progress

Clearing things out and potential salvage items

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

My goal for today was to start getting things out of the basement and into the barn or junk pile, as appropriate. My daughters were doing a whole bunch of baking, but we were able to coordinate a time when we could work together on that.

I didn’t get as much done in the basement as I wanted, but there was still a lot of progress.

The first thing to do was shovel a path to the barn and get one of the doors clear enough to open.

There were a couple of problems. The first was that, having worked my way to the barn door, my hip suddenly did it’s thing. From one step to the next, I became unable to put any weight on my right leg, due to pain and instability.

I was, however, able to work on my left leg, so as long as I could just pivot around, I could finish clearing the barn door, moving my right leg around just enough to try and work out whatever was causing the pain in my hip joint. By the time I did, my hip was back to normal, and I could deal with the second problem.

There was a ridge of ice right at the door. The doors sag in the middle, and it was just high enough to prevent the door from opening. The plastic snow shovel couldn’t clear it away, but a steel shovel could chip away enough for the door to finally open.

These doors are feeling very fragile.

Once inside, I had to figure out where I could clear out a space to put things.

My goodness, what a terrible picture. My hands must have been shaking like crazy, after the shoveling! Normally, I take multiple photos, just in case, but not today. Ah, well.

So I’m in the middle of the barn at this point. The old cattle stalls in the front half were all full of things, but further back were some that might be workable. Of course, the hall in the middle needed to be cleared, too.

There was also the lean to on the side of the barn, which has more space, but…

When a metal roof was put on the barn (right on top of the rotting original roof), the lean to was skipped. As you can see, there is a lot of water in there. Water from the melting snow is dripping straight through a number of areas.

There was a stall that I could at least partially clear. In the process, I found…

… old trusses that are rotting where they touch the concrete. (That’s my gloved finger messing with the photo, there. LOL)

Those metal screens in the back are interesting, though. I might find a use for them.

This grabber was hanging at one end. This is not something I remember from when I was growing up here. I have no idea where it came from. Looking at the size of the handle, this is meant for two people to use. One of these days, I’d love to restore it.

After clearing some space, I also cleared away some stuff that was in the gutter in front of the old stall. Some pieces of wood had managed to fall under the lid of the cistern, so I opened it up to get them out.

I didn’t bother getting the rest of the junk out. I do wonder why these are hear. They couldn’t have fallen in with the lid in place.

This, btw, is a urine drain. When the cows did their business, most went into the gutters, and the urine would flow into the pair of cisterns on either side of the hallway. Once they were full, we just emptied them with a bucket.

This is how things looks after clearing things out.

I could now get through the hall to access the space I’d cleared.

There is a whole lot of stuff all over the barn. Including lots and lots of windows.

Like this one, which looks like something we might be able to use in a future cordwood practice building. After the outhouse, which will have strategically placed bottle bricks instead of windows, we’re thinking of making a garden shed, which will have windows.

With that in mind, I went looking at some of the other stuff lying about.

I rather like this steel, exterior door. If it’s not too water damaged, I think it would be fantastic for our outdoor bathroom. There aren’t keys, of course, so the deadbolt and probably the door knob would need to be replace. Likely the hinges as well. It looks like there’s only half hinges on there right now. :-D

There are also these huge pieces of window glass. Too big for any project we’re thinking of now, but perhaps usable for something else.

I also checked out a shed near the barn. I’ve actually been poking about a few places, as the snow melts enough for me to be able to access them, looking for the drawknife I know I saw, some time ago. I can’t remember where, though! So far, I have not been able to find it. :-( I was hoping to get it sharpened for use as we debark wood for the cordwood building.

The shed has more windows, including one that looks like it would work well in the deep walls of a cordwood building.

Why are there so many windows all over the place? Many of them are quite old, made before the more energy efficient double and triple pane windows were invented.

It may not look like much, but this aluminum double sink is still quite sturdy. I am thinking of cleaning it up and bringing it into the old basement, to go under the set of taps where the washing machine used to be.

Ah, there’s the table saw! I was hoping it wasn’t one of the things that grew legs and walked away while this place was empty.

Which makes me think it might now be in working order.

If it is, I’m going to be very happy! It will come in very handy for future projects.

I kinda sorta found a second one.

I spotted a blade in between the stacks of flooring. It seems to be a table saw, without it’s table!

Speaking of tables…

There’s a round table top, minus its legs (which might be lying about somewhere else, for all I know), next to yet another stack of windows.

I wonder if that big blower on the counter works? It looks like a larger version of what we have in the old basement.

They’re hard to see, but there are stacks of glass blocks under the counter. I was seeing some at the salvage yard website I found, and at salvage prices, blocks of this size were selling for $8 each. There’s probably about 30 or 40 of them under there.

At one end of the shed are more doors. That wooden door with the big glass window is probably an exterior door. The lock on it would be for a skeleton key. They certainly don’t make doors like this anymore – with reason!

Then there’s a sections of a fence, that was clearly cut apart with a saw. :-/ And more windows. Because there are windows, everywhere!

Hopefully, we’ll be able to find most of the materials we need to build our first cordwood practice building in all of this!

Then there was this thing.

I have no clue what this thing is. If anyone knows, please leave a note in the comments, because I would love to find out!

I also found these.

Just… tucked away, under a shelf.

I really don’t think these go back to when my dad worked in a shoe factory. They are newer than that.

