Rants from the Hollow

The second floor, trusses, sheathing, and a metal roof, matching the cabin, went up during the first week of December, followed by 3 pairs of windows on the dormer on the north side, over the garage doors, and on north face of the lower level.

The floor and an apron in front of the barn was poured  at the end of December, and a stairway was built between the upper and lower levels at the back corner.

A pair of garage doors were installed during Elizabeth’s last visit earlier this month. We compromised and decided to put an electric opener on one, but not the other.

We still need electricity, lights and fixtures, and (along with the cabin) it still needs gutters. Other than that, the barn is pretty much done.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry will be after Elizabeth's January 23 site visit.]

During Elizabeth’s last visit to the cabin site, the masonry crew was just about finished.  The dry stack veneer, applied to the outside off the chimney with various degrees of enthusiasm by several apprentice bricklayers, had reached the ground on the face and corners and was almost complete on the sides.

Although most of the chimney is covered with Dutch Quality Stone dry stack, which is not stone at all, but an artificial stiff apparently made with cement and cinnamon sugar, Elizabeth had asked the mason to incorporate a couple pieces of the shale that were dug up last summer from the foundation excavation.

In the living room, the hearth stones and the veneer is complete on the fireplace, which had several test runs before the heating system became operational.

We decided to go with a low hearth for the woodstove in my office, with the same drystone veneer as used on the exterior chimney.  The barn board is already in place over the poured cement walls of this basement room. These pictures were taken just over a week ago, so I’m hopeful that the last few bits have been completed now.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry will be Amish Barn Raising.]

When Dad and I arrived mid-morning on Friday, the crew from Yoder Geothermal was already hard at work.  It all started with a suggestion from an unknown source that the pond might make a great thermal resource for a geothermal heat pump for the cabin. One of many long story shorts, one year later finds yet another Yoder on our building site, drilling four holes, each four inches across, and about 160 feet deep.

A four inch shaft doesn’t represent a huge amount of material, but it took a surprising form, being much darker than expected from our experience with the golden sandstone which litters the eastern half of the Hollow.

Ours will be a closed loop system that consists of four loops of High-density polyethylene pipe, each extending 160 feet deep, that will contain a mixture of anti-freeze and water, circulating it beneath the frost line and bringing into a heat exchanger in the cabin’s utility room.  The Yoder crew created each loop from two lengths of polyethylene pipe, connected together with a pair of right-angles.

A length of rebar was taped to the base of the pipe loop to provide some weight to facilitate dropping it into the well, and keeping it their during the grouting process.

After completing the shaft and moving the drilling rig out of the way, the crew carefully lowered each of the polyethylene loops into the holes.

Once the pipe loop was installed, the crew grouted the hole using two different forms of Bentonite clay.  The primary form was a slurry, mixed with water and then pumped using a machine called a Well Grouter.

 A large hose from the grouter was unrolled and then placed in the top of the shaft.

After a couple of minutes of pumping the Bentonite and water slurry into the first shaft, the crew started shaking their heads and discussing the situation at the bottom of the well.  The lowered a plumb bob at the end of a measuring tape, which lead to more shaking of heads and muttering.  The crew chief explained that there must be cracks in the rocks that kept the grout from filling up the hole.  The fact that the ground leaks comes as no surprise to any of the Heisers, but apparently it leaked more than the Yoders expected.

At this point, they starting pouring a pebble-sized form of Bentonite, with the trade name ‘Hole Plug’ into the shaft.  Although they expressed disappointment at the amount of Hole Plug that was required, and the level of effort it took to seal the shafts, they ultimately seemed to find their work satisfactory, because they continued drilling the rest of the wells.  By the time Dad and I left, they had drilled three of the four holes, and another pair of trucks arrived with another tank of water and a lot more Hole Plug.  (We also had a visit from an alarm company, which made it a 6-truck day.) The drilling crew is only responsible for putting the pipe loops into the ground. A different crew will put a trench to the back of the foundation, and bring the four pipe loops into the utility room, where they will be plumbed into a heat exchanger.  As of last week, the heat pump was still missing in action. What is normally a 1-week lead time had stretched to a cabin-delaying 6 weeks, although Bosch promised Berlin Heating and Cooling that the unit shipped from Florida on December 23.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is Masonic Order.]

No, we’re not spending the holidays at the cabin, but yes, that’s a plume of smoke coming out of the top of the chimney. The heat pump has been delayed by a supply chain problem on the part of the manufacturer, so in the meantime, our carpentry crew decided to warm up the inside of the cabin with the fireplace. Elizabeth dressed up kitchen door with a Christmas wreath, so even though the cabin will be spending its first Christmas alone, at least it looks festive.

