Wednesday afternoon, I found myself kneeling in a 3×5 foot shed with a 1500 watt space heater between my legs, a small LED flashlight in my teeth, and my back up against a propane powered hot water heater. The majority of the words coming from my mouth were expletives. Occasionally dashing out of the shed around to the front of our house and shouting, “TURN ON THE BATHTUB!” and running back to the shed. This continued for close to two hours. When I returned to the house my knees and back hurt.
You might ordinarily assume that my behavior was a result of mental illness, some bizarre prayer ritual, or a really quirky exercise routine. In this instance, though, I was attempting to return water service to our house.
The extraordinarily low temperatures we’ve had over the past few days (an archive of this month’s data from the weather station on our roof are available here: http://www.miscfarm.com/weather/NOAA/NOAA-2008-12.txt — note the lows on the 15th and 16th) froze a few of our pipes, including those surrounding the well pump pressure switch.
The pressure switch regulates the operation of our submersible well pump, based on the pressure that’s built up in two 75G tanks and the house pipes. By design, when the pressure drops below 35/40 PSI, the ‘cut in’ function of the switch is triggered and the pump runs until the pressure switch reaches the ‘cut out’ pressure (~60 PSI, in our case). It’s how our “water pressure” (at the faucet) is maintained.
Early Wednesday morning, Kat’s shower died halfway through her morning routine… it just stopped. We came to the conclusion that the water mains from the pump had frozen. We relocated a small space heater from the greenhouse to the garage, aiming it at the exposed galvanized pipe, and took off for work. We returned at 4 in the afternoon (around sunset) and my adventure ensued. After presumably thawing the pipes with a space heater, we still faced no water pressure in the house. I checked the well house and discovered some very chilly pipes, including drain valve that was frozen solid. Moved the space heater, again, this time to the well house… after the drain valve had visibly thawed, I flipped an L-shaped bail to reset the pressure switch. The encouraging snap of an electric arc and the needle moved from the ambient tank pressure (30 PSI) straight up to 70 PSI, only to drop back to 30, a second later. Another attempt with similar results.
After re-reading some information I’d found a few months back and a call to my father, who lived off-grid for 12 years and just knows this stuff, I was determined to figure it out. That’s where this post began… on my knees, with a small wrench, trying to adjust the ‘cut in’ pressure downward enough to get the pump running without hand-holding. I gave up. I spent some time with my new friend this morning, then, around noon, caved and called a service company. Late afternoon, I called to see if they were going to be able to make it. “Sure, he’s in your area and should be there in a couple hours.” Around 7:30, I talked to the service guy and he made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to attempt to drive out into the sticks with the roads unplowed.
Thursday, we awoke to 7 inches of snow. Determined to gain running water, again, I decided to spend some more quality time with my friend, the pressure switch. There’s no way these ‘snow wimp’ service guys were going to drive out here. I was convinced that something had become lodged under the diaphragm/pressure plate and it just needed to be cleaned.
After all, I’m a smart guy and somewhat mechanically inclined, right? This is what I wanted, right? Yeah, we’re working to become self sufficient and I just need to persevere, right?
I flipped the breaker to kill the pump circuit and made my way out to the well house. I took a picture of the switch without the cover, so I’d remember the wiring. 20 minutes later, I’d pulled the wiring off the switch, drained the last couple gallons out of the well tanks, and unscrewed the switch. I brought it inside, removed the screws from the bottom, pried the switch open, and pulled out the rubber diaphragm. No gunk. Huh… there goes that theory. I reassembled it, put it back in place, reconnected it to the house wiring, flipped the circuit back on, and went back out there.
After an hour of futzing with the two adjustment screws, I had it cycling pretty reliably. The radical change in pressure had shaken loose some rust and corrosion, but hell, it’s water, right?
Punchline to the story? Sometime between the pipes freezing on Wednesday morning and this Thursday afternoon, we ran out of propane. The company that we’d contacted to refill the tank every 2 months, somehow lost our account. So, after all this hoopla, I still don’t get a hot shower.
A few things I’ve learned from this:
- The pressure switch is a really simple and elegant electo-mechanical device.
- Having the propane hot water heater and well tanks in the same shed is a poor idea. Too little ventilation and the thermocouple on the water heater will burn out. Too much and the pipes/tank/switch will freeze in the winter.
- We really could survive here with very little from the outside (no, we’re not survivalists). While it’d degrade our quality of life some, we could boil water from the creek on the wood stove.
- 3 conductor 10 gauge romex is a pain in the butt, in enclosed spaces.
- Sometimes, even paying someone to do it doesn’t mean it’s going to get done. Just do it yourself, city boy.
A couple helpful links:
http://pumpsandtanks.com/faq_page.htm
http://www.inspect-ny.com/water/Water_Pump_Control_Repair.htm
A good short article on urban farming including poultry and beekeeping in San Francisco, California. We hope to get bees in the future ourselves.
