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Christmas Lights!

2011-12-04T07:52:00.001-08:00

The is the first Christmas we've owned a home that other people might actually see. So we borrowed some of the lights from Ag who now lives in our old house that no one can see and decorated the house. Our street is a bit of a dud for holiday lights, but we made up for it. Plus we have all this extra electricity from the solar panels to use up now ;)

Climbing in the oak trees out front is super easy.

Most of the lights, except for the icicle lights are all the new fancy LED ones so they barely use any electricity anyway. We may get more of those in the sales after Christmas.

Inside it looks nice too, here's the pooh tree and you can see the icicle lights above the balcony from the inside too.

Here's the real wreath that Ag made for us from trimmings from the real tree we got.

More pictures in the Gallery.

It was a big dumb cloud

2011-06-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

Don't worry I'm not going to upload a graph like this every day. But I could, I mean it's my blog and all, but I won't. The mystery of that huge dip in the first day's graph has been solved. it was likely just a big dumb cloud. Today's graph is much more uniform and at a better 5 minute resolution.

I'm really happy with the data logger (an SMA webbox).

My First Solar Production Graph

2011-06-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

Our system is still in testing mode, but now we've hooked up the webbox data logger and so I can get data out of it. I had knocked up a script to hit it every minute and get data but it crashed halfway through the day. Luckily the built in webserver and ftp server had all the data I needed for today's production and here's a graph.

That dip is interesting, I'll be interested to see if it's there in tomorrow's data too. It could be a tree shading the panels at that time of day, who knows. Looking at the data, the voltage of the panels is constant. I'll be looking into this more.

We made over 28kWh in one day!

Solar panels installed!

2011-06-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

Well it only took two days to install the solar system. Everything turned out great and we're really happy with it.

The system got turned on for the first time today which was also the day the building inspector would sign off on our permit. While it was on for testing we generated 10kWh of power which is worth about $2 or $4 depending on which tier of power you are offsetting.

We're allowed to offset the power we use at night or on cloudy days but not sell back more than we end up using. There are no batteries, the electrical grid is effectively our battery. If there is a power outage, our inverter notices and refuses to output any power (to stop us electrocuting people working on restoring power).

Now we just need to wait for the utility company to come out and give us a fancy smart meter (for time of usage billing) and to bless the system and we'll be allowed to leave it on all the time.

From 20110607solarinstalled

The coolest thing was seeing our electric meter running backwards while the system was running!

Solar Power System Ordered

2011-05-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

We've ordered Solar Power Panels to be installed at the new house. We've always wanted solar power, but at the old house most of our south facing roof was taken up with the panels that heat the pool water by pumping pool water through them. There is a little roof space over the smaller bedroom, but nothing big enough to put a solar power system on.

Our new house is a different story. I thought the main part of the roof was all south facing, but if you look in Google maps on the satellite imagery the long part of the roof is south east facing and the smaller roof over the bedroom and office is south west facing. Where we are south west is best because it's less likely to be foggy in the afternoon so that's where the panels are going.

I talked to 3 companies to get their bids on the job and we chose the one we liked that had a good deal and seems to know (and explain) their stuff the best.

Here's the specs of the system we ordered:

Total System Size: 4.320 kW DC Power (STC) / 3.746 kW AC Power (CEC)
Estimated Annual Production: 6,530 kWh
PV Panel Description: 24 x Schuco USA LP Model: MPE 180 MS 05
Inverters: Qty. 1 - SMA America Model: SB4000US (240V)

Initially it was only going to be 22 panels, but since the inverter is a fixed cost I asked if we could max it out with panels to reduce our cost/kW even though that meant a slightly slower return on investment since the extra electricity we would be replacing would have been cheaper than the solar. I also got a webbox which will allow me to upload and archive my data easily.

Getting at my data and not depending on an external service was a key factor in our choice of system. I had looked at microinverters from Enphase. Microinverters are an inverter for 2 panels so there would be a lot of inverters up on the roof. This makes adding extra capacity (for a plug in car?) at a later date much easier. But this thread in the forums taught me that my data would be held captive by Enphase and I'd have to pay $1/panel/year forever to upload and view my data which little protection if they end up going out of business.

