Touch it Nine Times

So life on the island is not always, shall we say, the most efficient. The old time management saw “Touch it Once” just simply doesn’t apply when things need to be bought, delivered to Hailey, driven from Hailey to Bellingham, carried down to the water in the marina, barged or sailed from B’ham to Eliza, carried up from the dock, loaded into the caretaker’s truck and then unloaded at the cabin. Phew. Not a smooth process, so make sure you have what you need… and only what you need!

In May we managed a full two weeks out on the island, and while busy it was glorious. Great weather of all sorts and the cabin is starting to come together as we envisioned it last fall.

About the busy part. While we are trying to keep it simple, and we took care of water and hot water last month, we did want to fulfill some other basic needs: light and heat. To that end we planned to install solar panels and replace our small wood stove with a larger, propane fired unit that could heat the whole house. If you feel that sounds simple, do please read the first paragraph again!

The general moves went like this:

1) Get it all there!
We rented a U-Haul trailer in Idaho and drove the big truck and trailer over to Bellingham… two day trip because we had things to pick up along the way (like a sofa) and because that setup doesn’t move down the road very quickly. Why a U-Haul you ask? Well, a partial inventory: 6 solar panels, solar mounting bracketry, 5 bags of QUIKRETE, the 275 pound propane stove (on a rented dolly), loads of stove install parts (best to have too much not enough), a rented 2 person gas auger, curtains, shades, deck chairs, 2×4’s for renewing the bracing, lights and on and on. It was nice to have everything securely locked in the trailer (especially for a night in a motel). On our way through Mount Vernon the next day we picked up our stove at Craft Stove and, yep, into the trailer it went as well.

Sunday afternoon, when the tides would work, we hauled the the trailer over to the public ramp and loaded everything (EVERYTHING!) onto the landing craft style barge Tin Boot Two and motored off to Eliza. At the island the caretakers could actually back down the beach and back the truck onto the barge to load the truck and haul it up to the cabin. They even left us one of the trucks for the evening to unload in two places at our “leisure”.

2) Get the stove installed
Our original hope had been to have the stove installers come out with the stove, but that was just too many moving parts with tides and install dates etc, so we hired a smaller boat to bring the installers out Monday morning. The crew from Craft Stove were rock stars and quickly had our old stove out, all the hinky old pipe work removed, and a new roof cap, new stove and new piping in. They even helped us lay out our hearth. On a tight timeline (with rented stuff to return), we left them to their labors while Brig and Bass ran the two person gas auger (not the best height match between us) and augered two 8″ diameter 4′ deep holes in the lawn for the solar panel mount. That done, we high tailed it back to town on the same smaller boat that brought the installers out, this time stuffed to the gills with the rental auger, hand truck, spare stove installation parts, 5 people and, of course, a hundred pound dog. Phew. After returning the rentals and the U-Haul, it was time for well earned hamburgers and beers!

3) Get some power
Tuesday afternoon we were back on island, provisioned for two weeks, and having arrived on our own hull… our preferred method of travel. The next few days were full on solar panel installation:

• Place two 2 1/2″ schedule 40 pipes (9′ long each) in the augered holes and set in concrete.
• Mount bracketry from a solar racking kit from doityourselfsolarracking.com, along with struts we bought at Lowes in Boise, onto the poles (once the QUIKRETE set).
• Mount the panels on the struts (6 315 watt panels for a theoretical total of 1,890 watts).
• Dig a 35′ trench 18″ deep for the conduit carrying the wires from the panels to the charge controller in the shed.
• Complete the wiring with a breaker box under the panels.
• Tie down the four corners of the rack to earth augers from American Earth Augers (28″ long, drilled into the ground with a socket wrench and cheater bar) using low stretch Dyneema.

Did it work? Happily, very well. On our first day, which was mixed overcast, we were getting 450-550 watts from each string of 3 panels for a total of over 1,000 watts, even without full sun. On the next few fully sunny days we were getting 1,500-1,600 watts no problem… we ran our shop vacuum for about an hour straight and never even touched the batteries, just straight off the panels. Awesome!!!

4) Try to do everything else
Lots of other projects to do and some did get done, some got delayed. In no particular order we also:

• Mounted shades in the living room and a curtain over the slider… since we’re still sleeping in the living room right now, sure helped to block a little light as sun comes up pretty early that time of year
• Mounted the curtains Brigid sewed – from reclaimed material – in the master and guest bedrooms and in the bathroom.
• Replaced the sun and water aged bracing on the exterior of the foundation… old stuff was getting pretty rotten, and this bracing is important for, you know, keeping the house from falling down.
• Sanding the growth and tarnish off the ends of the roof beams and protecting them with stain. One beam had some rot that had to be cut out and new pieces scarfed in, not pretty right now but we plan on capping and covering the beam ends with galvanized sheet which should look better and protect better

Anyone tired yet? We sure were. Did we have any fun? Well, we actually have fun when we’re working and finishing projects together, but we did take some breaks and have some good times. Walks with the dog were taken, we toured the surplus brush truck the fire committee managed to procure (and being good soldiers we both volunteered to be on the fire committee), some reading and sipping cocktails on the porch (the next project) managed to happen too. And in a stroke of luck, with Howard’s old TV antenna and some splicing of cables we were even able to watch the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals, over the air from Vancouver no less (I’d say go Bruins, but that ship has now sailed, but we didn’t know that at the time).

All in all another great adventure and, as noted at the beginning of this long ramble, we feel we’re coming a long way toward making this the comfy, cozy hideaway cabin we’ve always wanted.