KB Ranch

Christmas came early

Written by karen on December 4th, 2009

My life has changed! I have discovered the palm nailer.

It you don’t have one of these, you really must get one. (I’d recommend Porter-Cable. I love their tools.) Here’s how it works:

Barry brought us one when he came to visit last week. When he showed it to me, he had a look on his face like it was something really special. Kind of like he was showing a giant chocolate cake to someone who’d never seen or tasted one before. I was thankful for any new tool (he also brought us a nail gun) but didn’t fully appreciate how great this was.

I’d seen some kind of corner nailer on TV and wanted one. It’s supposed to make nailing into corners easier. It’s a handheld thing that you put a nail in the and then it hammers it in for you. With all the problems I’m having with my hands, I thought it might be worthwhile.

The palm nailer is all that and more. First of all, it’s pneumatic (runs off compressed air), which is essential, because it means it has real power.

It works not only in corners but everywhere. I will use it for almost everything from now on.

The nail gun is great too, but the palm nailer has several advantages to me. First, it’s not remotely dangerous. I can imagine nailing myself with a nail gun (and have heard the story about Doug about a hundred times) but not with the palm nailer. It’s very gentle and innocuous. It’s also a lot lighter than the nail gun, which is especially good when you’re nailing overhead. And of course, it’s super small so you can use it almost anywhere.

For a just a minute or two, I wondered if it was lazy or somehow inauthentic to use a power nailer. Then I thought about accounting. I’m glad I know how to do debits and credits by hand on ledgers. Having actually done that, I better understand the process and how the various accounts work. But would I ever think of running a business without an accounting software package? No.

I think that the nail gun and the palm nailer together will probably save us hundreds of hours on the rest of the building. (Just today, I did some work that I never would have finished in a single day without them.) And the pain and wear and tear on my hands that this will eliminate is incalculable.

Me and my new nail gun

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Tags: construction, power tools, tools

Brrr….

Written by karen on December 3rd, 2009

On Tuesday night we came home from celebrating Brad’s birthday to see snow on the mountains on both sides of the valley. It has continued to be cold this week….20s at night and 50s during the day.

On Wednesday, we got the roof on the battery house in one day. It was pretty easy after doing the other one. (Things are way easier at 9×12 than 44×27.)

Today, our plans, if the wind cooperated, were to start on re-wrapping the house and doing chicken wire to get ready for the stucco.

There was too much wind though, so we finished the interior of the battery house instead. It’s almost finished now. Excellent.

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Tags: weather

Stucco’ing

Written by karen on November 28th, 2009

Last week, we stucco’d the battery house (the first coat that is; there will be one more finish coat done in a month or so). The whole thing only took two days.

Here’s the formula:

1 part STUCCO MIX (We have a pallet full of bags of this. It’s astonishing to think how much stucco’ing we’ll be doing.)

PLUS

3 parts SAND (We just got a delivery of 13 tons. Eek.)

PLUS

WATER (We have lots of this.)

AND STIR COPIOUSLY…

(This is our new cement mixer. It is so awesome! I highly recommend one of these. The small ones are quite cheap.)

This kind of stucco seemed to go on quite easy. One thing we learned was that you really want the chicken wire stapled down super-tight before you stucco.

Corners are my speciality.

The final step is troweling in a mesh fabric. It is supposed to prevent cracking. We found it super easy to work with.

Here are the final results.

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Tags: construction, stucco

Happy Thanksgiving

Written by karen on November 27th, 2009

This year, we are thankful to be spending our first holiday season here and grateful that we have made wonderful new friends and have made great progress on our new home.

We spent the holiday with Barry and Elizabeth and a few friends from here. It was a traditional day: football, friends, family, and food (and lots of it).

This week we also made a trip to the nearby Chiricahua National Monument, which is always a delightful trip.

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Tags: Chiricahuas, Coronado National Forest, holiday

Arches and lath

Written by karen on November 18th, 2009

One of the things we wanted to experiment with as we built the battery house is archways. We’ll have several archways in the houses, both inside as doorways and outside as an architectural element. The idea is to have indented archways around a few of the outside doors.