My parents report that the cement has been poured under the front porch, and yesterday they watched the cement crew putting the finishing touches on the barn floor.  Once the doors arrive and are installed, we can finally park the Kubota inside. My parents also report that the Killbuck has flooded again, closing Route 60 again. The TV meteorologist says that Cleveland is 10 inches above its normal rainfall, an unprecedented level of rainfall that is likely a once in a lifetime experience. Let’s hope so.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is Geothermal: the green cabin.]

Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around an energetic and fun-loving maiden Aunt, who entertained me with extended weekend visits to rock shops, surplus stores, and whatever passed for tourist attractions in Akron, Ohio.

It might as well be true that my treasured ornament dates from the year I  learned  NORAD was tracking Saint Nick. Hearing the reports on the radio during a long winter’s drive from Bay Village, I breathlessly informed Aunt Eloise that you could see Santa on the RADAR.  She lived alone in a funny little old Firestone Park house with its perpetually out of tune piano, push button electric switches, and a treasure trove of an attic.  Her Christmas tree was full of these fascinating plastic ornaments, glitter-infused in blue, and green and pink, an army of kitschy gold foil propellers, silently spinning away over C7-generated updrafts.  Eloise unhooked one from the tree and generously handed it to me.  46 years later, that thing is still spinning away on a Heiserbaum, its longevity assured by today’s lower wattage bulbs.

Can you remember a time when Christmas didn’t come from China? As it turns out, the Twinkler Ornament was made in Ohio, conceived of in 1949 by Boardman, Ohio native John Garver and manufactured by the Tinkle Toy division of defunct Ohio firm Plakie Toy Company (and who would not want a Tinkle Toy?). According to Garver, who was trying to relaunch an updated version of his popular retro ornament in 2009, fifteen million of the things were manufactured. It would be nice to think that my ornament is not alone, and that Garver’s estimate that 2/3 are still intact and spinning was correct, although price history on eBay suggests otherwise. A fellow Twinkler reports that many of these were unfortunately lost in the heat of the 1950s moment.

Garver’s 1956 patent shows a somewhat less ornamental ornament, yet the basic design is clear.  Thumbing through some of the related patents leads to some interesting paths, including a somewhat different approach for a thermally-driven rotating tree display,  and my favorite, AE Newton’s 1933 patent for Electric and Other Artificial Fire, a whimsical device that I can only envision as a sort of flaming cash register, which probably had a greater impact on 1960s dens than the Twinkler.

I’d always referred to my ornament as the birdcage, and its inexplicably satisfying to learn that the creator of the thing called it that, too. Its just a little bit of Ohio, hanging on the family tree of my life, embodying a rich and wonderful set of memories in a dated but surprisingly sturdy form.

According to a site dedicated to retro Christmas decorations, the following text appeared on the outside of the box.

“THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Twinkler

When placed above the light

IT WHIRLS – IT FLASHES – IT’S PERPETUAL MOTION

Made of durable plastic, not glass”

One of the disadvantages of having the final grading work done so late in the year is that grass is unlikely to root before Spring. During her previous visit, Elizabeth cleaned Moore’s out of their remaining 2011 grass seed, spreading 150 pounds worth around our sprawling cabin site.

To maximize the survival and sprouting likelihood, and to reduce the potential for winter erosion, Elizabeth spread 20 bales of straw around the cabin site and along the side of the driveway.  On some of the steeper mud slopes, we unrolled excelsior mats, which Elizabeth attached to the ground with biodegradable pins.

The driveway gravel has never been extended beyond the nearest corner of the cabin, so we stopped in at Holmes Redimix and scheduled Dianne to bring us yet another truck load of 1&2 crushed limestone to spread across the back of the cabin, and what little turning area could be excavated into the hillside.  Dianne ended up spreading about half the load at the top of the drive, leaving several tons in a pile for me to spread with the Kubota tractor.

Ranging from baseball to softball size, the 1&2 limestone is nearly impossible to move with a shovel, and a huge challenge with such a small tractor.  I spent a couple hours last Thursday and Friday nibbling away at the last of a pile that was left in the meadow in July, spreading it over some of the subsiding areas in the drive where a new culvert was installed last month.  The new pile was easier to spread because it hadn’t packed down yet.

On the theory that ground would be frozen during the next 3 months, I took the opportunity to polish up some of the earth moving.  The back fill around both the cabin and barn has already started to visibly subside, so I used the blade to scrape up more clay and pile it around the foundations.

 The driveway drainage seemed on track towards creating a new stream through the side door of the barn, so Sheldon put in another culvert, with a drainage basin and grate located in front of the side door of the barn above. After 4 weeks of continued wet whether and pickup truck traffic, a ridge of clay appeared between the drive and the drain.  I used the tractor to scrape off the top of the clay, filling in a deepening puddle between the driveway and what I hope will soon be the cement floor of the barn.  I also dressed up a couple other drainage problems along the drive, and hope that it will last until spring.  Dianne should have arrived some time this week with a load of smaller limestone, either #4 or #57, to spread across the length of our gravel sinkhole.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is Christmas Cabin.]