Moose!

A young bull moose was seen this morning on the way into work.

The low road (Cache Creek) is in excellent condition.

September projects on the homefront:

• Doing some more work on the automation of the power system
• Updating information on costs for running an off-grid house
• Finishing two above ground garden boxes (2.5' x 9.5').
• Collecting and splitting wood for the winter
• Finishing a knitting project: afghan square
• Continue to get stuff organized at home for the winter

Rainbow

Double rainbow - view from the porch. You can see the driveway and the start of yellow leaves in the trees. No frost here yet, but I heard one farm got frosted already. I'm cooking up the last of the indigo from the dye garden.

Signs of life in our moonscape. I probably took this a month ago - the fireweed are seeding now.






















Last night we had a big dye-fest at the fair for the sheep to shawl. The pinks and purples are brazilwood and logwood, but all the rest are locally grown. The sheep-to-shawl yarns are on the far side, to the right. I knew there wouldn't be much so had to bring in some other white yarns to play with. They are white no more! We're having another dye party in a few weeks - here's hoping someone else has white fiber.

A Little of Everything

As you may know, we spent 10-12 days in Japan, before and during a PICES fish and climate meeting. Above is the pagoda in the Zen garden at Rinnoji temple in Sendai. I'm not sure we would have found it if they hadn't been having an outdoor rock concert for Earth Day.















Sunset at Matsushima Bay on our last evening there.















It's here! The results of the sock contest are in print, with everyone (including me) wanting to make the cover socks.















Here's my pattern, rated experienced+. I used all natural dyes on the sock yarn and the pattern was inspired in part by jungles on cursed isles in Puzzle Pirates. I designed a cursed isle and the Three Rings people kept telling us to "add more jungle!".















In other creative news, the T-shirts with my lynx design are in.















Just in time for visitors, we have curtains in the guest room with sun-block lining. I originally bought the fabric for the window at the top of the stairs in our NJ house - from a store which has since gone out of business.



















The porch settled during the spring thaw so Rob dug up two footings and raised them, with the help of a new footing bought for the purpose.














Having no dirt to speak of, we bought two containers and enough dirt to grow a few things: marigolds, parsley from a friend, and basil.














The tai chi group had a fund-raiser of a yard sale in the parking lot when other people were having plant sales: Siberian irises by the top of the driveway.














Also two rhubarb plants, fertilized by the neighbor's bunnies.

A quick update

A very quick update. The move is complete and the old house is sold! Onto phase next! Those with our old main number, it is still our number, it will reach Rob's new iPhone. The new house continues to treat us well. We have stopped using the generator for power for two to three weeks now. We are getting plenty of solar power these days!

Daylight as seen from our house in the dead of winter. The light situation is improving rapidly now, though.












Rob out fussing with the solar panels. They have since been fixed (we hope) so as to be robust in a gale. I took this picture because of the light on the hoar frost.
















I messed up yesterday and left the network on. The power from the batteries goes through an inverter to give the house 115 V AC. The inverter uses power in doing its job, but can go into a standby mode in which it pulses once a second to see if anything in the house needs power. If so, it will turn itself on. Having the network on all day prevented the inverter from getting into standby mode, in which it uses less power. Today the net was on, but we were here using it all day.

Preliminary House Data

Here is some basic apples and oranges comparison. As with all statistics, you can bend them any way you want. We have some pretty good data from oil and electricity bills from our old house and only a couple months of data from bills in the new house for oil, gas and water.

Old house (average cost per day):

• Oil: $9.90
• Gas: $0.00
• Water: $0.00
• Electricity: $3.56

New house (average cost per day):

• Oil: $7.32
• Gas: $0.97
• Water: $1.10
• Electricity: $0.00

Totals:

• Old: $13.46/day
• New: $9.39/day

So far, the difference is approximately 30% so far for only a couple months of records. The 30% during the winter will drop once the clothes washer is moved. This will require more energy and water to operate. We also have had to dump a fair bit of electricity from past wind events that might be captured for later use. The savings should improve a bit more during the rest of the year as we start gaining energy from solar and reduce the need to run the generator.

Fundamentals

Old house:

• Electricity (source: electrical grid/GVEA)
• No gas service
• Water (source: well, electrical pump)
• Oil (domestic hot water and water baseboard heat)

New house:

• Electricity (source: off grid, wind, solar, generator)
• Gas (tanks, supplies oven and refrigerator)
• Water (delivered, electrical pump)
• Oil (oil burner for domestic water and radiant heat; generator)

While there is no cost for electricity from being detached from the electrical grid, the real cost for electricity shows up in oil use as burned by the generator.

Come back later when more data is available.