So many things… so few explanations! :-D

With the space cleared in the barn, it was time to get stuff out of the basement.

Which… didn’t go as well as I had hoped. My hip did its thing again, part way through, and we ended up stopping sooner than I’d hoped.

That shopping cart has been coming in very handy, including as an impromptu walker!

We did get a decent amount out, though.

At this point, we just needed to get the stuff out of the house, so my daughter put the stuff in organized piles. Glass and regular garbage in one area, the water damaged shelf, riddled with nails, for burning, hazardous materials, including mystery liquids, and stuff to go to the barn for storage, or the junk pile.

Once my hip was working again, the girls went back to baking and I got the bigger wheel barrow and started hauling things away.

I also grabbed a cane from our collection to keep handy, just in case! :-D

Then, since I was hauling things into the barn anyhow, I cleared a few things from the garage, too.

It’s still a disaster, but I was able to clear out more batteries, paint cans, and some jugs and 5 gallon pails of mystery liquid.

I discovered that this wheelbarrow can handle only 2 batteries at a time. Those things are heavy!!

Gosh, there is a lot of junk to sift through in there. :-( Somehow, we have to separate out the junk from the stuff worth keeping. I see some sort of little compressor under there.

After many trips back and forth to the barn (I had my phone in my pocket, and walked far enough to hatch 3 Pokemon Go eggs! That would make it at least 2 kms of walking, probably more), this is the result.

I’ve got the hazmat mystery liquids and paint in one area, a total of 11 car, truck and possibly tractor batteries (there are at least two more in the side of the garage where we keep the lawn mower, and probably more in the basement) and a couple of old sump pumps. My brother tells me that at least one of them works, as it was used as an emergency pump at some point. There are others that will make their way in here, too. I’m hoping to get the old door from the van into the barn as well, and there are quite a lot of other things that I’d like to get out, including what appears to be a collection of motors. If we run out of space here, there is another section that can be cleared out for more.

Then, at some point, we’ll take all the old paint cans and mystery liquids to the landfill for proper disposal, and the batteries will be taken to a scrap yard to be sold for their lead, along with the bags of aluminum.

By the time all this was done, it was almost evening. There were still loaves of bread rising, with some in the oven, so no one had been able to start supper.

My husband was a sweetheart and ordered pizza! I didn’t mind the trip into town to pick it up. Since I’ll be going into town again tomorrow, to pick up prescription refills, it gave me the opportunity to park the van in front of the house. That way, I won’t have to walk through the lake of melt water to get to the garage!

Hhhhmmm… That pizza is really hitting the spot! <3

The Re-Farmer

Shelving it

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

During our trip to the city, I was able to pick up a couple of cheap plastic utility shelves for the old basement. Due to lack of space with all our other shopping, I ended up getting one at Costco and one at Walmart. They were the same size and type, but different brands.

Today, I wanted to start setting them up and grabbed the one from Walmart.

The basement stairs are steep with narrow treads, so I tried sliding it down the stairs in front of me. Like an idiot. This set of shelves were held together with nothing but a single strap (the Costco shelves were shrink wrapped). One of the shelves came loose form the others, and the next thing I knew, I was balancing precariously at the top of the stairs, one shelf in my hand, the rest almost at the bottom of the stairs, no way to close the door behind me, and a sudden crowd of cats wanting to check out the sudden stream of blue language.

Thankfully, my husband was able to rescue me. All I really needed was for him to keep the cats away and close the door.

I look forward to when the basements are safe enough that we don’t have to worry about them getting down there.

I decided the other shelf could wait until I was done with this one.

Both of these are 5 shelves tall. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t fit at that height.

I was right.

Even if that support was all the way in (I had to use the flat side of a hammer to get the others in), it would still be too tall.

Which is fine. Four shelves is good enough.

I focused on replacing the sorter shelf, with its many glass jars, first, since it was the most unstable.

A perfect fit! Except…

My apologies for the out of focus picture, but you can see how much space is under the leg, when I leveled the shelf.

So I needed to put something thin under the front legs, while still staying away from wood or metal. What did we have that I could use?

I started looking around in the new part basement when I remembered the stack of old floor tiles I’d moved from the bottom of one of the shelves while cleaning up.

Perfect!

Nice and stable, too. The other leg ended up needing a couple more tiles than this one.

That floor is remarkably uneven!

It didn’t make sense to put all those filthy jars back into the nice new shelf, so I made use of the old laundry sink.

In between soaking and washing batches of jars, I got my husband to bring over the other shelf.

Which was much, much easier to get down the stairs. Amazing what a difference a bit of shrink wrap can make!

Once I got it open, however, and starting looking between the shelves for the parts and pieces, something seemed… off. There seemed to be an awful lot of supports in there. And what was that, stuck under one of the shelves? That’s an odd shape…

So, according to the part list, there should have been 4 top caps, 4 legs, 16 support poles, 5 shelves and 3 wall brackets.

There were 5 shelves, 20 support poles, no top caps, no legs, no wall brackets, and 2… whatever those things are in the picture. I think they’re legs from a completely different style of shelf.

Well, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I may not have legs, but I still have bricks!

I also used more of those tiles to level the shelf at the front.

