Month: April 2014

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Timber!

Last summer, I discovered that my property is a little bigger than I thought it was and that a row of mostly dead trees and sucker growth were not my property line. So getting rid of that mess was foremost on my mind as it would open up the lot considerably. My dear friend and self-appointed adopted dad Charles promised that the first nice day of spring that he had a new chainsaw chain, he would get those trees down for me. This afternoon, he made good on his promise!

Things are coming together! The electrician is coming first thing in the morning (!!!), another neighbour is going to tackle my gravel pile with his tractor, and the guy who is going to move my graineries might do so over the weekend (OMG).

When am I moving back to Haven? SaskPower will come within 10 days of the electrician to hook me up to the grid, so I’m not moving back before that happens, and the gravel has to be finished, too. I may get back there yet!

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Another Haven Power Update

Back in February, I finally got an electrician to come out here to give me an estimate on getting power to my property. We spoke about a mid-May installation, then the weather got unseasonably good, so I asked for late April, but early April worked better for him, and I got all excited about moving back to Haven early.

Well, it’s late April and there’s still no date on power going in. 🙁 This is not the electrician’s fault. He has been fabulous about staying on top of this and I have no reason to believe he’s trying to get out of the job. The problem is the weather keeps regressing.

He emailed this morning to ask me to call SaskPower to open an account with them for a new service. He thought he could do all of that for me, but SaskPower requires that a new connection request be made by the person who will be paying the bill. He gave me the phone number and the instructions to get through the menu maze, so I got a live person in the correct department in under 15 seconds.

I had to give my land description since we don’t have addresses here and got yet another hurdle. For some reason, they have my neighbour as having service on my lot! His lot and mine used to be one and were subdivided, so that could explain this problem, although there’s also the possibility that the RM (‘town office’) gave him the wrong info seeing as my neighbour is a tenant, not landowner. I gave them another land description provided on my certificate of title and that was helpful to confirm that I am indeed the owner of my lot and that the issue with the neighbour is a clerical, not legal one.

So the SaskPower lady put me on hold for a minute to speak to a supervisor. She came back and said that they have people whose sole job it is to sort out issues like these (!) and that we could go ahead with my application. I gave her my legal name and mailing address, confirmed the service going in (100 amps), and that there is likely not going to be any cost for me to have the meter put in because I have a pole and lines right at the property.

The next step is to schedule the installation of the meter. My electrical guy can do that. I provided SaskPower with his name and telephone number and they gave me a notification number to give to him to make his call easier. There’s a 10-business day delay between the call and the installation of the meter.

I was then asked if I had called ‘SaskEnergy’ and I thought, oh no, another hurdle! It turns out that they are the ones who provide natural gas service, which I am not dealing with this year. So there’s nothing to do on that end, nor am I having a telephone land line put in by SaskTel.

I am beyond ready to get back to Haven, but with the weather yo-yoing as it has, it would be stupid to go back without power on the lot. Never mind the giant pile of gravel I’m still working on…

Yay for my electrician, though! I am really pleased to have found him and I suspect I will have more work for him in the future. And yay for SaskPower as they have been super easy to deal with, a far cry from my experience with Hydro-Québec.

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Solar Phone Charger

I love bargain hunting at the Willow Bunch Thrift Store, located just 10 minutes from Haven. 90% of my current wardrobe comes from there and I’m always finding little things for the rig or the property that are also a bargain.

In the electronics room today, I found a curious object:

I was fairly certain I was looking at a solar cell phone and small USB-powered device charger, but had no way of confirming my theory. So I gave the thrift store the grand sum of 50 cents for the device so I could try it out at home with my iPhone.

Well, I was right!!! I plugged the iPhone in, turned on the device, and I was rewarded with the ding that tells me the phone is charging! Wow!

 

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How To Move a Mountain

Spring seems to have finally sprung in southern Saskatchewan! But, really, I have idea why I’m so wintered out. Compared to winter in about 95% of the rest of the continent, winter here was easy. I don’t even feel like I ‘survived’ a winter living in an RV in southern Saskatchewan.

Today’s high was about 20C/68F and I made it a point to spend several hours on my property tackling the huge pile of sand and stone on which I plan to park Miranda when I move back in a couple of weeks. Power should be going in around April 20th (delayed because of one last, unforeseen, cold snap) and the RM says they can likely open my water tap around May 1st, so my return to Haven is coming up fast!

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Looking south. The broom on the left indicates where I want the driver’s side rear bumper to go. This would give me enough room between the RV and the tree line to move around on that side and also give me light through the front driver’s side kitchen and living room windows.

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Looking north. You can see how much I’ve raked out and that the area is nowhere near level. The darker spot represents an hour of work!

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Queen of the gravel pile.

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Standing on top of the gravel pile looking north.

It’s a formidable task to move all that material by hand and I will likely have to hire someone with a tractor to finish the job for me as I am running out of time. How do you move a mountain? One shovel at a time… I started by raking out as much as I could, but I now have to move what’s left using a shovel and wheelbarrow.

I’m disappointed with the material, which should have been crushed gravel, but it’s what I have to work with.  I’m trying to spread it evenly over a very large area so as to give me a dry solid surface around the RV for accessing the compartments, emptying tanks, doing maintenance, etc.  I’m hoping that the dirt will sink and the rocks will rise to the surface, as has happened on the pile over the winter.

The other thing I need to coordinate is the moving of my buildings. In an ideal world, I would have a level spread of gravel and a foundation all ready for them, but that’s not going to happen. Charles suggests that I focus on getting them weather tight this year and next year we can jack them up properly. I’m still hoping to get out to where they are right now to get some measurements so I can determine exactly where I want to put them. Oh, and I have trees to chop, too. Whew!

I’ve worked really hard this winter and I’m looking forward to slacking a little on the typing hours and spending some time working the property now that the weather is nicer. I’ve got a mountain of work ahead of me, but I’m focusing on just one task at a time and relishing the slight ache of muscles that haven’t done enough all winter and are happy to be productive again.