water heater move part 2

..because stephen asked ;-)

jambaloney here!

sorry - no trout fishing but here was our first frost!

we waited for a perfect day - read, no upcoming visits in case the heater didn't work - first thing i did was some prep work - here i pre-installed a sillcock so there is hot water available in the basement:

the sharkbite fittings are great - it allows you to set up pex in advance - red for hot coming out of the heater with a t-junction to the new sillcock and white for cold inflow with a shut-off valve just in case.

styrofoam down on the stand to insulate the bottom - free @ Home Hardware because it was cracked ;-)

 
 and it needs some osb on top to spread the weight...

now it is time to shut off the breaker - i made this guide, which is easier to read than...

this!

power is off - now to start disconnecting the heater

electricity first!

here are the wires  - notice the green hose on the floor - we are currently draining the water heater..

while we wait - we can install the extra wire to reach the basement! that toolbox has all my electrical tools in it - good to keep them separate.

here are the wires in the junction box - i will put it on the wall when the heater has been moved.

time to cut the copper - it is sheathed in foam

a hacksaw is useful - and emery cloth to sand of the burrs from the cut pipe...

the sheathing is removed and the pipes will be cut in the basement where the copper pipes are showing ..

FAIL - there is not enough room against the wall to use the hacksaw - good thing i have an angle grinder!!!!

here are the pipes cut and sanded

and here are the new fittings popped on top! if you don't know about sharkbites - learn !! they make plumbing waaaaay easier and they are removable - you can dis-connect and re-connect time and again!!! here is the link:

http://www.sharkbite.com/

w probably doesn't approve ;-)))))

now to cut off the pipes upstairs...

 code states that at least 18" of pipe from a water heater needs to be metal - i left a generous 30"......

moving the water heater (long since drained)  - k moved the dolly while i lifted when necessary... interwebs stated that water heaters empty are 90 lbs - this was a LOT heavier than 90 lbs !!!!!!

in place in the basement - home stretch now - woot!!!

elbow fittings connected the heater to the  other ends of the red and white pex...

plumbing is complete!!!!!

back upstairs to drill the junction box to the wall and cover....

and connect the wires in the heater - we are done!!!

last step is to fasten the pipes and wires securely to the wall and then turn on the breaker.. after 6 hours we had hot water!  it made some noise pushing the air out when we first turned it on, plus the water was a bit "rusty" in coulour... but after 15 mins or so, all was back to normal - a BIG success - tons of storage available now!!!

nice fall sky out back ;-)

hope you are all getting fall chores done - cheers!

kymber adds: woohoo! now we finally have a utility closet in the house...and our friends c &b gave us a really nifty cabinet thing that will hold all kinds of stuff - mason jars and lids, seeds and who knows what else!!!! picture of utility closet coming soon.

we are off to our halloween dance in fourchu tonight - woohoo - we are pretty excited! pics of us in costume coming in the next post! have a great weekend!

it's been another busy week!

wow! it's been another busy, but very fun week! and the weather has been brilliant!

 

i love all of the beautiful colours during autumn - so pretty! the sunsets have been pretty amazing, too!



we've been sitting out every evening with a cup of mint tea, or chamomile tea, or a mixture of the two. there is nothing like fresh tea from fresh herbs!



on saturday we had our volunteer fire department annual potluck supper in fourchu. all of the VFD members bring a main dish and a dessert. community members from both framboise and fourchu also bring side dishes or main dishes as well. let me just say that there was a ton of food! we had such a good time talking with all of our friends and community members - especially the ones that we don't see at the dances! oh and speaking of food - MEATPIE!!! it was delicious!



we scarfed that baby back all evening and then finished the rest off for breakfast - i love homemade meatpie! it contained steak cubes, potatoes, carrots, turnip and onion - yummeh!

we also went to visit our friends, c & b, and ended up having a hoot. our other friends, s & d, also showed up. as did b's brother, d. needless to say, even though everyone was tired, a party ensued. it was a blast hanging out with our friends. we also got to meet c & b's daughters new boyfriend, m. we all teased the crap out of him because he can sure take a ribbing - it was a great evening and fun was had by all.

here's some hassleback roasted potatotes, steamed broccoli and a bunch of sauteed veggies with some of our friend d's apple.

our friend d gave us another big bag of apples, they are liberty apples and they are sweet and tart at the same time. they are so fresh and crisp - we'll have apples for most of the winter!

