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2015/10/21 By nishi Leave a Comment

On the Can

As the cold weather began to seep into our nights (and now days), the toilet became a major necessity. Who wants to run nude 40 feet across the lawn in below freezing weather just to tinkle and run back? Or, less appealing, who wants to drag on clothes for this purpose, just to get naked again three minutes later? (Now your burning question is answered: I sleep in my birthday suit.)

So, as a most beloved gift to me, John took the lead on the construction of this nifty DIY composting toilet for us with just a few hours of work!

Isn’t she lovely?

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It was quite simple, actually. He just followed these directions, added a couple of personal touches, and we are in business — literally.

He cut the pieces out of a nice board, but there wasn’t quite enough for the entirety. As you can see, the back is a bit short. Without compromising the integrity of the structure or its appearance and without having to buy another board for just the tiny bit that was lacking, we simply fastened the back at the top. Here, John is countersinking and screwing the back panel onto the top. This is what will hold the hinges to allow the box lid to lift when needed.

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Here, we have finished fastening all the pieces together. This shows a version of the design that can be done with crisp edges. We chose to round the top edges with a router before finishing, as you can see in the first photo.

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Next, we applied two thin layers of polyurethane to the lid and the box, including the edges, sanding between layers. The decision to poly the inside as well as the outside was based on the desire for ease of cleaning and to simply keep as much icky moisture out of the wood as possible.

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Remarkably, the most difficult part of this project was changing the orientation of the supports of the seat. They have to be changed because they will sit awkwardly and wobbly on top of the edge of the bucket in their original direction. Turning them 90° allows for the supports to hug the outside of the bucket comfortably.

To change their orientation, first we pried them out of their holes with a flathead screwdriver. Next, we marked the depth of the original holes with some masking tape on the drill bit. Drilling the new holes was a bit tricky, but marking their placement with the pegs worked rather nicely.

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And there you have it, folks!

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We originally started by using composting bags; however, we immediately found that they did not work very well — the material is just too heavy. So we just dump it right onto the compost pile without a bag.

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We have also been playing around with the cover material. Peat moss works well, but it is rather heavy. Corse saw dust from our brand new chain saw works well, too. That will most likely be our go-to for this purpose. We’ll need to cut firewood through the entire winter, so we won’t have to take up the space with a bulky bag of dirt if we go that route.

Either way, it has been working out very well, and we are happily to be able to poop in here. Now it is truly home.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Construction, Toilet

2015/04/02 By John Leave a Comment

Light a Fire

With our hearth done, the next step is to make our wood stove usable. We need to run some stove pipe up and out of the roof. First, we secured the stove to the floor so we have a steady starting point. I’d never drilled into masonry before, but it turns out that with a masonry bit it’s pretty easy. Everything is easy with the right tools.

Masonry Drilling

Next we start building up the stove pipe from the back of the stove. This is the moment of truth, since I did my best to estimate the lengths necessary to vent the stove where we want it, but it was still just a guess.

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Success! It landed right where we want it. The stove itself is located directly underneath a solar panel, so we can’t just have a straight pipe going up through the roof. We needed to come over a few feet to clear the panel. Yes, we could have moved the stove’s location, but we would have lost the ability to use the second starboard bench as a bed. It would have simply been too short.

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So we cut a hole in the wood, then in the metal roof.

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Then we cut a hole in the deck.

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To keep any water from getting inside, we used the manufacturer’s flashing and some Henry’s roof tar. I was really impressed with this stuff, and would have used it far more often had I been familiar with it.

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We finished by running the pipe all the way up and out the deck. The pipe has double wall construction and 1″ clearances to combustibles. I’ve made sure to test this part of the deck while the stove is running and it stays very cool.

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We’re using their basic chimney cap up top. It seems to have no issues with either wind or rain so far. The last foot of pipe and the cap itself are able to be removed for travel.

