Water, Part 3: Rain, Rain, Stay Right Here

Today's a very rainy day on the farm and it has me thinking a lot about water again. I wrote some posts on my previous blog about water so I thought I'd re-post them here and continue with the theme.

Original post: 12/22/2010

The rainy season has officially arrived and I of course waited until the last minute to put some things together that I was planning to get to all summer. But I finally completed the projects and can now add another part to the series. This part on water has to do with rainwater harvesting. I think I initially heard of rainwater harvesting in my first green building course and it immediately intrigued me but it's taken five years to do anything with it.

October of last year my father and I went out to Benicia to pick up a couple of used food barrels, which I intended to convert to rain barrels. This year I built a platform with room for three so I need to go back for another. With some parts from The Urban Farmer Store in Richmond I added valves and tubing connecting the two together and then cut off one of our downspouts and added a diverter with a built-in first flush system. With a few pieces of PVC I connected the supply pipe and I was ready to harvest some rainwater.

You can see the diverter at the cut downspout. The first flush continues down and then turns 90 degrees to daylight a ways from the house. The barrel overflow also connects into this pipe with a T fitting.

We've had a few good storms and the barrels are already filled, probably about 100 gallons. But now what do I do with the water? It's still the rainy season and will be for awhile so I don't need the water for anything outside. And herein lies the problem with harvesting rainwater in this area. When you need the water is during the dry season, but 100 gallons won't last very long during that time. So storage becomes the key element and one hundred gallons just won't cut it. We're talking about needing storage for hundreds of gallons if you were going to keep it to outside use; and if we start considering indoor use as a possibility, it gets into thousands of gallons. Indoor use isn't on the near horizon since that would involve some complex plumbing but I would like to have more storage for outside use so it's either a lot more barrels or look into some large storage tanks. I've seen some cube shaped containers used for cooking oil that hold a few hundred gallons and have a metal cage on the outside making them stackable so maybe a few of those along the side of the house.

Right now this is all a bit experimental for me but there is a potential for serious harvesting and if you can manage the storage, you could theoretically get off the water grid. At the moment the only legal indoor use for harvested rainwater is for toilets and possibly laundry. But with a metal or clay tile roof, the harvested rainwater would be safe enough to drink and could then be used for showers, sinks, dishes, etc. I don't know if I'd ever go that far but I like the idea of it.

Water, Part 2: Out Damn Water! Out!

Original post: 11/11/2010

This is the second part in a series that I hope to write about water. Earlier this year was Part 1 about supply. Not too long after that we had to deal with the other direction, water leaving the house. When running the kitchen sink faucet we started to hear a the sound of water leaking somewhere. Luckily we still had a home warranty insurance that the selling agent had given us. They sent out a plumber who found the culprit, more galvanized pipe.

I can't believe that pipe actually took that long to leak. The rusted holes must have been so clogged with junk that the water just ran right over it. The plumber replaced it with a new section of black PVC pipe and tested it with the sink faucet running. No problems.

Then a few weeks later I was crawling around in the crawl space (it's my man cave) and noticed that the cripple wall framing in that same area was very wet. As it turned out, when the plumber cut out the old pipe he must have weakened another joint that only released water when we used the upstairs bathroom. So three weeks of showers and sink use had contributed to more leaking. I called up the insurance again and got the same guy out. He replaced more sections and now we have a leak-free pipe junction.

That still leaves sections of pipe that are bound to give out in the future, like the shower drain pipe. It makes me wish we had replaced it when we had the kitchen ceiling open for the supply piping. Here's hoping it holds out for a good long while.

Water, Part 1 Revisited

Original post: 5/31/2010

A few months ago I posted about having the plumbing replaced in the entire house in Water, Part 1. What they didn't replace was the section of pipe from the water meter to the house. I think they asked if I wanted that replaced and I said no to save some money. Well, last weekend it came back to haunt me. I was breaking up some concrete in the front yard and one piece wasn't coming up very easily so I yanked harder and up it came along with a copper pipe, which turned out to be the incoming line to the house.