I found an email address on the information sheet for this company’s customer service department, so I’ll email them about the parts issue later. This Costco one was a tiny bit more expensive (worth it, just for the shrink wrap!), but also seems to be a higher quality, too. I want to get more of these, and would get more Costco ones, if I had to choose, but not if they’re all messed up like this! :-D

Here is a before and after.

Cleaning the jars gave me a chance to look for chips, and I did end up taking out about 5 large canning jars and another 4 or 5 quart sized ones. Some of the ones I kept did have teeny chips I could just barely feel, but these will never be used for food again, so I was okay with keeping them. The ones with larger chips have the potential to cut someone, so I will probably find a way to use them for something else, where it won’t be an issue. Like bottle bricks.

As we start going through the collection of bottles in the new part basement, we’ll add more to the ones being set aside here, for potential use as bottle bricks. There are also lots more jars in the old kitchen that will come down here, so more of these shelves will be needed just for those.

The wooden shelves will be moved into the new part basement and put into use there, since we don’t have to worry about the wood getting wet in there.

A nice little bit of progress down there for the day. :-) I’m quite happy with it!

The Re-Farmer

Little progress, good progress and making do

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Well, we did it.

We did our monthly shop today.

Or perhaps I should now call it our bi-monthly shop, since we will have to go into the city again to get more of the big, heavy stuff we got only half of what we normally do.

Yesterday, I had hoped to get some more progress done in the new basement, so we can use it to quarantine some outside cats. Unfortunately, the biggest set back in accomplishing this is getting things completely out.

After setting up, gloving up and looking around at where to start (a very depressing thing to do), I decided it was a burning day.

We have not been using our burn barrel for quite a long time. While cleaning up the old wood pile area, it was my intention to burn the old, nail filled half-rotted pallet pieces. I even set up a larger metal ring for just that. I think it got used only once, before the full burn ban came into effect, and that was it for the year.

What I managed to do yesterday was drag out the old cardboard packaging for products no one has anymore, decades old catalogs, phone books and stacks of musty old Polish newspapers. That cleared up a very noticeable amount of space!

Paper sucks to burn.

I think I spent at least 2 hours, standing in the snow, adding more and more to the fire. There was some old cardboard in the fire pit from last year, as well as the roots of some invasive vines I found, covered in snow. These eventually did dry out enough to burn. I snagged some wood from the burn barrel that we were never able to burn, all dried out by the sun, just to give the fire something better than paper to consume (and to keep the really thin pages from blowing away after being burnt). I kept having to dig up the ashes to uncover more partially burned pages so they could burn completely.

It was surprisingly windy out there. We will definitely be taking that lack of wind break from the south into consideration when we start working on the outer yard.

By the time I was done there, I had no energy left to work on the basement. My daughter was all set to help me, but we instead discussed what we are going to do with the stuff we need to take out. Besides the shopping cart of old wood for the fire pit, and stuff for the landfill.

We’re going to have to start using the barn.

It’s got so much stuff scattered about in there, though. If we can clear out one of the old cattle stalls to make space, we can store things in there until they can be properly disposed of. Like the collection of car batteries, old sump pumps and cans of old paint. In fact, the more we can get out of that basement completely, the better.

In the end, I got nothing else done in the basement at all. :-(

Meanwhile… notice the amount of snow around that fire pit?

It was much like that this morning, when we left for the city.

This is what we came back to.

You can see the path through the snow I’d made to get to the burn pit, over on the centre left. My foot prints are full of water, and there’s water all around the fire pit. Trying to walk around the giant puddle only revealed more water under the snow. There was no way to get to the house without walking through either deeper snow, or water!

When I checked the weather shortly after we got home, we were at 7C. The sun room, however, was much, much warmer!

And that’s with just a couple of feet of uncovered window creating passive solar heat in there!

But I digress…

The trip to the city was very productive and actually went very smoothly.

We decided to hit the Costco before breakfast (which we ended up having at lunch time…), in hopes that we would get there before all the toilet paper sold out.

When we drove in, we noticed two things at the same time. First, the massive line up and second, the relatively sparse parking lot. We were able to park fairly close to the entrance, which is unusual.

There was a small army of staff in high viz vests keeping the line organized and sanitizing cart handles. The line went from the doors at one end of the store, along the building to the opposite end, across the lane into the parking lot, up one of the concrete dividers, looping around and back to the lane, then up the lane almost as far as the entrance before turning into one of the parking lanes. The end of the line happened to be near where we parked the van, but we had to walk further from the store to get in line.

Employees walked back and forth, telling people to stay 6 feet apart (with one guy helpfully adding that this was the length of 2 shopping carts), to stay to one side (for cars to get by) and reminding people to have their Costco membership cards ready. They also answered questions, which is why we heard that there was no toilet paper to be had. The delivery truck didn’t show up this morning!

As long as the line was, it moved very quickly. The staff at the exits kept count of how many people left, then let the staff and the entrance know, so let that many people in.

A wall of pallets was made to separate the entry side from the exit side. Once inside, but not through the inner entrance, we had time to read the very handy white board lists of things they were out of (toilet paper, Lysol products, etc.) and stuff they did have in stock that, I’m guessing, were things they’d run out of before, like flour.

Once inside, we found the shelves well stocked of pretty much everything else, including pallets and pallets of flour. We didn’t find bread yeast, and they didn’t have as many types of rice as usual. They were not allowing people into the room where the dairy and eggs were kept. Instead, they had people at a table who got what we needed. We usually get the double flats of eggs, but they only had singles left – not that unusual, with Easter coming soon.

