Author: Rae

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Typing Like Mad

Today marks a full month since I moved to Laura’s yard. It feels like a lot longer than that!

I took the summer too easy work-wise and now it’s time to make up for that. I’ve been applying like mad for contracts and, bizarrely enough, I’m suddenly getting tons of positive responses! I still need to dot a few Is, but it looks like I finally have as much as I can handle without going completely cross-eyed. The income isn’t great, but at least it’s steady. Most of the work is transcription, though, and that leaves me very little mental energy or desire to do any other sort of typing work. I’m now trying to get into a semblance of a routine that will give me a moment in the day when I can say, okay, enough for today!

I’m nowhere near that point yet, though. It’s 9PM and I have a couple of hours left to do today in order to make tomorrow manageable, although it will be more of the same.

Yesterday, C&C asked me to come help them finish insulating the inside of the addition, so I took half a day off to do that, although I’m paying for it now, hence the very long work day! But that was a good example of my making an effort to fit living back into my schedule.

I’d say all aspects of my life are going well, including the weather! Oh, we’ve had a few cold days and nights, but nothing that was unbearable, and the forecast for the rest of the week has us on a warming trend. In fact, tomorrow is supposed to hit plus 9 and if it does, I have to squeeze the emptying of my holding tanks into my schedule.

The new thermostat is definitely helping in that it’s getting me out of bed earlier in the morning, no small miracle! It was great yesterday to be able to set the thermostat for 55 while I was out all day but have it come up to 65 in the evening before I got home!

I’ve also modified my diet slightly to include more (good) carbs, which are making a big difference in how many fewer layers of clothing I need to wear! I’m still watching what I eat and am always surprised (and pleased) when I look in a mirror. It’s been a year of wonderfully positive changes!

The only thing that isn’t going so well is that the rig feels so empty. 🙁 I try to play with Laura and C&Cs cats, plus C&C’s wonderful dog, but it’s not enough. Yet, I know better than to recommit to a pet at this point. If I was near a larger city, I would try to get into fostering, but that’s not an option out here.

And of course it’s hard to be reading Croft who is in Salem, OR, right now, en route to Texas and to chat with my friend L about his impending departure for the Lone Star state, too, but c’est la vie and I’m not going to mope about it. Every decision I’ve made has led to this being the option for this winter and I’m not going to have a pity party about it!

Well, I’d better get back to work. Sleep would be nice at some point. 🙂

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Thermostat Tweaking

I’m having fun training my new thermostat!

According to the manual, how it works is that you set a time at which you want to have reached a certain temperature and the thermostat will estimate how long it will take to reach that temperature. For example, if you want to get up at 8AM to a rig that is at 60F, then the thermostat might start as early as 6AM.

For some reason, it takes me weeks to get used to the sound of the furnace cycling on and off at night and until then it wakes me up every time. So while we’re having these fairly mild nights where the electric heaters are enough to keep the temperature at 55F or higher keeping the furnace from cycling on unless absolutely necessary is a priority.

This morning, I had the thermostat set to reach 70F by 8AM. At about 5:45, it kicked on. At about 6:00, I was boiling hot and badly needing to get a few more hours of sleep (I’ve been swamped with work and burning the midnight oil). So I got up to lower the temperature threshold and saw that it was about 63 in the rig. I reset the threshold for 60 and went back to bed.

When I got up around 9:00, it was 60F in the rig and perfectly cozy for about a half hour and then my body temperature dropped. So I reset the daytime threshold for 65 and that ended up being too much. I finally settled on 63.

What’s interesting in all of this is that I need the temperature a lot lower than I thought I did and that I don’t have to work in increments of 5 or 10 degrees anymore. I think this new thermostat will make my furnace run more efficiently and it will be interesting to see if I notice a difference in my propane consumption.

Right now, the propane consumption has been negligible. I hadn’t had time to go to town to refill and was being super conservative with my bottles, thinking I was on dregs, but I had a full 10lbs left between the two of them when I finally got to town yesterday and I’ve been running on these so long I can barely remember the time before that that they were filled.

As for power, Laura has yet to analyze her power bills, but I’ve been using a Kill-o-Watt meter to track power usage with my electric heaters and it’s coming out to about $1 a day each so far, and that’s with them running 24/7 on low. So I’m not too worried!

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Upgrading From an Analog Duo-Therm Thermostat to a Programmable Digital Honeywell Thermostat

Today, I finally upgraded from an analog Duo-Therm thermostat to a digital programmable Honeywell thermostat.

This mod has been a LONG time coming! I just couldn’t justify the $50 expenditure when I wasn’t in cold climates for any length of time. But just the last few months here, when it hasn’t even been really cold, I could see that the expense would be worthwhile. One of my pet peeves is to get up into a cold room. Getting up is hard enough as it is, but the added work of shivering means I prefer to stay curled up under my duvet. So I’ve been getting a late start lately.