My first inclination was to bend it back straight but I stopped myself in case it broke and I had a gusher on my hands that would have been an even worse problem. So I let it be and spent the next couple hours digging a trench from the house to the sidewalk since I figured the whole thing would need to be replaced.

I couldn't believe how close the original pipe was to the surface. I had even seen a section sticking out of the ground before but I never thought it was actually part of a pipe being used. That was a Sunday afternoon and I wasn't about to start a project that I might not finish and then be stuck without water for who knows how long. So I left the trench for a week and was able to return to it on Saturday. In the morning I got the parts at Home Depot, shut off the water, and jumped right in by cutting out the old pipe. At that point I realized I was committed and could only hope things went smoothly. But of course they didn't. The old pipe was a little soft and it was difficult to get a clean cut that I could couple to . Then when I did get a decent cut, the water was still coming out slowly and I wasn't able to heat the pipe enough to get the solder to melt. I thought I was stuck and was sure I wouldn't be able to solve it so started to track down a plumber. I called one I know to see if one of his guys could come out but nobody was available and it being a holiday weekend I had visions of being waterless until Tuesday. I thought about it for awhile and then called the same plumber back and asked if he knew what to do. He said to disconnect the pipe at the meter and the water would stop flowing. Sure enough, as soon as I disconnected it the water stopped coming out from where I was trying to attach the coupling and I was able to solder the coupling. All the other connections went smoothly and soon I had it all connected. Next came the moment of truth and I turned the water back on. No leaks! I was a little surprised and very relieved that it worked.

I filled in the trench with drain rock and then soil and now it's back to normal. I'm a little glad that nobody was available and I had to work it out on my own. It gave a nice sense of satisfaction to have a project like that turn out well.

Water, Part 1: This Old Plumbing

Original post: 2/23/2010

Since we bought our house last year, water has seemed to be a recurring theme . Water coming in; water going out; water from the sky; and water from the earth. First we'll start with water coming in, i.e. supply. Our house, like many old houses, had galvanized steel pipes for the water coming in and going to sinks, tubs, toilets, etc. It probably sounded like a good idea at the time and it sure beats lead piping, but the life span of galvanized steel pipes is about forty or fifty years. The problem is that minerals and rust start to build up and near the end you'll have a 3/4" pipe with a 1/4" hole. This really affects water pressure and while our shower was tolerable, we barely got any hot water pressure in our kitchen sink. Which brings me to Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 1. This is not good. This was the pipe that went from our water heater, across the house to the chimney shaft, up to the floor framing, back to the exterior wall, and then back down to the kitchen sink on the same side as the water heater. A fifteen foot straight distance made with probably 100 feet of pipe. This piece was in the crawl space and as you can see was completely rusted through...and wet. This might have lasted another ten years or it could have burst at any moment, which could be quite inconvenient if we were out of town and the water ran for a few days at full pressure flooding our crawl space and running up an exorbitant water bill. So I replaced this section of pipe, which brings me to Exhibit 2:

Once we removed that section of pipe, I was able to break it in two just with my hands. We replaced it with a section of copper pipe and I thought that would fix the pressure problem but no. It was just the same, which meant there was another spot with a lot of corrosion or maybe it was all blocked. So we decided to have the house re-piped, and quite a difference that made. A team of guys arrived and in one day they replaced all that old pipe with brand new copper pipes, which should last as long as the house does.

The finished product. You can see the old galvanized pipes (the smaller diameter ones) that were left in place.

Mass Exodus

After my initial attempt to save the hive I had some time yesterday to take a look inside. The ants had bypassed the sticky goo somehow and were still getting to the hive. I moved a table out and placed the legs in water and then moved the hive to that table. I reviewed the hive and there seemed to be an adequate amount of honey and lots of activity so I thought everything might be okay. But then today when I got home from work I noticed there didn't seem to be any activity around the hive. As I got closer I couldn't hear any hum of activity and when I removed the top I saw that all the bees had gone; there just a few stragglers hanging about. The crazy thing is that all the honey I had seen yesterday was gone. They had uncapped all the comb with honey and took it with them.