This week we should see the permits issued and the equipment ordered and hopefully install will happen later next week and then it'll get turned on when PG&E takes their sweet time in turning it on. The credits and tax rebates make it an attractive offer that will hopefully pay for itself in 6-7 years they say. I'll be happy if it pays for itself in under 10, it should work for at least 25 with the only maintenance being panel cleaning and replacing the inverter after 12 or so years.

We did look into leasing the system, but it just didn't offer the return on investment we wanted and seemed as if we were mostly just giving our roof and sun over to someone else to make all the upside on it. It'd be a good option if we couldn't afford the system, but luckily we can.

After looking at this I've also been considering putting a solar pool pump at the old house. But since it's so expensive I'll likely only seriously look into it once our current pump dies.

Wood

2011-04-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, do you remember that tree that fell into our garage, it's still not fixed! but when the tree fellas (there were more than 3 of them!) came to clean up the fallen tree they told us they were going to come back and clean up all the dead trees in my other neighbors yard, the one we've been complaining to about his dead trees. He didn't want the wood from those trees so the tree guys offered it to us and we said yes.

Well, shoot that was a lot of wood and then we needed to split and stack it. There is a time I would have done all that myself, but I've run a wood splitter for a day and don't need to get that achievement award anymore so we paid the tree fellas (two this time) to come do it. 3 solid days of work later and we have about 9 cords of wood which should last us for about 5 years!

Meanwhile, down the hill at the new house, the Canadian Dogwood tree is in full effect and looking lovely. This tree was planted by Jo who built our house, he was a contractor and our house is the house he built for himself to live in, no wonder it's awesome. When his wife sold us the house she told us that she'd really like us to keep this tree so here we are trying to keep the tree around. It's lovely.

And he's a phone picture of some of the other crazy stuff growing in our garden. There's so much weird and wonderful plants growing around, I love looking at them all.

Thursday morning was an especially nice sunrise so I popped out on the balcony and took a picture for you. You're welcome!

tree vs garage

2011-03-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

We've had quite a bit of a storm here this last week. I didn't go home on Wednesday or Thursday but when I popped in quickly to pick up some stuff on Friday this is what I found. Seems the big ole pine tree couldn't take it anymore and gave our garage a big hug. Underneath that tree is the old mailbox that got creamed twice by the highway, that thing's a magnet for disaster! At least it pulled the tree toward the garage, it could have been a lot worse and hit the house.

The tree snapped when it hit the garage, still it's twonked the dormer pretty good and jacked that half of the roof and snapped off our stovepipe chimney.

It also jacked the cyclone fence and did some damage to the garage doors too. Nothing too bad.

Amazingly there wasn't any water damage inside the studio above the garage! I nailed up some tarps and everything still seems good.

Because we hadn't complained to our neighbor about the tree it has to come off our insurance and we have a $1K deducible :(

We're working hard on getting it all tidied up and fixed up as soon as possible before it starts raining again. I got to play with my chainsaw for a bit and the people renting the house where the tree used to live came down and chainsawed a lot of stuff too.

Nature and stuff

2011-03-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

I used to love all the nature at our old house, we even made a field guide of all the stuff we saw there. We've been too busy at the new house to do a full evaluation but have found a few things on the way. Check out this sunrise! I took that picture from out balcony!

And while the garage is being remodeled we've had to have the door open for a few nights. Guess who came to visit us!? Mr Raccoon! neato!

Here is a bird of paradise that's growing right outside our front door. The landscaping and flora here is lovely we'll have to try and keep it up!

And the cats are settling in nicely, although they'll miss the boxes once they're all gone (not quite there yet!)

More pictures in the Gallery.

TV Lift

2011-03-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

Originally I didn't want to have a TV in the house at all, I'd managed to drop satellite TV from the old house and we barely watched TV at all. This would be my chance to cut the cord and ditch the TV. But I realized how much I like watching movies, especially with my daughter so we looked for a solution. We could have gone with a projector and a screen (or just a white wall) but we're never up when it's dark so we'd need a pretty powerful projector or awesome curtains.

