2 Engineers Retired

  As most of you know we are on solar power at the lake There is a back up propane generator but most of the time we exist totally on what shines from the skies.   Our lifestyle there is not compromised, although perhaps not exactly what we have in the city.   For instance we do not have A/C, dishwasher or laundry.   On the other hand I use a hair dryer and a vacuum cleaner, and all measure of other stuff including and electric fridge with no worries. old battery So far we have been managing with a biggish (technical term) lead acid battery.   Think similar to one that might be used on an electric fork truck.   That is our old battery above.   This has worked well for us over the years but is a bit of a science project.   Some of the shortcomings with the lead acid were issues around the amount of water it liked to drink and issues around the state of charge vs freezing temperatures in the winter (plus all sorts of checking of this and that...

A wall of our shed   The summer of 2021 will go down in memory for us as creepy, disgusting and gross.   Well – primarily June.   Still waiting on the rest.   Our area was totally infested with gypsy moth caterpillars – which I had heard of before but never truly experienced.   Last year (2020) there had been some progress of them up one side of our lake, but we are at the north end, and here they were not too bad.   That said, we were a tad grossed out last year too when the small bits that we were blowing off the front deck turned out to be “frass” which is lingo for caterpillar poop.   We ended up taking down the tree that they had decided to live on (for a variety of reasons) and ultimately our front deck was poopless. Fast forward to 2021.   The damned things were EVERYWHERE !!   They start out very small and go through something like 5 or 6 moultings where they shed their outer layers.   They end up about 3 cm long.   ...

Of course said shower needed plumbing and all the various doo-dads that are required to have a door that can close etc.   We are quite thrilled with the result. Beyond the shower and shed we also wanted to have an outdoor sink for washing hands without going inside.   Managed to find an interesting copper sink textured with what appeared to be a ball peen hammer.   It is likely meant to sit atop a bathroom counter – but given that there was not one of those, a matching base was constructed to attach the sink to the shed wall.   And yes, a ball peen hammer was used, and a long soak with some baking soda to darken the copper to match the sink.   Here is the result (the colour match is actually very close, unlike the photo)   Now – walls, water, a sink and a shed are all well and good but ultimately one needs to walk to the unit in order to take advantage of it all.     We were excited to find preformed concrete slabs that were made to (s...

Gratuitous Lake Shot   Back when we first decided to build on the property we knew that to do pretty much any construction we needed to be able to shower afterwards.   It did not have to be fancy, but it needed to have warm water, be private and not cost much since it was to be temporary. Hmmm We managed to buy a propane powered camping water heater that could hook up to a hose.   The end with the water pump went into the lake and we hooked the other up to a normal shower.   OK, point one covered.   The privacy and the cost thing worked out great.   Our cottage was built from an old one that had been taken down and there were cedar boards that had been previously used as a subfloor.   Not attractive, full of cut off old nails – but free tongue and groove cedar.   A day of assembly produced a functional temporary unit that did us for years – far longer than we had intended.   Over those years we did have to replace the water heater, and ha...

  Back a hundred years ago (or maybe 12 or so) when we bought our lake property it came with an old fiberglass canoe.   (The place also came with an ancient 80’s era travel trailer that was quite disgusting, but we prefer to forget about that) The canoe however did prove to be useful.   The mesh of its seats was so old that webbing was falling apart but given that, technically, you should be kneeling that seemed OK, at least for a while..... What a mess Our property is large and fronts on two (small) lakes.   One lake is quite open and that is where we chose to build our cottage.   The other lake is smaller and has several islands.   It is pretty to look at, but a tad (very) murky so not too pleasant to swim in.   The islands however create an excellent venue for canoeing.   As a result the canoe lived at that lake and was used from time to time if we hiked over there.   Over the years it has not gotten any younger, or cleaner, and the se...