The latest ice report
December 11, 2011
As regulars know, I start the winter’s ice report as a post on the blog. Google loves blog posts, but ignores pages on the same site until traffic forces it to take notice. Reverse chronological order of postings makes this post soon fade into the other three hundred entries, so you’ll soon find this material posted as as page on the top of the blue column to your right. With enough contributions of data, I’ll be able to keep it up until spring breakup.
Sunday, 11 December, 2011
Intrepid hunters Vanya Rohwer and Martin Mallett report that between Lower Rock Lake and Opinicon Lake the beaver ponds this morning were frozen to a depth of about 1″, thereby depriving the area of puddle ducks. The streams remain open, and they saw no ice on Rock or Opinicon.
Saturday, 10 December, 2011
Tony Izatt, from Newboro, Ontario, on Newboro Lake, reports no ice yet. “According to my neighbour Greg Monk there was a thin covering earlier this morning along shore, but I guess the wind broke it up. Another neighbour Bob French was out in his boat today. He would have been ice-breaking this morning at the ramp.”
It begins.
December 6, 2011
It all begins with putting up the tree.
With the raising of the tree the Christmas season begins on Young’s Hill. For the next few days Bet will load the tree to the toppling point with lights and ornaments. Any horizontal surface above the floor will gradually grow a spray of boughs and berries. Little-remembered nicknacks will appear from wherever they have been hiding since last January and join the festoons of greenery which put the very spiders to shame with their cleverness, and Bet will positively purr with anticipation of her favourite season.
Building a play structure for an adult
November 28, 2011
The local code was clear: if I confined the size of the building to 580 square feet, a concrete slab would do as a foundation. Because I had no idea of what getting a set of engineer’s drawings entailed, this do-it-yourself option looked good to me. 29 by 20 provided a useful hobby room, though Charlie insisted upon a twelve-foot ceiling to accommodate a full-height car hoist.
A year earlier we had started a play structure for a sixty year-old male child, and the workshop had taken shape nicely over the winter. So we knew the basics.
A succession of Charlie’s pals from Kingston poured the slab on a busy fall day.
In spring the walls went up. In real dollars, spruce lumber is cheaper now than at any time I recall. Most of what we used was also of remarkably high quality, evidence of a depressed lumber market. OSB sheeting is also cheap. We wore out one nail gun and replaced it with another.
I had the task of lifting the walls into place. For the workshop the previous year the panels were made of 2X4’s and only stood 9’ high. The old Massey Ferguson proved able to tip them up, sheeting and all, and place them with careful manoeuvres within the 24 by 24 footprint. But these panels were made of 2X6’s and stood 12’ 3” tall. And the floor was only 19’ wide. How could we do it?
Over the winter Peter Myers had welded some lifting hooks onto the upper corners of the bucket of the more modern 35 hp. TAFE tractor, so I determined to use its loader for the task. Nine feet in lift height didn’t seem a problem, so I drilled holes at that level in a couple of studs in each panel, then threaded short chains through them before the sheeting went on.
For each panel lying on the concrete floor I would get the bucket as close as possible to the top, hook on the chains, then lift and curl the bucket as the wall came up. This took the slack out of the chains and allowed the panels to balance pretty well on their suspension points 3/4 of the way up. With the help of an assistant I was able to fit the panels neatly over the anchor bolts in the concrete. The TAFE’s power steering let me make some pretty designs in shredded rubber on the fresh gray floor, but to my disappointment they faded soon after.
The trusses were much lighter than those for the workshop, so placing them on the high walls proved easier than I had hoped. Martin and Charlie practically did this operation by themselves.
A year before I had let a salesman talk me into ¾” OSB sheeting for the roof of the workshop. The sheets proved too heavy for one man to handle, so we went with the lighter size for this roof. The modest 5:12 pitch also made work on the roof less fraught with anxiety than on the ostentatious 8:12 of my workshop. My two sessions of shingle surfing* had left Bet a nervous wreck as soon as I touched a ladder and Charlie determined to keep me off his roof.
But an additional trailer-load of scaffold enabled us to work efficiently around the new building. A pair of white oak forks bolted to the bucket of the TAFE did the heavy lifting.
We had three large windows left over from the workshop project and I later found a fourth on Kijiji. Martin and Charlie insisted on doing the soffits and fascia on their own. All I got to do was cut the aluminum on my ancient radial arm saw.
Fibreglass insulation is expensive. A heavy vapour barrier is essential. Sheetrock is cheap. These stages of construction go quickly.
