Episode#8 It's Hard To Smell The Roses When They Are Frozen

  At the end of the last podcast I said I would tell you about day 2, after the power failure and where we stand at this moment. It has been about a month since I found Our Country Cottage frozen and low on power and some things are the same, and some things have changed. The generator is dead and there is still no water in the cottage. The toilets are still in disrepair and given all that, I have decided that Our Country Cottage will remain as such, till we can count on consistently above freezing temps. I will explain later. But for now.... Day 2 and beyond. I arrived with one thought in mind. When things thaw out, those frozen toilet tanks will put water all over the floor. If you remember I had destroyed the downstairs tank as much as I could in panic mode, but the guts were still attached and they still contained a fair amount of ice, not to mention the upstairs toilet. Well I didn’t have to worry about them thawing out right away. They were still frozen solid. I built a fire. The batteries were at 71%, the living room was +5 C and the generator was not running but it fired right up when I asked it to.  A quick call to my plumber confirmed that the toilet tanks were held on by two screws that had to be removed from inside the tank. After some chiselling around on the downstairs toilet, I located said screws and managed to get the remainder of the tank off and placed it in the shower to thaw. Armed with my new found knowledge as to the location of the screws I did a surgical strike on the upstairs lump of ice. First removing the porcelain that was in the way and then chiselling directly to the screws, removing the tank and then placing the tank in the shower to thaw. A couple of notes. 1-Always wear work gloves when you are dealing with broken porcelain, it is very sharp, and 2-Use a box to collect the broken pieces in. Garbage bags won’t do, even doubled up extra thick construction grade garbage bags. Did I mention broken porcelain is very sharp. It cuts right through the plastic as fast as you try to pick it up. That is about all I can remember from day two. My daily Cottage log became sadly neglected while I was in emergency mode. Unfortunately these are the times you should be keeping the best notes. All is not lost, however. As a matter of course I always text my significant other when I arrive with the state of Our Country Cottage. This normally includes battery condition, whether the gen is running, temp in the place etc. I found, a while ago, some software that will take texts from my phone and create a spread sheet out of them. I can select all or just one person per sheet. In this case, I have a series of texts to and from my generator service guy as I was trying to trouble shoot the gen. They are all in order, dated and time stamped. I also take pictures, with a small camera or my phone. As a rule I always have my phone with me, so why not. It is another time stamped record to look back on. These are the notes and pix I am relying on to fill in the gaps for this podcast. Ok, to try and keep this in order, day 1 was the 14th and day 2 was the 15th. I will now refer to the dates. 17 Dec- Gen seemed to be working ok. Built fire. And just so I am not repetitive, I built a fire for all the following days I went to Our Country Cottage. 19 Dec-  Batteries were at 62%.Lower than normal. Another gen error but it cleared and fired up. 21 Dec-  Batts at 90%. Installed redundant power fail alert system. I have a bit more faith in getting an alert. 26 Dec- The batteries were at 78% and the generator had run earlier. The living room was +10 C and all was looking good. 28 Dec- I wasn’t planning on going up but my new power alert system reported a power loss, so I headed out. The gen had error condition but it cleared and fired up. It then ran for about 15 minutes and quit. First time it quit while running! I cleared the error and it cranked a bit then stopped. The next error would not clear and it would not crank, or even try to crank, even though the battery was in good shape and the motor was free to turn. Without a generator back up esp at this time of year (Very little sun. The shortest day of the year was Dec 21 or 22. Go figure.) there was no way that I could keep the boiler running to put heat in the cottage. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to build a fire regularly, every day or every second day depending on the weather. I could not stay there. The lack of water alone would have made it very difficult, not to mention the cold and no toilets. That would mean a 3 hour commute time, one and one half up and one and one half back. Spend at least two or three hours there, build a fire and wait for it to burn down so I could close up the flu and fresh air intake. Oh and um rustic toilet facilities. 29 Dec- Batts were 64 % and charging by solar. Did some trouble shooting on the gen but didn’t find anything. 30 Dec- Batts were at 73% and charging by solar. They were at 90% when I left. Took a couple of days for New years. 