Everything went very smoothly and efficiently, including the checkouts. We didn’t bother bringing our bags in, like we usually do. Instead, we packed the stuff ourselves at the van. That worked out so much better, I think we should keep doing it that way.

I had intended to buy a couple of big bags of cat kibble, but it turned out they were allowing only 1 per person of the Kirkland brand. I’m sure there was a sign to say that, but I missed it completely.

By the time we were done, though, we had actually got most of what was on our list!

That done, we got gas – at 59.9 cents per litre!! I haven’t seen prices that low since probably 2004. I worked at a gas station that summer, and I remember being told that I should fill my tank at the end of my shift because the gas prices were about to go from 61.9/L to the astronomical amount of 68.9/L (For my readers from the US, 4L is about 1 gallon.)

We can finally afford the gas to go out more often, but there’s no place for us to go!

That done, we decided to hit a drive through near the Walmart we were going to. It happens to be across the street from a new Bulk Barn that I hoped to go to. I wasn’t sure how a store like that would be able to stay open. We couldn’t see if they were open, so when we got our food, we decided to drive over and look. Either they were open, and we would eat in the parking lot there before going in, or they were closed and we would continue to the Walmart, and eat in the parking lot there. :-D

We still couldn’t tell from the outside if they were open – there were no signs that we could read from the van – but my daughter could just see through the tinted windows that there were people walking around with shopping carts.

So we had our breakfast… er… lunch… in the van, then headed in.

To a very unhappy staff member at the door.

As we came in, the first thing we saw was a barrier directing the flow or traffic. There were two signs on posts facing the door, and two others down the lane people were directed to. As we were grabbing a cart, this poor woman at the first pair of signs was dressing down a couple of customers that were shopping together. They had gone right into the store and started shopping, and she was telling them that they had to wait by the door, get gloves, and wait until a staff member got them. Only staff were allowed to scoop the products out. “Oh, I didn’t know” one guy responded. “No one said anything.” Which was when she pointed out the FOUR signs they walked right past.

All that for a bag of pistachios.

After dealing with the customers that ignored all the signs, she held out a box of these really thin, one-size-fits-all plastic gloves for us and asked us to wait until someone came to help us.

Normally, I would have liked to have wandered up and down the aisles to see if anything caught my eye, but since we were shopping Edwardian style, we just told the guy what we wanted and how much, and he got them for us. He had a shopping cart that was lined with plastic, and a pile of scoops to use for each item.

I got stuff for making meals in a jar. I did that last month, and they’ve really been working out well, so I wanted to be able to make more.

Oh, I just realized. I completely forgot to get dehydrated vegetables for that.

Ah, well.

That done, our next stop was Walmart.

Oh, dear.

Like at Costco, they were letting people in, a little at a time, as other customers left.

The line outside wasn’t anywhere near as long as at Costco (thank God for warmer weather!), but it moved much more slowly. People tend to linger at Walmart, more than at Costco.

On top of that, a fire truck arrived as we were walking to the store. Shortly after, and ambulance arrived, and we eventually saw someone being taken out in a stretcher.

Sadly, this is not really that unusual to see. Medical emergencies can happen any time, any where! I do hope the person recovers quickly from whatever happened.

Once inside, we started working on what was left on our list. YES!!! There was toilet paper! One package per household. It’s not the amount we’d usually buy for the month, but it will tide us over until we find some more.

We also got another big bag of cat kibble.

The main thing I was looking for, however, was rubber boots.

Now, I have a problem with getting footwear in general. I have always had very wide feet, but after injuring them many, many years ago, they are now even wider. My normal shoes are men’s size 9, triple wide.

None of the rubber boots came in wider sized.

I do have another problem, though. Rubber boots are made to cover the calves.

I have very little cartilage left in my knees and the balls of my feet. The metatarsals in my feet have a habit of suddenly dislocating. My patella also tend to pop out of place every now and then, and my knees tend to want to bend backwards or sideways. I compensate for all this through my leg muscles. As a result, I have highly developed calves. Weight lifter type calves.

Which means that the tops of rubber boots are far too tight.

After trying several sizes of one style, I ended up settling on a men’s size 12 (I don’t even bother trying on women’s shoes). They were still tight at the calves, but I figured I would just cut them.

My daughter, however, spotted some that were a shorter style. They were also lined winter boots, but I could live with that.

The size 10s seemed to fit very well, but just in case, I tried some size 11s.

They were even more comfortable to put on! Awesome! these would be perfe…

Then my heel rocked and I almost twisted my ankle.

What the heck?

Unlike all the other styles of rubber boots, which had very flat heels, these boots had rounded edges on their soles. This meant that the flat part of the heel was narrower than the boot itself.

An absolute recipe for turned ankles!! And I know myself well enough to know that I would do it, too.

So we settled on the taller style.

At least they were cheap.

Once done at Walmart, we had one last stop to make at our favourite grocery store.

We just had to check, and their toilet paper section was completely wiped out!

Everything else, however, was fully stocked.

Except bread yeast. *sigh*

Ah, well. We can just use the sourdough!

This is the store we pick up some international foods we can’t find anywhere else, and smaller quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables than what we’d find at Costco. Those, we keep topped up locally. We also picked up more stuff for our Easter basket, including fresh herbs. We’re going to make marinated goat cheese again. We also picked up jarred beets, so we can use the liquid for pink pickled eggs. There isn’t a lot that we need to pick up here, but enough to make the trip worthwhile.