Last week Charlie and Rob showed up to lay the bricks for the stove pedestal. For safety reasons a wood stove must be at least 18” above the floor in a room which may house a motor vehicle. Gas fumes are heavier than air. At the end of the evening they proudly lifted the stove into place on their masterpiece. The next day Bet and I hooked up the stove pipes.
So then it came down to me to close in the gaping 10 X 9 entrance. For my workshop I had found a mahogany door left over from a building project in Lakefield. To justify its price I resolved to build a copy of it for another building, so I ordered the shaper cutters, laid in a supply of hemlock (what they use for frames on a “solid mahogany” door) and glued up and beveled twenty-four black walnut panels. Though it’s strong and resistant to rot, in quality local hemlock ranges from excellent to unusable, so it’s wise to buy lots of material for something like this.
Kevin at Commercial Door Systems of Kingston took an interest in the project and set me up with a kit of heavy duty hardware. Yesterday we completed the assembly, so now Charlie has a weatherproof play structure for his automotive activities. Next step: assemble the hydraulic hoist.
Lesley, the Rockies, and a new Jag
November 20, 2011
Every time I take a bite of halibut or salmon from the freezer, I think kind thoughts of Mrs. Lesley Reid for deciding to send her little brother Tony and his friend on a fishing trip to Northern British Columbia last June. As earlier columns no doubt made it clear, this was my first trip to the west coast, first helicopter ride, first encounter with a huge tree, first look at a whale, and the list goes on.
I could add to the list my first chauffeured drive in a new Jaguar XJL and my first meal at an Elvis-themed restaurant, for on one of our sight-seeing days Lesley determined that we should visit Hell’s Gate, the point at which the Fraser River, which is over a mile wide outside their guest house, narrows down to a roaring gulch accessible only by cable car and suspension bridge.
While exploring on our own Tony and I had borrowed Alex’s Cadillac, but Lesley suggested that we take her XJL on this longer trip, so Tony twisted the shift dial to reverse, the navigation system switched over to a camera view of the flower beds and other obstacles behind (courteously showing where the wheels will go in yellow dotted lines on the screen), and we backed out of the driveway and onto our adventure. To say the big Jag is an impressive touring car is to understate the obvious: it’s a car fit for a queen. In fact, Queen Elizabeth has one.
On the road it was quiet and very comfortable. Tony seemed to rein in his normal dodgem-cars-driving style in favour of a more sedate pace, and the cat purred us up and down the steep slopes while I took photos of more and more of the guard rails on the Trans-Canada Highway. The Rocky Mountains are huge and magnificent, but they won’t fit into my little Canon.
I couldn’t help but think of how hard it must have been to live in or travel through this section of the country before the tunnels and the highway were built. The Fraser is a wild river with enormous fluctuations in flow over the course of the year. It shows no consideration whatever for life forms trying to live in its path.
After an hour or so of this fascinating drive we fetched up in a crowded parking lot: Hell’s Gate. Lesley asked us to wait while she walked over to the ticket booth, then returned, suggested proper clothing and cameras, and we stepped onto the cable car which sloped down to a museum on the other side of the river.
A pleasant young woman introduced us to the spectacle. She launched into a witty speech describing a colourful history of this point on the river as we dropped into the dark of the gorge. She ended her pitch just as the Airtram bumped against its stop. I saw satisfaction in her face: she had timed it just right.
The tourist complex down in the gorge is part museum, part gift shop, part fish-viewing station. The artist’s renderings of the original trail through the gorge nearly made me air-sick. To avoid high water the aboriginal builders suspended scaffolds half-way up the sheer side of the gorge as a trail through the difficult sections. From the murals these primitive structures seemed to require a great deal of climbing ability, nonetheless. Now I understood why it cost so much to ship freight to the inland of British Columbia during the gold rush. They had to pay men to carry the stuff on their backs over mile after mile of these terrifying scaffolds, and also pay tolls to the tribes who owned the structures.
But soon a sign read “fish ladder” and Tony and I were off to find salmon. Lesley hit the book store and loaded a shopping bag with titles on the Fraser and Hell’s Gate.
She gave me three of them, suggesting that I could find answers to some of my many questions. She only gave Tony one. Squeaky wheel syndrome, I guess.
On the other end of the tunnel just up the road lies the Elvis Rocks the Canyon Cafe. It was kind of a seedy place, but with a certain charm, too. The menu was loaded with Elvis favourites. No wonder the man weighed over 240 pounds at the time of his death. The food was greasy, heavy, and quite delicious.
