Endless Hot Water Anywhere? How About My Bath Tub in the Middle of Nowhere?

I got this tub off the sidewalk when a friend's neighbor tossed it out during a remodel. It had no feet. But I didn't care, I had a plan that it was perfect for.

There are a few luxuries in a dreary Oregon winter that make life really sing for me: A well stocked pantry, a place to sleep well and warmly and a good hot bath in a big tub.

Up 'till now I've had to settle for the first two, but when my little outdoor water heater stopped working after years of hard use, I decided to upgrade to the next size up. 

 

We are not talking about breaking the bank though. The old one cost $115, the new one was $215.

The old heater was half as big and was just fine for doing dishes or taking an outdoor shower, but it put out a rather minimal amount of truly hot water, so it could never fill a big claw-foot tub with very hot water. The water would get cold faster than the tub got full.

With this new heater I can start filling the tub on a 38 degree day and have a hot, almost too hot, tub to soak in. In less than 20 minutes!

 

If you have ever had the pleasure of soaking in a hot tub under the stars, breathing perfect, fresh air,  you know what a great experience it is. If you have not had this experience, please do! 

Perhaps the uninitiated might think it sounds too cold, but I assure you it is only too cold for the minute it takes to drop your towel and jump in. 

Getting out is zero trouble since your core temperature is so hot you could run naked in the snow without feeling the slightest chill. You can casually get out, dry off and dress. Maybe those Polar Bear Club swimmers aren't as nutty as they seem.

 

I have done a bit of crazy looking plumbing to get the water going where I want it. It looks like this in house walls too,  but you can't see it like this.

I have done a lot of plumbing over the years and I have never looked forward to it. Just like anything I do around the Homestead it's always been several trips to the store and remembering how to do complex jobs like wiring and plumbing just about the time I finish the job.

This time I used PEX tubing for the first time and I used SharkBite hardware to connect it. I highly recommend the SharkBite joints, especially for beginner plumbers, since they require no special tools- you just shove the tubing in and it locks on. No leaks, no fuss. AND if you made a mistake you can fix it in a flash without losing any materials. With a little, inexpensive ($2.50) gadget, you can simply undo the connection and start over using the same materials! 

In order to hook up the heater to three things and still have cold water to the sink, I had to do a little thinking outside the box.

I also bypassed the old nonworking faucet on the tub and used a hose-end shut off valve to regulate the water to the tub.

The tub was pretty dirty from sitting outside. But it cleaned up well. I had a little visitor before I got it running.

To cover the overflow hole, I screwed a canning jar lid and a gasket to a board on the backside.

This bath's outside, who cares if it overflows? And that Mod enables me to fill it to the brim. Luxury.

Lumberjackin'

We had a tree that was felled a few years ago. We thought we might like it as a landscape feature, but decided it was not going to work out.

First we cleared away the berries and brambles. I had rented a saw with a 28 inch bar to get through the thick end.  

I also had help. My son joined me with our newest farm-mate, Hank, a college friend of his who has come up to the NW to try a new direction. It was the first time for both of them being lumberjacks.

The tree had to come down because it was rotted inside. The first 10' or so was hollow. The edges were good, but the center was gone.

Pretty soon we got into full, solid rounds.

 

The boys spelled me with the saw. It takes a long time to get through wood this diameter and I wore out after a couple of hours.

 

It was their first time using a saw, but it seemed like a good time to learn. A saw like that handles like a Cadillac at 70 on a straight road. More training will be necessary before they are ready to use a smaller saw in the woods, but they did great.

A problem came as we got a little ways up the trunk. The further we went, the deeper the log was sunk in the dirt. We figured there was a lot of whiplash as it fell, causing the top to slam harder in the ground, sinking it deeper.

The worst thing for a saw chain is hitting dirt. I am not sure why it can chew through solid wood easily but goes dull at the slightest contact with soil. (If you know, fill me in.)

With a 28 inch bar and the wood 6" deep in the dirt, I was having a hard time making a clean cut without ruining the chain. I had a backup chain, but a lot of wood to get through and a long ride to the rental shop if it went dull.

After conferring with Phoebe and the boys we decided on a strategy. We grabbed a 4X4 for leverage, and some timbers to pry against. An adz was used to clear out the dirt from one side. 

I cut several rounds 3/4 through, stopping before I got near the dirt. Then we carefully dug one out and made a full cut.

 

We wedged the beam in and pried.

It took a fair amount of levering but we were able to roll the log a quarter turn and finish the cut safely above the dirt. It was an old school approach, and really satisfying to have such simple thing work so well.

The boys used a splitting maul and wedge to beak the rounds into manageable chunks. We will finish the splitting this fall, once the weather cools a bit and it is nice and dry.

