Well, now it's 5 years out here. Going on our 6th Christmas....
Daughter just told us she's preggie, so that will be the 3rd grandkid. My youngest is still to get married, so hopefully I get a good crop... It makes me think of my own grandfather, he'd been to war, then an electrician, seemed but did he just feel like an 18 year old that didn't know anything in his head too? I sure don't feel old and wise I'll tell you that.
I've taken what I learned about editing and youtube in general, and started a new channel about what I do out here. The idea is take a big project and compress it to 10 minutes. Doesn't really teach anything, although later on I might have a separate channel with more in depth explanations, since for every video I usually have a LOT of footage I whittle down. Tombstone Ranch I think I've managed to get like 10 subs so far, so I'd welcome any new ones.
Being October, I'm knee deep in firewood again. Every year it's been the same thing: cut and stack about 12 cords of wood, fill the wood shed to the brim, then run out of wood in April. SO, I ordered a new boiler. Same brand, but a 24 year newer design. The old boiler was just a big box and a blower. You burned wood and it heated the box, which has a big water jacket around it, the excess heat just shoots up the chimney. The new one burns supposedly 60-70% more efficiently. My old one wasn't properly cared for, there was a thick layer of creosote from whatever they were burning in it (I would guess garbage and everything that would burn), so heat transfer wasn't good at all. I'd been inside the thing scraping at the stuff, I tried torching it out, creosote remover, all that, but it was just time to start fresh. A Central boiler 865 HDX, it burns the wood, then also burns the wood gas, runs the heat through channels and various heat exchangers. Supposedly it leaves hardly any ash compared to the old one. The catch is the price, these are $30,000 CAD give or take, plus delivery. My excavator konked out right after I lifted it off the truck, so I am waiting on a repair guy to come out and get that running so I can actually install this thing, clock is ticking on how cold the house gets before I can get it hooked up.
Last year I picked up a snowmobile, a boondocker, LONG before I found out just how hard it is to ride a sled out here. I was expecting something like Ontario riding, sliding along on scenic paths definitely not sipping a cold beverage due to the millions of cops on the trails. I forgot there's simply no trails out here, and getting stuck is pretty much the thing you do most, and at almost 60, I just don't want to "go over there" bad enough to spend 2 hours a trip digging and pulling on a snowmobile, so now I'm looking to trade it for another side by side. There's a huge trading community out here, everyone is looking for something and has something, especially this close to a ski resort.
Had to put down the last of the dogs I brought out from Ontario this year. That still sucks donkey balls, especially the females. So now I'm running a couple of mutts I got off the reservation. One is a husky shepherd rottie mix, the other is a shepherd Cane Corso mix. I expected them both to be wild vicious attack dogs, especially the Corso, but instead they are cuddly.
That's the dog couch, in the bigdog room/office. That's where I'm going to build the new crab tank , overtop of it. The tank shouldn't be all that heavy without much water, but I'll be building it out of solid timber just in case I ever DO want water in it.
Of course, that will be an episode too once it gets done. 10 minutes. Oh and I DID get the booth built since last year too:
We had the house glass-blasted, all the finish taken off and re-done as well, and to celebrate the new look I got one of the local redskins to carve me a 6 foot tall bear:
Look at the finish of the logs around him. Previously it was an awful, dry flaking red with green finish. I called it a gingerbread house
After:
I'm still developing that lower level, plan to put in a sauna and some big ass rocks. Can't really have wood around your house in wildfire areas (we are quite close to Summerland which burned this summer), so I have a LOT of gravel I've laid down, more to come. Oh and there's this guy out here that reconditions hot tubs, strips them down, replaces jets and electronics, for a fraction of the cost of a new one. We priced out a jacuzzi 7'x7' at THIRTY THOUSAND, and there is NO way we were paying that, but for $8K, we got a really nice jacuzzi brand tub with 2 years warranty, and I was paying a young guy from Canada, not some faceless corporation from wherever.
Speaking of fire...now that "climate change" is the excuse for everything, pretty much every August is spent like this:
We spent probably 3 weeks with this. Our daughter lives in Summerland so was evacuated to our house, and then the fire started coming our way (again).
