Greenstorm's Journal

So, roof's been replaced, chimney has been replaced. The roof is pretty much the same as the walls. So what does that leave?

Well, I thought I had a pressure tank issue, so that would have been a water system issue. However, Threshold has stepped into "go big or go home" territory.

tl;dr I think the waterline from the well into the foundation is broken/cracked where it enters the foundation, but my water pressure is back.

The long: so my water pressure has been declining for awhile and we all thought it was the pressure tank, since the pressure tank is super old. There were a few things not entirely in keeping with that but I kind of ignored that, having no previous experience with a pressure tank failing. And honestly, the pressure tank is still old and may fail.

However, when I was getting ready to go into town for a couple days I ran the water for a long long time (low pressure and trying to get all the animals topped up) and noticed the basement was flooding. I had to leave (doctor's appointment was a timeline) so I turned off the well, turned off the tap on the mainline from the pressure tank into the rest of the house, and left. I figured that way there would be minimal extra leakage, since I didn't have time to troubleshoot and figure out what was going on.

Well, when I came home a couple days later the tap on the mainline wouldn't turn. There were a couple taps below it, so I hooked up a garden hose to one of them, ran it outside, and tried turning it.

I got full pressure. The kind of full pressure I hadn't had for a long time.

So I ran water from there for awhile and messed with the different taps below the stuck shutoff, then tried turning the mainline tap again. It turned slowly with a gritty feeling, spit a ton of mud into the water system, but it did turn-- and my house system was back up to full pressure. So it seems like a clog of mud had been blocking the pipes and that's why my pressure was so low.

However, this pressure led to me being able to use lots of water, and what I noticed additionally was that whenever the well ran too often, or when the well ran (to fill up the pressure tank) at the same time as I was running water heavily, the basement would flood. The pressure tank holds ~25 gallons, so this is either when I ran the washing machine on heavy or when I did the animals; nothing in the house uses that much water at a time.

I kept looking at the flooded area trying to figure out where the water was coming from but I couldn't. There was no water noise. There was no clear flow direction. The water just... swelled into the low point in the basement, which is right by all my plumbing stuff (it's all on the same side of the house, thank goodness). It was at the point when any time I heard the pressure tank filling I grabbed the flashlight and poked around in the area trying to see where the water was coming from.

Well, one evening I got lucky. There was a slight bubbling noise coming from under the downstairs toilet. Hm. And then I noticed the water was also flowing in the direction away from where the shower went through the foundation. The water was seeping up through any holes in the foundation.

And, sure enough, the ground right outside the corner of the foundation where the waterline entered was damp.

So it makes sense that the waterline is cracked at or just outside the foundation. When the well runs, it saturates the ground, and then when the ground is saturated the water is forced up by the pressure through available holes in the foundation. Because the soil outside is damp, and because there is no dripping from my waterline inside the house, it must be broken where it meets the house. And it must be a small break because my pressure tank still fills up, etc (though it does get a little air in it from time to time).

So, fair enough. Except that I live in a place where it freezes deeply in winter. That waterline is likely very deep under my foundation. I'm not sure what kind of damage water does to a concrete foundation over time; I know enough water movement would undermine it, not sure about concrete stability or the ground remaining saturated. Either way I'll need to do inside drywall remediation, some mold is starting to form, and unfortunately...

...I'll need to somehow get down to the throughhull or whatever you call the place where the waterline goes through the foundation, which will likely be a fiddly job (can only do some of it with an excavator since breaking the waterline &/or the well electric is a no-go.

Small blessings: my water still runs, my basement is concrete instead of having flooring over it, it's not midwinter.

Okay. I've been avoiding writing about this because writing makes it true, but: basically the chimney in my house is failing. That is, the system which provides my home with heat cheaply and effectively is not real safe to run right now. When I bought the house I knew the wood stove was relatively new; what I didn't know or guess was that the chimney was probably original, that is not at all new, and had probably had several fires in it. It had also been painted at some point which made both experts I talked to click their tongues and sound unhappy. Now it's inside a vey flammable pine surround.

So I've been doing a deep dive on chimneys: mine is a double-walled insulated one. It would have come in sections of 3' that would have been fastened together, likely screwed together like giant screws. The point of the insulation is twofold: it keeps the heat from coming out and burning the house either through normal use or in a chimney fire, and it keeps the inside of the chimney warm so creosote doesn't deposit in it and block it up.

My house is a weird shape that basically you can't really get on the roof well. The chimney needs to be lowered piece by piece through the roof as it's screwed on, and likely needs to be anchored at someplace in the middle. This in all likelihood involves a couple hours with a cherry picker truck or something similar.

The way my chimney is failing is that the join between sets of pipes is curling back in two places, curling a little bit more every time I clean the chimney. This starts to let heat out through the joins. When wood is heated and cooled repeatedly it lowers its burning temperature. If I were to have an actual chimney fire the chimney might not contain it and I might have a house fire, which is not supposed to happen with a proper chimney.

The whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that we had a soaking wet summer. There were only two weeks without rain; we had rain almost every 24 hour period. Most folks didn't get their grain off. So my wood is damp, and pine is the only real available firewood up here, and so I'm getting a lot of creosote in the chimney. This would normally mean cleaning it a lot, but cleaning it damages it more. The creosote increases the chances of a chimney fire, which would be extra bad in this situation. And so it goes.

I'm looking at options right now. The ground is frozen so running a natural gas line is expected to be at least 3x the summer price, but I could sell the really nice wood stove and replace it with a gas fireplace/stove, both the stove and running the line has a cost and we have a dickhead natural gas company with the highest rates in my province so I'd be saddling myself to them. Replacing the chimney is expensive, likely no one can do it till spring, and my wood is still wet. I could run on electicity until spring but that will be super expensive too and my home isn't really well-equipped with electricity, it's ok right now because we're in a weird warm spell but I'm not sure how -20 or -30 would do. Pellet stoves, well, fibre is getting more expensive and that's not going away; true of wood too honestly.

So I continue to explore my options, talk to contractors, etc etc. I could put in a natural gas stove, run it on propane, and convert to natural gas in the spring when they can run a line but that may not be cheaper than just running the line now. In any case my house is a weird a-frame shape so snow slide down the long sides would shear off any pipes; the gas has to come into the house on the shorter walls. And then I'll have a meter reader on the property, which means dealing with dogs and the gate.

I might make very different decisions if I planned to stay here permanently rather than being uncertain of that.

Bah.

Anyhow, that's been the last couple weeks for me.

On the plus side a friend of mine bought 25 bottles and did a 25-person gin advent calendar, so we've got a bit of a social thing tasting and comparing notes together. I've turned off the woodstove and am running on electricity right now, so I'm a little less anxious about the house. And I'm eating through my preserved stuff from the summer, which both feels lovely and is giving me lots of jars back.

Looks like I'm on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster right now.

Last night I responded to a discussion about ecological management on facebook. Never a good idea. I worked hard to be thorough, nuanced, nonattacking, and empathetic with folks I have some reason to believe are ok people. It went... fine, but it's never worth it. I expend so much energy and so much of my good mental health is lost.

I can't save the world. It's gonna burn sooner or later, and that's ok. According to natural law they, and by extension me, deserve it. I do wish I could do what evolution does next, and whether it's a survivor-level collapse.

I also sort-of learned to castrate piglets today: squeeze, cut, squeeze, pull/rip. There were only 2 little males and I held/observed, so the next litter the vet tech is going to come up and help me so I can cut and she hold. It's actually kind of amazing how many kink skills overlap farming skills, to be honest.

Between those two things I was just all adrenaline and darkness from last night until I had a bit of a sit-down before lunch, made myself eat, and then went to work and read UNDRIP and the BC government draft principles for indigenous people or whatever it's called. That was soothing but I can feel the adrenaline aftereffects in my body: every time it hits me that hard I lose the same amount of muscle ability that I'd lose in two to three weeks of complete inactivity and have to build it back. It's kind of fascinating how quickly I can lose strength.

I'm ok now, though I'm going to prioritize doing yoga and reading quietly and snuggling dogs and people and cats and watching animals till next week. Maybe I'll hunt down my old boss and sit in his hot tub with a farm book. I miss him. I miss all of them.

Also gonna (independent of the conversation on facebook) ask my new boss why she thinks there aren't any aboriginal people working for my office. Will be interesting to see what she has to say.

What I can do without thinking that I couldn't do a year ago
-and the next piece I'm learning

Keep a fire running for a month straight at a time
-find and cut enough wood for the whole winter

Feed and care for up to 12 groups/ types of animals daily (dogs, cats, rabbits, quail, ducks geese chickens, pigs)
-build infrastructure and routines to make this process easier

Drive to and from work in any conditions in winter
- drive the further distance to Prince George in more conditions

Manage -40C and/or 3' of snow
-better plan snowblower paths and deep-snow fencing

Create, document, implement, and data manage the timber valuation process for an area of about 6 million ha spread over about 12 million ha
-quality control on remote contractors
-negotiating with government entities to facilitate the process
-navigate internal company politics

Work at a desk
- without it hurting

Eat mostly meat I produce
-improve my ability to slaughter alone
- my own veggies 3/4 of the year
-my own grains

Ok, I guess I've been doing something with the last year

I am so glad to have my property, my home. The rest of my life has started moving again, as usual, and I enjoy and need having that stability to root into: plan for the spring, plan for the future, plant trees and shape the landscape.

It seems likely that spending more than 4 or 5 days in Vancouver is just going to make me sick, full stop. There's too much pot and other scent in public spaces, and honestly likely in many private homes. I guess that's something I can write off my list of activities.

On the other hand I may be able to be convinced that community can be worthwhile and I have a better sense of how I need to use my time. There are people who love, understand, and support me out there. Interacting with them one-on-one or in small groups is lovely and good for my soul. The internet seems to break rather than build community for me, and my attempts to spend less time on it have had really good results.

