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Category: lakehouse

Wed. Oct. 19, 2022 – still working, still stacking

Cold in the morning, cool all day, but warm in the sun.   That describes yesterday, and probably today.   It was gorgeous and sunny though the breeze was stiff and chilly at times.  It made working outdoors very pleasant.

Spent the day doing what I could to help the guys keep moving, and knocking off little tasks on my list.   The big thing I did was removing a 4 foot wide strip of decking from the dock so the guys can access the bulkhead today.   They are supposed to do the foam reinforcing and backfill later today.

Speaking of which, the sand fill under the house is so soft it’s essentially liquid.  The “Dingo” tracked machine can barely stay upright on the sand as it shifts around.  If I hadn’t been told to leave as much concrete as possible, they wouldn’t be able to use the machine.   Stabilizing the sand will move up my priority list.  Short of remove and replace, I’m thinking the foam injection makes sense.   Some sort of geotextile in layers might be possible but it would mean moving a bunch of the sand anyway.   Stabilizing the hill and the retaining walls was always on the radar, but the actual soil being wrong is a bit over the top…

I note that even if we’d scraped the house and started fresh, we’d still be facing some sort of soil and retaining corrections.   Ditto for the septic system.  And as an aside, the neighboring HOA park and boat launch is actually 2 lots, so I have even more distance on that side from any neighbors than I initially though.   You just don’t get that kind of space normally.   There is just a lot more up front work and expense than we’d have liked.

Today the guys will continue setting the helical piers, hopefully the foam guy will get started on the bulkhead, and after around noon, I’ll be headed home.   I’ve got a couple of pickups to do, some material to buy,  some tools I need to get from home, and I’m missing the kids.  After dinner  I’ll drive back up tonight so I can be here for the guys first thing on Thursday.

I should be able to bring up some more food stacks and maybe some medical as well.

Always be working to improve your position, and keep stacking!

nick

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Tues. Oct. 18, 2022 – work continues, rain didn’t stop them

Cool but damp in the morning, warming with the nuclear fire in the sky, but not getting crazy hot… that’s my hope anyway.   It stayed very nice (other than humid) all day yesterday.

The crew showed up and got to work.  The new machine does the job but has a learning curve.   Boss man did a pretty good job of climbing the curve.  He expects they’ll be faster today.  They started on the back side, where there wasn’t much, if any, water in the holes.  Most of the holes dried out while they were doing the other work.  If any are still wet today they have a pump.

I got a couple of smaller tasks done.  Moved my metal cabinet into the garage and moved all the canned goods and the freeze drieds to the cabinet.   Plenty of room for more.   I stacked the buckets beside it.   6x 30day buckets of freeze dried (but mostly breakfast and sides, no meat or good main meals).  60 days rice.  10 gallons of flour.  A shelf of pouch meat, and some canned chicken.  A couple of flats of veg and beans.   LOTS more to go before I feel comfortable but it would be good for a short term event.  It beats the heck out of foraging and eating cattail roots.

I’ve got a couple of different ways to cook up here, but need to get a set of coleman dual fuel appliances and some fuel stacked.   I’ve got the propane lantern and camp stove, and some 1 pound bottles already.  There is an electric hot plate and microwave too, if we lost gas, but had power.   I feel like I need some more depth, like I’ve got at home.  (Solid fuel camp stove, back packer stoves, butane table top stove, hobo stove, jet boil system, rocket stove, and more multiples of all that.)  I like to eat and I like to eat hot food.

Eventually we’ll get the wood burning stove in place and I’ll have that too.

There were TWO solar ovens, NIB, in an estate sale last week.  Never seen that before, but they got over $20 and I didn’t see where they ended up.   Too much for me anyway for something I’ve never used before and am a little dubious about.

Some accessories for cooking over an open fire would be nice too, tripod with chain, adjustable height grill, spit…and cast iron.  I need more cast iron up here.   I did bring up a turkey fryer propane ring and pots.   I can heat water in bulk, have a fish fry, or a crawdad boil with that.