 

It was really gratifying to do the work, made even more so by spending time working with the boys. It has been far too long since Jake was at home, and we are enjoying getting to know Hank.

Semi Low Tech Coffee Roasting- Roasting on the Cheap

It is once again time to wax poetic about coffee at the Homestead. Coffee is a big deal here and an ongoing obsession for my brain and palate. We really don't drink that much coffee, once a day, sometimes twice on those days we need to get a lot done.
But we like really good coffee and are more and more reluctant to drink substandard coffee.
Since we are conveniently located in the middle of nowhere and about one hour away from our nearest micro roasters, I am determined to master the full process of our coffee, short of growing and picking, which would be pretty tricky here in Oregon.

In the true tradition of Homesteaders, who roasted their own coffee before commercial entities came on the scene touting their vacuum packed "fresh" flavored coffee in a can somewhere in the early 1900's, I have a passion for coffee DIY.

As you may remember we do most of our coffee brewing in a stove top Moka Pot and I found a very old, hand powered coffee grinder at the thriftstore that does a very good job of getting a nice even and fine espresso grind.


For months I have been researching methods for home roasting and combing the thriftstores for a double paddled bread machine to build a roaster set up like my friends.

 

I had already ordered my green beans from 7 Bridges Organic Coffee in Santa Cruz. I chose a 10 variety 5 lb. sampler for the beginning roaster and I'm really glad I did. It is a nice assortment and it gives me a chance to mix different flavors and at least get a rough idea of what I like before I buy larger amounts. They have a great primer on home roasting coffee on their website.

While cruising the small appliances in an odd little thrift shop, I happened upon a George Foreman Jr. Rotisserie Oven.
"Hmmm" I said as I examined the vegetable basket that came with it. It was $14.99 and looked like it had been used once. My calculations for batch, bean size and temperature clicked off in my head.
This was a definite possibility. I snapped it up.

We plugged it in at home and watched the temperature hover at 325F. That is about 75- 100 degrees lower than I needed.
After a few weeks of cogitating (should I insulate the stove better or override the thermostat or...) I decided that what I needed was the additional heat from a Heat Gun, but not just any heat gun. I wanted one with variable temperature settings, not just "High" or "Low", this was a little trickier since I didn't want to spend much. Once in a while I would do a search of the internets and I could find them but they were "Professional" and cost upwards of a hundred dollars. Until one day I found for a measly 20 bucks ta da ta da da da da daaaa:

After I received it in the post, I realized that I really didn't know how I was going to get the heat of the gun into the closed oven. But where there is a will, there is a way. Or should I say where there is a drill...  

On the right hand side of the oven the rotisserie motor resides. On the left side of the oven there is just a fake plastic grill and beneath that is the metal wall of the oven. I cut out the plastic grill with tin snips and calculated the area in which the gun would not interfere with the pivot point of the basket, but still point the gun at the beans in the basket. I began drilling multiple holes in that general area. When the area had more holes than metal I proceeded to snip the metal left between the holes with my tin snips, making a ragged hole approximately the size of the snout of the gun.

I had to enlarge it a little with the tin snips by cutting little fins around the edge, which turned out to be a great thing. After I inserted the gun, I just used a little ball-peen hammer to tap the fins down tight to the gun snout. It holds it so well I did not want to take it apart to show you. You will just need to surmise what I did from the photos. If by chance the heat gun did not stay put, I was going to use a large hose clamp on the interior part of the nozzle to hold it in place.

If you use this oven method, do yourself a favor and get an Ove Glove. Blistered knuckles over ride all feelings of well being while sniffing your newly roasted coffee.

I trimmed away the plastic until the heat gun could fit all the way in. I did not want the hot metal nozzle to rest on the plastic outer body.

I pounded in the crumpled metal to hold the nozzle of the heat gun tight.

This photo shows where I settled on the heat setting- for now. This will most likely change as experiments progress.

These are the pans I used to cool the beans as soon as they came out of the oven.

Green beans

The stove is a little weird in that it has no "off" button. It uses an egg timer style knob. To roast coffee you just have to unplug it at the right moment when the basket clasp is at the front.

 

Unlike the Bread Machine set up, the oven lets the chaff sift to the bottom instead of flying around plugging up your heat gun intake.

First roast- a nice Viennese

Second roast- a City Roast

Roasts compared

I will not be able to give you real roasting stats for some time, but I will tell you for now that when roasting 1/3 of a pound of coffee (I am doing very small batches to get the hang of it) it takes about 6 minutes to reach first crack and somewhere around 7.5 minutes to get to City Roast +.

My first attempts have been met with very high reviews. I don't know if I hit a very good mix of Sumatra and Peruvian or if there is just no way to mess up fresh roasted coffee but I am very excited to continue the experiments. I bought myself a note book to write down the details.

Now the real fun begins!