We figured it was about time to start mudding the drywall.  It’s a nice task, not too difficult, and Heather and I can work on it together.  Covering up the screws is easy, taping the seams and corners is somewhat more difficult, but we will figure it out.  The trick is not to put too much joint compound (mud) on, so you don’t have much to sand off.  Better to add more thin layers and get to where you need it than add too much and have to sand it all back down.

We figured that we would start on this wall that is behind the fridge/freezer as 2/3’s of this wall will be covered by pantries and cabinets, as well as the fridge/freezer – so it is a good place to practice before we start doing walls that everyone will be able to see!

As I mentioned in my last post we needed to get some gravel to make a level base pad for our solar array.  I had originally calculated we would need about 11 cubic yards of gravel which I’d figured was about 22 tons.  As it turns out, after speaking with the quarry, they reckoned about 16 tons (a full dumptruck load) would probably do the job, so we ordered that up and had it delivered so it will be ready to go.  It’s somehow not as big a pile as I had imagined.

I also got out to the hardware store and picked up some floor registers, and successfully test fit one in the fresh air supply vent I’d previously roughed-in in the living room floor.

One of the other things on our to-do list on our road to occupancy, was “coverage of combustible insulation”.  This is specifically regarding our basement insulation – we’d previously installed 2″ XPS foam, but apparently this is a flammable product, so it needs to be covered with something fire-proof.  We considered just framing and drywalling in the basement walls, but that will bring on further electrical work, so instead we opted to purchase some Roxul ComfortBoard IS.

This is a rockwool product that comes in stiff, 2′ x 4′ sheets that are 1 1/2″ thick.  We fasten it to the XPS foam with construction adhesive (PL300) and then use a few 16D nails to hold it in place while the adhesive sets.  When we are ready to finish the basement, we will just attach furring strips every 16″ with 6″ concrete screws through the Roxul & XPS foam, securing them to the concrete wall, then hang the drywall from those.

We expect to finish this off in the next day or two, and that’ll be another task off the list!

Finally, we have been struggling with a solution for decent internet out here for some time.  Until now, we have been relegated to using the internet over a 3G modem on Rogers, but the charges for data usage are absolutely ridiculous.  We finally decided to do something about this, and had the internet folks around today to install satellite internet for us.  It’s about the same speed as our previous connection, but is significantly cheaper.  We hope it will continue to serve us well!

That’s about all the news that’s fit to print, hope you enjoyed the update!

In the past couple of weeks we have been preparing to set up our solar panels.  As previously mentioned, this involved clearing away the topsoil in preparation to make a gravel pad with the 16 tons of gravel we got delivered.

With some help, we managed to successfully clear out all the topsoil, and I spent a couple of days shoveling gravel into the wheelbarrow and pouring it in the hole we dug to create  level base for the concrete ballast blocks.  In the end we probably used about 12 tons of the gravel we ordered, the rest we will use for various things (creating pathways and such).

Heather and I spent a little time measuring and marking out where the blocks had to go, and before we started moving the blocks into place the gravel pad looked like this:

Through word of mouth we found a guy with  backhoe who said he could help us move the blocks.  He showed up last Friday afternoon and we got the blocks moved in no time at all.  We might have spent and hour and a half at it in total, and it sure feels good to get that done!

Soon we will start assembling the racking for the panels atop these concrete blocks and then we will be able to wire them up to the solar charge controllers.  Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the photos!