Journal of Progress May 10-May 17, 2020
Barbara has been taking morning walks. This picture of Indian Paintbrush takes her back to her childhood. Indian Paintbrushes were in the mountains above Manti where her father herded sheep.
In these rocks on a hill above Mammoth you can see a lot of mineral deposits. Barbara is not trained to recognize what minerals she is seeing. You can see that if they are valuable minerals, it would be a significant expense and effort to extract what is valuable.
This is the largest concentration of houses in our little community. Our barn roof is to the left. About 17 individuals live in these houses. Not much has changed except that just right and above the yellowish house is a big blue dumpster. A couple is restoring the white cabin right of the dumpster. It is just to be a weekend thing for them. There is also a couple of restored cabins which cannot be seen which are currently vacant.
Barbara is standing on the road east of the cabin looking west. The cabin is next to the road.
This is our plumber friend bringing the pressure tank for our water pump.
Below is the new pressure tank and water pump. When working, we will have 30 -50 psi of water pressure, as long as the main, 1500 gal. tank has water in it. Next up, ensure there are no leaks in the tank. Our plumber friend also helped run power from the main breaker box to the pump, and completed the water hookup to our water heater. To get water into the main tank for testing, we'll have to clean out the tank truck tank. It's got algae in it from sitting in the sunlight. I'll need help.
For Mother's Day, Barbara received a maple tree from our children. Here is Don, starting to dig a hole for it. The instructions specified the hole must be twice the size of the root ball and just as deep. It took Don three hours to dig a two-foot diameter hole a foot deep in our rocky, hard clay soil. He referred to this as, "Harvesting stone potatoes."
After all the work of planting was done, Don looked up and discovered he had planted the tree, which grows to a height of 30 - 50 feet, right under some power lines. He said he was too tired to move it, so we'll just have to top it when it gets tall. If the deer let it grow at all. Don put left-over metal roofing on the ground around the tree to discourage the deer. He's heard they won't walk on it, even to get to a nice, luscious maple tree sapling. We'll see. He didn't want to dig more holes for fence posts to fence them out.
Below is Don building the balcony brackets. After designing, laying out, cutting, gluing, and screwing the actual brackets together, Don drilled and chiseled mortises for the bracket tenons, which must fit exactly. Very finicky work. Each tenon will be glued and mortised into the backing plate, then pinned in place with two dowels, in holes slightly offset to pull the tenons firmly into the mortises.
Using fast-setting, water-proof glue, Don has to work fast to get glue on all surfaces to be glued before assembling the completed bracket.
Driving the dowels. The holes (deliberately) don't match up perfectly, so it takes some force. Don had to carve glue-relief channels in each dowel and round the interior end, so the glue will have somewhere to go when the dowel is driven. Otherwise, the wood will split.
Sawing off the excess dowel even with the edge of the backing plate. Driving the dowels forcefully enough to pass the offset holes results in damage to the end of the dowel, so Don left them about an inch long. After cutting them off and sanding, they hardly show.
Don had to repeat all the steps again to make the second bracket. They will be attached to the house framing, through the siding and sheathing, with 5/16" lag screws--seven per bracket. Don used engineering figures found on the internet to calculate that the brackets will hold up to 20.000 lbs. Five times more than enough for safety.
Above: Don cleaning the tank with a long-handled scrubbing brush.
Below: Don had to get inside the tank to remove the excess water and the algae. He passed full pails of water up through the access portal to our neighbor Dan.
Neighbor Gary (on left below) needed help building his house near the top of the canyon. Neighbor Patrick and I helped him set twenty-foot truss rafters. Dan helped him set a bunch the previous day, but hurt his back. They are VERY heavy! Out here, we all help each other. Don says he had worked all night the previous night at the set, and was a little dizzy working on the second floor, but was able to do so safely. We used ropes and muscle power to lift each truss into place.
