After The Root Cellar

There is life after the root cellar. I was beginning to wonder because once I started on the cellar it dominated so much time that I was almost overwhelmed for a few weeks.

The day after the root cellar was in the ground, covered with dirt and we thought it was done we started digging again. This time it is for a "Gray Water" drain system.

Cute Huh, this is the little digger I borrowed from Tom that I thought I was going to use to dig the root cellar hole. It digs a maximum of six feet deep and will only lift about 4 feet above ground level. I would have had to hand dig a vast majority of the cellar hole. I had to hand dig a portion of the outhouse pit and also the gray water hole I am going to show.

This is me hand digging.

Here are two 55 gallon plastic barrels. These barrels are drilled full of 1" holes all over them on the bottom and sides. Then they are completely surrounded by hundreds of rocks that are 2" to 4" diameter and then smaller stone and sand on top of the big rock. The smaller rock is to stop the sand from filtering down into the barrels.

These barrels are piped together and the pipe goes back into the cabin. We will find time to "plumb" the sinks and shower into this in the near future. This will eliminate drain buckets and having to put a pipe out the window for a shower drain.The tops of these barrels are about 42" below ground and hopefully will drain all winter. This system will only take shower and sink water. Maybe someday I will build a cesspool for a real flush toilet, until that it is still the outhouse.

This side yard really took a "diggin" after I had it all ready for grass. Now we will have to spend hours next spring picking up all of the rock that has been dug up and spread threw out the soil. We will also have to roto-til and mix in some top soil before much will grow. The rocks had all frozen in the night after we finished this. We were pushing the edge of winter freeze to get this stuff done.

There has been a real evolution taking place on this property. Here are a few pictures from our arrival on 6-10-2010

And now here it is just 43 days after we had arrived.

And now at 17 months, do you notice any difference?

I do have a goal that I want to achieve. I would like to be able to snap pictures virtually anywhere within 100 yards of the cabin and not have a blue tarp in the picture. Since about 2 days after we got here we have had something covered with a tarp somewhere. I don't know if I can ever get totally away from it because there is always 4 wheeler's to cover or snowmachines to cover or a rogue wood pile somewhere. It sounds like a pretty hefty goal after I type this out. That is going to take a lot more buildings.

The reasons for all of the clearing around the cabin are many. We now have a fire break in case of a forest fire. We have separation from the trees for "Blow down" as happens so often out here. Now they won't hit the cabin if one falls. Also and probably #1 for Myra is BUGS. With getting the forest this far back we will have a greatly reduced bug population right near the cabin.

We also have plenty of room for snowmachine turn around and snow shedding off of the buildings has a place to go. I still have to get the shop built farther away from the cabin because we don't have enough room for snow between the cabin and shop. By February the snow is piled very deep in that area.

And then,, there is the view. This was the view looking toward the river when we got here.

And here is our view today (late October 2011) from about the same angle.

We have a pretty nice little piece of Gods' world to enjoy today.

I have moved the water supply pump and pressure tank into the root cellar and we are pumping water from there now, instead of from a barrel upstairs. The hope is to not have to haul or pump water up to the barrel upstairs in the cabin. The only problem I am having right now is the pipe I ran from the cellar to the corner of the kitchen needs insulated differently. I built a 2 inch Styrofoam box about 12" square and packed it with fiberglass insulation around a 2" plastic pipe. It goes down about 7 feet total from the cabin to the 90 where it goes into the cellar. I then piled dirt up all around the Styrofoam box as high as I could under the cabin. I then ran a flexible high pressure nylon tubing threw the 2" pipe to serve as the water supply line. The water line keeps freezing about 18" below the bottom of the cabin. It is a good thing the line is flexible and I left slack in it. I just pull it up and flex it around to break the ice, then run a little fan on it for about 5 minutes and poof,, we have water again. I should be working on fixing that problem instead of typing this but,, Oh well.

On a little side note of the water,,, What a nice thing it is to have 33 to 34 degree water coming out of the tap for drinking water. This root cellar thing just might work out really well.

It has been Great sharing with you again today.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. We went to a Neighborhood dinner at Bentallit Lodge with about 20 other people and had a good meal and a good time.,

Enjoy your day or evening,

Roger