Overflowing

On Friday, we had over 18mm of rain in about 24 hours! Our tanks, which were already pretty full from the weeks of rain in early summer, were simply overflowing. This one, which fills from our house roof (about 115sqm), apparently doesn't have a big enough overflow outlet! It was simply gushing out the inlet, and I ended up going down and pulling the cap off the pipe so that it would flow out into the street drain rather than overflowing here near the house. At least the pipes will have had a good flushing out!

We ran entirely off our stainless steel tank last summer and most of winter (you can see it in the background), and managed to use no town water, though the levels did get mighty low once or twice. So far though, with the two tanks, we have had so much water we don't know what to do with it!

Still, conserving water is so ingrained in us now, that even when we have plenty, we use very little. Our washing machine and dishwasher use only minimal water (washing machine about 50l a load, dishwasher about 11), we have water saving shower heads, and are careful every time we turn a tap on. It all pays off though, and hopefully we will have plenty of water to see us through the winter (which typically has less rain here), without any worries.

Rainy Days

It's been raining on and off the last two days, so we've spent a lot of time indoors. DD made this flower out of paddlepop sticks, all her own idea, although I suspect it was sparked by our flower collages a few weeks ago. I'm really impressed at her craft work lately, she's coming up with a lot of ideas on her own, and has the manipulative skills to turn them into actual objects. She also made some letters out of the paddlepop sticks, although she messed them up before I could take a photo.

We were really glad to see this rain, as it's the first we've had since the last lot I wrote about, over a month ago! Very unusual for spring.

I know, I write about the rain quite a lot. But when you're living simply, it really does have a big effect on your life. And not in the annoying 'I'm going to get wet walking from the car to the shops' kind of way either. We rely on the rain to fill our water tanks so that we have fresh water to drink, shower and wash with, and to water the garden. Nothing makes the garden grow so much as a good soaking from the rain. Somehow, it's totally different to being watered with the hose or a watering can.

The rain inspired me to spread the rest of the sugar cane mulch around the front garden. It's well and truly soaked now, as is the ground underneath it, so hopefully even if we have another dry spell, it will stay wet, meaning I will have to water less, and what watering I do do will be more efficient. I hope it hangs around long enough for me to get some more mulching done, although I have so much else to do in the next few days, not sure how that will go.

It also inspired us to jump in and do a job that has been needing to be done for a while, digging a channel down the side of the house to drain some of the water that usually collects there. A good half hour in the rain, and we had improved things substantially. And of course, both DH and I needed a good shower! DD had a ball playing in the rain while we worked though.

While we were out there, DH cleared the gutters again, as they were overflowing yet again, even though it was only a few weeks ago that we cleared them last. We were debating over whether the cost of professional gutter guard was warranted, but after seeing that, it's definitely necessary, so we'll organise that on Monday.

Today I also managed to knock over another few jobs that have been on my mental to-do list, making soap, and making yogurt.

This is my second attempt at making soap using the tutorial on Down to Earth. The first lot was definitely usable, although not exactly pretty. I think my biggest problem was that I was stirring by hand, and after more than 20 minutes, had still barely reached trace. That was solved though by my wonderful sister (who will have some soap delivered to her in a few weeks) giving me her old stainless steel stick blender. One of the seals was gone, making it unsafe for blending food, but still fine for soapmaking. I reached trace so fast I was staring at it thinking it couldn't have happened that quickly, and wondering if I'd done something wrong!

This time I used a slightly different recipe also, listed here, which cut out the rice bran oil, and used copha instead of coconut oil (which is very hard to find). All up, it would have cost about $15. I would expect there are at least 15 bars of soap here (I'll find out tomorrow when it's set enough to cut!), so that's a pretty good price for this quality of soap. It's also totally unscented, with no other additives, very very hard to find in the shops! Now just to wait impatiently for it to cure (up to six weeks, if we can wait that long!), then we get to try it out.

I'll post more about the yogurt experiment tomorrow, it's still... what do you call it when yogurt is making itself? It's not really cooking, is it?

Four Sources of Water

Permaculture theory (as stated by Rosemary Morrow in her book, "Earth User's Guide to Permaculture, yes you're going to hear a lot about this book over the next little while) states that you should always have at least 2 sources of water, just in case one is lost or contaminated. This can be any combination of tanks, bores, dams, or town water. If your only water source is tank water for example, you should have two smaller tanks rather than one large one etc. Well, our new 5000L water tank arrived yesterday afternoon, bringing us up to 4 water sources - 3 tanks and town water backup. I've mentioned before that though we have a mains water connection, we intend to only use it in an emergency. Since we moved, mains water has only ever been used to top up the new house connected tank when it was first installed (via the automatic top up that was installed, and was turned off as soon as handover was completed). We now have over 50,000L in water storage, and after the recent rains, both main tanks are at half and three quarters full. Another good rain, and they'll be full.

That's where this new tank comes in. We'll pump into it regularly (it's not connected to a downpipe) when the tanks are nearing capacity, giving us some extra storage space. It will be used entirely for watering the front garden, and will save a lot of carting buckets back and forth. I'm hoping to set up some drip watering systems to make watering even easier (and more water efficient).

