Reinforcements have arrived.

I went and picked up some snow reinforcements the other night.  I forgot my ramps, which wasn't really an issue since the guy had a ledge in his yard I could back up to.  It started rough, but I did get it running okay eventually.  The guy said it hadn't been used in a couple of years.  Hopefully it lasts longer than the last one I bought that had been on the shelf.  The last one only made it through 2 or 3 driveway clearings before it blew out the main seal.  At least this one was cheap though.  Turns out it doesn't fit under the cap which surprised me a little.

The bar for the shifter came off as I was trying to cram it in the back of the truck.

This one is a Toro, but it looks literally identical to all the MTDs I have owned.

So the forecasters finally got it right.  It has been rain the past couple of days.  Most of my snow is gone now.

More importantly though is the path up to the big snowblower is now clear.

I was curious and took a look at the trench.  It is very full.  Looks like I have a bit more slope than I needed too.

One annoying bit though is that I apparently didn't fully close the door of my truck last night.  Ugh.  

It is supposed to be brutally cold this weekend, but I really need to get the snowblower on anyways, as unpleasant as it might be.  With all the snow gone I might need to put down foam board or pick up some sand bags or something to put down over the water lines too.  

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Colossal snow equipment failures.

The theme for the weekend was snow equipment, which you might guess by the title of the post didn't go well.  

To start the weekend off, when I got home on Friday, I noticed that my humidifier had tripped the GFCI again.  This is the third time, but it only does it when it runs dry.  I don't think there is any electrical risk here though.  And for those curious, the stool that is in the middle of the kitchen is the one I need to fix and yes my kitchen is a mess.

Saturday was a snow day.  I got the tractor pulled out.  It turned over slowly, but I guess it hasn't run since September I think?  I am not sure I have run it since I got back, most of the outdoor work was all excavator since my trip.  I tried to bring it up the hill to put the three point snowblower on it.  It didn't make it.  I will have to put the chains on it this year it looks like.

I did get the driveway cleared though with the bucket and grading blade.  I found a way that works better with the bucket, I think the last time I cleared with it I just had the bucket at the wrong angle.  It still won't clear feet of snow, but if you angle the bucket so that the front is a few inches off the ground, but the back is on the ground (the kind of angle you carry material at), it compacts what it doesn't push (which isn't good and will make ice), but it pushes everything above that point.  I just simply didn't try to clear it all the way down, and will trust the tractor and truck to drive over whatever it doesn't clear.  The grading blade I just ran backwards, but that isn't new, that is how I have always used it for snow (except in the tiny home where I used it to dig down to the concrete up at the slab).  This will work for now until we get a big storm or I can get my other stuff working again.

One thing I noticed when I was clearing the driveway.  It really really looked like someone had put a box on the steps down here. I checked it out, but it was just mother nature playing tricks on me.

I took a look at the pushmower, and tried to start it (which failed).  I knew I had almost run it out of gas, but I don't recall it running out last time I used it.  I opened up the gas tank though and it was bone dry.  

So I just folded it up and tucked it into the corner of the carport.  I can clean the carb on it in the spring if I have to.

Next up was the snowblower.  I did remember to walk to the parts store at lunch on Friday and pick up the oil for the snowblower.  Other then the oil draining super slowly since it was cold, the oil that came out was still transparent.  Other than being a year old, it really didn't need an oil change.  I couldn't find my drain pan (likely in the back yard since I was at one point planning to change the fluids in the excavator, that ought to look interesting come spring...), but with it running so slow, I just put the jug underneath it directly.

Then I went to fire it up, and lo and behold the engine has apparently seized.  I never turned it over when I first brought it down since I didn't want to run it with old possibly separated oil (I typically use the cheapest O'Reilly has to offer).  Even the electric start wouldn't budge it.  Ugh.  I might play with it a bit to see if I can loosen it up, but otherwise it might be time to look at replacements.

At that point I was pretty frustrated, so I went and took it out on my old humidifier.  It was getting dark anyways, despite only being 3:30PM .  It had a bunch of scale and stuff on it, and frankly cheap humidifiers don't have a good track record of surviving an offseason of non-use.  I did get it working though.  It puts out a lot more moisture than my new one.

Sunday was actually fairly nice, but I didn't do much.  I looked at snowblowers on Craigslist, but this is the worst time of year to try to find one (right after the first major snowfall).  Pretty much everything under $500 on Craigslist is either a complete unknown (ran three years ago and hasn't been touched kind of deal), needs work, is really small, or looks really rough.  Odds of finding a unit that would survive the winter did not look promising.  I also briefly looked at new ones.  It is a shame electric ones are so expensive, I really am sick and tired of gas engines that never work when you need them to; I have had to repair fuel issues on my push mower each of the last two years (I bought it three years ago), and the lawn tractors that seemingly blow up every couple of years and eat batteries every year, and the weed whacker that hasn't run in three years now, and my brand new friggin' chipper that wouldn't start in the fall, my generator that I haven't been able to start in a couple of years, and so on.  