Instead we got a TV lift, it's a cabinet with a TV inside it. When you turn on the TV it lifts up slowly out of the cabinet and... tah dah, you're watching TV!

This area is over by the kitchen, that allows us to play games and watch a movie while T. is cooking in the kitchen. Saturn the cat was fascinated by the TV coming out. The lift can raise over 100lbs, I thought about putting my daughter in there and having her pop out, that'd be pretty epic.

Finding the right TV lift was tough, they're all huge for huge TV's and we didn't want it to block the windows so needed a modest one. We found this one which was pretty much the right size. When it arrived I saw it didn't have any room underneath and it's going over a hot air vent so I took away the two draws on the bottom (intended for DVD players and suchlike) and put on some feet. I took a drawer front down to home depot and they scanned it and made me a pot of paint that matched perfectly. I painted the feet and I still need to paint a few of the cracks on the panel doors. Yup, despite all the packing it was a little beat up by the time it made it to us, It was a bummer and filled me with buyers remorse, but once it was set up I was super happy with it and the shipping company wrote us a good sized check to make up for the damage which is easy to fix.

weekend chores

2011-03-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend we:

Installed a fluorescent workshop light in the storage room
Installed a occupancy sensor in the garage (the light's on if you're in the room)
Installed cat 5 internet cable to the TV location (Still need to route it through the basement to the closet where the cable modem is).
Painted and installed feet on the new tv lift.
Put the tv in the tv lift and set it all up.
Installed curtain rods in the bedroom.
Cut and sewed curtains to fit in the bedroom.
Installed 5 year old height hooks in the hallway.
Installed hooks on either side of our closet.
Hung up all the big pictures on existing hooks and installed 3 quake proof hooks for pictures we know are staying where they are.
Made a shelf on the singer sewing machine stand for the receiver so the sewing machine goes on top.
Swept the leaves in front of the house on the street.
Took down the shelves in the storage room, getting ready for our cabinets to be installed.
Went exploring around the neighborhood and played art the quarry.
Rode bikes to the new school and hung out there for a while.
Talked to the kitchen cabinet guy about new cabinets.
Unpacked lots of boxes.
Had guests over!
Took apart and cleaned the litter box
Vacuumed the whole house
Did 3 loads of laundry
Cleaned the bathrooms
Made Pasta with Pesto
Honey/Mustard Carrots
Vegetable Stew
Cranberry/Orange Muffins
Apple Crisp
Special Breakfast
Organized all the tupperware

What a great productive weekend, we're really making progress on the house, almost finished now!

Done buying stuff

2011-02-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

We are done buying stuff. Today we finally bought everything that we need. A lot of it was bought online so that will be trickling in over the following weeks. Some of the furniture might take a big longer. We also got a new TV and BBQ from Costco and have made two big trips to Home Depot and I have enough projects to keep me busy for a long time. We got a new dining table and chairs big enough for us to have guests over. A new loveseat for near the kitchen/dining area so we can watch TV and play games while still talking to T. if she's cookin'. I'm excited about the TV lift we got, a box that the TV hides in until we want to watch it, then we press a button and up pops the TV, pimpin'! I didn't want the TV to be out all the time since we don't watch it that much. We also got heated towel rails for all the bathrooms, a luxury that's been on the wanted list ever since we got married.

Ceiling Fans

2011-02-16T21:21:00.001-08:00

Not long after we moved in, we noticed there were no ceiling lights in any of the bedrooms, this is most obvious when you realize you didn't pack a single lamp in the stuff that you have been trucking in every night. It was a bummer but something that could be fixed. I knew it could be fixed because I've installed ceiling fans in the old house. I also knew, after that experience, that it wasn't something I wanted to do. Luckily I know a general contractor and I've even ridden bikes with him. He gave us a quote to put in ceiling fan boxes in each bedroom and today he started and finished the work. I am delighted with the work done, everything looks great and now I just need to install the fans, something I've done before and don't mind doing.

Here's the first fan in our bedroom. We're still waiting on our bed before sleeping in there. We did get the back wall painted a lighter color as an accent wall.

