Sewer Rooter

When Chris the plumber was here celebrating the new year with us, one of the things he found was a tangle of roots in our sewer line. They were having a negative impact on the flushing of solids, so Chris removed them for us. They looked like elm roots to me and, right outside the house, growing against the foundation, was a clump of elms. Today, the snow and ice had melted sufficiently for me to work into the base of the clump with my chainsaw. And look what I found? An outdoor sewer drain with, presumably, an underground connection to our main sewer pipe. The perfect place for roots to find nourishment. Don't let the elm trees grow up against your foundation, damaging your sewer, your roof, and your walls.

Stove Wood

The previous owner left us a nice supply of cut/split aspen for the stove. And we burned through it like the paper from which it is made. We mixed it with about one load of pinyon that we brought with us from Escalante. Since the house is poorly insulated, it takes a lot of heat to keep it warm and we were soon looking for more. Someone had stacked some peices of elm behind the shed and we started cutting and splitting this for the stove. It, like pinyon, has a lot of BTUs, but it is dirty and ashy. When my father-in-law was heating his farm with wood I remember that he liked to say, "I burn one kind of hardwood. It is spelled with three letters and they are not E-L-M!" So, I suppose he'd be ashamed of me if I told him I was burning elm, which I won't. But, as I was loading the elm on the truck to bring around to the back porch, I thought of something an old-timer once said to me back east when I was burning Eastern White Pine in my stove. I had complained about it since it lacked the heat of oak. The old farmer looked at it, looked at the cold, grey, northeastern landscape, and said, "Well, it's better'n burnin' a snow bank."

Car Costs

I was trying to figure out what it cost to own a car yesterday. I mean the whole cost, every penny, nothing hidden. I was making it up on my own until I discovered that the American Automobile Association has done it for me. In fact, I think they do it every year. This is what I found for 2008: http://news.aaa-calif.com/pr/aaa/document/Driving_Costs_2008.pdf

One of the websites said that car costs can be the second largest expense for a family after housing. And, given that most families own at least two cars, the costs can be substantial. We own both a car and a truck (1/2 ton pickup), neither of them particularly new or nice. But, owning them does seem to be expensive.

The AAA breaks it down by operating expenses and ownership expenses. Operating expenses include maintenance, tires, and fuel; ownership expenses include insurance, registration, depreciation and interest. The AAA calculates costs of between $11.59 and $18.99 per day. That is a lot—a lot—of money, especially multiplied by two. So, I want to try it with our car, a 1995 Mercury Sable.

Maintenance (which I assume includes repairs): $1.10/day
Tires (two sets over five years): $.38/day
Fuel (miles driven/mileage x $2.941): $2.59/day

Insurance: (liability only): $.60/day
Registration (and taxes and inspections): $.16/day
Depreciation (the difference between what you paid and what you can get): $.66/day*
Interest: $.00

Total cost to own our car: $5.49/day

*I figured this using the car’s current blue book value. But, really, we will probably not sell it. Ever. We will have it salvaged when it can no longer physically move. So, this cost should probably be higher since we will likely never recover any value from it. On the other hand, if we can drive it for another 10 years before its final demise, that cost will be quite a bit lower (on a per day basis).

Fuel Filters

As I was replacing the fuel filter on the Chev this morning in the cold half-light before sunrise, I was thinking about the days when everything in life was simpler. Back then, I used to treat a fuel filter replacement as relatively routine. It was usually in the engine compartment and you could reach it from above. Not no mo. This morning, I was laying flat on my back in the ice and snow with the old fuel filter dripping a slurry of petrol and mud directly into my eyes. I've given up on holding the flashlight in my mouth because I always drool too much, so I was doing the whole thing by sense of touch. Of course, my fingers were numb so I had no sense of touch. But, hey, the suffering was worth it right? I mean, the whole job cost me just $7.41. (I don't even want to think about the difference between what they would have charged me over at the garage for ten minutes of labor--maybe $30 bucks--and the two hours that I missed at work where I earn probably $35/hour.)

A Word About Parowan

Parowan is called the "Mother of southern Utah," because it was the first city settled in the southern part of the state. Parley Pratt, sent by Brigham Young, dedicated the townsite in 1850. The first settlers arrived in January of 1851. The word, pronounced "Para-win" or "Para-one," is a Paiute word meaning "evil water."

A couple blocks from our house lives the Parowan Prophet. His name is Leland Freeborn and he has been given a vision of WW III. While this blog embraces self-reliance, I doubt that we have as much of the survivalist spirit as our neighbor. His website is below.

http://www.parowanprophet.com/

The Jotul

Despite the furnace (and all the heaters posted below), the real locus of heat is the wood stove. It is a Jotul. But, if you go to Jotul's webpage, you can't find anything like it (http://www.jotul.com/en-us/wwwjotulus/). So, I'm not sure when or where it was made. Anybody have a guess? In any case, Valerie thinks it looks like a monument from Easter Island.

Heaters

Our house does come with a heating system. Unfortunately, the walls and windows are so poorly insulated, that the furnace would have to run constantly to keep the house warm. We'd be paying to heat the whole Parowan valley. So, we went looking for supplemental heaters--small units that can warm a single room while it is being used. The first one we bought had to function without electricity, since the power was out for a number of days. We got a little propane unit that runs off of two little one-pound mini bombs. The heater works. It does what it is supposed to do. But it burns up the mini bombs in what seems like minutes. And those things ain't cheap. So, what . . . would we recommend it? Probably not. It probably costs five dollars a day to run it and we would be better off just cranking the furnace.

Once the power came back on, we bought a little electric space heater. Then we returned it and tried another one. And then a third. We returned them all and have given up on that for the time being. Back in the day I remember that those little electric heaters got HOT--too hot to handle. These ones that we have tried are only lukewarm. I could sit on them with a bare bottom. (Not that I ever would, of course.) I suppose that some folks got burned and maybe a few houses went up in flame, and the manufactures decided to make these things harmless. I guess that is fine, except it means that they don't work. They are sort of warm, but we need hot, and hot they ain't.

Redneck Storm Windows

The house didn't come with storm windows. It is January. I can feel the cold wind when I stand and look through the single panes. What is the solution? Visqueen and a staple gun. Ya can't see through it, but that don't mean it ain't handsome. Redneck storm windows.

Parowan Homestead

In December of 2008, we paid cash for a 100 year old home on about 1/3 of an acre in Parowan, Utah. By January 1 we had moved in. The civil war era plumbing and heating systems were not well suited to a modern winter and, as much as we like Chris, the plumber, we had not really anticipated celebrating the new year with him. In any case, this blog is the story of our attempt to turn a 19th century parcel into a 21st century home without borrowing, without whining, and—especially—without freezing.