There have been some articles about this upgrade, but none that were recent and took into account newer digital thermostat models. So I did some research about what to look for in a thermostat and then, gasp, I made the choice on my own. I needed something that would use batteries for power, be as close in options to my existing thermostat, and most importantly, would automatically lower the temperature threshold before bed and increase it in the morning. I settled on the Honeywell Pro 4000 TH4110D1007. It was $65 locally and $40 on Amazon. I ordered my winter boots at the same time, paying all of $13 for shipping and $50 out of pocket, saving about $75 total.

I was going to town this afternoon, so I promptly opened up the box when it arrived this morning to get the size of batteries I would need to operate the thermostat. To my surprise, a pair of AA Duracell batteries were included in the box. Nice touch, Honeywell!

At first glance, the wiring on the Duo-Therm and Honeywell seemed completely different. There were some corresponding letters, but both had letters the other one didn’t. I Googled for a Duo-Therm wiring diagram and couldn’t find anything that was like mine. Apparently, most have multi-coloured wiring, but mine just had red, white, and black, not very helpful.

Having, among other things, upgraded my RV converter, a little thing like a thermostat just wasn’t daunting. So I just read and reread the Honeywell manual until I figured out which wiring diagram corresponded to mine (1H/1C System), and that eliminated all the letters in their diagram that didn’t correspond to the Duo-Therm wiring scheme. As for the Duo-Therm, the one non-corresponding letter had a white wire, which I figured was power and therefore not needed.

I turned off all power to the rig before starting. Then, I disconnected and reconnected one wire at a time, a job that would have been much easier with an extra set of hands and a proper light, but which still only took about five minutes. I did it in this order, basically going counter clockwise around the Duo-Therm: RH to R, RC to RC (don’t lose the little jumper thing!), G to G, W to W, and Y to Y. I taped off the white H wire on the Duo-Therm that I assumed was power.

All that done, I was able to mount the base to the wall and snap on the controller. I turned power back on to the rig, set the thermostat to heat, and the furnace fired right up. Good start! The AC didn’t start, but I think that’s because it was 60F in the rig at the time so there was no point in troubleshooting something that might not need to be troubleshooted.

Within a couple of minutes, I noticed a problem. The fan (on the air conditioner) ran at the same time as the furnace. This was odd as the fan control had the same options (on or auto). I always leave it to on and it never runs, but I couldn’t get it to shut off. It blows cold air, so that was unacceptable! So I pried off the cover and disconnected the G wire that runs the fan. Another thing to troubleshoot at a later date. 🙂

Then, it was time to set the temperature control schedule! This was super easy and intuitive. I started by setting the current time and day and then entered the time and temperature options as prompted. How this thermostat works is on two schedules, Monday to Friday and Saturday and Sunday, where you set a wake up, daytime, evening, and nighttime temperature thresholds.

For both schedules, I said I wanted the furnace to be set at 55 at night, 70 for an hour in the morning, 65 during the day, and 70 in the evening after 6PM. I don’t even know if there is a Celsius option, but the Duo-Therm Celsius increments were so large that I got used to using the Fahrenheit scale.

The furnace has now been running for a bit and I’ve only gained a few degrees even though it is comfortable in here. As expected, the digital model is much more sensitive than was the analog. So I may discover that I can actually keep it at lower temperatures than I did the analog. It’ll take some time to work out the kinks. The big test will be tomorrow morning.

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Lots of Shoveling Ahead

I wanted gravel delivered to Haven before spring so that I can move back there in early May without having to worry about sinking into the muddy ground. It’s been so long since I placed the order that I don’t remember how much I asked for and I’m fairly certain it won’t be enough, but tah-dah:

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It’s not gravel the way that most of you will envision gravel RV pads, rather sand mixed with large stones. I’m a little irked that the guy had me move the boardwalk and stake out where I wanted the pile dropped so that he could do so at his leisure, then put the pile where he wanted, spreading it out away from the intended target. It is going to be a lot of work to get that gravel moved where I want it!

The plan is to create a 45’x20′ gravel pad that is 6″ thick. I know I have enough to cover the surface area, but am certain there isn’t enough to get the 6″ thickness. So I may end up having to order more gravel at some point.

Gravel is ordered directly from the RM of Willow Bunch and is $7 per cubic yard, plus a delivery charge on top of that. C&C had gravel delivered in the spring and still haven’t been billed for it, so I’m hoping I won’t get my bill for a bit…

Parking the RV on this gravel pad is going to mean very little sunshine for the solar panels, even if I have some trees trimmed back. So I am going to get hold of the electrical folks in Assiniboia and beat a quote out of them for getting hooked up to the grid and try to get that done by the middle of June at the latest. I also need to get a quote to get the trees in the middle of the yard removed and arrange to have my graineries moved, too. Once the trees are gone and the graineries in place, I’ll be able to start planning the rest of the yard, including a clothesline.

It’s rather exciting to have started to develop the property. I feel like I broke ground today.

I have tons of transcription to do in the next few days, but the plan is to quit by the middle of the afternoon and then go spend the last few hours of daylight moving gravel around. I’ve been bemoaning the lack of exercise opportunities the last few weeks, so I’m rather glad to have the best kind presented to me, exercise in the form of a rewarding project accomplished outdoors!