This kind of detail is added by putting Styrofoam on the outside of the house and then stucco’ing over it. Apparently, some people put this inch-thick Styrofoam over their whole house (for insulation value, we hear…that seems very odd to us), but we’re doing it just for looks where we want detail like this.

While I love the design (see below), I have been concerned about how we would do the arches.

Brad has always said he’d just “freehand” it, and it would be fine. Today, we found out.

We began by looking at different shaped arches on the Internet. Then we talked about how we’d do it. Since Brad thought he could just draw it and this was only a test (we could always throw out the foam if it didn’t work; we have lots), I said go for it.

We planned to cut one half first and then use that as a guide for the other half so they’d be symmetrical. Brad started by showing me how this would work and that it would indeed result in the point at the top that I wanted.

Then he drew out the design.

He cut the foam with a jigsaw and used a guide for the straight part.

Here’s the end result.

And on the actual battery house.

After we got the arch done, we mounted it on the wall of the battery house and started on lath. The lath we’re using is called stucco netting, and it looks pretty much like chicken wire (or what they call here “poultry netting;” that cracks me up). We were both dreading how difficult it would be to put up.

It has to be nailed down very tightly so that the stucco goes down smoothly. And the stucco goes on in a very thin coat, so you can’t really cheat it much. On the solid wall, we used a staple gun to nail it down. On the foam we had to use very long roofing screws, which was a lot harder. Overall, though, it really wasn’t bad to put up. More pictures here if you’re interested.

All in all, a very good day’s work.

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Tags: construction, doors, lath

Making doors: take 1

Written by karen on November 17th, 2009

So, we have begun to make our first door. Here are the steps.

First, we chose seven 2×6 boards that were reasonably straight, flat, and nice looking, a challenge given the quality of our lumber. Here the boards laid out on the slab to make sure they are flat.

Then we used a table saw to cut about 1/2″ or so off each side to square them up and help ensure fit.

Then we ran a router around the edge to give a beveled look. There are many shapes of router bits with various angles, etc. We chose one that would make a shallow, slightly rounded edge.

Next, we laid out the boards on a series of four pipe clamps with cardboard underneath for gluing. We smeared the edges of each board with carpenter’s glue and then clamped then tightly together, trying to make sure the boards were all flat with no bowing.

Here it is all clamped together….now to wait for 24 hours.

After it came out of the clamps, everything looked great. It’s going to be a week or so before we get to town to get stain and varnish to finish it, so you’ll have to wait until then to see the final results.

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Tags: doors, woodworking

Special delivery

Written by karen on November 16th, 2009

We are having many deliveries at the ranch this week. Today, the inverter arrived. This driver was really great.

We had a productive building day today as well and got the whole battery house wrapped. We plan to start on lath tomorrow and hope to get it done before the paper begins ripping off. (The gale force winds are a real problem.) The battery house is looking really nice and solid. We’re going to stucco the outside, in part as practice for the “real” house. I am quite certain that are batteries are going to have one of the nicest houses ever.

(This is the back. The inset is for the generator. Boy were the corners of this hard to nail down. The generator needs to be outside, but this will keep it covered and will shelter us from the noise. I don’t think it will be running much though.

The weather here has been freezing. Literally…mid 20s at night. This afternoon we finished work at about sunset, and we were both shivering despite our warm hats and coats. It seems only a couple days ago that it was so hot. The human body has an amazingly narrow comfort range!

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The next installment

Written by karen on November 12th, 2009

So this afternoon (as I’m walking out the door for work…impeccable timing again), I get a phone call.

“This is Joe from Accurate Freight. Is Brad there?”

“No. He’s at the Sunrise property expecting you.” Actually, he was expecting you three hours ago…but he’s still there.

