December Do Over

Whoa, December has been a whirlwind! We pretty much missed out on the first 2 weeks off the month. My Daughter became pretty sick with Pneumonia. We made an emergency trip to the ER on December 5th, and then both spent a week on the couch, as I came down with the Flu as well! If it werent for my husband I don't know what we would have done....

He ALSO managed to get the Hot water hooked up to the Cookstove. A couple more days of hard work, and a couple more dollars in supplies, and he had it up and running around the 10th of December!

It went off without a hitch, and worked PERFECT for the first 2 days, UNTIL a pipe burst in the Bathroom.... still sick and lethargic, I woke around 9 am on the 12th,, to a pipe in the front bathroom, gushing water.. Imagine a hose on high (without no spray nozzle),, yeah, it was insane.. I am so happy I heard it, as our bedroom is a ways away ... It must have only been going on for a couple minutes, enought to empty about 20 gallons of water in our bathroom, hallway, and onto a bit of our carpet in the bedroom.  Could December really get any worse??
Robb came home fixed the pipe, and insisted it had nothing to do with the hot water system we just hooked up. Now, he is a Maintenance Man, and a damn good one, so I took his word, let him fix the pipe, and forgot about it.. Until...................
I woke up at about Midnight the following night.. To the sound of what sounded like a waterfall in our laundry room.. ANOTHER BURST PIPE!?!?!?!?!?!  Robb jumped out of bed, and proceeded to throw around the F*** word  a couple times,, turned the water off,, and proceeded to vaccum up the water in the hallway, put towels and fans on the carpet.. I lay in bed, completely annoyed (haha) and frustrated.. and figured midnight was not the best time to have a conversation about why another pipe coincidentally burst in the Laundry room....

The next morning, while googling whatever I could think of, to see if I could help figure out why our pipes keep bursting,,,Robb called me from work, to tell me we needed and Expansion Tank..
When we hooked up the cooktove to the hotwater tanke, we also added some check valves, these prevent the hot water from backingup into the cold water line, which is great and a good safety measure, But because of the size of the tank ( we have a 40 gallon tank,, pretty small) the hot water was building up pressure and that pressure needed somewhere to go,, so it chose any which way it could when the pressure built up! The expansion tank has resolved the problem.. But not before creating YET another mess.. RObb had to tear off the wall in the laundry room,,, clean up the water mess,,, replumb the pipes in copper ( we had some pretty cheap pipe in there) and then hook up the expansion tank.

I must say, I didnt think any of this Off the Grid stuff would be perfect... and when the Hot water system worked perfect at first,, I had my doubts..hahaahaha..
We arent quitters though and know there will be more challenges along the way.,,and since the expansion tank, the hot water system works AMAZING!! Start a fire, watch the temp, and you have PLENTY of hot water do live just as we did before.
I will admit if I am gone all day,, I do turn the hot water off,,, as I am still suffering from some broken pipe PTSD..... not quite over that yet,,lol


Since then, My Little Miss Norah has gone to her last check up and is Pneumonia Free! I am better! We have a totally awesome HOt water system, and I am finally working on Holiday deocorating,  baking and crafts....

I guess a December Do over wont be necessary after all....:)
Happy Holiday from The Cool Homestead!

another piece of the Puzzle

Our Circulating Pump showed up on my doorstep today. Now I realize most people wouldnt start jumping up and down over a circulator pump ( especially a girl) , but its kind of a big deal, its another piece of the Off The Grid Puzzle.
Over the past 3 years we have only really talked of our plans to remove ourselves from the power grid, only in the past year have we really taken that step to "make it official". For most, the dream of Going off the grid is just that,, A Dream... I mean, unless you plan on living in a tent, pooping in a bucket, getting all your water from the creek, and cooking over a campfire ( and all of those are great lifestyle choices, just not the way we want to do it.) you are GOING TO spend some money. You can spend up to 30-50K on a solar array just to live a "normal" lifestyle.. who has that kinda cash?? certainly not us.

We are poor,,lol.. I laugh, but I give you truth. We live paycheck to paycheck. we are frugal , we work hard, but we are poor. So we are attempting ( and will succeed!!) to do this the cheapest way possible. When all is said and done we hope to only spend around 6,000.00. although I have a feeling it will end up being more,, because well, thats just how it always works when you are pricing something ;)

In march of 2012 we purchased the controller and inverter for our solar array,, 2 fairly expensive *Pieces of the Puzzle*** next will be a generator, then panels, then batteries..all expensive too,,lol

Now I am sure you are just reading along, patiently, and thinking, ok ok.... so what is the circulator pump for???!! This will be hooked up to our woodcookstove, will continously circulate the water as it gets hot to ensure that that we dont have an exposion of hot water/steam, there are other parts that go into the equation too ( Im sure my husband would correct me on this, but hey Im giving ya a basic idea, he is the brains behind all of this).. what I am trying to say is, as of this Fall , all of the hot water in our home will no longer be heated by our hot water heater, but will be heated by our wood cookstove.. pretty cool huh?? Now do you see why I am sooo excited!
another piece of the puzzle...completed. :) Now get chopping Robb, fall is almost here ;)