Rants from the Hollow

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.]

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”

We were more than a bit surprised during last week’s trip to the building site to flip a switch and actually see something light up. We knew that power cables had been laid between the utility pole and the cabin’s foundation, along with water and power connections to the well, but we didn’t know that some temporary lights had been put into place.

As observed by Elizabeth over a month ago, the various subcontractors have been competing for the most desirable locations for, staking out their territory with magic markers.  The view above shows a transportation hub in the basement utility room ceiling that includes cold and hot water, 110 and 220v power and television.

The bathroom ceiling above shows duct work, drainage and cold water running to an upstairs bathroom, along with duct work for downstairs ventilation fans.

Log wall construction creates some challenges for utility routing, with most of the plumbing, wiring, and duct work for the upper floor sharing interior wall space around the bathrooms in the southwest corner.  One result of this is a tortuous path for hot air from a plenum in one corner, leading through two closets, a bedroom and a storage nook, ending up with a heating vent inside one of the gabled dormers.

Electrical outlets on exterior log walls were planned before the logs were stacked, ensuring that holes were drilled for pulling the wires.  Most of the switches are near door frames, which simplifies wire routing. As shown above, the door, ceiling and fan wiring for the porch are put into place before installation of the door trim.

 At this point, it seems that everything that is going to be inside a wall is in place, and Sam’s carpentry crew has started installing tongue in groove ceilings and walls in the areas where we decided against drywall. Most of the duct work seems to be in place, and power has been run into the cabin, so we’re hoping that heat pump will be installed soon. So are the subcontractors working inside an unheated cabin in December. We have no work on the when the geothermal company will be drilling or when the heat pump will arrive.

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

The original Fortune Family cabin was located in the valley at the center of the Hollow, within 75 feet of one of several springs on the property.  Apparently, they had once had a small spring house. When we first bought the property, Dad went at the springwith pick and shovel, in an attempt to ‘capture’ it so that it could used as a source of drinking water (I’m thinking an article in the 1st or 2nd Foxfire book might have provided some inspiration).  My memory is that it took about 2 hours of manual digging to help Dad reach a decision to hire an excavator.

Gene Mullett arrived from Killbuck with a backhoe, a dump truck load of river gravel, a cement box meant to be used as a septic tank, and some 6″ PVC pipe.  He dug a hole for the 3′ square cement box, which would function as a settling tank, he made a 10-15′ long trench behind it, putting in some gravel, and then setting a PVC drainage pipe, with holes drilled in it, into a tee fitting that led into the back of the tank, and then he put a PVC spout on it.  That spring was our sole source of water for a number of years.  After building the pond, and then moving our little trailer up next to it, my folks had a well drilled, and a hand pump installed. That lasted about a week, and we’ve had electricity ever since.   The spring probably lasted 20 years before it escaped.

Along with installing the septic system, back-filling the house and barn, re-contouring the building sites, and upgrading the driveway, Sheldon the Excavator recaptured the spring last week.  For sentimental and aesthetic reasons alone, its nice to have a spring again.  Although its not the least bit convenient to the cabin,  it is a source of drinking water that is not dependent upon electricity or pumps.  Trickle or gusher, it flows year round, with sweet, cool, and clear water.   And there’s always single malt.

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

My parents bought the Hollow in 1972, and it came with a cabin that had been occupied by the Fortune family until about 25 years earlier.  It was a small building for a house, with a single large room on the first floor and a steep stairway leading up to a low-ceilinged second floor.  Apparently having been heated by a stove, it was not blessed with a large number of windows, but the door on the face was matched by a second door on the rear.

The walls were constructed of hand hewn rectangular hardwood (chestnut?), dovetailed at the corners, and chinked with a yellowish substance that seemed to be cement.  The roof was sheet metal, with a masonry chimney poking out.  When we took possession, the ridgepole had lost integrity, and part of the roof was open, but it was possible to climb the stair up to the partially collapsed second level. Local celeb Mad Marshall Jacobs, whose flagpole-sitting marriage had been covered by Life Magazine, visited once to look into a restoration, but determined that dry rot made this impractical.

Over the years, the old cabin just sort of mouldered away at the far end of the meadow where our little travel trailer was parked.  After the pond was built in 1976, our center of gravity moved towards a different part of the property, and the cabin was mostly left to collapse on its own.

In Fall of 2010, the remains of the old Fortune place are still visible.  I’ve scavenged some of the cut sandstone foundation stones, but there are still at least 6 more to collect. There are various bits of rusty and broken trash, some apparently from the time it was inhabited, and some later, and looking at the picture from 40 years ago, I find myself wondering just where the chimney ended up.

Surprisingly, 4 logs remain connected in the original position, dovetailed over a foundation stone in the SW corner.  A bit of chink is still visible, along with some of the rusty old nails that once peppered the exterior.  The dovetailing is surprisingly sophisticated–many Appalachian style log cabins only use half dovetails.

Shielded by the collapsed metal roof, at least one of the old hand hewn logs still seems to be solid enough to be useful, although both ends are dissolving.  I’ve thought for years that it would be nice to salvage a log or two and do something with them, but I’ve never taken the initiative to do something about it.  I guess its now or never.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry jumps back to the start of this project with Cold Start Last January.]

Other than 3 and a half inches of rain and the uncomfortably nearby escape of dozens of hungry lions, tigers, and bears, up until Friday, my parents evidently had a very quiet week at the Hollow. As my mom reports Yesterday we awoke to the sound of a  truck coming up the lane.  We  weren’t expecting anyone as rain was forecast as usual.  But here came a crew of cement guys  despite misty rain, towing a bobcat, to begin laying cement in the lower level  of the cabin.  The bobcat guy  scraped some of the muck off the top of the driveway at the site.  Next came a big gravel truck.  Gravel was spread at the top of the  driveway where the cement trucks would park.  The bobcat guy took loads of gravel down  the slope to the basement level, dumped it into two wheelbarrows over and over  to be carted inside.  After the  first truck left, another came with the same big load to be wheelbarrowed  in. 

He left and a cement truck  arrived but instead of cement it also carried gravel that whooshed down the  chute into the wheelbarrows.  I  watched all this activity from the dry and warm motorhome.  When the first load of cement arrived,  the truck couldn’t be placed close enough to Jay’s office entrance on the lower  level to send the cement down the chute and into the building, so the two  youngest guys carted it in by the wheelbarrow load.  They worked with furious speed — one  full barrow in while the second barrow came out empty and was loaded — just as  fast as one went in and was dumped the other came out — round and round and on  and on they went. The rest of the crew was inside spreading the concrete.  Arlan says there was a chalk line drawn  on the inside wall for the floor level.  The empty cement truck came down the driveway to the turnaround where he  washed the slides used to unload the cement and the revolving drum.  He left, another cement truck arrived,  and the whole procedure repeated.  The trucks carried 6 yards — 2 tons to a yard. Those two young men  wielding the wheelbarrows must have had muscles of steel and they must have been  mighty tired. 

The misty rain  stopped around noon and I put on my wellies to go up the muddy drive to watch  some of the proceedings.  I couldn’t  see into the basement to see how it looked.  The last of the gravel was dumped in  front of the barn/garage which will be done (and I assume the “patio” outside  Jay’s office and Kirk’s bedroom also) when a drain is put in the barn. Janice Heiser

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is 5 Pickup Truck Day.]