So now I think I just need to shut the farm down for the winter and start afresh in the spring when the carriage house is ready and everything is back to normal. I'd like to see if someone else will adopt our chicken and then I can get everything prepared for a new start.

Neglecting the Farm

The farm is a disaster at the moment. With the carriage house project under way there are piles of dirt, stacks of wood, and everything pushed out of the way. I've been neglecting the garden but it's still producing a few things like the cucumbers and tomatoes. The last chicken is lonely, though, and only comes out of its coop when I'm in the yard.

The worst thing I discovered is that the bee hive was overrun with ants. This is the time of year that the hive starts weakening and preparing for winter. Pollen availability is low and they need honey to feed themselves until February or so. Ants will come in and take all the honey leaving the bees vulnerable. I also saw evidence of bees from other hives trying to rob honey. I installed an entrance reducer and put some sticky goo on the hive stand to keep the ants away. I need to go into the hive to see how bad things are. I hope they survive until spring.

Shots in the Night

There were shots fired on our corner this past Friday night. Verónica and I were probably the closest ones to it but we didn't here them at all. Everyone else in the vicinity seemed to, though. When we got back from breakfast there was a police officer and our neighbors around one of their cars. It turns out that all five shots were fired at his car leaving four holes in the hood and one in a headlight. It's a worrisome event but at least it wasn't directed at anybody.

Pothole Gardener

I signed up for Pinterest not too long ago and haven't done much with it although I can see its appeal for noting interesting things you find. Their weekly email showed up yesterday, which I would usually ignore but the first thing listed was a link to a video about the Pothole Gardener. I love this kind of stuff. Thank you Pinterest for actually recommending something that I'd enjoy.

So today I was cleaning up around the front, mostly removing weeds from the sidewalk, and I decided to do something about this annoying obsolete access hole with a broken concrete cap and random wires for who knows what.

Inspired by the video I made my own little succulent garden in the hole with some random plants I had from other projects.

S.C.D.S.

Something's been going on with the chickens lately. We've lost three in the last week for some unknown reason.The first one was Butter, the Buff Orpington that was the sole survivor of the original three. I noticed she hadn't laid in a couple days so then became more aware that I hadn't noticed her out and about. So I checked in the coop and there she was dead on the floor. The next day or the day after I found one of the Americaunas dead on the coop floor, this time with what looked like some of her intestines having come out of her vent. Very strange.

Then coming home from a couple days away I found a second Americauna dead on the coop floor but, like the first, with no evidence of anything wrong. This leaves only two Americaunas, both of which I keep expecting to find dead every morning. Instead I've found soft shelled eggs that appear to have been laid while on the roost. I've seen one of them in the nest as if to lay but no eggs in the last few days. I'm not sure what's happening. Maybe a virus. There doesn't seem to be much that I can do except hope that these last two overcome whatever's been ailing the flock.

The Carriage House

There are exciting endeavors afoot here at Finca 57. One of highlights of this house when we bought it was the carriage house in back. It soon seemed to be more of a liability than an asset since it is in such disrepair that it's leaning towards the neighbor's and appears ready to fall into their yard at any moment. I found a Notice of Violation complaint in the city's archives from 1976 regarding this structure and all the items listed on it appear to be in the same condition as more than 35 years ago.

I'm not sure what it was originally used for but I'm assuming it was for parking a carriage since there's a second floor with doors for what seems like loading hay. There's also this strange wheel and axle thing hanging from the floor joists that may have used belts to run a piece of machinery. I'm hoping that can be rehung somewhere decoratively.

The first half of this year I spent putting plans together and trying to figure out what can be done with it. It's considered an accessory structure but it doesn't conform to many of the rules for that type of structure. It's too tall and it's too close to the rear and side property lines. So I designed the ground level to be a garage and workshop with a separate entry for access to the upstairs. I can't legally make the upstairs a living unit so I showed it as a multi-purpose room with a half bath and wet bar. I submitted the plans a couple weeks ago and picked up the approved plans on Friday. Construction should be starting next week.