I just really wish it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to switch to electric.  But considering I would need an extra set (or 2) of batteries because of how long my driveway is, it really doesn't make sense.  Even if I went with a single stage unit that is comparable in cost to a two stage gas (a single stage electric will throw further than a single stage gas), those still struggle with deep snow and don't have drive, you have to do all the pushing, plus it would be a pretty significant size downgrade (my current useless unit is 28" wide, the e-go single stage ones are only 21").  While most of those are less of an issue than it sounds since it isn't intended to be the primary (I spent 2 grand on a tractor snowblower to be the primary if I could get to it), they are still considerations.  It is worth keeping in mind the first couple winters I used a far less capable machine to do all the clearing, the 5HP 24" unit I got from Greg that wouldn't clear more than 12-18" at a time because it would bog and stall, so it is doable.  Of course in those days clearing my driveway was a 6 hour venture.  Would I really be willing to sign up for that again should something happen to the tractor?  

Then there is the whole "how much longer will I be here" question.  I did briefly look at used U-Haul trucks, and I could afford one next year to start the converting...  They are a less than ideal situation though, so the looking was more grumbling than actual action.

That said, this makes getting the snowblower on the tractor really important since my backup plan is seized up; the tractor bucket and blade would be rather painful to clear a 18" snowfall with, and this is supposed to be a mild but very wet winter.  For the immediate future though, the real question is whether the storm coming tonight is rain (as forecasted, but meteorologists are batting 0% so far this winter) or whether it is snow.  I might find out quickly how the new plowing method works with a foot of snow.

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Snow won another round.

I was on autopilot last night when I came back from work, so I will head out at lunch today and grab the oil.  I decided I could go out and shovel some at least.  I didn't get far.

Thankfully I had a backup and at least got the steps finished.  I also dug out my winter boots and got the plastic sawhorses put away.  I got the big wooden ones broken free (they were frozen into the ground).  I didn't move them over because they are currently covering wood scraps on the ground, so right now they are basically a driveway marker.  

Of course as soon as I finished, mother nature got angry and it started snowing again.  Sigh.

It is currently supposed to rain early next week, which is likely to create a large mess, but as long as it stays rain will be good for me.  

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

More winter.

I did my typical shopping run on Monday.  I added a Walmart stop (which I am not a fan of, especially in the holiday season) but it actually wasn't bad.  I wanted to pick up another humidifier.  The one I had last year was inadequate.  This one was surprisingly cheap.

Before cooking dinner the humidity was 18%.  

I went up to schedule my truck for an oil change and did some looking around at cars.  Bob's had a Ford Focus that was only $5k, but had some rust on it (not uncommon for a northeast car), and a Subaru that looked pretty clean underneath but was a bit out of my sister's price range.

After 24 hours, the new humidifier only got it up to 30%, so it looks like I will have to clean out my old one and hope it still works to give it a helping hand.

I started to pull down the walk behind snow blower last night, but realized that I didn't have the right kind of oil to change it.  This one takes 5w30, not SAE30.  Sigh.  I did that because there was another storm moving in, albeit not a bad one supposedly so I just figured I would drive over it.

This morning I woke to more unexpected snow.  This storm was only supposed to be 1-3 inches, but we had around 6".  Ugh.  Fortunately my truck has excellent tires on it and I was still able to just drive over it, but we are approaching critical mass of snow, I really need to get the snowblowers ready.  That will be priority 1 this weekend.  Clearing the top area so I can run the snowblower without hitting stuff will be priority 2.

Samsung has a warranty checking online, but it sounds like my heat pump should be covered.  I will still have to pay the labor to get it swapped out, but hopefully the cost of the unit will be covered.

I finally got around to publishing the pictures from the southern lights stroll 5k I did while down in KY.  Those pictures are available at:  https://photobucket.com/share/bcce0035-407f-4cc8-b8b9-b9761a43f17a 

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Back from vacation into winter.

I forgot to post a few things before my trip.  I did get some winterization done for the tiny home, since I had to pull the dishwasher out (which went to KY).

The weather wasn't supposed to be great while I was driving down, so at lunch the day before I left, I got the tarp pulled out for the excavator.  It had pooled with water.

I got the excavator covered the night before I left.

