The Straw House Blog

Unimog 401

2009-10-28T15:35:38Z

We've known for a while that our work horse '93 Nissan Pathfinder was approaching the end of it's useful life. The exhaust system is wrecked, the brakes leak, and it isn't capable of getting into the gnarlier parts of our property. It was useful for logging out the edges of the forest, but it's both too big and not capable enough to make it into some of the more dense bush on the property. We'd have to invest thousands of dollars in repairs, tires, and a winch to make it useful again. So about a year ago we started researching various vehicles looking for a multi-use vehicle that could help us with logging, plowing our driveway, lowering our wind turbine, and collecting maple sap (yes, we're making maple syrup this spring). We looked at full and mid-size pickups, 4 wheelers, side-by-sides, and then I stumbled upon Unimogs.

One year later we have purchased a 1953 Unimog 401 hard-top. It has a 25hp diesel engine, a 7500/lb winch and a snowplow. The machine is 10' long, 7' wide, and 7' tall without the plow. The plow adds nearly 3' to the length. The gearing on the Unimog is very low, in 1st gear it has a top speed under 5 km/h, 2nd takes you to nearly 10 km/h. Its top speed is about 50 km/h in 6th gear downhill with a tail-wind. With it's big agricultural tires, massive ground clearance and low gearing we've been able to get to parts of the land that were completely inaccessible except by foot.

Click on the pictures for a larger image.

The lights are on stalks so they can project over the plow. The large black box between the wheels holds the battery.

On the front you can see the hydraulics for the plow. The round grated part inside the front hub is meant to be a step.

Not surprisingly these 'mogs are often called "frog eyed".

We added a truck box for storage. The wedges are used as wheel chocks when using the winch.

The winch is an original Werner, 7500/lb winch driven by the PTO. The wrench is our lever, up is forward, middle is neutral, down is brake. It has ~ 50' of 7/16" steel cable on it but we've ordered 100' of 7/16" synthetic winch rope. It's stronger and safer than the cable. We'll be having a fair-lead custom made to fit the drum.

It's an OM636 Mercedes diesel engine producing 25hp. Despite how cramped the engine compartment looks it's quite easy to work on. Needs a good dose of degreaser.

The cabin is a tight fit to say the least. I can just barely get my legs under the steering wheel. The seats are all the way back but the machine is very easy to drive, though it's loud, hot and very noisy.

Key on for power, move lever left for glow plug, wait, move lever left again to start. Oil pressure, engine temp, mystery switch, windshield wipers, headlights, speedometer, and another mystery switch.

From top to bottom: Forward/Neutral/Reverse lever, gear shift lever, PTO engage lever, emergency brake, 2WD/4WD/4WD lock hubs lever. Reverse only works in 1st and 2nd gear. 3rd gear is the start of high range, 4th - 6th are only accessible from 3rd. Below the levers you can see the plow hydraulic controls.

The hand throttle allows you to set engine revs without using the foot pedal, it's mostly used for setting an idle speed and controlling the take-up speed for the winch. Yes, that's the coolant reservoir up on the dash.

Ceiling progress

2009-09-28T14:35:33Z

We've been making some excellent progress on the ceiling. It's rough work handling the hardwood boards up over your head, I can only manage about 4 hours at a time before I'm done. For the back section we'll mill the boards thinner, we don't need a full 5/8" for a ceiling, 1/2" would work out just fine.

Luckily we've been getting some help from friends and family. Phil and his boys made a trip up and we got a big section done, Stephen came by and lent a hand, and of course Dad's been a rock.

Every board has to have each end squared up with the chop saw and all of the end boards have to be custom cut to fit. Joanne has become a master with the saw, tape and square.

We're about two thirds done and might even be ready for trim in a few weeks.

Of course the boys wouldn't mind if the job lasts a while longer, after all most kids don't have a jungle gym in their living room.

Sorry it's been so long.

2009-07-17T00:15:48Z

As often happens around here it's been quite a while since my last post, so I figured I'd upload some pictures to give a sense of some recent events around here.

We finished of the deck on the east side of the house with some steel grating we acquired a year or so ago. Near the back part of the house we built a sandbox for the kids. When they're grown we'll make a nice zen garden or something back there.

Joanne has been busy finishing the ash boards that will be going up on the ceiling. We figure that we have enough for the whole front half of the house. The scaffolding is out on loan right now, but comes back in a week or so, this will be a late summer job for us, but it will be fantastic to have a ceiling up.

