Wednesday, July 30, 2008

late July

Another very productive weekend at the land with all thanks to our friends Yael, Birgitte, Maddy and 'the other Kevin.' The rain mostly stayed away and miracle of miracles, our fridge started working again! Eric brought his miracle excavator machine and we buried the septic pipe as well as lines for electrical and water and also adjusted the angle to ensure everything will flow properly. In the process, we made a better approach to what will be the front of the house, and moved a massive rock onto our rock garden area for a perfect bench. And we all got to be Eric's ditch bitch! It was good to get this done before the excavator leaves the island.

Maddy, Yael and Nugent sucked up far too many fumes laying the vinyl flooring for the power tower deck. The flooring will make the area below it water-proof, and useable for tools. More importantly, now that the decking is on, we can put in the rails for the power tower, which is a safety priority. Finding information about waterproof decking options was probaby my most trickiest internet research yet. One option we considered was EPDM, which does seem to be slightly better than vinyl although I'm still not sure why. Natural and water-resistent coatings seem very rare. However EPDM does have to be covered with something else, and that wasn't something we'd factured in when we built the power tower, so we would have had to modify the door. We are going to go with EPDM for the flat room portion of the cabin however. There were some roll-on products too, but we didn't find much information about the long-term durability of those.

The stair committee (Birgitte, Yael, Kevin and Sonja) worked out a nice stair design & gave us all a new appreciation of such an ordinary everyday feature of our lives! We were making progress too until time and screws ran out. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of Yael's glue messages on each stair. I'll think of you everytime I step on the fourth step! The stairs are another safety priority, since lots of people aren't comfortable on the existing ladder.

Lots of baby deer & squirrels & some post-rain slugs. Also two sizes/colours of garter snake.

Highlights/Accomplishments
  • Yael's Smores
  • Maddy's grilled vegetable sandwiches & potato soup
  • The wet boat ride
  • The excavator at work
  • The resurrection of the fridge for unknown reasons
  • The flashing and decking on the power tower
  • The septic, electric and water pipes to the house laid
  • Cool new rock bench
  • Birgitte & the rock drill
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From Late July

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a blog about 1 cabin and 7 ideas

local / logical / lots of uses / long lasting / low impact / low cost /loveable

Big thanks to everyone!

Help Gambier Island

Gambier Island is facing numerous environmental threats at the moment when we are seeing a rebirth of wildlife. Wolves, whales, owls and more, all around us we see evidence of an eco-system on the rebound. But that resurgence is threatened by plans to allow clear-cutting, develop LNG plants, sink warships.