Just a quick update to say thank you to everyone who supported the Bath House 2020 campaign. I had been on the fence about whether to do a fundraising campaign. When a friend called me to say she and her husband wanted to help keep the Bath House project on track, I hesitated a little and then learned what beautiful things can happen when you just say “yes” to people who are trying to help you. Not long after, another friend told me she wanted to help support the vision up here and I got some more practice saying “yes.” Those two initial donations taught me that it’s OK to accept help and inspired me to go ahead with the Bath House 2020 t-shirt campaign. So thank you from the bottom of my heart to Faria, Sunny and Audrey for your donations and for the lessons I learned by accepting them.
We only sold 17 t-shirts, which probably reflects the fact that a) people already have too many t-shirts, and b) my design skills are not very good. But people were generous with their words of encouragement and their non-t-shirt donations, and the grand total, including those first two inspiring donations, was $8,485 raised. That’s amazing! That was enough to finish the foundation and build the floor (both already done and have passed inspection), complete the installation of the well pump (also done and water is now flowing – huge celebration there!!!!), buy the conduit we’ll need to connect the pump to the house, build the Bath House walls (which is happening this week), and also get the roof on. Wow!
That’s all happening because of you, so thank you to all of you for helping us get this done on schedule – Faria, Sunny, Audrey, Randy, Nick, John, Oswald, Ryan, Patricia, Paolo, the other John, Heejay, Gisela, Brenda, Autumn, Ames, Alyce, Don, Amy, Pattie, Robert, and Pia. Add to that the design and consultation skills of Joel’s friend Cassie, who helped us get our drawings into digital format; my DeAnza energy teacher Massimo, who is volunteering his time to review our energy systems; equipment loans by neighbor Ed and the Marchys down the road; and all the sweat and muscle expended by Aaron, George, Diana, Brenda, Pat, Nolan, Lizzie, Gene, Steve, Roy, Dave, Linda, Hans and Mary in helping clear the build site, bend rebar, pour thousands of pounds of cement into the stem wall, haul sandy gravel over from the gravel pit, and do the final wall raising itself this weekend. This has truly been a team effort and we are overwhelmed by gratitude. Thank you for all you do in support of this project.
If you sent something to 18283 County Road 1, Eagleville, and it came back, by the way, my apologies. The postmaster advised I should only be using our PO box number for now, which is: PO Box 553, Cedarville, CA 96104.
Here are after /after photos of the same places you saw in the last blog update. We both had to pose with the well pump solar panel and even Allie was excited that we finally had water from the well. And click on the 1-second video to hear the beautiful sound of water flowing out of that spigot – no more trips to the neighbor’s house for water every two days!!
And here’s the Bath House on wall-raising day… so much of what has gone into this so far will never be visible to most people but we hope occupants will feel the benefits of all that work in solidity and comfort: 3 square feet of concrete footing, a 4-high CMU block stem wall on top of that, horizontal and vertical rebar woven throughout, a 6-hour day for 4 people hand filling the stem wall cavities with cement, stucco on the outside for aesthetics, rigid foam insulation on the inside for improved thermal mass performance, backfilled, leveled, floored, and ready for walls to go up this weekend.
OK, got too busy with the wall raising, so now I also have wall photos as well!
I also can’t end this post without a shout out to Lisa in the window department at the East Palo Alto Home Depot. I knew windows could get pricey. But I still got sticker shock when I started window shopping for the high-performance windows we will need to make our off-grid concept work for Modoc winters. In total, we’ll have 17 windows throughout the finished house (bath house + living quarters) of which 3 are sliding glass doors and 7 have special glazing designed for spaces heated by solar orientation… those windows need a low-e coating to keep heat from escaping, but they also need to maximize solar heat gain coming in. Nobody wants those in California and even window people are a little iffy whether or not the combination of features is possible. These windows need to be oriented to the South and they need to direct the sun’s warming rays toward a companion feature, which is a thermal mass floor. The other windows need to be as energy efficient as possible because we’ll be off grid in a place where winter can last 4-5 months. We can’t use argon to improve efficiency because of our elevation. And we are in a State Responsibility Area, which means CalFire has additional requirements that all our windows have two panes of tempered glass. With all those special requirements, Lisa did an amazing job of walking us through our options and the price impact of each, getting our order right, and finding discounts that apply to us. At the end of the day she got us our 17 high performance Anderson windows / sliding glass doors for under $400 an item. If you need windows, she’s your ally.
A final note while on that topic, those thermal mass floors will feature natural stone which will collected in Nevada at some point over the next few months. If you enjoy rock hounding and want to come up when we are on stone-collection expeditions, let us know!