“Each morning when Colin Phipps’ two young sons get up, they run outside to the chicken coop to gather eggs for breakfast. Next year, the family is planning on expanding their farm by adding a little pig or a hutch of rabbits. Just another day in rural California? Not exactly. Phipps lives in a row house in Bernal Heights — one of the city’s many high-density, single-family neighborhoods. The houses here tend to be more like cottages, the backyards downright postage stamp-sized. Yet Phipps is not alone.”
Urban Farming: Back to the land in your tiny backyard
This is our first full winter will all the animals. The chickens weren’t out in the coop until this spring/summer and while we brought Molly, our first dairy goat, home in February 2008 we had snow but temperatures weren’t terribly low. With the weather dropping in to the teens over the past week this is how we’ve been managing to keep everyone comfortable:
Chickens
I let the chickens out when the temperature was around freezing on Sunday but they did not show any interest in getting their feet cold. They would actually fly from object to object to avoid the snow even though it was only 3 inches deep or so. They spent most of the day roosting on the potato boxes that are being stored next to the far side of the house. Unbeknown to us at the time we placed them on either side of the dryer vent. The chickens happily roosted on the boxes keeping toasty warm as I do the week’s laundry on Sundays. A few took up playing in the dirt in the front flower bed under the eaves. I’ve kept them indoors the last few days with temperatures in the teens and 20’s as I’m concerned about frost bite since most of our’s are single comb breeds.
Their coop has a radiant heater that normally adds approximately 5 degrees to the internal coop temperature. We’ve sealed up some of the ventilation on the coop to preserve more heat but it’s also leading to more ammonia build up from their waste so we may have to revisit that. We get approximately another 5 degress due to practicing “deep litter”. That essentially means the litter in the coop is allowed to breakdown in place and fresh litter is added on top. As the litter breaks down it generates heat. The chickens had managed to bury their thermometer this fall and it was registering temperatures of 80 to 100 degress in the litter when outside temperatures were in the 60’s.
Since our coop is sized for free range chickens it’s not actually large enough to keep the chickens indoors at all times. We have to be careful about our decisions to do so due to the potential for ammonia build up which will cause respiratory illnesses.
The only other concern for any animal is access to fresh water. Due to the internal coop temperatures that’s only been a problem on the night we got down to 14F. The water in the bottom of their metal waterer froze blocking the rest of the water. Running the waterer in hot water the following morning and refilling with warm water fixed the problem and it hasn’t reoccured, but we haven’t seen temperatures that low again yet.
The chickens always have access to pellet food in their coop which under normal circumstances they eat little of. Additionally during these cold spells I’m giving them scratch grains which are basically chicken junk food. It has the effect of giving them a bit more energy and when sprinkled in the coop, encourages them to turn the bedding.
Goats
As per my previous post, we put coats on the goats. Since then we haven’t seen any evidence that they are suffering from the cold. They are cold hardy animals and will warm each other. They prefer not to be in the elements anyway and will stay in their shelter so they are not affected by the wet or snow. They have room to sleep and relieve themselves in different areas in their shelter and their bed area is protected from drafts by an additional wall/roof. Their hay manager is in the shelter as well, giving them no reason to leave normally. They have a 17 gallon plastic water trough that has been forming a thin layer of ice on it over night on only the coldest nights (generally 20 or below). We break the ice and replace a portion of the water with hot tap water a minimum of twice a day.
The goat “shed” is in a heavily wooded area and located underneath a large old evergreen which appears to have the affect of sheltering them and their yard from strong winds and snow fall as well. This wasn’t entirely intentional, but we’ll take it just the same.
The goats always have free access to hay and minerals/vitamins but we are also giving them some additional grains during the inclement weather. Normally grains are given when milking. We are giving them grains now to get them some more concentrated energy to help them in keeping themselves warm.
I was really disappointed when I found out that 2008’s Slow Food Nation event was going to be held in San Francisco only because we’d moved from the Bay Area ourselves just a year prior. I wanted to attend!
We’ve been members of Slow Food for the last two years. For the most part it’s primarily meant making a small financial contribution to the organization. This last year we were able to attend a Slow Food gathering for our (new) local convivium here in Snoqualamie Valley. I’m really glad to see that our area has it’s own convivium actually, most of the active ones are surrounding large urban areas (Seattle, San Francisco, etc). While I think it’s quite important for urban dwellers (as we once were) to reflect on these topics as they certainly have specific challenges, I also think it’s great for those of us in the agricultural regions that often supply these large urban areas to kind of get out and celebrate what we contribute to the system.
This article spotlights the Victory Garden put in place for the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. I can definitely see the logic for taking these large evenets to “the big city” (better audience for change and larger exposure) but I hope they don’t entirely lose track of their roots. I’m also not trying to deny those determined urban farmers, I want to see more of them!
“Farm aid, the annual concert dedicated to raising funds for the American family farmer, has been held in such agricultural strongholds as Manor, Texas, and Ames, Iowa. But the most recent venue, the distinctly nonrural borough of Manhattan, is not as incongruous as it seems. With its estimated 600 small-scale farms (which are often large-scale vegetable gardens), New York City is part of an urban agricultural boom in the U.S., where rising food and fuel prices are making city farming seem less and less outlandish. In July volunteers began transforming the front lawns of San Francisco’s city hall into the first edible offerings on that site since 1943, when civilians across the country were encouraged to aid the war effort by growing victory gardens.”
