Cabin in the Woods - Generators and Chippers and Bugs Oh My!!

Cabin in the Woods - So It Begins

Before we left, we had Gordie do the paperwork for an offer.  We had heard, there was someone else coming up to take a look at the place for the second time.  This was my first time up, and I was certain this was 'The Place'.  After several years of looking, this one just dropped in our laps, so to speak.

Before the weekend was over, we had a verbal confirmation, the offer was accepted, but since it was a long weekend, getting the signatures was going to prove a bit of an obstacle.  We were in no immediate hurry so we made the closing date a couple weeks.  Gordie recommended we put one condition into the offer.  The condition that we could get fire insurance on the place.  After all, the wildfire season was coming and there had been a few fires near this location.  We thought it was a great idea.  They accepted.  We hooked up with Gordie again, at our friend, Brenda Lee's home (a little closer for Gordie, and no ferry ride to contend with). 

We did have a fantastic surprise.  You could call it Good News / Bad news.   Gordie informed us that since we were the first owners of this house, we were entitled to a 10 year builder's warranty.  THAT was the good news, the Bad News was when he informed us that since it was 'new' (that's 12 years of growth and all) we had to pay GST taxes on the place.  6000.00 Dollars!!!!   We took the good with the bad and paid it.

Getting insurance proved to be a bit of a challenge.   Insurance companies are not in the business of handing out money if they don't have to.  Wildfire Season was fast approaching and the chances were high it would be a busy season.  D managed to find an insurance company who would take up the challenge.

A mother Robin tending her nest in the eaves of the cabin.

Decisions! Decisions!

Once the deal was in motion, we headed home.  The 12 hour trip home, went quickly.  If I wasn't driving, D was writing our battle plan for the finishing, and moving to the new place.  When she was driving, I was writing.  We had our work cut out for us.  

Septic: we were being told this could cost up to 50k.  We made plans to investigate alternatives.  Unfortunately, septic systems are governed by the province, and the province was fussy about how and where they are built.  For the time being we were going to check out composting toilets, incinerator systems, and the last option on our list, a lagoon. 

 Electricity:  Here was another money eating option we needed to deal with.  Do we go solar?   Not with the long winters, tons of trees to block the sun, even though the area has lots of sunny days, according to records.  Brenda Lee had dealings with an Electrician at Timberline.  Rueben.  We contacted him and made arrangements.  Let's put it this way.  'Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men' was more accurate.  We were about to get a lesson in 'Burns Lake Time' as Brenda Lee called it. 

I had a good working knowledge of running lines, breakers, lights, and plugs.  I could do the finishing work, but putting in a electrical panel?  Out of my league.  Besides, we also needed a pole, and we wanted it wired underground. We needed permits, BC Hydro's blessing, and connection, and the possibility of a transformer. Again, no experience.  So we needed to hire an electrician to get it in, and we could do the rest.  Easy Peasy.   

People get around to calling you back, texting you back, emailing you back all on their own time.  If you are from the city, don't expect next day service.  In our case, it would take until Thanksgiving.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Insulation:  Even though the roof and basement had insulation, the main part of the building didn't have any insulation.  We would have to insulate it.  Since we were handy, this wasn't going to be a big deal.  So we started pricing insulation.  The good stuff was going to be expensive.  And we needed a lot of it.

Water:  We had a well. It had a serial number. And we had a computer.  Unfortunately, the number on the well was registered to a well on an island in the gulf.  The owner of the place knew nothing about it.  The guy who drilled it didn't remember anything about it, other than, if it had a well, he tasted the water to check it.  We started to hear rumors that the well was dry, and no one wanted the place for that reason.  We were concerned to say the least.

Heat was going to be the final obstacle we had to overcome.  The winters were long, and temperatures can drop to -40 for weeks at a time.  We had 6 acres of trees, so this could keep us warm for a few years if we got a wood stove.  But what if we were delayed getting home before the fire went out?  We checked out the Blaze King line of wood stoves and settled on the Sirocco 30.2.  The info stated that it could keep the place warm for 20 hours or more.  This appealed to us, but we wanted a back up.  Electric?  That was an option, but if the power went out, and we couldn't get back in time, we would have some frozen cats, and water lines.  

We settled on a  three tiered system.  The wood stove would be the main source of heat, and it was free.  Ok ok..... maybe not free, I still have to cut trees, let em sit and then chop them, and split them.  That would be work.  We could buy wood, but Brenda Lee said you need to place your order months in advance.  The second system would be space heaters / baseboard heat.  Electricity.   The third  tier was going to be propane.  Everything could still be toasty, or not frozen solid, if the power went out and we were delayed coming home.   