As you can also see in the photo, the front garden is starting to take shape. Besides the tank, you can see the black compost bin in the bottom right corner, that is about 1/4 full now, with a pile of grass next to it for covering food scraps with. it's hard to see, but the climbing peas are about 18 inches tall now, and starting to flower. I'm hoping we'll get a harvest in before it gets too hot for them. Weeds abound in the rest of the front yard, but in the next few weeks they will all be mown down then smothered with lots of mulch. Then I'll be able to get started, albeit a little late, on my spring planting.

On a good gardening note though, the strawberry harvests just keep getting bigger and bigger! I need to pick them more often, as you can probably see, some of them are getting rotten spots where they're lying on the damp ground too long. I had to chuck about a dozen really rotten ones to the chooks, but most of these were salvageable, and have now been frozen for the next batch of strawberry jam. Organic and homegrown this time!

Still waiting....

Nope, sorry to say that there is no nice picture of our new floors tonight. The contractors turned up, checked the floors, and they needed a tiny bit of leveling in the main walkway areas (around front and back doors), so they put down some concrete type stuff, then went away to let it dry. They'll be back tomorrow morning to start laying, and will finish off on Saturday.

Aside from the obvious disappointment in the fact that I have no floors to photograph, I'm not really that upset. It's better to have it done properly, and since DH is working through the weekend, we couldn't move until at least Monday anyway.

The rain is putting a damper on everything right now too. It's not good heavy tank filling rain, just continuous (all day without letup even for a few minutes!) dribbly rain. Enough to mess up the road again, nearly got bogged on the way in this afternoon, and to make everything muddy and miserable. We've also discovered that the pipe that we hit the other day seems to still have a leak, as it's hole filled up much more quickly than all the others. Can't do much about it till the rain stops though.

Getting Close Now!

A couple of days ago, our second tank went in, and it was all connected up to our roof. The building company only put in enough allowance to have 2 downpipes connected, but we paid the extra to have the whole roof (about 115 sqm) connected up. Hopefully it will fill quickly. As you can see, we've had a bit of rain since it went in, but mostly the annoying drizzle that the vegie garden loves, but not enough to really fill up the tanks.

The second tank is the same size as our stainless steel one, but is dug half under the ground to bring it below the roofline so that gravity will fill it. The water will run down the downpipes (with screens at the top), along a pipe under the ground, then back up the pipe on the side of the tank. Though the pipes will remain filled with water (there is a drain on the other side to flush them periodically), the screens will keep mosquitoes or bugs out.

Now all that is left really is connecting up the hot water and temperature test, clean up, and the final council inspection. We still don't expect to be in before the end of the month, what with paperwork etc, and getting the flooring done. Hopefully the end is in sight now though.

Just in time.

After several months without rain, we've now gone to the opposite extreme here, with about 4 days of rain, and counting. We were sorely in need of it, being down to about 4 rungs of water in our tank. That's still several thousand litres, but we were starting to become concerned. Thankfully, after the heavy rain today, we're back up to around 2/3 of a tank, which should see us through the next couple of months, even if we don't get any more rain.

We had a few issues with the guttering at the back of the shed overflowing because it was choked with leaves. We didn't realise that until the heavy rain hit, too late to clear it. We did get it done in a break in the rain, but haven't had too much more since. Hopefully we'll get another lot of rain overnight, then it will clear in the morning, for DD's 4th birthday. We're all heartily sick of not being able to hear each other over the drumming of the rain on the roof.

Of course, it would have been even better if this tank, delivered the week before the rain, had been installed! It would have been half full by now, and might have stopped some of the buildup of water lying around the back of the house! Even once the tank is in though, I think we're going to have some serious drainage issues here.

Of course, these drainage issues are kind of serious too. This is our driveway! It's not really the water that's the problem, but the mud. It's that really slippery clay, recently dug up and put back to put the electricity cable across here. I haven't been bogged yet this time (happened early on, before we moved in), but we're being very cautious. At least, if it happens, we don't have far to walk home!

The garden is certainly enjoying it. I swear the peas have grown about 3 inches since it started, and they're all flowering like mad. Everything is greening up, and I think all the rooster booster I threw around last week was put down just in time. The rain is dissolving it all, and sending it into the ground.

Building Progress!

We've had these piles of framework sitting here for several weeks now. They delivered them about a week after the slab went down, and we got quite excited, but since then, nothing has happened at all. Until today!

Mid afternoon, the builders showed up, and began erecting the frame for our house! They came a day or two ago in a rare moment of fine weather, and marked out the slab, explaining that they have a couple of other jobs going, but apparently the guy only lives a couple of streets away, and his other job is in Caloundra, so when there is a break in the rain, it's easier to pop over to our place and try to get stuff done than to drive a whole hour to Caloundra and find out it's pouring there.

Firstly, they laid out all the frame pieces like a big jigsaw puzzle. I could hear them talking (we sat on the veranda and watched), and I think each piece is numbered, and the plans tell them which piece goes where.

Here is the first corner going up.

It actually happened pretty quickly once they got going. Each piece was fastened to the slab with some sort of gun, then each piece was screwed to the ones next to it.

They got about half way through, before the light drizzle/showers that had been persisting since they arrived turned into actual rain, and they abandoned the job for the day. If it's overcast/threatening rain tomorrow, they might be back to finish the job (rather than go all the way to Caloundra only to find out it is actually raining there.)