TIME: Inner-City Farms
We’ve been checking on the goats several times a day with the frequency increasing as the temperatures have dipped to record lows. Molly, our Oberhassli, has a very thick coat (and a layer of fat on account of being a bit spoiled) that seems to be serving her quite well. I haven’t noticed any signs that she’s bothered by the cold. Obsidian, our Nubian, however kidded this year and we milked her until a few weeks ago. She’s been putting on weight and is probably at about her ideal weight, but doesn’t have quite the thick coat that Molly does. We’ve noticed her shivering when we are up to visit them which has worried me. When we aren’t around they spend inclement weather in their “barn” and they sleep together to warm each other, but when she comes in to the yard she starts shivering.
I had seen many reference to goats in coats or sweaters in the winter. Many folks simply use regular human clothes for them with relative success. I decided with this weather that I would feel better if Obie had a coat. Due to our tendency to hoard garish and outlandish scrap fabrics on discount for various Burning Man related projects I knew that we had at least some scraps of fleece in the stash. Fortunately I happened upon several yards of a tie-dye like pattern that Bengt had purchased and quickly guilted him out of it in order to make goat coats.
I used this link as a start, although I think my “design” is simpler: http://kinne.net/goatcoat.htm
I made no darts and no belly flaps. I did use the recommendation to make the ties high on one side so they’d be under the coat and less likely to snag or be pulled on though. I left a vent in the front seam to allow for more movement while not sacraficing length. The ties were double stitched and I did a X reinforcement, they shouldn’t come loose easily. They are simply tied in a square knot off to the girl’s side. The ties themsleves are made of scrap fleece in the hopes that it would be more comfortable than alternatives.
Molly’s ended up being a little short (neck to tail), but otherwise they seem to fit well. We did two fittings before I sewed them. I think it worked out pretty well for probably 30 minutes worth of work. We’ll see how clean they actually keep them. The fleece should wash up well, but I don’t have enough fabric to make a second set so I can swap them for washing while it remains cold.
Back from vacation and our first snow of the winter.
Audio only version: http://www.miscfarm.com/2008/12/14/farm-report-audio-only-5/
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This may seem like a bit of a non sequitur, but one of the motivations for us around raising our own animals is because of concerns for commerical animal treatment. We half-jokingly refer to commercially raised products as cruelty-X, for example “cruelty chicken”, “cruelty beef”, and on rarer occasions “cruelty carrots” (yes, in most cases that’s a joke). It wasn’t a conscious decision, but started occuring in our conversation as we became more eduated about commercial operations (including organics unfortunately!). Yet it remains as a regular reminder when we make decisions to go the “easy route” and disregard, or fail to research, the origins of the product of choice. This article is enlightening because it also demonstrates how far reaching commercial livestock products are. I didn’t realize that there were animal products in the laudry aisle. The feel of fabric softeners has never appealed to me, but now I have another reason to avoid it.
“Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride
A derivative of rendered fat from cattle, sheep, and horses. Just boil it down and mix with ammonium (NH4). After a series of chemical pit stops, out comes a quaternary ammonium compound, or quat—a positive ion in which the hydrogen is replaced by long-chain organic molecules. Quats effectively coat your clothing with lipids, making the fibers soft to the touch. These fats also make fabric a bit less absorbent—don’t use on towels or cloth diapers—and the positive charge neutralizes static electricity. There are a few other quats in Downy, with easily pronounceable names like 1-methyl-1-tallowamidoethyl-2 -tallowimidazolinium methylsulfate.”
What’s Inside — Downy Coats Briefs With Horse Fat
We often relate to two movements which are similarly focused but opposite directions in our adventure. One is “urban farming” and the other is “homesteading” or “back-to-the-land”. This is a great article about real people’s experiences in urban poultry farming. Even though I don’t think it would change our decisions, I wish I had known more about this when we were living a more sub/urban life. One of the biggest revelations for me, out of our experiences to date, really is just how incredibly easy it is to keep chickens.
“For Brooklyn real-estate agent Maria Mackin, the obsession started five years ago, on a trip to Pennsylvania Amish country. She, her husband and three children—now 17, 13 and 11—sat down for brunch at a local bed-and-breakfast, and suddenly the chef realized she’d run out of eggs. “She said, ‘Oh goodness! I’ll have to go out to the garden and get some more’,” Mackin recalls. “She cooked them up and they were delicious.” Mackin and her husband, Declan Walsh, looked at each other, and it didn’t take long for the idea to register: Could we have chickens too? They finished their brunch and convinced the bed-and-breakfast owner, a Mennonite celery farmer, to sell them four chickens. They packed them in a little nest in the back of their Plymouth Voyager minivan and headed back to Brooklyn.”
Newsweek: The New Coop de Ville
We are back from hawaii. So far only general kitty chaos damage, but we need to go check on the goats this morning and pick up the dogs still.
Getting the animals ready for our vacation and the predicting the aftermath
Audio only version: http://www.miscfarm.com/2008/11/26/farm-projects-audio-only/
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