What was interesting about all this running around is that I was not anywhere near as exhausted as I normally am by the end of the day. I really dislike crowds. While there certainly were plenty of people around, but people did try to keep physically distant from each other, so it wasn’t that madhouse jostling. Everything went so smoothly and efficiently that even the waits in line were not at all taxing.

Once at home and the groceries were put away, I broke in the rubber boots to go and change the batteries in one of the trail cams, which now involves slogging through a hug puddle in the yard.

Yeah, I had to pull my pant legs up to get my legs into the boots.

Also, it turns out one of my calves is bigger than the other. By the time I was done, I had to get one of my daughters to pull the boot off of me, because it was stuck to my skin!

I have since cut them another inch or so, which will hopefully solve that problem.

I expect to be getting a lot of use out of these!

So we are now stocked up and set for at least a couple of weeks for some things, the rest of the month for others.

The shopping went much better than expected.

Oh, and I was also able to get a couple of plastic utility shelves for the old basement.

I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow! :-D

Trying not to kill myself, bringing them down the stairs… ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: old hot water tank

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Today, it was back to the old basement to finally do something about the old hot water tank that died on us, shortly after we moved here.

A job that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped in some ways, while better than I hoped in others! :-D

Here is the state of the tank, before I started.

You can see that the bottom of the tank is quite rusted out and falling apart. The top, however, is still quite secure. It’s held in place by 4 screws, so I thought I’d try to take those off, first.

The first challenge was to figure out what type of screwdriver to use. They were so full of grit, I at first thought I’d need a star tip, but after digging some crud out with the tip of a box cutter, I discovered they needed a square tip.

Not that it mattered. The screws immediately stripped, as soon as I tried to loosen them. They weren’t going to move.

I was able to get the access panels on the side off easily enough, since they were barely put back on before the tank was moved.

I should note that yes, I was wearing safety gear before I started.

The bottom came off quite easily, and all sorts of rotted insulation and rust started to fall out!

I had a box ready for the smaller pieces of metal, and garbage bags for the insulation. I was using the old ash shovel as a dust pan as I swept up the smaller stuff, trying as much as possible not to kick dust up. Impossible, of course, but I could at least minimize it a bit, and using a shovel for a dust pan gave me a bit of distance as I worked.

Then, I took out insulation through the access panels. It wasn’t as rotten, higher up, but still…

… lots of rust on there!

I then had a couple of problems to work around. The screws on the top weren’t going to come out. I even tried a crow bar, but couldn’t get the leverage. The tank has a seam that I hoped to pop open, but that was more solid than the rest of the tank. Even if I opened it, though, it would hang up on the drain pipe near the base.

Then I remembered something.

In my late brother’s work shop, which we are now using to store all my parents’ stuff as we clear out the house, we found a pair of cutters. My oldest bother spotted them and told me they were sheet metal cutters. So I brought it to the house, and my husband sharpened them (they really needed a sharpening!).

They cut through the metal beautifully!

Cutting where the access panel openings where made it much easier. I also cut to the drain pipe so the metal could be pulled up around it, as well as going as close to one of the screws in the top panel as I could.

After yanking on it a bit, the outer shell panel broke free from the top cap and the whole thing popped open!

So. That’s what it looks like on the inside!

The next while was spent removing more insulation, taking off the springs that held the bands in place, and pulling out some of the wiring. I was also able to basically tear off the cap without any extra cutting near the screws. The metal of the shell tore pretty easily at the screws, once it started to open up.

In the process, I discovered a problem.

That cylinder is where all the weight is – and as I manhandled it, I could hear water sloshing inside! Yes, we let it drain before it was removed, but there’s no way to get all of it out completely, without cracking it open somehow.

This thing is heavy, and I needed to get the stuff out from under it. There wasn’t a lot of space to work in, either. (You can see the box with the new well pump waiting to be installed, and the jug of water that was intended to be used to prime the pump after installation.)

The first thing to do was clean up as much of the insulation as I could, then try and get the bands out from under it. I was able to get the bottom band out, a little at a time, but would not be able to do the same at the top. I had somewhere to grip and lift the bottom, but nothing to grip at the top. The obvious solution would have been to stand the cylinder up and move it off the shell, but there was simply no way to safely grasp the rounded top and lift that much weight.

I might not be able to stand it up, but thanks to that very strong drain pipe at the bottom, I could drag it!

And this is as far as it’s going to get for now!

I honestly don’t know how we’re going to safely get it out of the house. I had hoped that taking it apart would reduce the weight more than it did, but I probably took of maybe 10 pounds of material, in total. That’s barely noticeable.

As for the shell…

I could now remove the top band and use the shovel and broom to get rid of the majority of the insulation that had been crushed under the cylinder.

Then, I folded it.

And squished it.

Into a nice, flat pancake that could easily be moved.

It was very satisfying! :-D

The parts and pieces will be taken outside through the new part basement, with its safer stairs that are right next to the entryway door! But not until more of the snow has melted and we can reach the junk pile.

Next, I had to carefully clean up the dust and rust underneath. I wanted to make sure as little as possible could end up washed into the sump pump reservoir. I do NOT want this stuff clogging up the pump!

