House Blog

I've made many water related improvements since the last post, here they are:

Howdy has been playing with rain barrels for a few years, but recently he took the next step and hooked them up to their toilet, so the toilet now flushes with rain water. I love this idea, since flushing a toilet with drinking water (5 gallons = 19 liters for each flush) always seemed like a waste to me.

So I was motivated to find some barrels and collect the rain water from my roof. This also helps my foundation, since the rain water used to drain right next to the foundation, which can cause problems.

I asked around and Jono had a good connection with somebody involved in catering for Picante's (very good Mexican restaurant in Berkeley) and somehow I got some steel drums that used to be full of honey and were used by Cafe Fanny for their granola. Each drum holds 55 gallons (208 liter), which used to be 640 lbs (290 kg) of organic honey. I *love* honey, so I really like the fact that I have old honey barrels as my rain barrels. I have 3 of them (one for each downspout). They will all be linked together and then to a pump, which will pump water to my toilet tank when it is drained.

Tonight Howdy helped me pick out all the plumbing parts at Pastime Ace Hardware, and 1 hour later and $105 lighter, I got parts. I forgot to get some pipe to adapt to my current downspouts, but I put the other stuff together. Here are a few pictures.

As of Friday the foundation is finished. I have a new foundation under 2/3 of the house and lots of earthquake retrofitting (bolting, angle iron attachments, solid blocking between the short cripple wall, retrofitted pier/post/beam connection).

I'm a little bit less worried about earthquakes now. You can see some pictures from the foundation.

Yesterday Howdy helped me fix a leak in the shower. I knew it was leaking into the crawl space, but I didn't think it was too bad. I'm planning to do some bathroom work in a few weeks anyway. But the foundation guys told me that the ground was soaked, and some of the piers were sagging, so it was time to fix it. At first we thought it was a leak in the water supply line to the shower, but after not showering for a day, it was dry, so that didn't seem to be the problem. We discovered that the drain was leaking in two places, so we bought a new drain assembly, new PVC pipe and a new coupler to attach to the P-trap (that funny U-shaped thing that keeps your house from smelling like a sewer). As we were finishing the installation I dropped a little wrench down the drain. It could have happily stayed there, but Howdy decided to take it out with a magnet. On the picture you see the first attempt, using the magnet from him bike speedometer with a piece of floss, but the magnet was sticking to the cast iron P-trap, and wouldn't grab the wrench. Then we attached it to a wooden rod, and that way he got it out. We thought we were done, but when we started testing it by running the shower, there was still lots of water coming down to the crawl space (where Howdy was hanging out). It turned out that the seam at the edge of the shower pan lets through a lot of water. I sealed that seam later that afternoon with silicone. I showered at the gym later that night, so that the silicone can dry. Hopefully tomorrow it will be ready for a leak-free shower experience.

Last week on September 27th they started working on my foundation. They have removed 2/3's of my old foundation, with lots of jack-hamering. Now my house is up on blocks. From the outside it looks like it is floating. The new foundation is going to be a lot wider and taller then the old small foundation from 1919. And it is going to have rebar (steel reinforcement) in it. They are done removing the old foundation, and are building the forms and installing rebar today.

There is not a day that goes by where I do not improve something on my house. I'm still living surrounded by boxes (see picture on the left of a stack in my living room). But I have all the basics unpacked. I have my large dining table that doubles as desk. I'm using these tiny powered speakers that Daniel had when I shared a house with him 10 years ago, and they sound great. Every now and then I think about some of the higher quality audio equipment that I have in a box somewhere, but this is great right now.

I cooked a nice meal tonight, inspired by a TV recipe from Jamie Oliver. I made a potato salad with a rare tuna steak, and risotto with roasted garlic and thyme. I'm a little short on counter space in the kitchen, but I am managing to cook. I listened to some Dutch music by Blof, while cooking.

I installed insect screens on the windows in my kitchen and bedroom. This is especially nice when cooking at night, since I can have the window open all the way for ventilation.

The big projects haven't started yet. At the end of this month about 1/3 of my foundation will be replaced, and after that I need to redo the bathroom. The foundation is simple for me, I have a contractor who is going to do the whole job. The bathroom is more complicated, since it needs so many different specialists, plumbers, carpenters, electricians etc.