There's also a potential career opportunity coming up in the fall/winter. Nothing solid yet, but it could be good; work better suited to me and the ability to keep living in the same place.

Also lots of movement and big decisions for partners, and of course that always trickles down.

It feels like spring again, snowmelt starting to gather momentum. It's an important time to steer.

On the weekend Josh came over and we cleaned my chimney. I had already taken out the chunk of chimney between the stove and the ceiling, so it was just a matter of putting the brush in and attaching one after another long fibreglass rod to clean the next 2.5 stories' worth of steel pipe. I had picked up a system for containing the creosote and soot on some forums -- basically poke a small hole in a garbage bag, tape the garbage bag around the chimney hole, and feed the pipes in through that.

We were cleaning the chimney because it needed to be cleaned and no one in town would clean it. I'd pushed it last year and ended up with a spring chimney fire -- luckily no damage was done. Because of that chimney fire we had to also remove, clean, and replace the catalytic converter on my stove, which meant buying a new gasket to seal the catalytic converter in place. During the first fire the gasket expands, so all the hot air is forced through the catalytic converter (which looks like a honeycomb, basically it has a magic surface that burns the creosote so it 1) doesn't plug up the chimney and 2) produces more heat).

I was nervous about doing the thing myself, and when I'm nervous about something I'll often wait till Josh can help. He's an engineer and is much better at sorting physical things than I am.

We cleaned the chimney Sunday and lit the fire up. I kept it running more or less continuously till last night It wasn't acting how I remembered. The bypass door handle was stiff. Then last night there was a thunk and the bypass handle was extra stiff, there was a clunk, and suddenly it moved freely without a sense of weight behind it.

There was a fire in the stove at the time.

So I added a little more wood (it was a cold evening) and determined to figure out what was going on tonight.

In the morning the fire had burnt itself out and the stove was cold. I'm always more confident and enthusiastic in the morning, so I took the morning off work.

First I took the chimney back down. Then I took the catalytic converter out. The bypass door is a flap of metal that channels the air either through the catalytic converter or straight up the chimney -- when everything is cold the smoke needs to go straight up the chimney, then when it's warm enough it is channeled through the converter. I couldn't get that door to hang properly off the rod that attached to the handle so I stuck my phone inside it and took some pictures and sent them to Josh. While doing that I found a slot the door was supposed to slide into, got everything sorted, put the chimney back on, reversed some loose metal bits that had been put in wrong on the weekend, and cleaned myself up.

A stop at the hardware store revealed that they were out of gaskets, so I am awaiting a shipment of those. I know how to put them in, at least, because we did that on the weekend already. Then I can start a fire again. Luckily I have backup electric heat.

This is a steep learning curve. Even just learning to start a fire properly in the stove required the manual (you lay the logs front-to-back, whereas in a normal stove you lay them side-to-side, like in yule log pictures). Plus: cutting wood, stacking wood, splitting wood, sourcing wood.

And the thing is, everything up here is like that. Raise some meat birds? Learn to fence (no one around here does fencing), learn to make a bird shed, learn to slaughter and pluck and gut and cut up and freeze - the nearest waterfowl slaughter location is 8 hours away. Learn to remove your door and put it back on to get the freezer into the house, no one's gonna do it for you. While you're at it, learn to plumb in an outdoor tap that won't freeze, the main waterline is easy to access from inside the house at least.

Following the chain of something up from one piece of knowledge to the next used to be a hobby: I like gardening, so I learn to cook and make booze from grown food, and then I learn to preserve what I cook, then I learn to make dishes to eat from, then I learn to grow animals to more efficiently compost/return nutrients to the soil. I do that sort of thing naturally.

Here nearly everything is like that.

I've come up and dived right in, to be sure. A house in the city would require less learning. A house without animals would require less learning. A house with an electric or gas furnace, with attachment to city sewer and water, a job that was the same as I'd done before: all less learning.

It's pretty tiring sometimes, when I just want a thing to be done. Some things I can put off: last year I paid to have my driveway ploughed, this year I got a snowblower (And of course there is no snow to be seen). I considered replacing my wood stove with a pellet stove after the fire. My house is not off-grid, and I've put off getting milking/hay eating/ruminant animals that can be fussy digestively. I did not end up on a snowmobile last year at all.

So this is less specialisation. It reminds me of the Heinlein quote about what "a man" should be able to do. It gives me a lot to think about.

I think I know my environment better than I did in the city. I know better how the things around me work.
I have less ability to trade money for free time than I did in the city, and probably less free time regardless (more things are externalised in a situation like this).
The threshold for asking for help from people is higher here than in the city, because...
A thing going wrong is less worthy of a helpless flail, and more worthy of just fixing it.
Fewer people make youtube videos about things that need to be done out here as compared to things I wanted to do in the city.
There are more shared experiences here than in the city: society is not as stratified in terms of actual activities or behaviours.

And so on.

Anyhow, tired, but I've been thinking about this some and wanted to get it down.