I’m actually in good shape for alternative cooking.   I would like to be as set up for water treatment.  That is definitely on the list, beyond the sawyer mini and the other small filters.  We can always gross filter and boil, but that takes a lot of time and energy.  I need more bleach up here.

You can see that even with tall stacks there is always room for more.   Work on that!  Keep stacking!

nick

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Mon. Oct. 17, 2022 – foundation work, yes please!

Cool and kinda crisp this am at the lake.   Humid as humid gets in Houston.   Yesterday was cool but so damp I was sweaty standing still.

Spent the day doing the things I couldn’t leave for a week.   Cut and vac sealed and froze 17 pounds of pork loin.  Two 3 pound roasts, 3 pounds of the dark end marked for pulled pork, a pound of some extra meat they left attached to chisel and extra buck out of me, and the rest in center cut pork chops, 1 inch thick.   It joined the steak I bought on sale in the freezer.

Did a couple of small repairs, sorted some auction stuff, and put out the preliminary Halloween decorations.   Getting them down, I found where the possum was going to the bathroom in my garage attic… yeah, not nice at all.  Gloves and a bag took care of that, but I’ve got no love for the possum.  I set two traps and my wife says she’ll relocate any vermin that get caught while I’m away.

Eventually I got out of the house and on the road.   Made it to the BOL and made an early night of it, because the foundation guys return today.   I’m really interested to see the new machine and see how the process goes.   Then when I’ve had my fill of watching other guys work, I’ll do some of my own.

I guess I can stretch the metaphor and say that doing all the work up here is stacking up a BOL… but it’s a stretch.   I did bring a case of beans up to add to my food stack.

So I am doing a bit of stacking.  You do some too!

nick

 

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Sun. Oct. 16, 2022 – headed out of town… got work to do

Cool and damp.   Getting warmer later.  It was fairly nice all day, but the humidity was high.   Sweat running down my back just standing around… yuck.  And likely more of the same today.

Did some of my stuff.   Got some Halloween stuff done, but first thing on the list today is getting a bunch of stuff out and set up.   I’m well known in the neighborhood for my decorations and that is a good thing.  I’m the guy with the great Halloween display and the cool Christmas stuff, not the weirdo waiting for the end of civilization.  I’m the guy who helped everyone out with plumbing parts after the freeze…   meatspace baby.

We’ll probably get around 150 kids if the weather is ok.    And I’m dressing up this year.   Been growing facial hair to help sell the costume.  It itches.  I don’t have a lot, and some of the facial scarring keeps hair from growing on one cheek, so it’s not symmetrical, but it’s the first time I’ve ever had sideburns.  My indian friends think it looks good.  Some of the younger guys think it looks good.  Everyone else thinks it looks silly.   I’m undecided.  Change is sometimes a good thing.  Hard to try something completely new at my age.   And I’ve been growing it for a couple of months, because it’s so thin and slow growing, so it looked even worse than it does now, as it finally looks intentional.  My oh my, don’t it make ya wanna cry.

Did some weeding in the raised beds.  The collards continue to do well, so I pruned them and weeded that bed.   And surprise, surprise, the watermelon started to grow!  It’s got vines and flowers.  Also, one pepper plant and one cabbage survived, and are growing now.  I weeded that bed too.  The biggest bed, that has the herb garden, is really only growing chives and the grape vines this season, but they are doing ok now.   Both vines had frozen back to the dirt, but they are climbing the trellis…  and even better, one of my potted citrus, that I thought was completely dead, is sprouting leaves and they are not growing just from the root stock but from the tree.  The other herbs are doing ok, other than the rosemary.  I can’t keep a rosemary bush alive for more than 2 seasons.  So it looks like I might have more garden than I thought.  Hooray.

Anyway, plan for today is more Halloween, some shopping at Lowes, maybe a dumpster run on the way out of town, and finally back up to the BOL.    Crew will be there around 9am  to start the actual foundation support work with the helical piles.  That should be interesting to watch.   If I get the plumbing parts I need at Lowes, I should have stuff to do all week while they work on the foundation.  If not, the list of other jobs is long and varied.  I’m sure I’ll stay occupied.