Here's my daughter's room. It's the most complete of all the rooms so far. She loves it! whenever anyone asks her what her favorite room in the new house is, it's always 'my bedroom'.

I think we should get a copy of Cinderella ate my daughter before it's too late!

We splashed out on switches like this. They allow us to control the fan and the light from the wall with only one wire (and no need to punch holes in the wall). They also allow us to get little remotes off ebay and we can control the fans from our bedside, awesome!

One week in our new house

2011-02-15T18:20:00.000-08:00

Today marks one week since we moved into our house. Finally all our junk is here with us and we're starting to settle in. We've also had a lot done on the house already although we really didn't plan to, everything is even better now. It's amazing how much you can get done in a week if you farm out all the work and plan it carefully. Ideally I'd like the garage to be done by now, or even within two weeks, but it might take a bit longer than that with the new doors being the big bottleneck there, but it'll be worth the wait, it's going to be better than planned I think.

We still have a ton of boxes all over the house but we're slowly working through them and getting furniture settled and ordering some new furniture to fill the gaps. E's sleeping in her room. We're still waiting on our new bed so still sleeping on a futon in the living room. The washer/drier and dishwasher are great. The fridge is a little annoying, for something so big it feels like it should fit more in it. Also the fridge has an all metal front and magnets don't stick to it! I should have known, but I've never experienced fancy pants appliances before. It also has a small dent in the door which we weren't worried about because we were going to cover it in magnets, sigh. E's artwork taped over it is good enough for now, there are also other options.

Also I forgot to tell this story from the moving big furniture weekend. At our old house we could never get pizza delivered, but here we can. We chose that day to be the first day we ordered pizza and when the doorbell rang T. was so excited she ran around the yelling, The Pizza's Here! and promptly forgot how to get to the front door and ran down the hallway to the bedrooms.

Kitchen

2011-02-14T06:23:00.000-08:00

The plan was for us to put a bay window in place of a small window in a bit of a dead space in the kitchen. We were also going to put a pay window in where we were going to put the TV close by to the kitchen so we could all hang out while T was cookin'. Since we were getting some window stuff done we were going to also throw in another window in the apartment and also maybe in the storage unit and make it a possible office. Well that all fell apart last Friday when Terry came over and told us he couldn't put bay windows in where we wanted due to shear walls and 4ft from the corner and other such rules, no bay windows, no other window work, see ya later Terry. The cats don't know it but they're bummed to not have two new cat-cookers like at the old house.

However, we were waiting on the new windows before getting the kitchen painted. No new windows, no holdup so we called the painters to see when they'd be available and tomorrow was the answer. So as well as having to clear out the garage for the floor treatment we also had to clean out the kitchen. But hey presto the very next evening we had a newly painted kitchen and we all think it looks a whole lot better than it did (not that it looked bad before!).

Day after moving bike ride

2011-02-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

O.K. this isn't really house related but it kind of is.

Since J was in town and we don't get to see him as much as we used to before he moved away, Sunday was dedicated to going to ride bikes just like we used to.

However, this time I could get ready for my ride at home and just roll out of the garage into town to meet everyone and then we went on a sweet 30 mile bike ride going far and wide.

We even ended up at a brewery where I could have a beer because I didn't have to worry about driving on a super twisty highway. Then I rode up to the house, I will admit it was more of a climb than I wanted after all that but I could roll into the house and shower. So awesome. Riding with my friends made it all even better especially since I got to ride with some people who can't make it to the regular morning rides and I really like riding with them, hope I get to do more weekend rides from my house soon!

Moving Day!

2011-02-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

We had a move-in day and also a moving day scheduled for months. I had been packing for 4 weeks before we were even supposed to move in, much to T's chagrin because the usual answer to "Where is X" is "in a box!". Here's all the boxes piled up in the old den, kinda looks like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Ever since move-in day we've been bringing truckloads of boxes (pickup truck) and dumping them in the garage but there was some furniture and boxes that were too big for the old truck-truck so we rented a box truck and recruited my very bestest friends to come help out.

After about an hour we had the truck pretty much full of our junk. Some great packing by J. and heavy lifting by C. and N.