 here's another beautiful day - the clouds are so pretty and the sky is so blue!

we also had our friend e's son and girlfriend come over for the day. jambaloney and h went to the beach to get sand to fill in the ruts in our driveway - he'll have a post up about it soon. it's great to be able to just go to the beach and get all the sand, small rocks, medium rocks and big rocks whenever you need it! they also got another huge load of seaweed to add to our compost - woohoo!

oh and i learned a new trick about seaweed! one of our patriarchs that i haven't really had much time with yet was talking to me and found out that me and jambaloney grew food. he told me that his father had a huge garden and he used seaweed to keep out the weeds. he told me to make a pile of seaweed and let it get rained on and snowed on for a season. then before putting it down as mulch, give it a good soaking. then lay the strips of seaweed all around your plants. is that awesome or what????

speaking of awesome - how about some pizza?

i made the crust super thin, rubbed olive oil all over it, crushed garlic, tomatoe, olives, parsley, feta and mozzarella - divine!

in gardening news, i have radishes, beets, swiss chard, spinach and kale coming along nicely. i will transplant my sage, mint, oregano, chamomile and parsley into pots and put them in the greenhouse to hopefully have fresh herbs all winter - that would be soooo awesome! i will also start a variety of lettuces in pots in the greenhouse. it will be nice to have fresh food during the winter! especially fresh food that we grew ourselves!

anyway - we got costumes from our friend c for our halloween dance this saturday. they are really crazy about halloween around here - just about everyone dresses up and just about everyone goes to the dance for at least an hour. we'll be there with our group of friends and close the place - bahahahah! wait until you see jambaloney's costume - it's soooo funny!

i'll be hitting up your blogs later this eve! right now i gotta go feed the man and stir my broth - i'm making a big, giant pot of broth and the smell in the house is just wonderful! speaking of wonderful - i hope that you are all having a wonderful day, too!

what a weekend!

we have been having some beautiful, fresh, clear fall days - and we have been taking advantage of these days by suntanning out on the front deck - it's been lovely!

 

wow! this thanksgiving weekend was a whirlwind - we had a blast! friday afternoon we went to our friend's daughter's birthday party...6 screaming 9yr old girls - bahahahah! but they had so much fun! they were playing outside for the whole time and having a blast. us adults hid in the kitchen - bahahahah! we had hotdogs and hamburgers and ice cream and our friend, S, made up little gift bags for the girls to take home with them. i thought that was really sweet!

saturday night we had our community centre dance - it was a hoot. there were only about 20 people there but the majority were our framboise family members, including V, B,C, S, D, R, E, D, and we were thrilled that our brother and sister C and G were up from the mainland!!! also our fourchu family C and B were there! we all danced and talked all night! so much fun!

but on sunday we went to our framboise family's house for thanksgiving dinner. i ate 2 whole plates of stuffing, turkey, smashed and gravey, mashed carrot and turnip - delicious! the company was wonderful too! we made a pumpkin pie to bring, and we brought all of the ingredients to make the icing at the house. jambaloney makes icing from scratch using whipping cream - it is delicious!

Sweet Sandy - i got to show off my beautiful measuring spoons. i normally don't use them, the are hanging on the cupboards as decoration. when i showed my friend C the beautiful spoons, she said "OMG! you can't use those! they should be hung as decorations!!!". i told her that i don't normally use them but that i wanted her to see them. she thinks they are lovely! and so did V and E!

our friend D brought a big bag of apples for us from his apple trees...he is the man that owns the blueberry farm...such a thoughtful guy! i had dreams of apple sauce, apple pies and apple butter! but it isn't going to happen. we have been eating 3 or 4 raw apples a day - they are so crisp and fresh and refreshing! i talked to D's wife, E, on the phone last night and told her we were eating the apples like crazy. she said she would get D to get us another big bag - teehee. i sure do hope so! D grows the best blueberries and apples that i have ever eaten!

on sunday evening we went to our fourchu family's house...my friend C is crazy for halloween and had all kinds of ghouls and ghosts and blinking lights and a bowl of candy with a hand in it and when you reached for the candy - the hand grabbed you! she also had a phone that would ring and when you answered, it would say "i know what you are doing and i know where you are!" - bahahahah! a couple of other friends arrived with their young kids and the kids just loved it all. she had the downstairs and the upstairs decorated! people have been dropping in with their kids for the past few days and will continue to drop in until halloween. the kids just love it!