Huerto Hellarity

Evolution of a Square Foot Garden

Starting with the eviction of the Hellarity House, the workers came in and created piles of trash in front of the house that then went in the dumpster. One of the piles had a bunch of salvageable lumber. I thought it was going into the trash but someone did end up coming by and picked the remaining pieces that I didn't take. Oops. I'll call it payment for all the nights we lost sleep because of their partying.

Most of the pieces were 2" x 2 1/2" studs, generally used for interior partition walls. If you've never seen this kind of wood, it's beautiful. It comes from old growth Douglas Fir and is usually closer to full dimensional as opposed to nominal. Here in the Bay Area I've seen houses with 2x12 joists in continuous 25-foot lengths. Magnificent.

I had to remove all nails, screws, electrical boxes, etc. from the studs. Then they were clean and ready to use.

With the cleaned studs I was able to join three pieces together with Timberlok screws to make the sides for two 3'x7' beds.

In honor of the source, I named the beds Huerto Hellarity. It looked a little too ghetto, though, so turned it around and faced the name in the other direction.

Using the Square Foot Garden method, I divided it into 21 squares and filled it with Mel's Mix.

I added an end frame with trellis netting for vine plants, or in this case tomato plants grown using the single stem technique.

This being my first attempt, I didn't quite fill all the squares. Next year I'll do a full bed and also prepare the second one with two trellises.

Liquid Gold

A few weeks ago we harvested honey from our bees for the first time. It was an awesome experience. A couple fellow homesteaders from down the street, Sophie and Rachel, came over to help. The first step was to move one of the supers away from the hive. I pulled the first frame and Sophie brushed the bees off the frame. That was probably the most intense part. We weren't quite prepared for the mass of pissed off bees and suddenly they were everywhere and agitated. Even though I had my head protection on a bee got in and stung my throat. Another one got Sophie on the wrist. After that we covered ourselves a little better and calmed down enough to move quickly and steadily. I didn't get any more stings but Sophie got another four. She also didn't have the long gloves that I had so I think all were on her wrist and arm.

The first thing you do is uncap the comb. When the honey is ready the bees cap the entire frame with wax. Using a serrated knife we cut that wax cap off uncovering the mass of honey.

The honey comes in all shades, depending on the pollen. The dark honey looked so rich and delicious.

The the frames go for a spin in the extractor, which sucks all the honey from one side. You have to be careful not to go to fast otherwise you start sucking the honey from the other side along with the comb.

I think we had to do both sides of three frames before the honey started to come out slowly. But then from there it just kept coming and coming.

Beautiful honey with me in the background working on the last drops.

We harvested forty pounds of honey, about 3 1/2 gallons, from twelve regular frames. We filled miscellaneous jars that we had been collecting along with some mason jars. It was magnificent to see them all.

Tiny Eggs

The Americaunas are starting to lay. We got one yesterday and then another one today. I tried to take a photo that shows how small they are but it's hard to get a sense of how tiny they really appear in person.

The one on the left is from our Buff Orpington. The second one is from a full grown Americauna that we were hosting for awhile. The third was laid yesterday by one of the Americauna pullets; and the fourth was laid today by another.

Plum Season

I planted four fruit trees a couple years ago and they've been maturing nicely except two have run into some problems. First is the Bartlett pear, which hasn't produced any mature fruit. It keeps getting fire blight and a landscape friend told me that it was due to the ornamental street trees, which are in the pear family. He suggested moving it farther into the yard except that there's no real room for it in the plan so I may have to get rid of it.

The other tree that's been problematic is the Santa Rosa plum. It's been growing extremely fast relative to the other trees and possibly too fast. A month or so ago one of the major branches broke, tearing at the joint to the main trunk. It must have had a weak joint, and as the branch grew heavier it tore at the seam.

I figured it could survive that damage and the other branches appeared fine. The tree was filling with fruit and looking good but then another branch went. Maybe I let them get too long and with the additional weight from the fruit it tore again at the seam with the trunk.