And I’ll be stacking more canned goods up there.   That will let me increase the stacks here too.   Stack it up fellow ants.  Don’t be a grasshopper.

nick

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Sat. Oct. 15, 2022 – home after all

Cool, damp, and warming later.  Sun most likely.   Like yesterday.  Sun was burning through the truck window (radiant heat) but the air was pretty cool until later in the day.  Sunny all day.  Nice night at 72F, but a bit damp.

Spent the day out and about after doing auction stuff.   Had a two hour power outage, preceded by short outages and flickering.   We never had outages without hurricanes when I moved to this house in 2008.  Now they are far too frequent.   I think it’s another example of the deteriorating conditions around us, and it exposed an issue with my UPS setup in my office that I have to get straightened out.

Child was feeling better in the afternoon.  Fever had broken, and she ate a bit.   Still watched TV when I told her not to.  Brat.   If D2 doesn’t develop any symptoms, she’s got a sleepover at a friend’s house tonight.

I’m going to be  doing normal stuff, and getting a lot of my Halloween stuff set up.   I don’t want to wait for the last days, because those will be filled with getting the more fragile stuff set up.   Gotta get the general stuff out now.  If feels like I waited too long as it is.

Sunday I need to pull a bunch of canned goods to take to the BOL.   I’ve been holding back because we’re doing the work, and have stuff everywhere, but it’s not a good retreat until it is stocked.   I will feel better when I’ve moved a bunch more stuff there.  I’ll take half the OTC drugs and medical supplies too.  Lots of duplication here that could be spread out to there…

So look at your situation, and re-stack as needed.   Or stack some more.  Because everything is changing except man’s nature.  It’s reasserting itself, red in tooth and claw.

nick

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Fri. Oct. 14, 2022 – another week gone by, halfway through October…

… fer Pete’s sake.   Cool and damp in Houston today.   Some places got rain last night.   I don’t think we will/did.  Thursday was hot and oppressively humid, and today will likely be similar.

I did home stuff in the morning, but did pickups in the afternoon.  Did a grand circle around Houston in fact, starting out heading north on the Beltway, swinging east, then south and finally closing the circle by coming back up through downtown and heading west.  Ok, not quite a circle.  Lots of driving.

While I was doing pickups I hit one thrift store (the Deseret Industries mentioned a day ago) where I got a pair of tactical shorts and a DVD of Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.  I love the book and loved the movie.  I hope it holds up to my adult eye.  I always swing through the store if I’m in that part of town.

And after my last pick up (by Hobby Airport) I swung by the Habitat for Humanity reStore (which I try to do when I’m in that part of town).  Turns out they had a bunch of doors that will be  a very nice upgrade to the BOL.  New interior doors were on the list, just not very high.  New door knobs were going on the old doors as they got primed and painted (got a bag of knobs at the goodwill).   It’s amazing the change in appearance that getting rid of the flat builder grade (cheap) doors and gold doorknobs makes.  Upgrading doors and door hardware is straightforward and can be done over time and on a budget.   It’s great bang for buck,  for updating an older property, especially if the original doors were cheap and nothing special.  Buying them new would have been over $800, with another $300 for knobs.   Got lucky the reStore had some cheap.  This particular reStore almost always has doors.  I’ve bought a bunch there.

Secondary market, meatspace.   If I needed the doors right away, there are other places I’d have looked besides the big box stores.   There are places that just sell doors, and sell manufacture overstock, closeouts, blems, etc.  There are architectural salvage stores (where I went to replace a door and some windows on my rent house, which was built in the ’20s or 30’s.)  There are other places to look as well.   KNOWING those places, that they even exist, is part of what I’ve been encouraging people to do.  Start participating in the secondary economy now, while it is voluntary.   Swapmeets, bodegas, discount stores, farmer’s markets, yard sales, thrifts, estate and garage sales, and person to person selling are bound to increase as traditional sellers have supply issues or staffing issues, or just can’t pay the bills and close their doors.

