Whatcha doin????

Water, water, everywhere,
And not a drop to drink.

The video at the airport was astounding, thinking about the last time I stood there beside the railing in the video.

 

With an 18 foot storm surge.

I'm remembering a little cay just a half mile off the north coast from Nassau. Couldn't have been more than 6-8 feet above sea level. The thought that the place I sat and had dinner was under 12 feet of water is unbelievable. The power of the wind to displace that weight of water is almost beyond comprehension.

 

I feel for the Bahamas having to endure Dorian for 2 days. On the upside, however, it missed me.

 

Huh, and silly me is flying to Florida next week.

 

You picked a good week.

 

Florida is now in Dorian's rearview.

 

Been pulling down more ceiling, and still trying to figure out how best to insulate a strange shaped space above the ceiling in the corner that was extended. I also need to figure out how to put some kind of waterproof sheet up there so that if my flashing leaks again I won't get water soaking into the insulation again. This particular corner is awkward - once the ceiling goes back up there's no way to get at it without either lifting the roof or pulling the ceiling down. Neither is a desirable option.

Before long I'm going to need to borrow my friend's truck to haul my mountain of rubble off to the landfill. At a guess I've got about 800lb of the stuff by now.

 

Got back from a walk yesterday and found that if you forget your FItbit you can kludge and botch just about everything - steps, calories, active minutes etc. But you can't enter how many floors you climbed. It tracks them, it awards badges based on them, but evne if you enter "climbing stairs" as an exercise you can't tell it how many stairs you climbed.

I tried reaching out to support and their stunning advice was "don't forget to wear your Fitbit when hiking". I've just about had it with Fitbit. When this one dies I'll be looking elsewhere. They clearly don't care about people who want to track climbing as well as steps so I think I'll give my money to someone who does.

 

Going to go look at a spot for a "mini-farm", escape hatch for TEOTWAWKI, potential retirement spot. Located about a 45 minute drive from our little place on the river or 2 hours from current primary residence. 10-15 minutes max to nearest small town and decent medical.

8 acres, mix of pasture and woods. Small creek. Existing well. Septic system. On the grid, but open and good setup for solar if desired. Mature grape vines. Mature apple trees. Existing garden spot. small 2 bedroom house already, obviously needs update. Small barn/outbuilding. Secondary house that probably needs major rehab.

Looks like a "grandpa's dead and we 9 heirs need to sell his place" sort of deal
No zoning regs, so will have to check the neighbors carefully. Neighbors are probably a little closer than I would like, but hey, I can't afford 6000 acres.

Here's the crazy part.

Ask is $117,000.00 USD

 

Sounds like a good deal.

I sometimes suggest to my wife about something like that. Not so much as a bug out/survivalist thing since that's such a remote possibilty. I just like the idea of owning a decent chunk of land. There was an interesting one about an hour from here.

 

I rather like the idea of owning enough land that I don't have to think about neighbors, but the cost of thousands of acres is likely to be prohibitive. In years gone by I'd looked at woodland for sale because the thought of having 25 acres of private woodland seemed quite attractive but when you come to realise that 25 acres, although much bigger than the average domestic yard, is still barely a few hundred yards across in any direction it doesn't seem quite so secluded any more.

I like the idea of having a place that's as off-grid as possible, especially if it would cope with being totally off-grid for an extended period if needs be. As I'm fixing up this house I keep thinking about things like alternative fuels for heating, and to what extent it's worth installing options to heat with oil, wood or electricity so that I can shift usage based on prices.

 

Yep. You have to get in the 100s of acres to be further away than a good rifle shot! Or in some secluded area backing a national forest of something.



We're looking at it primarily from a potential mini-farm, organic gardening, maybe a small amount of chickens/livestock. We've considered beekeeping. This has good exposures for solar, so that's also consideration.
The price is good enough that even if we just build another custom house and either bulldozed or rented the other it would be a good deal.

Worst case, it gets sold somewhere down through the years. Certainly not making any money in fixed income...

 

Years ago I saw a place for sale that looked pretty unassuming - something like 2000 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms for the very reasonable price of something like $8m. It came with over 20,000 acres. With that much land it's probably safe to say that if you can see someone and you didn't invite them then they are trespassing.

Sometimes it seems you get a deal that is almost too good to be true, where people who don't look at it through "do whatever you want" eyes are put off by one thing or another. I guess the people who want a farm get put off by the work needed on the house, people who want a house with a large yard don't want some other aspect of it, so you can take it for a song.

Farming seems like a lot of work for retirement. That said only this morning we had the funeral for one of our church members who had a full time job and farmed for fun. Farming sounds like it was pretty much another full time job for him but he grew crops, raised cattle, did the full works, in his spare time.

 

Trying to figure out whether blocking the cavities in the very top bricks of my hollow wall is a good idea or a bad idea.

I read a site that suggested thermal looping is a really bad thing, but my concern with blocking the top is that I don't want to find moist air can't circulate and get out. If concrete blocks aren't completely airtight and waterproof (and I gather rain driven against concrete can be driven inwards by direct sunlight, a condition that happens regularly on one side of the house) I don't want to find I get condensation forming inside the bricks causing me other problems.

Sometimes trying to figure out the best way to do things seems like an exercise in conflicting advice where just about any option is wrong for some reason. Although given the issues with rain being driven in through the brickwork I would also consider putting some kind of clear waterproof coat on the brickwork that gets most of the rain.

 

My setup is that the walls are made of hollow concrete blocks, open at the top. The top of the wall roughly aligns with the sides of the attic, and the attic then has a skirt around the bottom where the sides flange outwards, presumably for water runoff. The undersides of the skirt is plastic, so the tops of the wall aren't exposed to rain. There are air gaps somewhere between the skirt and the plastic undersides (soffits?) and if I can physically get at them I plan to put some kind of bug screen in there.

My first thought was to block the tops so that icy air can't get down in the winter. But then I figured if I did that then moist air couldn't circulate up and out in the summer. Since I'm insulating the inner face of the brickwork (with polyisocyanurate panels between the studs, fitted as best as I can given everything is a little warped and uneven) I figure cold air inside the bricks is probably better than moist air unable to circulate. What I'm looking at doing now is making sure there's insulation all the way around the rooms, so the winter air can't get through and freeze everything, but let it get down inside the walls in order to provide better ventilation in the summer.

As far as I can tell it seems like one of those things where the theoretically perfect insulation, that would let me heat the entire house with a candle, would solve the problem of heating bills but create moisture problems. It would be really nice if I could slash my heating bills, but not if it means ripping things apart and dealing with black mold.