“Well, I’m at the end of Noland Road, and it’s about to turn into a dirt road.” (This is the not-NM way to go…the dirt road way.) “I’m not sure whether to keep going this way or to go back to the interstate.”

OK…. My first thought is, Why are you asking me? My second thought is, Really? you have cell coverage there? We’d been told earlier that he would be driving a truck that was licensed for NM *and* that had a liftgate and pallet mover. At this point, I decide not to about the latter. “Do you have the paperwork to drive through NM?” I say.

What ensues is a long, complicated story about how he has the appropriate paperwork for taking the batteries through NM but the truck isn’t multi-state licensed (or something like that…I really wasn’t clear), and his boss is worried and told him to take the dirt road.

Without hesitation, I say, “Take the dirt road. It isn’t bad at all. Trucks take it all the time.” At this point, I think that getting the batteries here is the most important thing.

He hesitates. I reassure. We go back and forth.

“Well, I don’t have directions to go that way.”

I give him directions. They are not difficult. He sounds unsure and says that he will probably call me halfway to get clarification. I tell him that he won’t have cell coverage and then instantly regret saying that for fear he’ll reconsider and go back to Tucson.

He agrees to try. I call Brad to convey the information and leave to go do some work.

When I get home, I am anxious to hear the rest of the story. Did the batteries actually arrive?

Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer involves Joe stopping in Portal (which wasn’t on the way according to my directions…he admitted to taking a right when I suggested a left) to call again to clarify where we were. It also involves Doug going out to search for him (he didn’t find him) and an incident in which the truck’s mud flap apparently fell off….and part of his hydraulics had been tied to that mud flap. A kind motorist (really? on the back dirt road?) stopped to help him tie up his hydraulics so he could continue on. The whole thing took several hours, and it is only a 30 minute drive. At any rate, he got there and had a liftgate and pallet mover to boot.

More good news is that with all day to work on it, Brad and Doug managed to construct and mount the shelves for the batteries.

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Tags: solar

Busy!

Written by karen on November 11th, 2009

It’s a busy week at the ranch! First, we have a guest visitor this week — Brad’s long-lost (just kidding) brother Doug. He’s here all week, and you better believe we are putting him to work! I’m not sure he knew this was what he was signing up for. He has his own business, and it’s the first time he’s taken time off in a long time, so we are honored that he chose to spend it here.

Secondly, we’ve had all kinds of adventures related to the delivery of the various solar components. They were supposed to call ahead about deliveries so we’d be there, but you know that wasn’t going to happen! On Monday, I was home by myself (getting ready to go out to a school I’m working with here) and I got a phone call — 4,000 pounds of batteries are on their way here now (with no forklift), and they need directions. I give them directions, but there is a major problem — they don’t have paperwork to drive through NM….but that’s the only way to get here, on paved roads at least. So I tell them about the back road. Several phone calls ensue. Brad gets involved. The end result is that the batteries go back to Tucson.

In the meantime, we’ve got our very nice neighbor to drive his tractor with forklift attachments over. It’s sitting on our property now…waiting.

We got a call today from the freight company who says that they will be coming again tomorrow, this time with a truck that is licensed for NM and with a liftgate and pallet mover. Hallelujah! Let’s hope even half of that happens.

We’re also expecting the panels in the next couple days. Brad and Doug started assembling the supports for the panels today. It seemed to involve a lot of reading and re-reading of directions and a fair amount of unhappiness, so I mostly worked on finishing the battery house walls and moving some dirt while they did that.

Other than that, with the whole battery thing, we’ve kicked the battery house construction into high gear. Yesterday, we put in blocking, insulated the walls, and put the inside OSB decking on. (Lots of hammering for me.) These will be the first walls to be completed. We didn’t have enough insulation to finish the whole thing, but three walls are up, which is enough to build the shelving for the batteries.

The weather here is glorious this week. It’s hot, sunny, and clear. Our garden continues to thrive, and we have more arugula and lettuce than we can eat. I’m hoping for one more batch of tomatoes this year as well.

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Tags: construction, solar