UP!

The weather forecast called for a chilly day of rain and thunder storms, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day after all. A perfect day to lower our wind turbine for its annual inspection - and hopefully repair. It hadn't been performing well since a bad wind storm did some damage to it last April, it was now a matter of finding out how much damage.

Coming down carefully...

As usual, Frank "the Solar Guy" who designed and installed the system was in charge of the operation. Lowering a 306-feet, $9,000 tower is not something you do lightly, it takes thorough planning and smooth team work. Fortunately we had a good group volunteering to help us out, which included a powerful Bobcat to do most of the heavy lifting.

Once the tower had come down we quickly found out what the problem was: a frayed tension wire in the turbine head had overheated and shorted the system. The good news was that we had the skills and the tools to repair it. Other than that there were no further issues or repairs, thank goodness.

Many hands...

Getting the tower back up proved a bit more of a challenge. Because of the slippery tall, moist grass under the Bobcat, its wheels began to spin. The solution proved simple: everybody pile on top of it to give some extra grip - and there we went.

All aboard!

Lowering & raising a turbine, even a relatively small one as ours, is always a hassle and time-consuming. On the other hand, it's also a great exercise in community building, with everyone pulling his/her weight, learning about wind power and adding to a wonderful day. But the end of the afternoon the turbine was back to happily cranking out green energy again.

Thank you, Frank, Jane, Mark, Dana, Paul, Brian, Will, Joey, Mel and Tyler for your help and positive attitude. Oh, and the happy dogs Will & Kate and Amber, too!

Firewood? Must be summer!

After a long winter that just didn't seem to want to let go, summer's finally here. And with the hot, seemingly endless days, the summer chores kick in: putting in gardens, setting up watering systems (thank you, water barrels!), some basic house maintenance, encouraging a few dozen insecure 3-year old trees using home-made compost, but most of all: getting next winter's firewood bucked, split and stacked.

The distant sound of chainsaws whining is the tell tale sign that we're not the only ones working at it. Common wisdom has it you'd better have your wood bucked and split by Canada Day (July 1st) so it has enough time to dry out before winter rolls around again. It's hard, hot work, yet strangely satisfying. We pretty much hit that target, most of our wood is ready for next winter and it even looks like there's enough left for the winter after - bonus!

Getting your firewood done is one of the bigger chores connected to living in the country. It's also a vital one: no firewood, no heat! And given our long cold winters and temps that routinely hover around the -30C to -40C mark, you'd better have your woodstove going!

Fortunately our large straw bale house proves very well insulated, using only about 3.5 cords of wood each winter - about one half to one third of similar sized homes out here. That saves a lot of work! And as I'm slowly working my way through what seems like a mountain of wood in the summer heat and surrounded by hungry mosquitoes, that's something I'm very grateful for right now...!

A Greenhouse For –40C Winters…?

Our North Ontario winters are crazy long & cold. If you want to do any serious vegetable gardening, you’ll need some sort of greenhouse to beat the short growing season – or it will beat you. Add to this free trade and low oil prices, and it’s no wonder that most of our produce here is trucked in from vast distances, losing much of its freshness and nutrients in the process.

Some people are getting a little nervous about that. For with oil prices steadily climbing, so has the price of that trucked-in produce. And with energy and environmental crises breathing down our neck, they are beginning to wonder what may happen if those crises will make it impossible to get our food here. How will we feed ourselves then?

Enter Nolalu resident Leo Hunnako. Leo’s got a Big Idea: to build a greenhouse for North Ontario’s mind-numbing cold winters. Yep: winters. You know, our long plug-your-car-in, square-tire winters. That’s when Leo’s greenhouse will be happily producing fresh organic veggies. Solar powered, almost all year round. Mind you, this is not your (grand) daddy’s greenhouse. This one’s super-insulated and sheltered from the biting winds. Lots of thermal mass will retain the sun’s warmth that pours in during our short but sunny winter days. Solar hot water collectors will store even more solar heat that gets piped through a sand-filled wall and underneath the veggie beds. Insulated double pane windows will be covered up with more insulation material at night to keep the warmth in.

