on.
Blackwater:  wastewater contaminated with human waste- sewage

Seven years ago, when we built our house, we made the decision not to put in a septic tank. The main reasons were because of possible well contamination and because our lot is quite small. We instead decided to use a composting toilet (which means no blackwater) and a greywater system.

I bought Art Ludwig's book Build an Oasis with Greywater and made dozens of plans, each more complicated and involved than the last. I decided to build an artificial wetland from the house, meandering along a path to a sink near our mailbox. On paper it was beautiful. The gentle curves, the water plants poking up from the pebbles that would make up the system. It would have baffles to keep the water from just running straight, and the plants would clean the greywater gently, using up the excess nutrients as it slowly moved down to the pool.

That never happened. Time constraints kept me from finishing quickly, and we ended up with a small pool of fetid water that smelled like rotten eggs. And it was my fault. I should have followed Art's guidelines, and I should have realized just how much work it entailed to build such a paradise. Moving cubic meters of rocky soil, ordering cubic meters of different grades of rock, not to mention the maintenance cleaning out lint sludge, small food particles that escaped the sink drain screens...

Now I am happy to say that for the second attempt, I followed the guidelines in the book, and have discovered the guiding principle of all truly stable engineering projects. K.I.S.S.
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid!

Our greywater now drains to a large unlined basin filled with rice hulls and wetland plants that just naturally  found their way there. A number of water tolerant trees and shrubs form a ring around the outer edge. Again, I didn't plant them, I just kept the ones that thrived.
The large pipe from the house takes all the water to this, and it is wonderful. And simple.
No more smell, no more clogging, when the rice hulls eventually decompose, I just add more.
K.I.S.S.

Shipping Container House

While this really has nothing to do with me or homesteading, I saw an interesting house near the beach today. It is made of two 40 foot shipping containers. The owner cut the sides off of them using a hand-held disc grinder and several dozen discs! Then he pushed them together and welded them tight. He cut the windows and doors the same way. And the best part is that he said that he could pay for it out of his savings, so no debt.

Shipping Container House

Shipping Container House

It got me thinking of all the cool ways that you could stack shipping containers to build a house. 

The Overhang

The Breezeway

Half-Built Home

I am a big fan of DIY. If only I could do it better lol. Our house for example. My lovely wife knows of my passion for working with wood, and thought we could save some money when we built our house. So we went for the "Half-Built" option. The contractors do the really important stuff, foundation, framing, roofing, plumbing and electric, and I do the non structural detail work. Sounds fun, right? Well, it was, and I would never do it again in that situation. The new house was a 40 min drive away, my wife was 6 months pregnant with our son while looking after our one and a half year old daughter, and preparing to move. I tried my best to work on the house on weekends and some weekday mornings. This is not a good way to finish your dream house. Finally we had to take a break on construction so that our daughter wouldn't forget who I was.

But there were some really good times too. When all our friends pitched in and helped us stain the siding. Two days covered in green Xyladecor. Friends came up and helped us nail said siding to the house, others helped with ceilings and floors, or brought lunch when I was stuck on site with no vehicle. And Mom and Dad flew out from the states to help us get it together.

I look at the house now and all I see are mistakes. The chipped plaster here, gaps in the moulding there, the seams of the sheetrock visible in places. I look at them all and smile, because I remember Dad and I hanging out on the scaffolding putting up siding on a perfect sunny October day. I look at a plaster stain on the ceiling and remember my English class student learning how to apply the finish coat during the rush to finish plastering before the wife and kids got back from Grandma's.

Every mistake has a story. Well, most of them at least.