But the patrons were more interested in who had arrived in the Jaguar than in their food. Lesley shortly was holding court with Winnebego owners, a pair of Harley riders, and a vegetable truck driver. It’s a very nice car, especially in the context of a gravel parking lot overlooking the river, and a quarter-mile-high rock cut on the other side of the Trans-Canada Highway.
On the return trip Lesley suggested a massage, so Tony flicked the switches, and a series of rollers began a gentle, soothing trip up and down my spine. I might have nodded off for a bit there, because the trip back to Abbotsford seemed shorter than the run out.
Standing up the new garage door
November 18, 2011
Homemade overhead garage door
The light was better inside than out by the time we had finished the preliminary fitting, so I took a photo of the back of the door. The bevels face out, of course. The sharp-eyed will see some horizontal cracks in the panels. Not to worry: the walnut panels are tongue-and-grooved as well as coved on the outside to fit the frames.
As it looks I’m going to need to cut the base to fit the contour of the concrete. To the left of the photo you’ll see a piece of 1/2″ sheetrock under the bottom of the door. But the sections are still out of alignment. If I raise the bottom panel another 1/8 to 1/4″ until it’s level, though, and scribe the bottom rail, cut to the contour and then re-install the aluminum and rubber bottom fitting, it should work.
The door, btw, is ten feet wide and nine high. The ceiling is 12′ 2″ in height to accommodate the car hoist.
Stone House Reno 7: The Basement Floor
November 12, 2011
For as long as I can remember the basement of our old stone house has been a warren of horrible little rooms only entered by necessity, but over the last two weeks I have poured concrete in the two areas which still had dirt floors.
The holes in the walls created by small animals over many generations are an affront to my sense of what is right. It doesn’t seem reasonable that critters should have free passage through the basement, even if they do no apparent damage. So I plugged as many low-lying holes in the mortar as I could while dumping the concrete for the floor. Mortar will follow later to seal the walls.
The former wood-storage area has always had air so bad our son couldn’t stay in the room. Turned out that was from an ancient block of firewood lodged behind the oil tank which was slowly turning to dust and releasing spores. Once it was out of there and a cubic yard of concrete mixed and poured, the room developed a completely different air. New florescent lights didn’t hurt, either. The fall vegetable harvest took over the new space with an electronic thermometer so we can monitor storage temperatures from the kitchen. Old horrors die hard.
The room next to the cistern is larger and the footings for the massive wood furnace had to be removed. Early in the renovation process I had pulled the cast iron monster out through the doorways with a long chain and my old Massey Harris 30. But the elevated base remained, so I dug it out, piece by piece.
My friend and companion in this project was my little Bolens tractor. Equipped with a three point hitch dump box I bought on impulse, the Bolens is small enough to back in under the outside stairs and deck, right up to the basement door. It carries away anything I can load into the box, which holds about two good wheelbarrow loads.
So the large slabs of sandstone have been relocated to a storage pile. All I had to do at that end of each trip was back up to the pile, dump, then drive back to the doorway while the little diesel pumped its comforting rhythm beneath me.
In this main room of the basement the 1970’s ductwork cut into the headroom. What’s more, I found the flagstones and concrete of the furnace footings were supported by a pad of crushed limestone gravel. It raked around quite easily. So I dug out a few more stones for the Bolens to haul. I could locate them with a hoe and tip them up, then carry them by hand the twenty feet to the tractor’s box. Easy. The headroom continued to increase as the tractor hauled rocks and grit away.
The job grew strenuous occasionally during battles between larger rocks and my pick, but I could cool down afterward with a tractor ride. That’s the advantage of a very small dump box: lots of breaks keep you going.
Before long the room, which used to consist of walls and a big hump in the middle, became flat enough that I could walk around upright without hitting my head. I even dug down a couple of more inches to leave room for concrete. Over by the water pump it still sloped down a bit, but I put an ABS fitting with a plug there to drain seepage from the pump back down into the dry glacial till below. That’s one advantage to living in a house built on a drumlin.
Then came the concrete. Compared to the complex recipe for mortar, the mix for concrete with Tackaberry’s sand/gravel combination is dead easy: shovel five scoops out of the trailer and into the mixer, add one of portland cement, spray until wet, five more gravel, one more cement, water, gravel, cement, water, then leave to mix while you dump the wheel barrow load already waiting.
It’s not a bad job at all, mixing concrete. The only problem lies at the other end, after dumping it. Proper concrete finishing involves a lot of steps and a complex timeline. All I wanted was to get the floor covered up so the mice would look elsewhere for winter accommodation.