Daughter just told us she's preggie, so that will be the 3rd grandkid. My youngest is still to get married, so hopefully I get a good crop... It makes me think of my own grandfather, he'd been to war, then an electrician, seemed but did he just feel like an 18 year old that didn't know anything in his head too? I sure don't feel old and wise I'll tell you that.
I've taken what I learned about editing and youtube in general, and started a new channel about what I do out here. The idea is take a big project and compress it to 10 minutes. Doesn't really teach anything, although later on I might have a separate channel with more in depth explanations, since for every video I usually have a LOT of footage I whittle down. Tombstone Ranch I think I've managed to get like 10 subs so far, so I'd welcome any new ones.
Being October, I'm knee deep in firewood again. Every year it's been the same thing: cut and stack about 12 cords of wood, fill the wood shed to the brim, then run out of wood in April. SO, I ordered a new boiler. Same brand, but a 24 year newer design. The old boiler was just a big box and a blower. You burned wood and it heated the box, which has a big water jacket around it, the excess heat just shoots up the chimney. The new one burns supposedly 60-70% more efficiently. My old one wasn't properly cared for, there was a thick layer of creosote from whatever they were burning in it (I would guess garbage and everything that would burn), so heat transfer wasn't good at all. I'd been inside the thing scraping at the stuff, I tried torching it out, creosote remover, all that, but it was just time to start fresh. A Central boiler 865 HDX, it burns the wood, then also burns the wood gas, runs the heat through channels and various heat exchangers. Supposedly it leaves hardly any ash compared to the old one. The catch is the price, these are $30,000 CAD give or take, plus delivery. My excavator konked out right after I lifted it off the truck, so I am waiting on a repair guy to come out and get that running so I can actually install this thing, clock is ticking on how cold the house gets before I can get it hooked up.
Last year I picked up a snowmobile, a boondocker, LONG before I found out just how hard it is to ride a sled out here. I was expecting something like Ontario riding, sliding along on scenic paths definitely not sipping a cold beverage due to the millions of cops on the trails. I forgot there's simply no trails out here, and getting stuck is pretty much the thing you do most, and at almost 60, I just don't want to "go over there" bad enough to spend 2 hours a trip digging and pulling on a snowmobile, so now I'm looking to trade it for another side by side. There's a huge trading community out here, everyone is looking for something and has something, especially this close to a ski resort.
Had to put down the last of the dogs I brought out from Ontario this year. That still sucks donkey balls, especially the females. So now I'm running a couple of mutts I got off the reservation. One is a husky shepherd rottie mix, the other is a shepherd Cane Corso mix. I expected them both to be wild vicious attack dogs, especially the Corso, but instead they are cuddly.
That's the dog couch, in the bigdog room/office. That's where I'm going to build the new crab tank , overtop of it. The tank shouldn't be all that heavy without much water, but I'll be building it out of solid timber just in case I ever DO want water in it.
Of course, that will be an episode too once it gets done. 10 minutes. Oh and I DID get the booth built since last year too:
We had the house glass-blasted, all the finish taken off and re-done as well, and to celebrate the new look I got one of the local redskins to carve me a 6 foot tall bear:
Look at the finish of the logs around him. Previously it was an awful, dry flaking red with green finish. I called it a gingerbread house
After:
I'm still developing that lower level, plan to put in a sauna and some big ass rocks. Can't really have wood around your house in wildfire areas (we are quite close to Summerland which burned this summer), so I have a LOT of gravel I've laid down, more to come. Oh and there's this guy out here that reconditions hot tubs, strips them down, replaces jets and electronics, for a fraction of the cost of a new one. We priced out a jacuzzi 7'x7' at THIRTY THOUSAND, and there is NO way we were paying that, but for $8K, we got a really nice jacuzzi brand tub with 2 years warranty, and I was paying a young guy from Canada, not some faceless corporation from wherever.
Speaking of fire...now that "climate change" is the excuse for everything, pretty much every August is spent like this:
We spent probably 3 weeks with this. Our daughter lives in Summerland so was evacuated to our house, and then the fire started coming our way (again).
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