It’s scheduled to be operational by early October, the first of its kind. The idea is that with Leo’s help (and after extensive testing) many more will follow. We can’t wait to see how it will perform.
Our survival may depend on it.
Leo Hunnako can be reached at leoh @ tbaytel.net (first remove the spaces in the email address - spam protection)

Toys we really need (no, really)

Click, clunk, whirrrrrrr – crrrack!! And repeat. And repeat. And repeat...
Now that our wonderful new chainsaw has produced the 5 cords of firewood required for this winter, there’s one more task to do: splitting it (well, there’s also the stacking it and building the woodshed, but that will have to wait till this fall).

Of course you can take your trusty axe and wood block and do it all by hand, but believe me: that’s only fun and games for the first hour or so. The other umpteen hours… some may call it invigorating, but “back breaking” is closer to the truth.
Enter the electric log splitter, courtesy of our wonderful friends Ron & Kelly (who also own a camp near us, a little piece of heaven with a sauna overlooking a quiet lake – but that’s another story). And suddenly, that big wood pile seems a lot less daunting.

Some purists will prefer the blistered hands, the aching back, the sweat-drenched shirts, and hey: go for it if that turns your crank. I prefer the elegance and convenience of this electric miracle. Click, clunk, whirrrrrrr – crrrack! Powered by our own renewable energy, of course.
The only disadvantage: this is only a loaner… Anybody got a small electric log splitter they want to get rid of…?!

Things That Go Bang! in the Night

Our solar hot water system has been out of commision for a while now. It had been doing just great – until one cold night this past winter (-32C plus a nasty wind) we heard a loud bang: the system had frozen and burst, despite the glycol in it (a biodegradable type of anti-freeze).

Of course we had to wait repairing it until the frost was gone (which took well into June this year!), and then we just got too busy to actually get to it. But yesterday we finally got up on the ladders, took the solar tubes off and temporarily stored them (picture below) and took the manifold down for a closer look. Frank Ilczyszyn (below, right), who designed and installed our entire solar and wind system, was once again our go-to guy to help out with this 2-person job.

Fortunately the damage wasn’t all too bad, we should be able to repair it later this week. I'm looking forward to get the system up and running again, it does a great job at producing hot water from the sun, even on overcast days. Last summer we used solar hot water exclusively, it was so efficient we could simply turn our conventional water heater off. I got quite a kick out of that. I'm telling ya, nothing beats a steaming hot solar shower in the morning!

I Love My Chain Saw!

I never was much into doing guy things. I don't care about cars (or trucks, if you live in NW Ontario), I like classical and folk music, don't fish or hunt, am not particularly fond of working the BBQ, don't -dare I say it?- follow sports, and even less guy-like: I have no problem talking about feelings.

But something happened about 3 weeks ago: our grumpy old chain saw officially became a serious safety hazard. The big bloody gash in my upper leg told me loud and clear: don't use this tool ever again if you hope to live to a ripe old age. Or live, period.

New chain saws are expensive, though, until friends of ours told us about their Echo saw they picked up at Roslyn's Hardware Store. I now am the proud owner of a brand new saw, and I love it (thank you, Wendy & Kevin!).
Now I'm looking for excuses to fire her up and cut down stuff. I dream of felling trees, making them drop with uncanny precision. No more ear drum-piercing whining, no more foul smells, no more guzzling of gas & oil, no more struggling to get 'er goin', no more parts falling off, no more fretting if we have enough firewood for this winter, and especially: no more worries about safety and reliability. Ahhh...! Yup, life is all about balance.

Disclaimer: no live trees are being harmed in the process, only dead, sick or blown over ones. And for bucking, we're using a solar-powered electric chain saw. Hey, we're an Eco Centre!