Now I'm not so sure the tree is worth keeping. The tear occurred near the other one making for a narrow section of the trunk. I'm considering removing the plum and pear trees and then replanting a new plum tree that I can prune more diligently as it grows. We were able to save a lot of the plums from the broken branch and the rest are maturing quickly. Looks like we'll be making plum jam this weekend.

Swarming Bees

A couple days ago I happened to be home for lunch a little later than usual when I noticed a lot of extra activity at the bee hive. There were more bees flying around than usual and then it just got crazy. They were pouring out of the hive like liquid. Before I knew it there were thousands of bees in the air and I thought I had just lost my whole hive to a swarm. They moved off as a cloud over to the neighbor's house where the neighbor came out because of the buzzing. It was just insane how many there were. Then as quickly as they exited the hive, they condensed to a tight ball hanging from a redwood branch about twenty feet up.

I went to work and then decided to see if I could catch the swarm so gave it a shot that evening. I had to climb up the redwood tree and tie a rope around the branch so that I could cut it and lower it. It kind of worked, or at least I thought it did. I was able to get the branch lowered and then most of the bees into a cardboard box with a frame. But then I noticed another bunch higher up. I think I had knocked the queen off when I lowered the branch and they just congregated in another place. So a couple days later they're still there. My neighbor, Yvette, brought over a deep super and placed some bee lure into it hoping that they'll move in. It hasn't worked so far but maybe they'll find and choose it before they move into someone's attic.

A Morning on the Farm

We have five visiting chickens that we're boarding for a couple friends of ours down the street. They came from Fifth Crow Farm in Pescadero. There's an Americauna, a Black Australorp, a Delaware, a Rhode Island Red, and a Leghorn. That gives us ten chickens at the moment. The Leghorn, which always reminds me of the Warner Bros. character (I say, I say son...), had only laid a couple eggs since she arrived and started to wonder what was going on. She is also a regular escapee so when I saw her out again this morning, I knew she had to be laying somewhere else. Sure enough, under our little deck landing I found five white eggs; her out little stash.

In addition to hosting chickens, we also have some quasi-adopted cats. Our friends Brooke and Ian moved in a couple doors down and they have two black cats, Sacco and Vanzetti, aka CC and VZ. They've decided they really like our place and feel free to come and go as they please, in and out of the house.CC is a bit of a hunter and we found some feathers on the bath mat yesterday, evidence of his latest kill. And then this morning I found him with a live bird in his mouth. I tried to get him to let go of it but I couldn't grab him. Oh, well, we have plenty of those little birds around and maybe it'll keep them from eating so much of the chicken feed.

A Raccoon Ate My Baby

I should consider myself fortunate that I haven't had problems with raccoons since owning chickens. But it's the fact that they haven't been around that has made me complacent about protecting my chickens. I moved the chicks outside a few weeks ago and they've been living in the chicken tractor, which has been working out well. Then I was mountain biking Tuesday morning and when I got back to car there was a text message from my neighbor telling me there was a raccoon trying to get the chicks. He sent that at 7:30am and I didn't get back to the house until 8:15am. Sure enough, the raccoon had reached through the chicken wire and snatched one. It couldn't pull the chick through but it was somehow able to eat the head off through the netting. The one time I'm not in the house at that time and a raccoon shows up. I'm surprised the raccoon was out during the day considering they're more of a nighttime creature.

I moved the chicken tractor into the chicken area and hoped for the best that night, which was a bit stupid since I knew the raccoon was around and that it knew there were chickens. Sure enough, right as I was getting into bed I heard the chicks making a commotion. I ran downstairs and found the raccoon trying to get at the chicks again. I ran into the carriage house to get a weapon but since it was dark I ended up grabbing the flat ended shovel. I had it cornered but then it escaped and I chased him across the yard. It scrambled up the fence but got a little stuck in the lemon tree so I tried to run it through with the shovel. Because it was the flat ended one, it didn't do anything. I needed the pointed shovel, which might have done some damage. I so wanted to kill it.

