Garbage Day

It seems like I lived at various landfills this weekend.  After my Saturday morning breakfast with Ron (Gail’s husband), my Landlord Bahman and I went first to the North Shore Transfer Station to drop off a load of green waste (fractured shiplap and various 2×4 material not worth keeping or giving away). We then headed out to the Eco Landfill in Richmond at the end of 6rd (consequently the road I grew up on), where we dropped off another load of shingles that will eventually be ground up into asphalt road admixture.

Once back and after a quick break, I loaded some general trash from around the yard and all of the roofing felt I had taken off (it was not allowed to be mixed with the shingles) in the bottom of the trailer and a whole bunch of green waste (rotted wood) from Ron’s yard and headed back to the transfer station for two circuits.

By the time we got back it was after 5 and I was done!  I was going to make concrete for the bottom of the weather station but was way too tired and basically went to bed at about 8:30 and generally slept for the next 12 hours.

I am finding the schedule of getting up around 8 AM, working at computer till 10-11 AM, being at the job site till 8 PM and then on the computer till 11-12 a bit too much and so will have to find a good schedule to settle into.  I am generally finding my paperwork and planning are suffering the most.  I will have to get much better at taking Sunday completely off to get these items done.

But today was not complying with this wish.  After a morning of some computer work and a quick visit from my sister-in-law and her adorable dog Ida, I headed off to the site and spent the next couple of hours moving the camera network from the storage container into the garage including re-routing all of the aerial LAN cords.  This is all to get the container ready for the big move (probably Tuesday).  I also undid the shed circuit and pulled the tech cable out of the way of the tractor work.

After a quick trip to the lumber store for 6 bags of ready mix I mixed up the concrete to secure the 20′ weather station mast (now that it will no longer be supported by the container).  It is nice when you own your own tractor and can use it for things like this instead of spending hours digging a hole.

Tomorrow will be prep for the root air spading on Wednesday and then clearing out the landscape bricks in the front yard and starting to move the plants to be kept.  If the day goes well, I may even start the big move of the shipping container.  This thing took me FOREVER to get to the back yard, and that was when it was empty.  It is a heavy sucker (over 5000 lbs)!  Now that I have a whole bunch of stuff inside, it is going to be even harder.  I plan to use long 2×4 runners and 4″ Dia. round 7ft posts and try to roll the container along (much the way the Egyptians did it).  We will have to see how successful I am.

By the way – the container cam will be offline for a while (really did not have anything to see anyway and is low quality camera I bought used of Craigslist) while I reconfigure.

And because I really do not want you having to stair at my mug, I am adding in some random photos I have taken over the last few weeks.

My wife had given me a kit back in the mid 90’s which I built over a Christmas holiday. I enjoyed it all spring and then a few weeks into summer, I had a radio glitch (believe someone turned on a transmitter with the same frequency) and the plane did a very high speed dive from about 200ft right into hard packed clay. There was not a piece left that was too big to put into my pocket! Shortly after these two bodies were donated but by that time I had lost interest and moved on. I will need to completely strip these and restore them, which will be a fun project at some point in the future.

 

As a home inspector I somewhat pride myself in the fact that the home was reasonably well maintained.  But when I peeled off this bathroom exhaust vent termination it reminded me of why you always want the right type of termination for each vent use.  This was a standard mushroom cap roof vent instead of a smooth walled goose-neck.  There was absolutely no way this could have been easily inspected from below or from the roof deck (below was blocked with a flap when the fan was off).  I would have had to get out my fibre-optic scope to have seen this deficiency.

You never want inter-weaved shingle valleys.  As I pealed back the layers, I could trace the route the water was taking to get down through.  And once water finds a path, it will tend to flow along that path for ever more.  Best practice dictates full metal valleys (I like 3ft wide) with a centre raised ‘W’ pattern to arrest the water flow down the roof slope (stops it from flowing up the opposing side). You also want what is called an open valley where the shingle is cut back from the centre line at least 4″ on each side.  This provides a lot of nice slippery metal (think slide) for all the leaves and other debris to slide on down to the eaves.

Thanks for visiting!