I’d put the plastic vapour barrier down to prevent loss of moisture before the curing process was complete, but the screed, bull float and power trowel stages became a few tentative pokes with a rake to push down the larger gravel, then a float over the surface with a trowel before the next wheelbarrow loads cut off access to this area of the floor.
But gravity is a great help when pouring a floor. Nothing fell off, regardless of how badly I did.
So the floor is crude, but complete. To the satisfaction of the furnace inspector, the line from the tank to the furnace now floats above the new concrete rather than hiding from view in the dirt below.
The new basement should provide about 2500 cubic feet of fresh storage space. That should hold us until Christmas, at least. At under $200 in materials for a week’s worth of home improvements, the project hasn’t broken the bank, either.
What is a senior citizen?
November 6, 2011
“How come you old guys are still working? Last week I had a customer in here from Montreal who bought a load of scaffold. He was starting a new house at 85.”
To say this comment took me aback was an understatement. The owner of the Ottawa scaffold supply company, a genial man of about my age, greeted his customers in person, wrote his bills out in longhand and used a filing cabinet. Yet he saw me as old. What’s more, he lumped me in with an eighty-five year-old.
I wanted to say, “But I’m not of that generation. I’m of the younger generation, a baby boomer. I use a Macbook Pro laptop!” As long as I don’t look in a mirror I’m still the youngest kid in the class. But gray hair and a few years of retirement tends to blur that distinction for others, I guess.
It’s not without its advantages: I don’t get carded at Value Village any more on Tuesdays when I ask for the senior’s 20% discount.
And the income tax break for pensioners is a real help.
But Bangs Fuels has a not-so-fast attitude, and cranked my fuel bill up a notch when Bet and I took ownership of the property. My mother is a senior on their books, but I am not.
Last week when Mom and I were guests at the Portland Senior Citizens lunch I got to speak to the group. They were more polite than most classes I have had, though this might have been because of President Edgar “Thor” Connell’s firm hand on the gavel. While we were setting up one man walked by the screen, looked closely at a shot of three of us blasting down a snow trail on the Ranger and muttered, “That looks like fun.” They liked the aerial shots of the farm in the opening of the slide show, got a kick out of the sugar-making, and agreed that one of Rob Ewart’s low-light photographs had a Norman Rockwell quality.
With a bit of time left at the end I offered a choice of three short stories. They went with “Why nobody will take Bet fishing – more than once.” They seemed to get a kick out of it. For the ten minutes it took me read the story they were just like a high school class.
Warmed by our welcome to this most congenial group, I decided to ask family members and a few correspondents on the Internet for their views on the subject of “What is a senior citizen?”
My former classmate and fellow Old Eight’s member Dave Roberts weighed in from Toronto:
“As Jane and I worked our way through our 50s – we are now 62 – we started to become conscious of our seniority and how others perceived the senior citizen. As you can understand, we had no preconceived notions or definitions. Early retirement and pension questions gave us some early warning signals and benchmarks. Being offered a seat on the bus, to my acute embarrassment, set another. Others came from the different ages attached to discounts, at places like Tim Horton’s, movie theatres, and that ultimate test-track, Florida. Of course too, at any gathering of our peers, including our fabled 8s, we all talk about seniority and our respective aches and ailments. Combine it all: we have a definition.”
My wife offered the following critique of my form during a recent session of shingling:
“You’re too old to be on a roof. Have you ever seen yourself walk around up there? You make little, lurchy steps and look as if you are terrified. Perhaps you are. But there is also a good deal of terror involved on the part of the observer. I find it really nerve wracking to be the one on the ground.”
To get the perspective of someone in her eighties, I asked my mother to define the senior citizen.
“It’s primarily a matter of health. At seventy I did not feel like a senior, though at eighty-five I feel old. But some days I feel pretty good. I think I’m in good health for my age. In my last year of teaching when I had a huge special ed class I felt a lot older than I do now.”
Moored4 from Washington wrote:
“I used to think that anyone over 50 was old or “a senior citizen” but then at 60 I redefined that to be the age of 70, but now that I’m 67 I think maybe it ought to be 80 years old. I still have the same thought patterns that I had when I was in my mid-20s, I still do all the things I have always done, do my own tractor work and repair, break my own horses, play pranks on my friends. So maybe at 90 you might be a senior! I guess as long as the buzzards aren’t sitting on my stomach I’ll still think I’m young.”
the Walnut Diary 