Most blog readers beyond friends and family won't know this but we lost both of our dogs in the last 12 months. Ceara had a stroke and had to be put down last May, she was 14 1/2. Gator had a tumour on his spine, we had to put him down in February. Gator made it to 11, which if you were familiar with his tendency to eat foreign objects was a miracle. We were devastated. The picture above is Cash. He's our new boy, a 3 year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The boys are head over heals in love with him. Fortunately he has shown no inclination to eat rocks.

Sometimes I can't believe how lucky I am to have ended up here with such a fantastic family and place to live. Sometimes the universe concurs.

Interesting post on Earthen Plasters and Weather

2009-01-20T13:41:53Z

Kara over at Stonehouse Straw House has an interesting post up now on a terrible experience they've been having with their exterior finish and their interesting (and very nice) solution. They used earthen plasters on their outside walls and under prolonged exposure to some pretty extreme rain the plaster actually started to slough off. Earthen plasters have been around for a long time but in my experience they're mostly used in the southern (read: dryer) states. Despite this some folks have started using them in Ontario, and apparently the maritimes. Earthen plasters are very nice looking, easy (though very labour intensive) to apply, and have little of the health/environmental baggage that accompanies regular lime plasters such as we used. My suggestion, if you like earthen plasters is that you use them on interior walls, and stick to the tougher lime plasters for the exterior.

What I really like about the post though is their solution. They created a board and batten exterior wall that covers and shields the damaged plaster while still allowing for airflow. In the end the solution ends up being just as attractive, if not more so, than the original wall. Bravo!

The Ceiling - Part 1

2009-01-15T17:13:27Z

Over the Christmas holiday's we started covering the ceiling in the gallery space with tongue and groove cedar. Dad won the cedar at an auction last spring for a very good price. We won a large stack of boards almost all of which were 16' long, 8" wide and all were tongue and grooved. Unfortunately about 40% of the boards were in pretty bad shape: worm-eaten, weathered, rotten, or warped in some way. We've been cladding our various sheds in the crappier boards and putting aside the good ones to use inside. This fall Joanne and Mom sanded and finished some of those good boards and that's what we've been using.

Over time the Tuck tape that sticks the vapour barrier to the beams has lost it's tack so I'm re-taping as I go.

Fitting the long boards is much easier with a helper. By the end of a day working over your head like this your arms feel like they are about to drop right off.

For extra fun every board in the middle row had to be custom cut to accommodate the light and fan junction boxes. Also because the boards need to be staggered the scaffolding had to make the full trip back and forth across the gallery about a half-dozen times over the course of the project.

We didn't have quite enough boards so we'll complete the job in the spring when we can finish the boards outside - the stain that we use for colour really reeks.

As usual when Dad works so do the children. What's remarkable about this picture is that Gil is actually hammering real nails, into real wood with a toy plastic hammer. No I don't know why there is a parking lot beside the board. Look at how long those legs are! Wonder where he gets his build from?

Happiness defined

2009-01-02T00:57:03Z

New Panels

2008-12-08T18:48:12Z

Last month we installed two more 175W solar panels to our array. For those keeping track we now have eight 85W BP solar panels, four 165W Sharp panels, and two 175W Sharp panels for a grand total of 1360W.

Unfortunately one of the realities of building an array piecemeal is that the sizes of the panels change from model-to-model and year-to-year. We really didn't want to buy new racks so we decided to modify the existing racks that hold the BP Solar panels. We added two new mounting rails and moved the two existing rails to the sides. The new panels squeeze quite nicely in the middle.

This required that new holes be drilled to mate the horizontal rails to the rack uprights. If you look closely you can see a piece of wood we were using a blocker to prevent us from accidently drilling into the back of a panel. With Dad, J.P. and I it took most of the day to get the racks modified, panels mounted and wired.

Most of the time that we worked Declan played outside in the sand pile (side note: a pleasant side effect of straw bale construction is that you usually end up with enough leftover sand for a good play area.) He's a remarkably self-sufficient kid.

We've been really lucky, so far this fall and we've had lots of sun. We call this time of year the "100 days of grey" because we typically go from late October to early January with little or no sun. In the last four weeks we've had many sunny days and have really seen the benefit of our new panels. Here's a picture of the readout form our Outback MX-60 charge controller. You can see that the panels are bringing in 31.4A but the MX-60 is upping that to 38.3A. Typically we have to run the generator weekly through the 100 days of grey to keep the batteries charged but in the last four weeks we've only run it twice. In addition to saving money on gas, we really appreciate the peace and quiet.

