Homemaking

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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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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.

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Haven Power Update

Getting power put in on my property, Haven, has been surprisingly difficult because none of the local electricians will return my phone calls or emails. The only person who replied to me was a guy in Moose Jaw whose estimate came in at $2,700…

A few days ago, Caroline showed me an ad in the local paper for a new electrician in Assiniboia, so I promptly contacted him.

To my surprise, he got right back to me and scheduled a time to come meet me at Haven!

The meeting happened this afternoon. We walked the property together, talked about my immediate and future needs, his availability, and the price.

He needs to crunch numbers and check the cost of the socket into which SaskPower will plug their meter, but he’s thinking the job should come in somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500. That’ll be for the exterior grade box, the socket, the outlets, his time, permits, etc., etc.

Best of all, he can fit me in as soon as the weather is clement. I told him that I want to aim for May 15thish!

I spent about 8 months of 2013 off the grid and I will concede that I am DONE with boondocking for the time being. 😀 The thought of leaving Laura’s yard and being able to move to a place with 30A service sounds like pure luxury!

Having decided that I am going away next winter (even if I haven’t figured out how or where exactly yet), power is going to be the biggest expense at Haven this summer. Another load of gravel and moving the buildings will be about a $500 expense total. That’s really all I feel like spending this summer and I want any extra earnings to go to travel and squirreling away for the winter.

It’s such a relief to have this item off my to-do list. Now, I need to start planning an “RV Park Chez Rae Has Power!” party for the beginning of June. 😀

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Making Life Without Running Water a Little Easier

This is not yet another post about conserving water while RVing. It’s about those times that, for whatever reason, you are unable to fill your RV fresh water tank but still have a plentiful source of water nearby to haul home in jugs.

I will have spent a sizable chunk of 2013 in this position and finally have a system that almost makes me not miss being able use my holding tank. It helps, of course, that I can have a hot shower any time I want, something I was sorely missing on the beach last winter, as well as access to free laundry. But that still leaves having water handy for dish and hand washing as well as freshening up.

When it’s warm out, like it was on the beach last winter and on my property during the first part of the summer, I don’t miss not having hot water at the ready. I’m fine with washing my hands or freshening up with cool water. I heat up a kettle of water at the end of the day for doing the dishes, but that’s the limit of my need for hot water.

But when it’s cold out and you only keep your rig at about 60F, washing your face with cold water in the morning really sucks! Heck, even washing your hands with cold water after using the bathroom is less than pleasant. It’s also nice to have hot water on hand for making hot beverages during the day.

After spending so many months hauling water, I’ve got my method down pat.

I start with hauling water home in this Reliance 5-gallon water container:

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On the beach, I used a similar containers by Reliance in a flexible material, but both developed leaks (after three years of great service) so I replaced them with what I could find locally.

This is exactly as much water weight as I can carry a few staggering steps, like from my truck or Laura’s wagon to the rig*. What I like about it is that it has a tap, so it’s just like having cold running water. I have it set on the table by the entry so it’s out of my way yet accessible. When Neelix needed his perch 🙁 I would sit my water container on the stool by the counter. This is a much more desirable location.

(*It’s about 100 feet from Laura’s back porch to my rig so the only way I can get the water home without breaking my back is by putting it in her little heavy-duty wagon!)

I also have a typical water container used with water refrigeration systems that I can have filled at the grocery store:

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Laura loaned me a pump for this container, but I haven’t try it yet. If it doesn’t work well, I’ll transfer from this container to the other one.

Hauling water from Laura’s is really luxurious because her water is potable and I don’t have to filter it for drinking. It’s a treat to be able to open a tap and have drinkable water!

Next up, hot water. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I needed a large capacity Thermos-type unit, preferably with a pump so that I wouldn’t have to worry about lifting and pouring from a heavy container with dirty hands.

I happened to find this vintage double-Thermos unit on eBay for a great price and it matches my kitchen perfectly!

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If I’m going to have something like this sit on my counter all winter, I’d much rather it be aesthetically pleasing! As you can see, I can pump water directly into the sink. Each side holds exactly one kettle’s worth of hot water. And they don’t make ’em like they used to! I have added hot water in the morning to find it still scalding in the afternoon for doing dishes. It was then still nice and hot for a before bed wash and was still pleasantly warm in the morning for the morning wash! Pretty impressive!

Now, what’s that in the sink?

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I do my laundry at Laura’s, but I find that dish cloths and the like pile up very quickly. So I make it a point to wash what I used of those that day in the sink, using a kettle of hot water to soak them first in a little bleach and soap.

For the bathroom, I get water from the kitchen in a large bowl and I refresh it as needed during the day.

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If my hands are particularly dirty, I wash them in the kitchen using my hot running water! 🙂

Finally, I spray all my used dishes with a little soapy water from a spray bottle:

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Since I do them when they’re fresh, no soaking is necessary. I wipe everything clean, then rinse with the hot water from the Thermos. Having the hot water at the ready guarantees that I wash everything right away instead of waiting because it’s not worth heating water just to wash a bowl and spoon and ending up with a huge pile that needs loads of water to wash.

So that’s how I’ve been getting by without running water this fall. Hauling heavy jugs is a pain, but between that and the propane, I’m getting good exercise!