and on monday, we were back at our fourchu family's house for another thanksgiving meal! oh yummeh! they always send us home with bucket loads of leftovers! we had a really good time and our friend B's mom and dad came too! it was an awesome time!

so we have had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend, yet again, because of all of our good friends and family. it is so nice to arrive in the middle of nowhere, where people have known each other their whole lives and be so warmly accepted! we feel like thanksgiving is every day since we got here...and it is our favourite holiday so how cool is that?

anyway, we were expecting a frost the other day and picked all of our peppers! we got a ton! so for last night's supper i made stuffed peppers with feta - yummeh!

i will make a variety of sauces out of the rest of the peppers for jambaloney to enjoy all winter.

here was today's dinner - marinated shish-kebabs and rice - i marinate the veg in olive oil, garlic, cumin, cayenne and turmeric for about an hour and once cooked, the veg just melt right in your mouth!

for supper tonight i am trying a new recipe for roasted potatoes - i hope it turns out! we will have steamed broccoli and carrots with the potatoes. we have many meat-free days a week...not for any other reason than that we really like veggies and fruits. but don't get me wrong - we love our meat, too! our brother B is going to get us a deer this hunting season. jambaloney probably won't get a chance to get out - he needs to go and get us a 20lb bass and 20lbs of smelt! plus there are all of the jobs that poor man has to do to get us winterized. we'll be in much better shape next fall and he can go out hunting. until then, our brother B will take care of us. we'll have deer meat for all winter, spring and summer - yum!

anyway, i am off to make supper and will be back later this eve to check out all of your latest posts! to our canadian readers - i hope that you had a wonderful, family-filled thanksgiving weekend. to our american friends - i hope that you had a lovely weekend. ciao for now!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

monday is Canadian Thanksgiving - Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian readers! so that means this is a long weekend up here in canada - woohoo! and it is going to be a long one as we have events all weekend - plus we went to our friend's daughter's 9th birthday yesterday. we were only there for about 3hrs but, suffice it to say, we are shell-shocked and traumatized! and there were only 6 nine yr olds there! talk about bushwhacked - we came home and flumped for the rest of the evening!



i know i am kind of going backwards and forwards but thursday was a gorgeous autumn day! we went down to the river and jam did some fishing just off the boat - i mean yacht - launch. he can't keep any trout and he's not trying to catch any - he just loves casting. i love sitting on the boat - i mean yacht - watching him.

it was a beautiful visit to the river but no dips!waaaay tooo cold!

 

here's some dinner from the other day - we love vietnamese spring rolls! these babies are stuffed with fresh mint, fresh thai basil and fresh cilantro - all from our garden. talk about kick-you-in-the-head delicious herbs!

here's a beautiful american mountain ash tree on our property - sooo beautiful!

our first spring/summer here, we thought it was dead but it came right back to life this year. we love it!

here's the last of our harvest of peppers. we are supposed to get close to a frost tonight and i didn't want to risk them. being that i have never grown a pepper in my life, i am pretty impressed with this last haul. i will be able to make a variety of sauces for jambaloney to get us through until next summer - that saves money - woohoo!

we had a busy day harvesting the last of the peppers, roasting a big, giant local pumpkin and making puree for pumpkin pies, roasting pumpkin seeds and getting in the last of our nasturtiums to dry. jambaloney did some more work on the greenhouse. here's a nice, light afternoon snack - cream cheese on smoked salmon, rolled up and stuffed into nasturtium flowers - so spicey - yummeh! with chives and fresh roasted pumpkin seeds on the side!

here's a close-up of the cream cheese/salmon stuffed nasturtiums - deelish!

and lastly, i had enough pumpkin puree for 2 pies plus a bunch left over. so i made soup.

this soup is made with a ton of garlic, a ton of ginger, some sweet onions, curry powder, chilies, homemade stock and cocunut milk - it is spicey as oh heck and we have been sweating buckets since we ate it!

tonight we have our last dance of the year - we are really looking forward to it! and then tomorrow we are having thanksgiving dinner with our framboise family, and then monday we are having thanksgiving dinner with our fourchu family. it's going to be awesome! can you say turkey, smashed and gravey? i know that you can! and you know that i am going to gain 30lbs this weekend - bahahahahah! we are making a pumpkin pie to bring to each dinner - i sure hope the pies turn out. cross your fingers for me eh?

