Big Day yesterday!

Don't know if you know all know that two nice kids - Kylie and Jesse have been staying with us - so yesterday Jesse fixed the pond pump so it doesn't sound like a airplane engine taking off!! Took him literally 5 mins! And the day before he got all the water from the house roof going into the catchment from Robert's directions (added 40% more water). He is the Robert mini-me!! Seriously - Robert 30 yrs ago!!! Today Jesse got the hairball out of the dryer that had stopped up one of the sensors!


Sometimes these little things make all the difference in the world!

Drywall .... or so I thought

We were lucky enough a few weeks ago to get about 140 sheets of drywall at no charge!! Big Score I thought - I can see walls with drywall instead of reeds.... until Robert told me .... we have to level out house FIRST! So now I am looking for 4 20-ton bottle jacks to borrow or buy. Of course as usual, no one has them. well HPM does but it only had 1 and it was $35/day. We need them for about a week. So I called a jack supplier and the jacks are about $40 to buy - cheap enough but weigh 23# each. So to ship UPS from MN to Kapoho is $150 EACH!!! unless we ship them slow boat (4-6 weeks).... and we only have a small window of opportunity for my brother to come back and help drywall (which as long as there's snow in his country he is happy to do!!)

What to do ???

Our Water Supply

For those of you that don't know - we get our water from a catchment tank (it's the equivalant to a mainland cistern). Rainwater gets collected in a tank that holds about 5200 gal of water. Since we get 60+ inches of rain a year this size tank should be fine at most times of the year. (July/Aug might be a little sketchy.)

Matiu backplastering the k-11

We wont go into the politics of Kapoho Vacationland and the KKWA (Water association down here) but suffice it to say that a few days before the wedding we lost our other water source although we knew it was coming. Robert and the guys had been working on the existing catchment tank, refurbishing it and putting the k-11 on it.  Chris (my brother) helped Robert plumb the pressure tank and pump and within 3 days we were back in business. We now have a sustainable water system (as long as it rains, and if it doesn't we can order 4000 gals at a time!)

We filter it and it is probably way more drinkable than any city water. I usually have a load of clothes in the washer and as soon as it starts to rain, I turn the washer on and do laundry till it stops raining. You do have to think about adjusting your usage - unless you are from the desert and used to being spare with water!

Overall the project has cost us about $1500 - and we still have about $400 to spend on the UV filter. After about 50 months (4 yrs), our water will be free from there on! (Water from the KKWA runs about $60-90 per month.) We did weigh the option of having a well dug but we are too close to sea level to not be inundated by salt water.

This is the tank filling up from rainwater. We have two sides of roofs draining into it right now and we are adding a third today!

The Summer 2010

We spent the summer beginning to do the "unseen" structural remodeling. Some windows came out, some walls came down, some finally went back up!  We painted the outside front wall even though eventually it will be covered in 6" hardiplanks. I bought gallons and gallons of paint from the Arc og Hilo's recycling center for $4 a gal so Robert is letting me paint everywhere even though in time it will be covered up! But for now it makes me feel happier looking at the fresh paint! This was painted in late August 2010. Notice dark carport is down and sunshine is coming in!

Empathy ! Looking back at the beginning May 2010

Front wall onto deck

In the beginning - May 2010

So we are about 6 months into an owner builder project of our own. It's a lot different in some ways from this side of the credit card! We thought we'd jump right in and be done in 6 months but money and commitments have held things up! Oh yah and we got married in December!

So in the next few posts I will try to catch you up with our progress so far! We had to basically begin at the beginning - rewire, re plumb, rebuild walls. Robert thought at first he would do a little re-framing and then in a few weeks sheet rock! He then found the electrical was scary. We had extension cords run everywhere until he and my brother got it all re-arranged in December.