Get some practice buying in places that mostly take cash, that don’t have a constant inventory, that might have  ‘irregular’ supply chains… (not stolen, I’m not advocating that), but if things go all splodey in the economy, informal economies grow.  The line between ‘informal’, ‘grey market’, and ‘black market’ might blur and knowing what is ‘normal’ and what is not can help you avoid any issues.  Or seek them out if it comes to that.

Business always finds a way to get done.   Become familiar with some of the alternative ways…

And the cash you save will help you stack things higher!

nick

 

 

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Tues. Oct. 11, 2022 – 10112022 – at home later today

Cool and clear to start the day but getting hot later.  Monday was gorgeous.  I know the dry spell is killing us and crops, but it sure is nice weather otherwise.  And nice not to get rain when I’ve got 27 holes, 4ft deep around the perimeter of my house…

My foundation work definitely got pushed back to next week.  Supply chain issues, and a critical adapter part they need is weeks overdue.  I’m headed back to Houston later today and will work on stuff at home for the rest of this week.

Yesterday the main thing I got done was to connect the master bath pex to the pex trunk line in the attic.  The lines to feed the kitchen are in place but not stubbed out.  Working under the sink just wasn’t going to happen, I hurt too bad from the attic crouching and crawling.   I got foam rubber insulation over the parts of the trunk and branches that I’ve connected so far too.  I do need a couple of parts to tie the new service into the pex and old piping.  I’ll bring them back with me later.

I spent the rest of the day on little tasks and cleanup.   Wife and kids went home yesterday evening.   That left me to have a fire and listen to the radio one last night this week.   The moon rise was later, so I did have some nice dark sky before the moon washed everything out.   It was bright enough to cast shadows and if I had a large print book, I could have read by the moon light.  No shooting stars last night though.

Today I’ll wrap up a few small things, and pack up for the week.  One auction pickup on the way home (an antenna) and then I’m back to normal routine.   It will be a change getting up to get the kids out the door.

I’ve decided to move a bunch more food and supplies up here.   The goal is to get out of Houston if there is an issue, and it would be better to have more of my stacks up here.  Can’t move them all, because of the possibility of needing to stay in town.  Also doesn’t make sense to have all my eggs in one basket.   So I’ll move about half, then rebuild the stacks in both places.  I’ve still got stuff at my secondary too, that will probably stay there.  Backups to the backups.

I need to get serious about getting a full set of tools up here too.  I’ve got enough dupes to do it, but haven’t done much to organize it.  Right now, if I had a plumbing issue at home, I’d be out of luck as all my supplies are here and if I had a mechanical issue, all my real tools are in Houston.  That’s not a great state of affairs.

Ditto for medical.  Some of the stacks need to move, not just first aid kits.

Your stacks aren’t big enough.   Neither are mine.   Get to stacking!

nick

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Mon. Oct. 10, 2022 -10102022 – Columbus Day. Or shine the light of civilization on the vicious natives Day…

Cool now but hot later here at the BOL.  It got plenty hot later in the day yesterday, and I was sweating like crazy in the attic.  Today I’m hoping to avoid the attic.

My main task yesterday was running the pex in the attic and down to the kitchen.   If I stub out the kitchen, or just end the run, I can pressure test, as soon as I connect the stub out in the bathroom.  Dang it, I’m going to be in the attic anyway.  I forgot to connect the bathroom.   I knew there was more I needed to do while I was already covered in fiberglas…  now I’ll get sweaty and filthy again.  Maybe I’ll get it done early, before it gets so hot up there.   Pro tip, if you are going to be working with fiberglas, cover any exposed skin with talcum powder.  Wipe smooth with hand.  It will fill pores and stop most of the fiberglas from getting in your skin and itching.   Works for insulation or when working with resin and fiberglas, like on a boat.  Plain white ‘dryer sheets’ wiped across your skin will catch and remove any fibers that do get in your skin.  I like Bounce, but any of them will do.  Those two tricks will remove most of the discomfort from working with fiberglas.