In the end, I used a wet mop to pick up as much as I could, because sweeping was just kicking up way too much dust.

I am so glad I was able to find these thicker masks at the pharmacy, before everyone went crazy and bought them all up. This is actually my second mask. One of the elastics broke on the first one. I have no more. I do still have some dust masks I’d found in the hardware store, but they’re not as thick as these ones.

Once I finished cleaning up the mess in the basement, I proceeded to take a shower, then put my clothes in the wash. Fiberglass insulation dust can be dangerous stuff. Especially when it’s as old and rotted out as this stuff was. When it comes time to take the garbage bags of insulation to the dump, I’ll have to make sure to keep them separate, so they go to the proper disposal area, and not with household garbage. I’ll also have to double bag them.

For now, I’m glad that the space in front of the pumps and tanks is finally clear of this thing. It’s been there for over 2 years! :-D It’ll make it much easier for when the well pump gets replaced.

I’m looking into finding a filter to install between the well and the pump. Or pre-filter, these are apparently called. I’ve found several kinds, but I can’t tell if they are suitable for use with a deep well pump, rather than a shallower well pump. The problem is that the deep well pump has two hoses, one above the other. From the looks of how they are installed, the second hose would be in the way. It would be good to use one, though. They are designed just to filter out the bigger stuff, and should help extend the life of the pumps and tanks. I’ve sent some links to my older brother, who knows this system better than anyone, and hopefully he’ll be able to tell me something, one way or the other. Or, perhaps, inform me of something better to use.

At this point, I’ve done almost as much as can be done in the old basement. The other things that need doing are little things, like getting plastic utility shelves to replace the wood shelves on bricks, and organizing.

Which means we will now work on the new part basement.

Oh, that reminds me. I was chatting with my brother about the clean up I’d done so far, and commented on the collection of car batteries down there. I said that, unless he knows if any of them are still usable and he wants them, I would probably take them to the dump for proper disposal. He very adamantly told me not to do that. It turns out that these can be taken to a scrap yard, in the same way we plan to do with our aluminum collection. They will pay by the pound for the lead in them, and each battery can bring in quite a lot. He tells me that the amount of aluminum we have is probably enough to make it work taking in.

I figure we can do that in the spring. Anything we get from the aluminum or the batteries is going to go into a tax free savings account we set up for our contingency fund, and the money will go to replacing the roof.

It’ll take a while. Based on the two estimates we got, and assuming that they will find rot under there, we’re looking at $10,000 we have to come up with. Assuming no emergencies happen before then. :-(

Ah, well. For now, we just deal with what we can.

Like figuring out how to get that beast of a cylinder out of the basement!

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: old basement progress

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I was able to get a few more hours working on the old basement today.

Honestly, I should probably be using those hours doing housework, but that’s depressing. :-D Cleaning the basement may be really gross at times, but once it’s done, it’ll stay done for a very long time.

It’s a psychological thing. :-D

Today, I finally got to the water damaged shelf.

The containers at the bottom, with odds and ends in them, simply got moved to the other basement, to join the other stuff there we’ll need to sort through and figure out what to do with. That big plant pot will hopefully be big enough to transplant our umbrella tree into. I just have to find a drip tray for it, though the umbrella tree will likely spend the summer outside again, so I’ve got time for that.

Through the shelf, peaking from behind the chimney that used to be hooked up to the old wood burning furnace, is a really big baking pan. Too big to fit in the oven, so I don’t know why it’s here. I later cleaned it up and set it aside. I’ll be using it as a tray for when we start seeds indoors.

Dismantling the shelf was certainly interesting. Just look at the size of those nails! (In case you can’t make them out, they’re about 4 inches long, and those were what held the shelves to the sides.) For part of it, I ended up using a big flat head screwdriver to pry pieces apart. I had thought that some of the boards might be salvageable, but… nope. This will all go to the burn pile.

That shopping cart came in handy. :-D

Yay! It’s done!

That extension cord plugged into the outlet goes up through the floor, and into the master bedroom, along with a TV cable. There’s no longer a TV there, but the extension cord still comes in handy!

When we’re finally able to renovate, this chimney is what I want to have removed and replaced with a dumbwaiter. :-) That will make it so much easier to move things from floor to floor!

With the space opened up, I though I might set up a table here. Some time ago, I’d noticed a sturdy looking wooden table top leaning against the wall just on the other side of the opening to the new part basement. No sign of any legs, though. While I was clearing things in the new basement, I found – along with the hand pump and other things I uncovered – a set of legs that looked like they might belong to this table top.

So I brought them over.

They were, of course, extremely dusty, so I gave all the pieces a good cleaning. This table is clearly home made. I’m thinking it may have been made by my late brother. He did have a wood lathe and could have turned those legs himself.

Unfortunately…

The holes the legs were meant to fit into had crud in them. Only one of them was clear. These two were the worst. I was able to scrape most of the glue and residue out with a utility knife, but that was it for now.

So the legs were definitely made for this table, and the ends would normally have fit into the openings. With all the crud in there, they wouldn’t go all the way in.

I decided to set it up, anyway, in a different area.

I lured my daughter away from some commission work to give me a hand in setting it up on bricks, to protect from any future flooding. (The water on the floor was from the still wet table top and legs.)

I just had to set up my mother’s “thou shalt not steal” sign. Too funny!