The First Trip to Our New Home

The month went by fast.  We had spent almost every awake moment researching, wood chippers, chainsaws, power tools, weed eaters, water pumps, water softeners, on demand water heaters, calling people, setting up budgets, everything.  Had we bit off more than we could chew?  It was hard to say at that point, we were excited.  We knew it was going to be a lot of work, challenges.  We were in our late fifties and not in the best of shape.  Looking back at the start of this, not once did we ever doubt we couldn't get this place up and running for our retirement.  NEVER!!!!

The first official trip to our new home, was going to be a measuring, and confirmation trip.  We wanted to measure everything, to prepare for kitchen cabinets,  walls, electrical outlets, insulation everything.  We had no heat, no water, no toilet facilities, no fridge, and no beds.

In truth, we had actually been planning for this for years.  Believe it or not, we did come prepared.  For years we would scour our favorite second hand stores like the Restore (Habitat for humanity for those who don't know) This is without a doubt, the best place to score if you have a long term goal.  Over the years, we managed to score a shower ($25), a Fisher wood stove ($200), wire on the spool, specialty tools like a Greenly Multimeter ($25), tiles, wood, you name it.

Once, recently, I was strolling through the store and saw a black GFCI electrical plug.  It is rare to see anything like that in black, I looked at the box and saw they wanted a dollar for it.  I scooped it and kept looking.  I found the box had a total of 24 of them.  All for a dollar each.  Scoop!  Denise found a beautiful faucet with a set screw missing.  Scoop!   One Restore was closing its doors for good and we happened to see the sign for the closure.  We went in.  The place was almost deserted.  They did have a few appliances, and some bins with odds and ends in them.  The guy behind the counter said, fill the bag and you can have the bag for $5.  So we did.  While D was scoring electrical components, I took a quick walk around and saw a double oven.  Virtually, brand new.  There were progressive signs on it.  All with lower prices.  The top one said 80% off.  I asked how much that would be.  The guy said $53.  SCOOP!!!  Another find was a black induction stove that you set into your counter.  Scoop!!!.


53 Dollars was the final price.


Several other great places to look for stuff is at Value Village, MCC, Thrift Stores.  But nothing beats the Restore.  Besides being a great place to shop, and a great place to donate, they also do great work with people in need.  Every so often, volunteers will build a complete home for someone who is deserving of the gesture.  Restore, and MCC are two of the charities Denise and I fully support.  They have a hotdog sale to bring in cash, we are there.  Have something to donate?  They get it first.

 To sleep, we had brought two options.  Cots we bought at Cabelas when they had a super sale on, and my Hennessy Hammock from Mountain Equipment Co-op.  D opted for the cot, while I decided to sleep in my hammock.  Yes INSIDE!!!   We had beams, and I liked sleeping in hammocks.   Unfortunately, the beams were too close together and I spent the night with my feet pointing to the sealing.  After a few nights of blood rushing to my head all night, I decided cots were far superior.

The second obstacle was washroom facilities.   We had managed to get a porta-potty at one of the thrift shops for 25 dollars, and D set it up down in the basement.  In fact, this was a well planned answer to an age old problem.  We had the porta-potty for several years, but never had to use it.  When we pulled it out of the box, we could see that it was going to be too low  for us to squat on.  I made a riser for it to sit on giving us  a nicer platform to read How To Manuals, and DIY books while enjoying nature calls.  For a shower, we had the one from Restore, so I made a platform for it as well.  Since we had no hot water at the house, we used a portable propane powered shower.  Lucky for us, we didn't stink, and if we did, we stunk together and didn't notice.  So it never got used.

Now we aren't total barbarians, we did heat water from bottles we brought with us, and gave ourselves sponge baths.  A much needed luxury after we worked all day in the bush etc etc

 Two things we both insisted on was to have a generator, and a wood chipper.  The plan would be to clean up the wilderness on the property, and shred all the wood into chips.  This could be laid down and used for trails to the back of the property, and for the gardens.  Again, a lot of research went into this and we settled on a near professional style Ducar (We pronounce it Duker).  15 HP, this thing would be a god send.  It was huge, and the metal on it was thick.  REALLY THICK!!  Could it stop a bullet?  not sure, but I would definitely hide behind it before hiding behind a tree.

The generator was another heavily researched project.   While D did the searching for the perfect chipper, I was in charge of the generator project.  There were several needs that it had to fulfill.  One, it had to be somewhat portable.  We may need it in the bush and I didn't want to drag one through the jungle to get to where I needed it.  Two, it had to be reliable.  The only answer there was HONDA!!!  If you have another type and you want to argue, go for it.  You are wrong.  Honda ROCKS!!.   We needed something that was going to be powerful enough to operate with table saws, and other machines with high power needs, while still keeping our food cold, and phones charged.  This meant it must be bigger than 2000 watts.  Three, it had to have a long run time on fuel ups.  I didn't want to get up in the middle of the night, fuel the generator while becoming a snack for the local wildlife (Read: Bears, Wolves, Cougars, Wolverines, Mosquitoes).  And Four, it had to be somewhat quiet.  I didn't want to go up to the lake and have to listen to the sound of a generator, whether it was mine or a neighbor's.   We chose the Honda EU3000.