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all of you! this is our very favourite holiday of the year...and we have much to be thankful for! not the least of which is having really good friends who always have your back!

river days, some food...and yes, i buckled and bought a bucket of freeze dried food!

here's a beautiful sunset that we enjoyed a few nights ago...amazing eh?

and then a river day that looked like this - it was wonderful. we downed tools after working all morning, caulking and sealing all of the screw holes in the greenhouse to make it as airtight as possible.

 
here's some yummy steak and a greek salad for supper - it was delicious!

next up - a bit of a ramble. i have never been into stockpiling MRE's or freeze-dried food. i stockpile whole foods and for those of you who know what i mean, you will understand. we can freeze and dehydrate whole foods...and that is what we stockpile. we cook almost everything from scratch...and little things like balogna sandwiches will eventually run out in the event of some cosmic-scale collapse! so we will simply do without and make blueberry jam sandwiches - know what i mean? that is how we approach our prepping.

however, my friend denob, the prepared Canadian put up such an interesting post on the Canadian Preppers Network about a month back...and it really got me thinking. maybe it is because he is doing such a good job running both the network and the forum. maybe it's because i trust his judgement. maybe it's because he takes such a scientific approach, using his kids and family as the scientific testers - bahahahah! oh he's funny - he is! but i trust his opinion and he is never afraid to share it! he got the Chef's Banquet Ark Bucket from Briden Solutions, a Canadian company, and he put it to the test. you can read more about his scientific tests of the bucket here. anyway, i was convinced. did we need 335 freeze dried meals in our preps. yes, i think it was finally time to incorporate them in our preps.

so we ordered the bucket. got it in about a week and a half. for those concerned with OPSEC, the bucket arrived in a plain brown box with absolutely nothing identifying what was in the box. NOT like the Safecastle and MountainHouse boxes which i have read come with blaring advertisements on the box as to the contents!!!

here is our bucket.

here are all of the freeze-dried meals guaranteed to last 20yrs...however, i have read that they last much longer.

here is what the bucket contains. if you can't read it, go to the CPN for a link to the Ark bucket.

remember our crappy little closet with the water heater in it?

well, you will remember that our house is a cottage with an addition stuck on the side. remember we have 2 attics and that when the addition was stuck on they didn't even remove the siding from the first cottage? anyway, all of that to say...when jambaloney first started trying to find a way into the second, or first attic, i can't say which- he found this little hidey-hole behind the gyprock in that crappy little closet. can you say SCORE?!?!?!?  oh i know you can! have a peak!

i removed a bunch of our preps so that you could see the shelves and whatnot that he put in. this little hidey-hole, when covered stores ALOT of preps. when all of our preps are in it, it is full to the max and because i am tiny, i am the one who goes up there to document and add new preps. well that is where the Briden Ark bucket lives...along with all of our other preps. this is just one of our preps storing areas. but i wanted to show you that there are many places to find in your home for hiding preps and i also wanted to tell you that, yes, i buckled and bought a bucket of freeze-dried preps. again, i trust denob/thePreparedCanadian...and that's why we bought the bucket...at a very good price i might add. 335 meals. on top of our several years worth of preps, i think i can stop worrying for a while.

it's been a beautiful couple of days. we've been spending afternoons suntanning on the front deck or down at the river. have a look-see:

we had a bit of a celebration yesterday afternoon - getting all of the screws in the greenhouse caulked, sealed and painted...a bit of a milestone...it will make the greenhouse airtight for the winter. so for our afternoon celebration, we had a big-*ssed BLT, some dark ale and some wine.

we took our celebration meal out on the front deck, naked as the day is long, baked in the sun, and enjoyed each other's company.

that above is what i looked at while i ate my sandwich.

and there's nothing like some chicken wraps for supper - yummeh!

we spent this afternoon at the river...hopefully i fried myself to a crisp. i need to bake the tan in so i can be sorta' brown until the middle of november, ya know?

i read and snacked on pita chips while jambaloney suntanned. then the hill-billy boat launch started calling to him so he went and worked on it some more.

it's been a really good couple of days. we have a really looooong weekend coming up this weekend - it is Canadian Thanksgiving...our favourite holiday! and we are booked from friday through to monday. how awesome eh?