Poor J. he's so allergic to cats it's not even funny and there we were moving our furball infested stuff all over the place, finding huge dust bunnies of cat fur as we went. What a trooper!

And then the mother-in-law shows up with her truck! full of her crazy stuff and some pieces of furniture for us too. We unloaded her stuff, packed in more of our stuff and headed down to our new house to unpack.

Our old house driveway is crazy steep but ends up in a nice flat area. Our new house driveway is short and steep with very little flat bit at the top. We could have the truck on the rampy bit and have a flat area to unload onto, but that meant getting the stuff up a huge incline IN the truck before unloading, or park flat but have very little room behind the truck. Option 2 was the best of two bad choices. Option 3 was unload on the street and carry everything UP the hill and you know we weren't about to do that!

Eventually it all worked out, E's bed was the biggest deal and I even stayed up late to put it together so she could have her own room back. Mission Accomplished!

Garage and Storage

2011-02-10T06:23:00.000-08:00

I love the garage in the old house, it's something we spent a lot of time getting right and it's wonderful to work on my bikes there. This new garage (here's the before picture) had some good cabinets at the end and a big double garage door with an opener. Since T would be riding bikes to swimming every day, she needed another way to get out without running the garage door opener which is right below our bedroom. And that was how we came up with this crazy plan.

First the garage floor is being coated with a green stain/sealant that's like epoxy, but not quite. Then I'm also getting the same cabinets that we have in the old place which I've been very happy with. I spent a lot of time thinking about the arrangement of the cabinets and how I might use them and how they'll fit in the the various wiggles and panels on the walls. I'm also going to put in some Plugmold power strips, Wall Control pegboard and Akro Mils drawers. Thanks to my buddy at the local bike store, we're getting a great deal on a commercial 8 bike rack which should have enough room to keep us going for quite some time.

For the garage door, we're taking out the double and replacing it with a single and a wide 36" entry door that we'll likely mostly use all the time. I'm going to try hard to get the garage door and the entry door to match the other doors and windows around the house, they have a 3 pane motif going on I'd like to maintain.

There is also a storage room which you get to from the outside, I was trying to work out how to get to it by staying in the house, but it would jack up the apartment too much so it's staying as an outside access only thing. I had also thought about turning it into an office, but we really don't need the space and with what we learned about windows needing to be 4ft from a corner of the building it would be hard to get some good windows in it. So it's staying as a storage unit. But since we're getting things done properly, I'm getting short commercial carpet installed and then a wall of the same cabinets as we are getting in the garage. It's going to be lovely.

It's not a trivial project, but it's all coming together nicely. I'll post pictures when it's done.

Let the work begin!

2011-02-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

The first full day in the new house I worked at home because we had a lot of people coming over. First the painters were coming to paint my daughter's room before her huge bed arrived and also her bathroom needed a new color too. Then the internet was installed and that went really well, we can't get the 20 megabit connection here, but I'm signed up for 15Mbps with a static IP and 3Mps upload. I splashed out on an Apple Airport Extreme and I'm super happy with it, so easy to set up and I can plug hard drives into it.

Also I met with people to coat the floor in the garage and put in some cabinets in the garage to make it similar to my old garage which I really like. But that's another post.

More pictures in the Gallery.

Moving into our new house!

2011-02-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

Saturday the old owner moved out, Sunday we came and just hung out at the house, it hadn't been cleaned so we didn't want to move our stuff in, we did however bring a truckload of boxes and leave them in the garage. And then I came back and brought another truckload with my daughter and then we rode bikes around the neighborhood. Monday was carpet cleaning day so we stayed away, well, o.k. we did bring a truckload of boxes to unload. Tuesday the cleaners came and we were allowed to move in. They did an exceptional job and the house looked great. We brought the mattresses from my daughter's bunk bed and put them on the hardwood floors in the dining room and we all camped out in a row.

It was so nice to finally be IN our new house!