There are actually two models of Honda 3000 Generator.  One is a light weight unit with wheels, and weighs about 65 lbs.  It doesn't have electric start, and the run time is not all that long.  The EU3000is has electric start, a huge gas tank, I think a bigger engine, and a lot more weight.  Tipping the scales at about 150 lbs, this beast is heavy.  Honda does have a wheel kit for it at 275 dollars, which I thought was a total ripoff.  Why would the light one have wheels, and the nut-buster didn't.  The EU3000is also was about 1000 dollars more.  Would I do it all over again?  Yup!  I bought a set of wheels at Princess Auto and made a wagon for the generator.  Price 40 dollars, and some pallet wood.  To be honest, the wheels I bought look identical to the 275 dollar Honda units.

Here is a quick review of both the Ducar and the Honda.

Ducar:  Will protect the family from army tanks, and any branches up to 5" in diameter, as long as it is dry.  Heavy (380 lbs) and harder to drag down a hill than up.  Lucky it comes with a trailer hitch for a quad or tractor.  Huge engine.  Has a shoot that you can point in any direction, to toss the chips where you want them.

Honda:  Heavy, amazingly quiet, great on gas, and will run 2 coolers, a water cooler, a battery charger, several lights and if you have a fat HD extension cord, it will run a 1/2 horse radial arm saw.  Twice we blew the breaker on it due to a cheap high resistance overly long extension cord.  Keep it short and you won't have problems. Another great feature of the Honda Generator is the Eco Drive.  This is amazing.  You turn this on and the RPMs slow down to give only enough power for what is needed.   Plug something else in, and the engine speeds up to accommodate the draw of electricity.  We used this extensively, except when using the radial arm saw.  Then, is when it was advantageous to keep the speed up continuously.

 The down side is:  for 2600 dollars, and at 150 lbs it should have wheels like the cheaper, lighter unit.  Don't soak me for another 275 dollars to save me from having a hernia.   NOTE: As a gesture of rebellion, I managed to get a Honda sticker and put it on my little red wagon I use to haul it around.  :p

 One thing I admittedly dreaded was driving 12 hours with our trailer full of our prized possessions.  The trailer was purchased used when we moved out to British Columbia back in 2007.  I loaded all the heavy dive gear and a bunch of the wood and metal machines we had to move.  Somewhere, I developed a short which tripped a fuse in the 1998 Dodge we had.  Unfortunately, the fuse was used to power everything on the trailer, including the brakes.  To drive that beast 14' x 7' @ 7500 lbs, through the mountains of BC did raise the blood pressure.  Not to mention it had been sitting in our driveway for 10 years.   I had had Fountain Tire check the brakes to make sure they weren't seized, and they said it worked perfectly.  That eased my mind.......  a little.

Our Honda EU3000is with cart

Another great score.  A cement mixer for cheap.  You never know when you will need one.

 I really hated backing that monster up and down the driveway since it was so steep, but I did have lots of experience with trailers and 50 ft buses, working for Greyhound.  I bit the bullet, and only worried about things that DID go wrong, rather than things that MIGHT go wrong.  Surprisingly, it was easy to move.  Too much worrying for nothing.

 

 For a week before we left, the truck and trailer sat on the road in front of the house.  I didn't want to bring it up the drive and load it, because if it wasn't balanced, the landing gear or back end of the trailer would drag on the drive.  We hauled everything down the driveway and into the trailer.  When we were ready, it was stuffed full.

Some of the main things we took up with us was the oven, the wood chipper, tools, lockers, insulation, wood, stoves, cots, clothes that we would eventually need to move, and thought would get better use up north, electronics, compound bow, shotgun and lots of extra gasoline, and the list went on. 

 We targeted 8:00 pm to leave and were on time.  D and I stopped at the local Chevron and filled up.  We were off and running.  Everything was going well, except for the fuel consumption.  Through the Fraser Canyon we would make it up to Cache Creek (about 3 1/2 hours away) just above empty.  If it was any worse on fuel we would have had to use the gas cans, since it was at night, and gas stations were few and far between.  We developed the 'Fuel up in every town' plan.  Meaning, we didn't know when, or IF there would be a gas station open in the next town, and nothing would be open until morning.

As it turned out, we filled up in Cache Creek, 100 mile, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George, and Fraser Lake.  This would give us about a 1/2 tank of fuel when we got to the cabin.  All tolled, it took 13 hours with fuel stops, and bad timing on the ferry schedule.  (Meaning, we always seemed to 'Just Missed It', and still do).

