Hi all!  It’s been more than a month since my last letter. Now that it is winter, things have slowed down out at the land. But we did have a couple things happen that are worth mentioning.

First off….. I have received the first draft of the drawings for the cottage! (see attached).  That is very exciting to see it becoming so real! Only downside is that there are a lot of things I want updated. I would hate to be my own drafter.. you know how particular engineers are. (If you are interested in seeing my first round of mark ups let me know!)

I have also started working with an engineering firm that is doing the calculations and will sign off on the design of the cottage. After that I believe all I have left to do for planning is get what they call a “manual J calculation” done and the hvac designed. The manual J calculation is when they analyze the design to see how much heating and cooling the building will require.  For the cottage that will also include a geothermal design.  All of which takes time but I think I’ll be able to squeeze it in before its time to build!

Other than all the exciting paperwork, we went up to the land this weekend to work on the interior of the shed a little more. I spent the majority of the time getting the bedroom bed frame done and closing off the wall to the room.

I also threw up a quick makeshift railing type thing to keep kids from falling down the ladder. In addition, I was having some issues with my batteries. I have two battery banks out there and one of them was misbehaving.  After some troubleshooting, I found out that one of the leads from the BMS (battery management system) to one of the battery leads was fried.

After fixing that lead it solved my problem. I was beginning to wonder if the batteries were going to be all that good. I couldn’t run an electric heater all night without running out of juice. I planned to have 4 banks of batteries for the cottage and if 2 couldn’t run an electric heater all night… it just didn’t seem to add up. The good news is that I was only ever using one bank of batteries. After cooking dinner in an instant pot, running a bunch of power tools,  and running the heater all night during a very cold night,  we woke up nice and warm and still had 50% of our battery life. That was a huge relief! (to be fair, little electric heaters actually use a LOT of electricity. Try turning one on continuously for 12 hours one day and you’d notice a difference in your power bill. For some context, the average house uses 30kWh a day. If you run a 1500w heater for 10 hours that would be 15kWh or half of the average consumption of the average house for a day.). 

Other than that .. we spent some time rolling around in the loft and having some family fun out in the shed! 

 It’s the closest thing to tiny home living we will ever do :). Lydia, Samuel, Andrew and I all stayed the night. In the morning I also took a quick walk around. I visited the septic field to see what it looks like in the winter. Only difference is snow 🙂  

I’ll keep you updated on the progression of the paperwork stuff through the winter, until next time!

Mark