Green magazine

2008-10-05T21:36:04Z

Our house is featured in the latest issue of Green, an Australian magazine. The article is very nice - written by our friend and former neighbour Liza Finlay and the pictures by her cousin Naomi Finlay are spectacular. This article is the first to feature photos of our house in the winter. Aside from being one of our four favorite seasons winter provides lots of sun to the interior of the house. The pictures look sun drenched and warm on the interior, an excellent contrast to the snowy landscape outside.

We had a a photoshoot here a couple of weeks ago for a forthcoming coffee table book and the contrasts between the two photographers and publications was remarkable. Naomi captured images of a house that people live in, including one fantastic shot of Gil and Declan that we'll treasure forever (cliche though that may be). The coffee table book people don't seem to want any people in the pictures at all. In fact another of their books that we looked through did not have a single living creature in any of the houses featured. In fact some of the houses didn't even seem to have furniture. Le Corbusier, one of my least favorite architects described houses as "machines for living" and the houses in this book had been staged to the point where the interface between house and human was tenuous at best. So why did we agree to be in the book? It was a last minute request from our architects and I didn't have a chance to check out any of the other books from this publisher beforehand.

Washout

2008-07-31T19:57:09Z

We've had quite a bit of rain here in southern Ontario this year. In fact we've already had more rain than we had all of last summer and we've shattered all previous records. I don't mind rain at all, but I'm not a fan of massive downpours that wash out my driveway. So far we've had three such storms this summer, and since we've never been washed out before that's pretty serious rain.

We've had Eric in with the backhoe twice now to fix the driveway, and the township has been working on the road pretty much continually all summer.

We think there used to be a culvert here. If there was, it's gone now.

If you look behind Declan you can see most of road, back there in the forest where it doesn't belong.

Fortunately this new gully is the township's problem, not mine.

Joanne makes me drive the truck over the washout, neither of our cars could make it.

Here's the road. There's a brand new ditch, the old ditch is full of the washout from the previous storms.

The new deck

2008-07-26T20:34:08Z

Long time readers might recall a post I wrote back in April of 2005 talking about milling cedar and the fabulous decks that would be built. I'm pleased to report that construction has finally begun on the east decks, including a new deck directly off the front door.

This deck is a team effort, unfortunately I have to spend as much time trying to keep the kids on my team as I do building the deck. It takes only a matter of seconds for them to not only form their own team but for that team to splinter into two entirely separate (and warring) factions. Things degenerate rapidly at that point. So as a result both children are gradually accumulating their own tool sets and each has a simple task that they must perform in order to "help" me. For example both travel with a handful of 3 1/2" screws that each gets to hand me in turn as I screw down the decking. Both kids help me measure the deck (each with his personal dollar store tape measure natch) which lends an interesting twist to the old saw "measure twice, cut once" since neither can actually read a tape measure.

I have noticed that they are doubly helpful when they are wearing superhero pyjamas.

It's all worth it when you get a section done and the kids are so proud that they helped build the deck.

July Update

2008-07-24T17:27:57Z

Spring and summer have been busy around the house. The bench is complete except for finishing. I haven't decided yet what kind of finish I want to use on the bench yet, though I'm leaning towards Tried and True Linseed Oil and Beeswax finish as I love the depth and glow it gives to wood. Danish oil seems to be the traditional choice.

I had to disassemble the twin screw vise and re-install it, but that was expected. It's very finicky to install correctly even when you follow the instructions to the letter. There's still a bit of stiffness in the last inch of travel but I'll probably leave it as is for a while and see if any other problems develop before taking it apart again. The rear vise jaws are secured to the bench with 5" bolts threaded right into the bench top. The front jaw, just like the end vise chop, is a piece of spalted Maple from a tree off our land.

We also had the portable saw mill in to mill the logs that I mentioned back in April. Of the thirty-eight logs only two proved to be rotten so we got away pretty lucky with storing them for so long.

Unfortunately some of what we had thought was Maple when we cut it in the winter turned out to be Basswood. On the other hand some of the Bassword was very nice. In particular we flitch cut the crotch of the tree and found some gorgeous grain and colour which is uncommon in Basswood which is normally very clear and white.

We'll stack and sticker the wood through the summer and hopefully the Ash will be dry enough to go into the kiln this fall. My goal for this fall/winter is to get the ceiling done.

