Gone With the Wind
Well the winter snows finally melted and we blew right into springtime here on the ranch, and when I say we blew into it, I mean we BLEW into it! We have had nothing but wind, wind and more wind. As you can see in our blog picture, one storm proved too much for our construction potty and over it went! This is precisely why I paid the extra money to insure it. I was NOT going to go out there and stand it back up. That storm brought in 75mph winds, and Kris, Hobbs and I were prepared to evacuate the trailer! The week prior we had 40-50mph winds. That seems like a piece of cake now! I lost count of how many times I’ve Googled, “what speed of wind will tip a trailer over.” Oof! Trailer life can be very sketchy sometimes. For those wondering, our porta potty survived, it just oozed blue goop all over the ground which then killed our baby grass.
Our most recent storm quickly became dangerous. As we were just thinking back on 1 year ago when we were bailing water out of our foundation hole, severe weather started to circle. I saw the storm rolling in, ran out to the house and warned Kris. He closed the house up but decided to stay working in the garage. I returned to the trailer with Hobbs. Well, the house would’ve been the wiser choice. Hail started first, then hail and rain, then a full-on wall of water! My first experience with an actual flash flood! As I started looking out the trailer windows, I could see the driveway up against the trailer starting to erode under the rivers of rainwater. “Well THIS can’t be good,” I thought to myself. I tried to look out the door to see if the ground was eroding under the actual trailer, but it was raining so hard I couldn’t see anything and was instantly soaked. Checked out the windows again to find large pieces of asphalt falling in the ravine. Tried to call Kris and we had no cell service and no internet. Can we say a “little” bit of panic set in? I could see Kris in the garage just sweepin’ away, not the slightest clue that his wife might actually be falling into the ravine! I grabbed Hobbs’ harness and tried to prepare him for evacuation, but he was having none of it! Thankfully, after an hour, the rain subsided. We ended up with 4 inches of rain in 1 hour! Check out our pictures here to see what we survived! We are now officially living on the edge! Yikes! The next time a storm blows in, Hobbs and I are moving into the house. If the trailer survives, we’ll move back in! Too close for my comfort!
We’ve also had a few other “special” moments in the trailer like going to bed late one night after a long workday, only to hear a loud hissing sound coming from the kitchen. We jumped out of bed to find water pouring into the cabinet below the sink, over into the electrical panel cabinet and out onto the entry rugs. The water filter had burst a seam. Needless to say after all the water was cleaned up, we returned to bed around midnight. There was also the day we decided to change the seal on the trailer toilet because it wasn’t holding water anymore. If you’ve stayed in a trailer before, you might know that no water in the bowl, means smelly sewer gases. Turns out we have the more difficult toilet that requires removing the entire bowl to fix the seal. Well, our bathroom is so small that Kris had to just hold the bowl up while I tried to sneak in below and put the new seal on! THAT was a smelly, gross job! Paid off in the end though because now we have a much better smelling bathroom! A fun trailer memory was the morning we had a visit from a bobcat! He walked right by the trailer, then went up to the house where Kris got a picture of him up on our retaining wall! He’s now known as Uncle Bob. We hadn’t seen him again until my sister visited last week and ended up getting about 10 feet from him without knowing it! I saw him crouch down in the brush to hide and warned her before she got too close. I’m not sure she thought it was as cool to see him as I did!
As for the house progress, it’s coming along! Kris finished the radiant heat and so it was time to pressure test it! We initially found one leak in the copper pipes, so I got an on-the-spot lesson in soldering copper pipes. Eek! It took both of us with torches to heat it up high enough to reseal it, but we were successful! Back to pressure testing we went and found no other leaks! The system is holding, and we are quite proud of ourselves for installing such a fancy system successfully by ourselves. Looking forward to warm floors next winter.
Next up was the electrical. This is more in Kris’ comfort zone being an electrical engineer. But with the ability to do whatever he wanted, he MAYBE went a bit extreme. Of course, he’s never gone extreme with anything before! Ha! We not only have basic electrical, but we have smart switch options, tons of wifi hubs and crazy security camera abilities. Just gonna let everyone know now that you will NOT be able to sneak onto the property…unless I’m the only one home and can’t figure out how to use all this fancy technology!
HVAC came next and they just completed the system about a week ago. It took a bit more room in the mechanical room then we thought, so Kris’ office got a bit smaller unfortunately, but it’s still workable. The fire sprinkler system was the real space hog! My goodness! The sprinkler system was installed pretty quickly and easily, but the water holding tank for the mechanical room came, and our jaws about hit the floor! It’s huge!! We managed to get it into the mechanical room, but it fills nearly a third of the entire room. Then we found out we also have to mount a siren and strobe light on the front center peak of the house so the fire department can find us. Good grief! That’s gonna look amazing. Sigh.
Last but not least, the plumbers wrapped up their work as well. Not before putting our master bath toilet in the wrong place and the water lines to the guest bath going uphill, but they’re finally done. We are now awaiting rough inspection which includes plumbing, HVAC, electrical and framing. Hoping to check that off this week so we can move to insulation and drywall! We are very ready to see walls go up in the interior. Though we still have a long way to go, I think actual walls will give us a much needed boost as we approach the finishing stage of the house! You can check out our Utilities section for all the latest photos!