I then loaded up the truck.  It was very full, there was stuff in the back too.  In this instance it is good that I haven't tossed the cap yet.

The drive down wasn't nearly as bad weather-wise as it was predicted to be.  There was some snow, but it only collected on the road for a short bit in PA and the mountains of MD.  The roads were mobbed though, which was made a lot worse by the fact that people were freaking out, sadly common for the first winter storm of the season.  

It was still kind of pretty though.  

I did take a picture of a sunrise while I was down there.  I was curious, so I did a head to head against my sister's phone, which is a Samsung Galaxy S9 and her pictures came out much much better.  Mine the white balance basically muted all the color in the picture.  

Hers looks perhaps a little oversaturated, but for a sunrise that is a good thing.

The trip itself was quite nice.  Had lots of turkey.  Played with the dogs some.  Wore them out once or twice (though normally they wore me out).  

The drive back wasn't terribly eventful, at least until I got home.  There was still a bunch of snow when I got home.  

The ditch was full of ice, which will make working on the drainage a problem.  

More importantly, it looks like one of my heat pumps died while I was out.  Fortunately I turned on the furnace before I left because in previous posts it had been throwing phantom errors occasionally and I really didn't want my pipes to freeze.  Good thing I did.  This error is fatal though, C464 is compressor failure.  I just turned on the other unit in the other bedrooms, and pointed the air flow out into the living room for now.  I will have to dig out the paperwork to see if the unit is still under warranty or not.

I also noticed that another one of my light covers had come off.  I am tempted to take a tube of silicone or something and use it to glue all these things in.  This is either the second or third time one has come off.  

I did get the tiny home done before winter, but winter is very clearly here to stay; there is a decent chance that this snow lasts until the January thaw.  It is cold enough, and more is coming this week.  It is dark when I go and come home from work, but I might have to pull at least the walk behind snowblower down and get it ready.  I don't really want to try to set up the snowblower on the tractor in the dark though, I have only ever done it once.  But all my pre-winter stuff is badly overdue now.  I also need to figure out how to deal with the ditch.  I consider myself lucky that my water lines didn't freeze while I was gone (the ones outside had two feet of dirt removed from on top insulating them).  At any rate though, I know the cold we have had isn't enough to freeze them, which is a bonus for now.  I will probably try to break up one of the sheets of foam board insulation I have and put it down in the ditch to restore some of the insulation.  But it survived single digits, so I am not immediately worried.

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

New idea on traveling.

Here is the missing picture from the last post.  This is the current progress of back yard when the piston decided to turn into a high pressure oiler.  The marker sticking out is where the trench I dug last year is (I put it there so I wouldn't crash the mower into it).

Most people say van life is cheaper, but when I ran the numbers, that was definitely not the case; the only way I could see someone claiming that is if they don't include the cost of replacing the underlying vehicle, or assume it will last forever.  So I was doing a little bit of reading Sunday night, and came across another option: box trucks.  I can get a used box truck for half of what I can buy a van for, used vans too.  While I am not too high on Mitsubishi, they are one of the biggest players (Isuzu is the other big one), and depending on how old I am willing to go I can find them for as little as 10k, though most are around 20k.  The used vans I was looking at though were in the $25k-30k range.  From an overall vehicle length perspective, most of the smaller ones are comparable to my current truck, which is perfectly acceptable, but they are more compact in the front, so you get a lot more interior space.  You can get used U-Haul trucks even cheaper, but those tend to be abused within an inch of their life, and U-Haul is not known for pristine maintenance records, but U-Haul at least publishes gas mileage figures: 12-14mpg in their small 10', 10-12mpg in the slightly larger ones.

This idea also breathed new life to the truck house idea: the basis for a lot of these box trucks and other smaller class C RVs is the Ford E series.  I believe this used to be the Econoline, but regardless, it starts at $38k brand new, which is nearly $20k less than an F-150.  I for the life of me don't really understand why (it is a 1-ton chassis not a half ton which surely outweighs the cost of a pickup bed), but it certainly makes it a lot more palatable from a cost perspective.  It does force some trade offs though: they don't appear to come in 4WD (it does have a standard locking rear diff though), if you want gas the only engine option is the 7.3L V8, and their features/options are very limited (though I didn't want most of them anyways).  But still, I prefer new (this way I know it hasn't been abused for the last half-decade), and this provides another opening that is more financially acceptable.  I didn't see any official gas mileage numbers, but in general I would expect it to be equivalent to a 1 ton truck, so in the 13-15mpg range.  3-5mpg is a large delta (I anticipated the van would get 16-18mpg).  For reference, the fuel consumption of my most recent trip at 13mpg would be ~615 gallons, at 16mpg it would be ~500 gallons, and at 18mpg it would be ~445 gallons, and gas was just over $3 per gallon on average, so fuel would cost ~$510 more at 13mpg vs 18mpg, on a trip that was $6300. 