Turns out that I saved the other four chicks but the raccoon had already gone into the chicken house and taken one of the big girls. I found her dead in the carriage house, her head stripped of feathers. I am determined to protect my chickens but it's a constant battle. Now I'm putting them all into the chicken house at night and closing it up tight. I ordered a chicken door from AXT Electronic in Germany that will open and close automatically via a light sensor. That should keep them protected at night but if a raccoon is willing to still come in the morning when it's light out, I'm not sure what I can do.

Raised Beds Progress

Yesterday and today I assembled the pieces of salvaged wood for the sides of the raised beds. They turned out nicely.

They'll be 3'x7' beds, which isn't exactly an even number but that's what I determined was going to fit best in the proposed space.

Salvaged Wood

There was a pile of wood outside of Hellarity House this weekend from what appeared to be demolished interior partition walls. It's beautiful old Douglas Fir, 2" x 2 1/2", so I salvaged the long pieces and removed all the nails, screws, and electrical boxes. I have a few ideas for reuse in mind, one being the raised beds I've been planning to build.

R.I.P. Hellarity

The end of an era has occurred right across the street from Finca 57. For the last nearly fifteen years the house at 836 57th Street had been occupied by a group of squatters practicing a form of communal living in what was known as Hellarity. For the last seven years they had been in a court battle with the owner who had purchased it a foreclosure auction in 2004. That battle apparently ended a couple weeks ago and they had one last hurrah with live music until midnight and then somebody with an acoustic guitar and singing at the top of his lungs until dawn. At least that's what I could hear.

I have mixed feelings about their demise. On one hand it was an eclectic part of a diverse neighborhood. On the other hand they seemed to have an open door policy for whomever wanted to show up, some of whom didn't have respect for the neighborhood or the neighbors. Midweek amplified punk/metal music wasn't out of the ordinary. Visitors often lived out of their cars on the street, left garbage in the gutters, and one group even urinated on the sidewalk in front of my house. While I was able to discuss these issues with the regulars, it gets tiresome to keep having to deal with it. Needless to say, it's been pretty peaceful around here since they've been gone.

Pretty much immediately workers started to empty the place. They tore off the front stairs and chain locked the gates. They've filled this dumpster in front at least three times with trash, furniture, debris, and who knows what else. I'm not sure what the plans are but I've seen inside a couple times and it seems like you'd have to demolish the whole thing and start over. Then again, having seen my share of decrepit houses redone completely, you can strip one to the bones and start from decent foundation and framing. I'll be curious to see what they do.

Top Story Addition

I went back into the hive yesterday to do some remodeling. In just a week I noticed a surprising difference in the weight of the upper super. It was quite a bit heavier, which means honey production is in full swing. I added another regular super on top to them a little more room for honey. I think this is the configuration I'll leave it at and harvest the upper supers alternately. I also added a queen excluder and a new screened bottom board.

 Before

After

Pre-Spring Update

Spring is nearly here, or at least it feels that way. It's been such a warm winter that all the trees are a bit confused. I borrowed a tree pruning book from a neighbor and have been doing minor attempts at pruning. I started with the street trees that our neighbor, Urban Releaf, planted when we first moved in and then did just some minor pruning of our plum and pear trees. The apricot tree doesn't seem to need much yet and the fig can wait as well.

Santa Rosa Plum

Bleinheim Apricot

I put on my bee suit as well and reviewed the hive. They're busy and the upper super has honey. I'll need to add another shallow super soon as they start to fill the hive more quickly. I wanted to find the queen but I wasn't able to take all the frames out of the deep super since I injured my thumb a few weeks ago and having only one opposable thumb made it difficult to extract them delicately so I kept pissing off the bees.

Lastly, since the massacre our two remaining chickens stopped laying for a couple months, either from the shock or the natural winter ebb. They did start up again a few weeks ago and have been laying pretty regularly since. We also got five new chicks from BioFuel Oasis last week. I went with all Americaunas because they've seemed to have had the best temperament of all the breeds we've tried, although I'm pretty happy with the Buffs so far.

About four days old.