plumbing – Karen's New York Love Affair

Winter visitors

I just got back from Monkey Valley, where I had a chance to find out how the place fared for the winter. I found evidence of some horses (or so I thought) in the yard, and the corpse of a tiny shrew in the power room. Other than that, no signs of mayhem from the animal world. No mouse or rat invasions, and no insect invasions either. It must have been a quiet winter! I do feel sad about the poor little shrew, though.

There was the usual water damage due to freezing. In spite of my best precautions, which I have detailed elsewhere, there were a number of casualties to the plumbing system. After a day or two of seeming to operate correctly, the kitchen tap started spazzing out water in all directions. The upstairs toilet handle would not flush, though flushing by pulling on the mechanism inside the tank worked. One of the showers leaked ceaselessly on the first night I was there (with my Mom and sister Katherine), until, cursing, I attacked it with a screwdriver. For some reason loosening the plate around the handle caused the showerhead to stop dripping, even though I hadn’t got it open to fiddle with the workings of the thing. And, two small leaks in valves in the power room. I see another big plumbing bill in my near future. Aargh!

But this is life. As I’ve recently learned from two of my Diamond Approach teachers, these things happen to us no matter how realized we are. It is not my fault, not your fault. The only thing that changes on our journey of soul maturation is the way we experience the problems, and the way we handle them. I personally enjoy venting my frustration through swearing, but maybe there’s a different way… Such as sensing how I actually feel in my body, and expanding my awareness to know that I am a vast and regal being… Or whatever.

The good news is Monkey Valley made it through the winter, and the damages are actually pretty minor. Happy Spring!

I’ll tell you more about the “horses” next time.

Ah, the luxury of hot running water!

It took two years from the time I bought Monkey Valley until there was hot running water to fill the beautiful claw foot bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. The bathtub was the first purchase I made after getting Monkey Valley. It weighs hundreds of pounds! Hugh and I brought it up in the ice blue Volvo station wagon I had at the time. With another friend helping, three of us managed to carry it up the stairs. Then it took two years for Hugh and I to install the solar power, the water pump, and get all systems going so that hot water was flowing through the veins of the house.

Plumbing has been one of the biggest challenges here, because it seems to be impossible to totally drain the house. I have a routine that takes about 1 ½ hours to do, to shut down the house when leaving it in winter time, which I have refined after various expensive mishaps involving small leaks, huge gushing leaks, expensive repairs, and even more expensive service calls:

turn off the power to the pump
open all the taps to drain the water
drain the line down at the pump house
open the screw under the Bosch flow-through propane hot water heater to drain the water in its pipes (failure to do this led to two very expensive repairs)
drain the water filter system (forgot to do this once and the whole thing busted)
drain the lowest line in the house
attach a hose and drain the line to the outside tap, which is even lower
drain the tap from the cold water tank
drain the washing machine, which has a tiny little tube at the bottom for this purpose
scoop remaining water out of toilet bowls (two)
put salt or environmentally-friendly anti-freeze in the p-traps (basically, down each drain), toilet bowls, and toilet tanks

Now that there is a solar hot water heating system added on to the original plumbing, Russ Hughes of Active Mechanical in Merritt (who installed the solar heating system, and is sadly now deceased—may your spirit be at peace, Russ) advised that I shut off the line to the new propane-heatable hot water tank, and leave the pilot burning. On sunny days, this gives the solar boiler a large body of water to use for heat exchange. Leaving the pilot burning is supposed to prevent the water in the tank from freezing during spells where there is no sun. This is a new element in the system, so I am not sure how well it will work, but this time around it worked fine.

Anyway, as you can see, the whole thing is a goddam pain in the ass, and sometimes it makes me wonder why I bother living out here! This time coming home there were no leaks. But before I could turn on the water system I needed to:

close all taps (remembering the cold water tank tap, which I have forgotten to close in the past, resulting in a gushing flow when I turned the water back on)
put the screw back in the Bosch flow-through
open the valve in the line from the hot water tank
turn on the power to the pump, which uses a step-up transformer to convert the 110 volt house power to 220 for the well pump
light the pilot on the flow-through tank

Plus, always, light the pilots on the stove and fridge to get those running again.

This time around, it only took an hour to make the fire, get all systems going, and unload the car. Plus another half hour to unpack food, clothes, laptops, and so on…

And then it was time for a nice hot bath!

November 25 – Frosty homecoming

Each time I return to Monkey Valley it is an adventure. There’s no telling what I will find. This time I arrived about 7:15 pm, well after dark. The outside temperature was -4 degrees, and the inside temperature was 0 degrees! In the power room it was a bit warmer—4 degrees—due to the solar boiler keeping a tank of hot water warm.