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Productive, but not productive enough. Popped the excavator.

Saturday morning I went to pick up a freebie inflatable kayak off Craigslist.  I woke up early though, so I went out and measured how much wire I would need.  There is absolutely no chance a 50ft spool would cut it.  It looks like I would need a 75ft spool at least (this measured 78 feet), and that is just to get it to the deck, not the location of the hot tub.  I think at this point I will put off running the wire for next year though.  Honestly, given the cost of just the wire, it might be worth getting a quote to upgrade the house to 200A service, then I only need to run a new circuit from the house which would be 20 feet or so.  Either that or just run a 20A circuit for the deck, and stick with the inflatable hot tub for the foreseeable future (which runs off a 110V 15A circuit, instead of the typical 50A 240V built in hot tubs use).  

The kayak.  It is bigger than I expected.  It has a leak in the right tube.  I might (should?) be able to fix it, but otherwise it will only cost me a couple of bucks to chuck it if I can't.

I got my property tax bill in the mail Saturday and got a pleasant surprise.  With the reassessed values, my taxes went down.  The second bill is frequently smaller than the first, but the difference is not normally large.  I guess the other people in the town got hosed worse than me with the reassessment.

After all that though, it was time to get back to work on the excavator.  I ran it out of gas again, and since my can was full this time (it was mostly empty last time which is why it didn't get completely filled) I made a huge mess trying to fill it.  I used to have a large gas funnel, but couldn't find it.  I had a long one that I use to drain oil, but that had a lot of junk in it which I really didn't want to put in the excavator's fuel tank (I am pretty sure it does not have a fuel filter).  

So I made a trip to Harbor Freight.  While I was there I picked up a new worklight too.  It isn't as bright as the monster ones I got a couple years ago (I have one in the shed and one in the carport), but it is better than nothing.  The hope is that while I don't think it is bright enough for excavator work, it should be bright enough for hand shovel work. 

I also went and picked up the rolling cabinet from work that I am bringing down.  I am headed to KY this weekend.

Sunday was mostly an excavator day.  I got most of the digging done, but not all (more on that in a second).  I did have a short heart palpitation when I first sat this branch, since it is the exact same size that conduit would have been and at this point I was digging right on top of my water lines.  It was a major pain to remove too, it was too slick for the excavator to bite and was a real pain to dig out since it was two feet into the dirt.

I got all the inline digging done.  The last bit you have dig from the side.  Turns out this is a lot slower and more difficult since you actually have to dig, you can't just rip through the earth like you can inline.  

I apparently didn't get a picture of the back yard and progress.  My bad.

I got just under half of the sideways digging done when bad things happened.  It started spraying hydraulic fluid.

The piston doesn't look difficult to change, but I have no idea where I would even look to find one.  I might poke around (and maybe ask Barry, the only other person I know with an excavator).  This is where it is leaking.

A couple of other notes, I turned off my water pump when I was digging over the water lines (for obvious reasons), but I apparently forgot to turn it back on before I ran the dishwasher that evening.  It looks like everything worked okay though, so I apparently have a large pressure tank.  It did completely drain it though.  I have never actually seen the pressure tank that was installed (it is installed underneath the house).  I am sure it was terrible for the water heater though, since it probably was running near empty for an hour or two.  Oops.

Surprisingly everything in the dishwasher came out clean though, no soap spots or anything that I could see that would indicate that most of the cycle was run without water.  

I also removed all the remaining lumber out of my truck and cleaned out the back to prepare for the trip.

Unfortunately this puts a large damper on my ability to finish this before I head to KY.  I am seriously debating just JB welding and gorilla taping the crap out of it (I am aware that Gorilla tape can't take the PSI hydraulics run at), and just letting it leak until I finish the trench, I am that close.  I don't really want to try to dig it by hand, but that is also an option, but it is in the area that got compacted when they put the house in, so it would be rough digging.  And at this point, it wouldn't happen before I get back.  I also need to keep a really close eye on the temperatures too; water lines don't freeze because they are buried well below the frost line, but right now there is I would guess ~18" of dirt removed from on top of them, so they may not be below the frost line at the moment until that material is restored, and it will be December before I get back from Thanksgiving.  Ugh.  And I still haven't put the snowblower on the back of the tractor or anything yet.  It might be time to dust off the white flag and punt the drainage until next year, even despite the fact that it was absolutely gorgeous outside this weekend.  

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.