Once it was set up, I hammered the table top down, using a piece of scrap wood to protect the surface, to try and get those legs into the openings as much as possible. They barely moved! Which meant that this is a very, very wobbly table.

Just to be on the safe side, because I KNOW I’ll forget and lean on it or something, I made up a warning sign. :-D

After this, I was able to start working on the other side of the basement.

There isn’t a lot that has been added to the space, but it’s big stuff, so it’s filling up fast!

The remains of a wooden chair got pulled apart (the legs were already falling off!) and added to the shopping cart with the rotten shelf pieces. The garden hose we’d used to help clear the access pipe to the septic tank got rolled up into a 5 gallon bucket I’d found, so it’s all nice and neat and tucked away. In one of the pictures, you can see some hoses behind what looks like black pool noodles. Those are old aquarium hoses. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to use them again, since I’ve not been able to find a source to replace a broken hose connector for the filter of our big aquarium. Still, just in case, I cleaned them up, then found another bucket I could roll them up into. I even found a lid to keep the dust off them.

Here is how it looks now. When shifting the broken hot water tank, to move out the box the new one came in, I discovered there was still water in it that had started to drain. So that got moved over the drain trough next to the old hot water tank we replaced shortly after moving here. The next time I work down here, it will be to dismantle at least that one tank, as it’s way too heavy to haul up the stairs as it is. The newer broken tank is pretty light, so it might be easier to take it outside as is. I still want to dismantle it. I would really love to see if I can tell why it broke after only about 2 years.

There is still stuff that needs to be sorted through, but that is for another time. Of course, there are always odd finds. There were so many buckets of various sizes, but only one had a lid on it. Given what I’ve been finding elsewhere, I feared it might have something else for the special disposal pile.

Nope. Just this.

No clue what these are for, but I assume they were cut to size and kept protected in the bucket for a reason, so I’m leaving them until I can ask my brother if he knows what they’re for. There were a few other little things that joined the collection of rotted wood in the shopping cart, and one thing that was definitely a keeper. The temporary grave marker used for my late brother until the memorial stone was installed a year later. It’s just a simple board cut into a cross at the top, with my brother’s name and dates engraved on a little brass plate. It’s got some moisture damage on it, but that’s likely from the year it spent outside than any damage here in the basement. My oldest brother made it, and I definitely don’t want to loose track of it.

I’m rather pleased with the progress made today.

Hhhmmm. I suddenly can’t remember if I turned one of the lights off. One last trip to the basement, and I’m done for the next while! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: both basements, progress and things we find!

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So while my wonderful daughters were making brownies, I headed to the basements to continue with some organizing and cleaning.

In the process, I found some very cool things!

The first thing I found was among a pile of glass jars I sorted through.

Continue reading →

Crushed

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I wanted to get some progress in the basements today, but before I continued with cleaning up the old part basement, I wanted to clear things out of the new part basement. I’d been putting garbage bags near the bottom of the stairs, and things were getting pretty cluttered.

It wasn’t just the garbage I’ve been cleaning up from the old basement, though.

Shortly after we moved in, one of the things we’d done was set up wire frame bag holders to hold bags for recycling.

This was back when we still thought recycling was worth doing out here. I’m not so sure anymore.

At the landfill, the only general household recycling they want sorted out is the glass. Everything else is supposed to go into the general bins, which then get shipped to the city for sorting. At first, we would take our paper products to the burn barrel, but with the fire bans in the past two summers, that stopped. Even starting up again in the winter didn’t work out, due to weather. So that all goes to the dump now, instead.

One thing that took some getting used to after the move, is that this province does not have bottle depots. You know all those things you pay an enviro fee on when you buy them at the grocery store? We used to be able to take them in and get that fee back. Here, we just pay the fee and it goes… somewhere.

However, I knew that aluminum could be taken in and sold by weight. It’s one of those things organizations do for charity drives; they collect people’s aluminum, then sell it by weight to raise money. Pop tabs are collected separately, as they are pure aluminum and get a higher price per pound. Pop tab collections are sometimes done to raise money for wheelchairs.

So we’ve been collecting our aluminum for close to 2 1/2 years now.

For a while, we had a wire bag holder for aluminum, another for paper and plastic, and a small bin for glass.

At some point, we needed to make space for company, so it all went into the basement, but never made it back up again.

Since then, we continued to bag the aluminum separately into smaller bags, all of which got tossed into the basement as smaller bags were filled. (Except the tabs from pop cans and food tins. We keep a small jar for those and when it’s full, I run a magnet through them to catch any that aren’t pure aluminum, then transfer them to a 1 gallon jar. We have yet to fill that jar.)

Then we got a can crusher, which allowed us to fit more into the little bags before they got tossed into the basement.

As you can imagine, things were starting to get ridiculous down there.

Today, I fixed that.

Most of this involved combining the contents of little bags into larger ones, but I found 3 recycling bags full of stuff from before getting the can crusher.

I just spent a whole lot of quality time with the crusher.

This is what I got out of the basement.

Six bags of crushed cans. Not everything could be crushed; some of the cans were too big even for our extra tall can crusher, and things like cat food tins don’t get crushed at all. Even taking that into account, each one of those bags is the equivalent of 3 bags of uncrushed cans.

So this is the equivalent of 18 bags of cans, crushed to fit into 6.

I honestly don’t know if this is enough to be worth taking to a scarp yard. They go by the pound, and aluminum is really light.

