Wow, I just realized my last weekend blog update was July 2nd. Since then I took a trip to the Philippines, and weekends just haven’t worked out, but alas we made it back to our beloved place on Earth.
We headed up for our second week long vacation on the ranch. Headed up after work on Friday and back to LV on Saturday. Got a lot done, in waves, and really took advantage of the week to plan the future home and property layout. So exciting for us!
First things, how the ranch fared after the past two weeks of major rain in N. Arizona. The drive up to our property, on the larger ranch roads were sketchy. I mean the road was really wiped out after heavy rains. In some parts traveling was very slow with a trailer of material, as the top level of smooth gravel and dirt was gone and nothing but rocks remained. Some parts were down to a one vehicle width and river washes down each side. Incredible!
The second part of that great rainy weather is that once we reached the property, we discovered our rainwater tank is now just about 600 gallons full. I love it! So cool to see. The other part is that after a very sunny four days up there, we started to get some weather, and afternoon thunderstorms. The first rainy day gave us more water in the tank for sure. We both just listened and felt the water pouring into the tank. So cool! Love collecting rainwater! We arrived to a green field and greenery around everywhere.
On to the project stuff. I wanted to finish off some of the loft floor framing and work on the stair structure that we will have on the outside of Rusty. I started with doing floor joists work on the new stair structure.
I found that the bottom of the container, the skid part, was a perfect match for a 2×6. I attached those with 3/8″ self tapping bolts. Worked great!
I also finished the top side header joist, which I used some left over 2×10’s to overlap the existing railing and tie into the 2×8’s I used as my floor joists.
I think it will work great, and I know it worked great.
Oh…if you haven’t noticed yet, Rusty got a paint job. We wanted to stop the rust affect of ‘Rusty’, so we invested in some oil based metal primer to stop rust. He is now a true ‘rust’ color….for now.
Also, in the right hand photo you can see a massive shade tarp Sheralee worked out. Very cool. It had four 10′ poles in concrete and then buried in the ground for stability. Well, it worked well for us the first 2 days…until we got 30 mph wind gusts! hahahahaha. That was enough of that….it just couldn’t survive no matter how we tied it down to tries and staked it to the ground. So, down it came. boooooooo
Just threw this in there, we had some incredible meals this past week. I mean incredible….fried chicken, burgers and homemade fries, mahi mahi, ribeye steaks, sausage and peppers. So good. We joke that we eat better there than here. Probably true.
We also did some work from up there….this is our onsite office setup:
Oh…and we setup our badminton/volleyball net….and did some of that to try it out….
Then laundry day came, and it became something else…
So, back to the loft / stair structure build. I wanted to finish off the floor framing and then continue down to the ground in preparation for the stair structure framing this weekend. I added some extra support. Sheralee poured some great concrete foundations that we set concrete blocks on. Worked great.
Now we are ready to do some actual wall, window, and door framing this week. Also, laying the sub floor on the stair structure with insulation foam board underneath. Can’t wait.
Also, finally got to use my 30w solar panel to charge our two pump batteries there this past week. Worked great, even during the cloudy days.
We also decided that once we are onsite, in the future, we are definitely installing a wind turbine, 12v Wind Turbine to supplement our 12 volt solar system. There is certainly enough wind speed there to generate up to 400 watts.
I think that is it for now…more coming after this weekend!!!