Green Home and Garden Tour

2008-05-23T19:44:31Z

Peterborough Green-Up a local environmental group is holding a green home and garden tour on June 7, 2008, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. We're a part of the tour in addition to several interesting homes and businesses in Peterborough proper.

Details are available on the Green-up website.

Normally if you'd like a tour of our house you have to wait for the annual OSBBC Straw House Tour in October, so this is an early opportunity if October doesn't work for you.

From the Green-up site: Take a tour of homes and businesses where real people are making real changes to reduce their impact on our local resources. These sites will showcase some of the inspirational environmental examples that residents in Peterborough are setting through personal actions.

Tour locations highlight examples of green lifestyles, including a totally off grid home, using recycled building materials, hot water heating, solar and wind energy, and more! Extensive natural gardens will also be on display at some tour stops, with examples of how to create great gardens while conserving water, providing habitat and food for wildlife, and enhancing the environment!

Wind Generator Update

2008-05-11T19:46:13Z

We dropped the tower a couple of weeks ago to see if it was alright before we ordered new blades.

Our main concern was that the bearings and bushings might have been damaged by the vibration of the unbalanced turbine. Once the tower was lowered we took as much of the assembly apart as was feasible, checked the moving parts for excess movement and everything seemed to be just fine. We put the tower back up - the safest place for the tower is up in the air, not down on the ground.

J.P. from Generation Solar ordered us new blades and I figure they'll probably arrive right as the summer doldrums start. Right now it's sunny and there's a strong (though gusty) wind blowing outside. Normally at this time of year there's an abundance of both sun and wind that we never have to run the genset. With the wind generator out of commission we've had to run the genset a few times over the last couple of months. I hate that.

Here's J.P. and a good shot of where one of the blades broke off from the turbine. You can see that the blades snapped off just past where they attach to the turbine. We still have no idea why they broke. We did find the other blade though, it was about 200 metres downhill from the turbine, laying in the grass.

Logging

2008-04-20T19:49:33Z

We had quite a few logs ready for milling back in the fall and had even booked the sawyer. Then the first week of November the snow started. It has been a great winter for snow, not so much for milling logs. Most of the winter the logs were completely buried. So spring is here the snow is gone and Dad and I spent a good portion of the last two days cutting down trees and pulling them out of the bush.

Yesterday we took out a good sized ash tree, including one of the biggest logs that we have ever pulled. Today we dropped a dead butternut tree that fortunately was still solid. It yielded three good logs and one so-so log.

So at this point we have thirty-eight logs ready to be milled, including yellow birch (1), elm (1), ash (23), maple (3), cedar (5), butternut (3) and chestnut (2).

We're planning on dropping some beech, poplar, ironwood, hickory, ash, black cherry, basswood and cedar this spring. We only drop trees that are in decline or dead, we try and get them before rot sets in, but it's tricky, some species rot from within (like poplar) so by the time they look ready to take they're already hollow. Our best guess is that in addition to the logs we'll mill this spring we'll have another thirty to forty to mill in the fall.

The logs are rolled up onto scrap wood to keep them off the ground, but this is a temporary storage solution. Hopefully we haven't lost any logs to rot over the winter. We're planning long term storage for air drying the lumber. Even with access to a kiln the wood should be air dried for at least six months. Some of the wood (mostly the ash) we'll air dry for a couple of years so that we can use it for steam bending.

Bench Update

2008-04-20T19:47:29Z

There hasn't been a huge amount of progress on the bench this week. Both side have been planed (relatively) flat. The top will get a final touch up once the bottom has been completed and attached. Unfortunately some of the boards have pretty nasty grain and I've had problems with tear-out. I may splurge and buy a smaller low-angle plane to do the final surfacing.

This weekend I cut then ends of the bench square and started installing the end vise. The end vise is let into the end of the bench. Cutting out the inset involved lots of small kerfs and then chopping out the waste with a mortise chisel. I only have one mortise chisel, it's a 3/8" Lie-Nielsen with an Ironwood handle. Ironwood is the hardest wood that grows in North America (we have a lot of it on the land) and you can tell. After an several hours of bashing on the chisel with a maple faced hammer the hammer is dented and the chisel handle looks brand new.

Now that the inset is cut the vise can be mounted. Hopefully I'll get to that some evening this week. Next weekend I'm hoping to get the twin-screw vise mounted. Once both vises are mounted I'll flip the bench on the saw horses and start building the bottom. I'm planning to build the entire lower structure with hand tools, including sawing the tenons and wasting out the mortises. It'll be hard work but I need the practice and most of these joints are hidden and don't have to be pretty.