Yard Work

2011-01-24T00:28:00.000-08:00

It started off innocently enough, I dragged out the wood chipper to chip up the christmas tree. Then I wheeled it out back to chip up some branches that have been piled up forever and next thing you know I'm chopping down half a bay tree and all the new growth on the redwood stump that will never die. Satisfying. Finally I start picking the big rocks out of the pile of dirt that has been on the back patio ever since I built the woodshed (yes 18 months ago). Finally I can't stand it no more and start piling that dirt down on the redwood stump and 4 hours later my back patio is finally clean! 15 days before we move out... However it wouldn't be fair to leave it like that for the new tenant would it? I still have a bunch of rocks to get rid of, we're going for the great escape plan and hiding a few of them in the trash every week.

No pictures, just imagine a clean patio.

We bought a new house!

2010-11-03T03:46:00.000-07:00

We just bought a new house!

It's hard to describe how surreal it feels, but we've been told we own it and I see a big huge mortgage in my online banking, so it must be true.

First some logistics, We are going to keep our old house and rent it out, we still like it a lot. Part of the deal with buying the new house would be that we would let the current owner stay in there and rent it back from us until February. That's why over there on the right of this website you see a countdown until we can move into our new house.

It's twice the size of our current place and has wonderful views of the ocean and town. It's close to parks and schools and my daughter will be able to walk to her (new) friends houses and school and ride her bike right out of the house. It's close to swimming and bike trails and beautiful.

Obviously it won't look this nice once our ratty old cat destroyed furniture moves in, but it'll still be awesome.

Did I mention the kitchen, because it is awesome and wifey can cook up a storm in there for sure! There is no pool (we didn't want one where we live) and it has a two car garage for the bikes.

It's move in ready and very well maintained. We want to put in a few bay windows and do a little painting but it's pretty much ready to go.

I also want to epoxy the garage floor and put in the same cabinets we put it at our current house.

Every time we visit we find something new that makes us love it more and more. Last time it was the little sponge holder in those fake drawers in front of the sink, the filing cabinet filled with receipts and owners manuals for everything in the house (just like we would do!) and the built in closet organizer in my daughter's room. I keep having these moments where I work out something new about it that fills me with joy, like being able to call someone up and they will deliver pizza! and not feeling trapped in our house on rainy days because we're worried there will be a big accident on the highway and we won't be able to get home. 99 days to go!

Sunflowers are looking up!

2010-07-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

The sunflowers are looking up this year! They're at 6ft right now and don't even have their yellow and black heads on yet. Here's hoping they survive before the gophers/rabbits come over and eat them!

2009 - 2010 rainfall: 49.68"

2010-07-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

July 1st marks the end of the rainfall season and this year was much better than last year. Last year we got 35" of rain, this year we had 15" more with a total of 49.68. We had some really heavy storms with over 12" in a 24 hour period and some prolonged time of rain, but nothing we couldn't handle.

Field Guide Extravaganza

2010-06-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted some nature pictures from the house. This scorpion was hanging out under my daughter's sand box. I was on the deck by the pool, when I went to move it I found a gazillion termites nomming away and this scorpion. I was able to go get my camera, cut out the wood and turn it over and he was still there. Got quite a few pictures, the best were with my canon point and shoot in digital macro mode.

A spider we found in the pool. He was dead I think.

There's been an awful skunk smell for the last week or so, then we finally saw a skunk carcass in the neighbors yard, it was easy to see, it's where all the flied were (yuk!). Not long after, two Turkey Vultures showed up to nom it.

Just today I was pulling up weeds when this 24" long king snake got pretty upset with me and started shaking his tail at me. It even rattled. It was super scary.

On a foggy summer morning the spider webs look pretty awesome. This one's quite the mess in our orange tree.

This is more like it and stretches from our orange tree to our lemon tree.

This one reminds me of the article about how different drugs affect the webs of spiders.

As usual I'm now adding these pictures to the Field Guide Album as I find them.

Owl House

2010-06-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Here's something else that's been gathering dust in the garage. I got out my huge ladder and screwed this thing to the big tree out front. We can't see the box from the house since I wanted it to be not north facing, but it's easy enough to go and peek and and it's even possible we could set up an owl cam from the studio above the garage. Now we just need some owls to come live in it.

I found the Owl Shack FAQ a useful reference (even though this isn't an own shack).

I'll let you know if anyone moves in.