I discovered while in the attic that there don’t appear to be any roof vents.   There are soffit vents, but nowhere for the hot air to exit.   I thought I was just unfamiliar with however they vent a metal roof, but from the inside, I don’t see any venting at all.   I’ll have to ask the roofing company about that.  Every roof I’ve ever seen has venting (except panelized cathedral ceiling.)

I also spent a little time on other things.  I sanded a bench. Pressure washing raised the grain, and eroded some of the softer part of the wood slats.   I did a quick and dirty sanding with the angle grinder.  It’s smooth, but worn.  Matches the rest of the condition, so it’s ok.  Next time, the slats will need to be replaced, and I’ll refurb the cast iron end frames then.  Until then, call it ‘shabby chic’.

My wife did some electrical, disconnecting the hall bathroom receptacle, installing light fixtures, tracing the circuits, and then installing a new fixture in the living room.   That was while I was in the attic doing plumbing.

I think I’ve got a good solution for attaching my cell booster antenna mast.   I picked up a basketball backboard mounting kit, and I’ve McGyvered the bracketry to clamp to a pipe and give me a place to clamp the mast, while extending it out past the roof overhang.  Feels like it will be very sturdy, and should work.   We’ll see, right?   At the moment, the mast, an extendable painting pole, is ratchet strapped to the chimney.  Redneck as all get out and it  has to move soon, so I can start taking down the chimney.

If the guys come today, we’ll work around them.  If they can’t get the part they’re waiting for, I’ll see them later in the week.  Wife and kids head home later today.  I’ll stay until I know the schedule has changed.   I may pause the fishing… and let my back recover.

Progress is being made.   Skills and contacts are stacking up.  Do some stacking of your own…

nick

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Sun. Oct. 9, 2022 – back at it

Cool and clear with hot later.   It was 73F when I went to bed, after being quite warm in the sun.

Started in Houston with my hobby meeting, which was nice.   Meatspace.  Friends and acquaintances that don’t talk politics or prepping… it’s a nice break.

We do talk about current affairs, price increases, long lead times, and the economy.   One of the guys owns a company that provides a value added technical service to real world goods, and he’s seeing orders slow down.  His work is both mundane, and sometimes high tech, with aerospace customers and other plain industrial customers.  Hard times are coming to the business and industrial world.

After the meeting, I headed up here and basically didn’t do any work.  Didn’t catch any fish either.   Did chat with two neighbors.   One of them is catching fish, over 40 crappie in 2 days.   Good eating.   He mentioned bringing over his crappie tackle box and showing me what he’s using…  I’ve got a lot of learning to do.

Today will be mostly focused on plumbing, with some other stuff thrown in for variety and recovery time.  That’s the plan anyway.  We’ll see if it happens.  I’d rather spend time drowning bait…

Stack up some friends and relations.  Stack up some helpful neighbors.

nick

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Fri. Oct. 7, 2022 – back and forth

Cool, damp, then sunny and hot.  Excellent weather.  Kinda dry though, lake is lower still.

Spent most of the morning messing around on small things while waiting for the foundation guy.   Then spent a while with him.  Eventually started knocking down a few smaller jobs.   Didn’t want to get into a big project, and it was too late in the day to get up in the attic.

But I did get a few things off the list, just not high priority things.  I like to have some small things to fill in around the bigger stuff.

Had my fire and drink while waiting for my family to get here.   They ended up getting here super late.  They had stuff to do before leaving town, I guess.   80M had a bunch of stations, 40 was crowded but mostly local (region 5) and there were a bunch of shortwave stations in the upper 9Mhz band.  SO much more activity than I hear in Houston.  I really like spinning the dial when I can hear so much.

Today I’m going to do a couple of clean up things, then head to Houston.  I’ve got ebay shipping to do, and a couple of auction items to pick up.  I’ll be very happy to have a high speed connection for a few hours.  Then my non-prepping hobby meeting Saturday morning, and back to the lake later in the day.

I’ll take some trash home with me, and bring a couple more things back up to stack up here.

Even if you don’t have a BOL, find somewhere offsite to stack some stuff.   Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.   Stack some baskets!

nick

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