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Inside, we covered the ceiling hole with another piece of the DuraVent flashing. Nishi trimmed it to a perfect circle, and it looks great.

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All that was left was to actually start her up!

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The stove burns very nicely and, as advertised, we have a smokeless burn in around twenty minutes. I’m still playing around with finding the perfect fuel. The wood needs to be cut much shorter than anything I’m used to, and I haven’t found the sweet spot yet. I have found that the compressed sawdust logs I’ve used in larger wood stoves don’t work that well in here.

We still need insulating curtains over the windows to hold the heat generated by this little stove. The heat difference at the ceiling above the windows is dramatic, and along with a few small circulating fans the curtains will make this quite the toasty space.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Chimney, Construction, Hearth, Woodstove

2014/06/17 By John 1 Comment

What’s the hold up?

It’s been a rough spring for the Anne Marie. As the weather warmed up, we started spending more time in there, and began construction of a new unit. It came together quickly, and we set our eyes on installing the woodstove. Taking a closer look at the section set aside for the woodstove, we noticed some water damage on the plywood subfloor and water marks on the insulation on the walls.

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Oh crap. What’s going on?

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Alright – everything out! Yes, that is mold you see growing on our plywood. We yanked out the subfloor and the insulation underneath, then the insulation and spray foam in the walls.

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It turns out we have leaks at most of our windows. It isn’t clear from the photo, but water was getting in from the sides and bottoms of the windows where 25 year old caulk had just given up. We had a taste of this back in the fall, but we were pretty sure the worst was behind us.

The water runs down the ribs to the floor, where it sat underneath the insulation for long after it had rained. At the edges, it would travel up along the sides of the insulation, and reach the plywood subfloor. Bad news.

The good news is that it seems the water is only coming in from the windows and below. We have zero signs of leaks from the roof, and our ceiling still looks great! I’d be lying if I said that this didn’t make us reconsider the whole project. If we had leaks coming in from the roof, I think we’d have thrown in the towel.

As it is, we just have to yank out the windows and put some new caulk in around them.

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The windows come out surprisingly easily, which is a relief. Sealing them up again has been a bit of a challenge. This brings us up to date: we’re still re-sealing the windows, and parts of the walls that are leaking. We’ve had some success caulking windows, and some failures. We’re not really sure what causes the newly caulked windows to leak, and that’s a huge frustration.

I really dislike doing things twice, and this has been a rough few months on us as well, but there’s no way around it if we want this to work. There is an unacceptable amount of water coming into our living area, and we have to stop it.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Anxiety, Construction, Demolition, Insulation, Leaks, Walls

2013/11/04 By John 4 Comments

The ceiling is complete!

We finished the ceiling! After much deliberation and research on how best to secure the wood to the frame, we wound up going with plain old screws. The hardware isn’t as visible as we had feared, and gives us some peace of mind that the wood hanging above our heads will remain there.

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We started just above the starboard windows, working our way up one row at a time. The tongue and groove boards made it so we didn’t have to screw into each and every intersection with a rib. There isn’t a pattern to the screws, we just put them where they were needed.

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There is, however, a pattern to the boards. It’s too subtle to see, but each row of boards starts one rib back from the one before it. It repeats four times across the ceiling.

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We added insulation above us as we went along. We mostly reused the stock batting that was there when we took the ceiling down, and added new batting where it was needed. It’s hard to express how happy we are to have most of the insulating behind us.

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We still need to trim the two rows immediately above the windows, but the bulk of the work is done. It was a straightforward and simple process that took a week or so to complete. And as you can see, totally worth it.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Ceiling, Construction

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Anxiety Bed Brick Ceiling Chimney Clearance lights Compost Construction Cooktop Counter Demolition Desk Festivals Flooring floorplan Fridge Hearth Inspiration Insulation Kitchen Leaks Lights Performance Port Bench Roof Roof deck Rust Sink Snow Toilet Tour Upholstery Video Walls Water Heater Woodstove
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