BA's Plumbing Update

This is the Pressure Tank and water heater I purchased from Sears outlet online. They were new in box at a heck of a deal. The pump is on the left from Harbor Freight at $119 minus the 20% off coupon. TIP: purchase the insider track club membership from Harbor Freight, it will save you tons of money. I purchased a 2000 watt inverter for $89.

Above is the cistern from Tanks for Less on the left. On the right is the shower I need to finish. If you have any suggestions for the ceiling, let us know.We love your feedback. I had to purchase sand to place under the cistern to level it.

Until last week, I did not know how to plumb a house. With the aid from neighbors, great ones at that, I was able to connect our new 2500 gallon cistern to a Harbor Freight 1 HP pump, a 38 gallon pressure tank, and a 20 gallon water heater. Unfortunately I listened to the Home Depot person first, which cost me a day of work, and more money than I needed to spend. When my neighbors came to help, I took back all of the PEX and Sharkbite fittings to Home Depot and purchased regular 1 inch schedule 40 PVC and all the attachments at 1/4 of the cost of the other stuff. Don't waste your time on the expensive stuff. Also, when buying plumbing materials, buy extra. It will save you from making 3 trips to Ace hardware, and 3 trips to Home Depot like I did.  Of course there were some minor dripping at places that was easy to fix. There is a place where the cold water line to the house, from the cistern is leaking. I am blaming that on Blanco Electric and Plumbing since they are the ones who decided to install mobile home tubing instead of PVC for the house. Now, I am having them come back out to fix the leak. It it hard to go from that type of tubing to PVC. I purchased the cistern for $884 plus $70 shipping from Tanks for Less out of Austin Texas. Great company. They also had the 2 inch to 3/4 inch connector that I needed that Home Depot did not have. I was also able to wire the water heater up after trial and error, and a smart neighbor. Next, I plan on building a shed to protect all of these things from reclaimed wood from the concrete blocks we had built. I was able to take a real shower last week. It was awesome. There is a lot of little things that I have to do inside and out. Make it easy on yourself and keep a running list. Mine keeps getting bigger and bigger. Next we have to install a window and a skylight in the bathroom, make a way to open the double doors and attach the wood to them, build a tire wall to house one side of the septic system, install a real toilet, finish some tile on the shower, do something with the bathroom ceiling and closet, attach some more trim boards, paint the ceiling, and tile the kitchen back-splash. Whooo! I am going to be busy. All this and working full time and going to grad school for a teacher's certification. They do say that once you have a house, the work is never done. - BA

A bad trip and a good trip

Well, I'm sick (some kind of ick with a sore throat and fever), so all I can really do right now is lay around. Which is not good because I'm burning through these last weeks of my precious break from graduate school. But the good news is that it is now 2012, and this is the year that I will finish school and get my master's degree. So yay! This time next year we'll be living at BaHa Ranch, and I'll be studying my butt off to take the NBCOT exam. And hopefully, I won't be sick.

Since I'm not doing anything, I thought I'd add a post about the really bad trip we took to BaHa ranch a couple of weeks ago. Not to fear, it was followed by a really good trip a week later.


I guess I should mention first that right now, we live about a 4-hour drive (and a world away) from BaHa Ranch. Every time we go do some project there, it is a bit of an ordeal. In December, when we decided to build a shed, all kinds of things went wrong. First, we were locked out of our box. The lock just wouldn't turn. We went to our trusty Ace Hardware store and the guy there sold us some spray to loosen the lock. Well, I'm not sure what all it did, but it melted the paint off the front of the lock, and then the key broke inside the lock.

So we had to call a locksmith (and the nearest one was 20 miles away). I should also mention that during most of this time it was raining, the wood for the shed got soaked, the entire build site turned to mud, and our work clothes were inside the box - so we were stuck in what we were wearing, which quickly became covered in rain and mud (wonder why I'm sick now?). Course we could have cut off the lock, but guess what? We were really smart and bought those disc locks that can't be cut off, so...only option was the locksmith. Well, the guy was great and had the lock off in a few minutes, but by then it was dark. Did I mention that the only lights we have right now are solar-powered? We have to set them outside as soon as we get there in order to have light for the night. So there we were in the dark. Then BA decided that the day wouldn't be a total waste is he could take out the generator and start on the shed. Good idea, but the generator string broke off. By then we were too tired to air up the mattress, so we just slept, uncomfortably, in our sleeping bags (with our little dog tucked inside of mine, where she snored loudly all night). And it was very very cold. Oh, and going home the next day, the trailer that we had rented fell off twice and hit the truck.

Oh, my, I feel awful just thinking about all that! On to the good trip...

The next week, we went back to finish the shed, and nothing went wrong! We built a shed, then went on a date, and then slept comfortably on the air mattress (without the dog, who was wrapped in her own blanket pile for the night). And that's it. We were just thrilled because nothing went wrong, and we felt like we had passed some sort of test. Maybe it was the "Are you really cut out for country living?" test. Maybe it was the "1,000 things can go wrong when you're in the middle of nowhere" test. But you know what? We LIKE the middle of nowhere. And we've figured out how to take care of things when they do go wrong. We've relied on neighbors, friends, and strangers, and learned to ask for help. And we keep learning more and more lessons about how to prepare for the worst and then hope for the best.