 Coming up the driveway with the trailer was like bushwhacking through an open field with 50-60 ft trees on either side of you.  Grass we drove over was met by trees we mowed down with the bumper.  We parked the truck and trailer on a flat area about 150 ft from the house.  From  there we would have to back the trailer in to unload our stuff.  But before we could do  that, we needed to do some maintenance.  That meant mowing the lawn, trees, weeds, flowers, and any small critters that got in the way.  450 ft of driveway mowing was not on our To-Do list.  But I got to it.

This is the flat area that will eventually be our garage / work shop.  Approximately 400 ft up the drive, and 150 ft from the house. 

The view from the flat parking area looking up toward the house, 150 ft away.  This was the first views we had of the back of the house in May.  By June the jungle was encroaching on the driveway.

I needed to make a clearing I could swing the truck and trailer in for my back-up approach to the cabin.  The 150 ft of trail from the flat (we will call this the Future Garage Area, aka FGA) was lined with downed trees, and branches making it hard to navigate.  We spent the day transporting some of the lighter stuff, and food into the cabin, and did some widening of the road.  All in all, it went fairly quickly.   At  the same time, I needed to take down all the 12-15 ft trees that had overgrown the front slope and under the second floor deck.  I used the new Stihl Kombo- 131 with a huge blade, to chop the bigger branches, when that dulled, I went to the accessory chainsaw.  All the branches were piled next to the house for D to chip.

 This is a photo of the jungle outside the front door.  Some trees were actually growing through the upper deck.

      

                                  The Front Yard Jungle in the early spring and summer

After two days of weed whacking and playing with the chainsaw I can see the road.

 

This is the start of the pile from the front slope 

  

The front part of the property is full of fallen logs.  This is one of many.

 

                                                              Starting to look livable                                                                                                                                                                                     

D after a few hours of chipping the brush from the front slope.  Yield: 2 yards of chips.

 

Some of D's hard chipped chips, filling the ruts in the road from the house to the flat.

Sign at the ferry terminal.  Got Weeds?  HAHA  HELL YA!!! But not for long!

On this first trip, at night, we measured everything.  The walls, the beams, the railings we planned on changing, the floors we planned on covering, the gables we planned on insulating, EVERYTHING!  D switched the locks to new ones we had the only keys for, this made us feel must safer.  After all, the bears and cougars would have to break a glass window to get in now, instead of going through the door.

One day we even went for a leisurely stroll into the bush to see if we could find the creek.   Although D had experience camping and canoeing, I didn't think she had navigation skills to get us back to the house, so I handed her a can of fluorescent spray paint, while I manned  the machete for the bush.  Ok I cheated a bit on the navigation.  I made a note of which way the sun was casting shadows (A TIP FOR NEWBIES),  I brought my Brunton Compass, and, to ensure we followed the trail back, I took a chip out of the trees as we went, to make it easy  to follow them back.  Bread crumbs so to speak.  

It was hot, it was humid and it was skeeter infested.  D wore a bug net hat, I fended them off with the machete.  As we progressed, we would encounter fallen  trees we would have to navigate around, making it more difficult to figure out where we had been.  Finally after what seemed like 4 - 5 hours we arrived at a ravine. ( Reality dictates it was about 30 minutes). This was not what we had expected.  It was approximately 75 ft across, and steep on the opposite side.  It was hard to get an idea on how deep it was, and if  there was water running at the bottom.  I wanted to keep going, but D asked me an odd question.  "What is the paint for?" .....  I guess she never heard about painting the trees.  When she saw  the notches she got it.  We made it back without incident.

Phase One was pretty much completed.  We got the lay of the land, we had a list of things to do and bring for the next trip, and we were hot, sweaty and exhausted.  Surprisingly, we never felt the need for a shower.  We would wait until we got home for that.

We were still a little nervous about leaving our valuables, so we took the generator home with us the first time around.  

The next night we headed home.  It was after the holiday traffic so it was smooth sailing.  Again we had to worry about where the gas was going to come from on the way back.  After all, it was a holiday weekend.  As it turned out, each larger town, had one gas station open heading north, and one heading south.  We filled up when we could.  

As we approached Spences Bridge, I looked in the mirror and discovered we had no running lights in  the trailer.  As it turned out, there was still a short, and it grounded out at some point, blowing the fuse in the engine compartment of the truck.  Luckily, Chrysler had made some corrections to the design of their electrical systems since our last Dodge.  This one still had the brakes, the tail lights, signals and emergency lights working.  Only the running lights were off.  We made a mad dash for home and only spent a few hours without lights, on the dark road down the Fraser Canyon.

When we got home, I backed the trailer into the driveway fairly easily.  We fought for the shower, and then took a nap before unpacking all the gear.  We were still pumped up with adrenaline. 

The neighbor's dog wondering who is in his territory

Can never remember the ferry schedule, even when I take a photo of it