02 Jan- Batts at 73%. 03 Jan- Batts at 91% and it was very sunny so I turned on the boiler go get some more heat in the place. Yes, there was enough sun to charge the batteries and run the boiler at the same time. Up to this point I had been trying to get the generator to run but this day, I called it. I realized that even if I did get it to crank and run there were other issues. Basically I had lost confidence in it. I turned the boiler off before I left. 04 Jan- Batts at 96% and charging. We were in another cold snap so I had a small electric heater going in upstairs bathroom. Topped up the batteries with water and cleared the snow from the roof above the battery room hatch. There was a lot of snow up there. 06 Jan- Batts at 85%. Starting to think more about closing the place down. 07 Jan- Picked up a short bit of, basically, garden hose to drain the water tanks and a wall thermometer for the utility room. OK the hose was clear plastic hose with a garden hose fitting put on it. Guess what you can’t find at your home center in the middle of winter. Yup, cheap garden hose or any type of water hose under 50 feet or under 50 bucks. As it turned out the clear pipe was really good for letting me see the water flow. When I got to the cottage and went to assemble the hose it was cold and didn’t want to come out of its coiled condition. There was some heat left in the masonry heater oven from yesterdays fire, so I popped it in there to warm up. After a bit of time I took it out and managed to straighten it out some. It was a bit like wrestling a snake. Batts were at 94% when I arrived. I drained the water pressure tank, the hot water tank and took the water filter cartridge off. I had to pin the hose down with a heavy box and some paint cans. I also emptied the fridge and unplugged it and made a mental note to check the fridge next time as there was a good amount off frost build up. 11 Jan- Batts at 91% and the living room was just below freezing. An icicle was hanging off of the kitchen tap. I drained some of the water out of the hot water preheat tank. While that was draining, I looked at the fridge. The timing was  perfect. The frost had thawed just enough to release from the fridge, but not too much that it leaked all over the floor. You are now up to date. Just to clarify a couple of things. The water tanks that I drained are in the utility room which is below ground. Theory states that stuff below the frost line will not freeze. In this case, the utility room is separated from the mud room by a large metal hatch in the mud room floor. When the mud room door is open the outside cold comes in and, as we know, heat rises so cold must fall. Will this utility room freeze? I don’t know for sure. I emptied the water tanks so I can sleep at night. That being said, I have yet to see that new wall thermometer go below 2 degrees. I will have more confidence by spring. And where did that water from the tanks drain to? The previous time a tank was drained, the plumber had to drain it into a bucket and carry it up the ladder and outside. Not nice. This time I tried draining it into the sump pit thinking that because it was below frost level it should just run out through the weeping tile and if I was lucky it would not even turn the sump pump on. And that is what happened. No pump required, it just filled up to the weeping tile and drained out. Also, when I came back the next day the sump pit had drained to the bottom, I guess through the ground.  It took me some time to admit to myself that shutting Our Country Cottage down, in essence, till spring was then thing to do. I still plan to go up about once a week or so, to keep the solar panels and drive clear of snow and to make sure all is OK. To wrangle another generator into place during the cold of winter doesn’t make sense if you can wait till the snow goes and it warms up. Once the weather is constantly above freezing I will get the toilets and plumbing sorted out and anything else the cold might have damaged. I can take the summer to select a better generator and get it installed properly. Not that this one wasn’t installed properly, more that I was trying to save a bit and in the long run, didn’t. At the moment the generator pad looks like it will have to be enlarged and maybe a shelter incorporated to add another layer of protection from the weather. These generators are made to be out in the open but if another layer of protection will help I am all for it. It will help keep the critters out too. Next podcast I will get back to a more normal format. I will talk a bit about the power lost alert system I have and what I did to improve reliability and information it will send me, and “In the Beginning” looks at cottage design. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at “ourcountrycottageanarrative.com” If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the “Friends of OCCaN” mailing list, you can email me at [e-mail]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes, Stitcher and  Google Play, so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one.