At least they’re out of the basement.

They are now taking up space in the garage, instead. :-D

I also got out a large bag of regular recycling, plus another 4 garbage bags from the old basement clean up.

Things are looking a whole lot better down there, just by getting this stuff out!

At some point, we will even be able to start using the new part basement as a workshop again!

I’m really looking forward to that. Even if stairs are my nemesis. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: old basement progress, and finding things

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I was able to get a bit more progress in the old part basement yesterday, and it’s the sort of progress that actually feels like things are finally moving forward!

Stuff got put back for a change!

Okay, so it’s really all temporary, but still…

The first thing I wanted to work on was getting the now dry shelves back against the wall. My plan was to put both on one side of the centre pillar, instead of one on each side, like it was before.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

Continue reading →

Clean Up: old part basement. Mopping and scrubbing

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Today, I was finally able to continue working on cleaning up the old part basement.

For those who are new to visiting this blog (Welcome! Thanks for popping by!), click here to read about what happened, and you can see the clean up progress here, here, here and here. (All links will open new tabs, so you won’t lose your place! :-) )

I’ve really been kinda dreading what I need to work on next, which is to start putting back some of the things I had to move out during cleanup, and try and figure out what to keep, what to store elsewhere, and what needs to be disposed of. Hopefully, I won’t be finding any more hidden “poison for tree” containers hidden somewhere!

The first thing I did today was move the blower fan to a different area, so I could do a bit more clean up in the last section I had worked on.

The photo on the left is how it looked when I last worked in this section. There was still a lot of dust and dirt in the area, but trying to sweep it did more to kick the dust into the air than get rid of it.

In the process, I discovered a light fixture hidden between two furnace ducts! I had to have seen it before, but simply forgot it existed. It’s very well hidden! (As an aside, I had my phone on one of the ducts near where I was working, held in place by the magnetic case, playing music. I later found out the girls could hear my music on the second floor, through the vents!)

There are so many odd little lights around this old basement. This half of the basement alone has one of two lights that turn on with the switch at the top of the stairs, one that has its own switch at the side closer to the new part basement, and one above the septic pump that has no switch. It is screwed in and out to turn it on and off. Now I find the light with the pull chain between the ducts, so that’s 4 lights on this side of the stairs. On the other side of the stairs is the other light that’s turned on by the switch at the top of the stairs, a light with a pull chain above the sump and well pumps, and another with its own light switch closer to the furnaces.

That’s a total of 7 lights in one little basement!

Anyhow. Where was I? Oh, yes. Cleaning.

I was even able to wash this section of wall a bit. The other walls were too crumbly, and the best I could do was sweep them gently, but this wall is solid. Since this wall is part of the original basement, but became an internal wall after the new part was added, it tells me that the crumbing of the exterior basement walls is probably due to all sorts of moisture from the soil around it.

Waterproof sealants probably didn’t exist when this basement was built.

As for the clean up today, this time I didn’t even try to use the mop bucket, and just set up in the laundry sink. That water got so black! Even after changing the water several time and rinsing the floor several times, it was still really filthy.

We’re not going to be able to use this mop anywhere else in the house anymore. :-D No amount of washing and rinsing of the mop will get it clean enough!

Once the floor was washed and rinsed as best I could, I set up the blower, then turned my attention to the two shelves we will be able to reuse.

I started by washing and scrubbing the shorter one.

I gave it a good scrubbing – after first removing the nails that were used to attach it to the pillar it was next to, originally – then flipped it upside down to do the bottoms of the shelves. You can see the water damage on the “legs” of the shelf, even though it was raised off the floor by bricks.

When this shelf was scrubbed and rinsed (and I took advantage of all that soapy water to mop that section of floor again), I dragged out the taller shelf.

It needed some nails removed before I could start cleaning it, too.

This one has less water damage on its bottom, but was a lot dirtier. The section of wall it was next to is crumbling a lot more than where the shorter shelf was set up. At least this shelf is a lot sturdier, which made it easier to scrub.

Once they were done, I set them up where the blower is aimed, on bricks to keep the air circulating.

Though we will be using these shelves, because we need to, it will be temporary. When we are able to, we’ll pick up some plastic utility shelves to use instead. No wood. No metal. Not for this area!

Once we figure out what goes where of the stuff that got moved out of the shelves, we plan to use them to store bottles. We’ve got a stack of bottles from hard apple cider that we’ve been accumulating over the past two years that will be used as bottle bricks when we do our cordwood practise building. There are also lots of other bottles and jars all over the place, and as we clean those up, we will set aside the one we want to use at bottle bricks as well, so we’ll have other colours as well as ones with no colour at all. The outdoor bathroom we’re planning to make as our first practice building is not going to have any windows in it. Bottle bricks will be used, instead, so all light while maintaining privacy. Whichever wall ends up facing south the most, will have the most bottle bricks with no colour in them for maximum sunlight.

Storing these in the old basement will also mean we’ll have access to water, and the old laundry sink that has turned out to be so very handy. The bottles and jars will need to be cleaned and sterilized before they can be made into bricks.

Little by little, it’s getting organized!

All of this took only about an hour, and it feels like I should have done more, but everything needs to dry before I can continue. Hopefully, I’ll get a bit more progress in tomorrow.

Now, before I forget again, I’m going to go back into the basement and get the dehumidifier that’s down there running.

The Re-Farmer