So the first order of business was to turn on the power (let there be light!), then to make a fire. If any of you have experience with heating a house that is 0 degrees, you will know that by bedtime the house was still much too cold to go to bed! With constantly feeding the fire as soon as there was room to put more wood in, I managed to raise the temperature to 10 degrees by midnight. I tested the feeling of the bed upstairs, and it was way too icy to get in! So I brought the down comforters downstairs, pulled the couch close to the wood stove, and settled in there for a few hours. Around 4:00 am I went upstairs with the warm blankies and was able to stretch out full-length on my bed and get some comfortable sleep. In the morning it was 8 degrees in the living room, and time to get that fire going again!

By bedtime the second night the temperature in the house was up to a balmy 18 degrees downstairs, and 20 degrees upstairs in my bedroom. Heating is obviously very important! I have a backup propane heater, which is due to be repaired on Friday. So hopefully after that I will be able to keep the house a little warmer while I am away for short winter trips. For longer trips there’s nothing to do but drain the water, put anti-freeze in the p-traps, and hope for the best. If heating is the top priority, plumbing is also very important (second priority), and has been a continual struggle. So has pest control, which can become top priority in a flash… (to be continued)

Coming home to Monkey Valley – September

Corner of Loon and Dillard On Wednesday, September 10, I came back to Monkey Valley. This might not seem remarkable to you, but it was a very exciting day for me.

You see, in November 2006 I went to Vancouver expecting to return to Monkey Valley in a few days. But there was a big snow storm, and VSA, the highway maintenance company, didn’t have time to plow my road because the snow just kept falling on the Coquihalla and the connector to Kelowna, and my road was not a priority. By the time they could get around to plowing my road, in late December, there had been more snow and a thaw and freeze, and it would take a caterpillar to break through the four feet of frozen snow! Estimated cost: $1,800!!

I decided to spend the winter in Vancouver, paying extra rent on my apartment there because I would be there full-time rather than part-time. Additional cost for five months: $1,500. I thought I’d rather pay the money to my friend Geoff than to VSA.

However, there were some hidden costs I didn’t realize at the time. Mail forwarding: $300. Tank full of propane, which was drained over the winter because I’d left a small propane heater running to keep the house from freezing while I was gone for “a few days”: $1,800. Cost to repair frozen plumbing, which occurred once the propane tank ran out: $500.

Oh well! I had a fun winter in Vancouver, and even enjoyed a weekend visit to Monkey Valley when my friend Marvin and I snowshoed in. This was a 7.5 KM trek from the corner of Dillard and Loon to the house but, unbelievably, a couple on a snowmobile was driving by just as we were preparing for the hike in, and they gave us a ride! So we just had to trek out.

That was in April 2007. In May I was able to drive in to Monkey Valley and pick up my camping gear. Then I was off for a summer of travel and training. I went to Boulder, Colorado for my graduation from Naropa University, and then did five vision quest retreats and trainings, and went to the Diamond Approach summer retreat, and went to a yoga teacher training in Mexico. By the fall of 2007 I was exhausted! But I also needed to look for work.

So this meant I decided to spend another winter in Vancouver. I prepared the house for winter as best I could, and said goodbye to Monkey Valley in November 2007. There were still some burst pipes the following spring, although I had done my best to drain everything! Plumbing is a big expense at Monkey Valley! Anyway, the plumbing was repaired over several trips home, with help from Nicola Valley Plumbing and Active Mechanical. Russ with Active Mechanical set up my solar hot water heating system, and he fixed that part of the system, while Nicola Plumbing repaired some leaks in the house.

But with looking for work and some more travel for training and retreats, it wasn’t until September 2008 that I actually was able to return to Monkey Valley “full-time.”

So it was a very happy day when I drove in to Merritt with my cat, Donald, and a car load of small household items that had found their way to Vancouver over the previous 22 months.

The first order of business was to cancel the mail forwarding. Once again I get to enjoy the thrill of going to the post office and checking my box for mail! Next, I went across the street to Interior Savings Insurance to pay for my annual house insurance policy. I stopped by VSA to ask for a quote on getting my road plowed this winter. I went to Fun-Key Enterprises to speak with Susanne and Tim about getting a new road sign made. Last year, my Starshine Way road sign was stolen a mere two days after my friend Eric and I had installed it! And finally, I went to Espresso Etc. to have a decaf and say hi to my friend Janet and her husband, Frenchie, to tell them the great news that I was coming home.

It Was a Happy Day!