Gary knew Barbara's father. He is a photographer and with a writer, did a documentary on Sanpete County where Manti is. Gary spent several days at Barbara's fathers sheepcamp and took many pictures of Barbara's father, some of which are in the book that was produced. Barbara had a copy of the book years before she met Gary.
from Don’s Cabin Diary May 4, 2020
Hummingbirds today!
Barbara hung up the hummingbird feeder this morning, and attracted them to the porch. Now we can sit in the porch swing and watch them. Three fought over the feeder this morning, while Barbara was watching and I was sleeping. Worked on the house all day, and went out to the porch to wash up, and nearly got attacked. Strange bird. Fairly big for a hummer, but it definitely made a low humming sound while it was flying. But it ALSO made a high-pitched, trilling whistle at the same time! Sounded almost metalic. I’ve see lots of hummingbirds in my life, but I’ve never seen one do that. Barbara’s bird book says it was a Broad Tailed Hummingbird.
Good work day. Dave, a friend from Provo, came out to help me get the water system going. He’s a professional handyman. He knows more about plumbing than I do, and since it’s so hard to get a decent plumber to come out here, I hired him. Today, we got the drain system hooked up, then ran wire to where the pump and pressure tank are going to be, to have it ready when the puup and tank unit arrives next week His wife, who is a friend of Barbara’s, helped her start the second coat of drywall mud downstairs. Barbara has taken over the mudding and sanding jobs and is getting quite good at it.
After they left, I started mortising the balcony support brackets. Got one mortised, cut, and sanded, ready to be doweled. I’m securing the mortise-and-tenon joints with dowels. Hard work, even with a drill to remove most of the wood.
A friend from California, who helped me with the electricity a year ago, was concerned that the brackets might pull out of the wall, and suggested a complex and labor-intensive way to support them with cables or chains. Didn’t seem right to me, so I started looking up engineering data: lag screw pullout resistance, weights of different species of wood, etc. Here’s what I found:
5/16" lag screws with 2" threaded length, properly installed x two brackets
pullout resistance in southern white pine (what I have) 306 lbs. per threaded inch = c. 600 lbs / screw
calculated moment for each of five lag screws. Totals: 10,000 lb-feet per bracket 20,000 lb-feet both brackets
Weight of balcony @ 1 ft. 130 lbs*
Max live load (3 adults @ 300 lbs. ea.) @ 1 foot avg. moment 900 lbs**
fudge factor for weight 170 lbs weight***
TOTAL MOMENTS: 1300 lb-feet weight 20,000 lb-feet resistance
“Moment” is weight or force x distance from fulcrum. (1 lb @ 10 feet = 10 lbs @ 1 foot)
Even if I made so many errors that the weight should be doubled and the resistance should be halved (errors of 100 percent), I would still have more than four times as much weight bearing capacity as I need. Some people call this, “over-building”. I call it, “good engineering”.
NOTES:
* I left out the weight-bearing effect of the “batter board” that supports the edge of the balcony that lies against the house, because I do not know how to calculate it. But it certainly supports around half the weight of the balcony and some of the weight of the live load. Since I do not know the actual location of the people on the balcony, or how to account for transient loads caused by their movement, I figured that leaving out the batter board support from my calculations should just about compensate. That’s why I over-build.
** Average weight of adults (men and women) is 185 lbs. I don’t know many who weigh more than 250 lbs. Only one of my friends is likely to weigh more than 300 lbs, but she is confined to a power chair and cannot make it up the stairs to my balcony, so I figure 300 lbs. is plenty.
*** Actual calculated weight of balcony was only 85 lbs. This seemed too light, so I doubled it, then added an additional fudge factor. I could build it, weigh it, then hoist it into position, but that’s a LOT more work than just building it in place. I’m the guy who’d have to do the work, so I opt for the easy way.
Barbara is standing on the road east of the cabin looking west. The cabin is next to the road.
Below is Don building the balcony brackets. After designing, laying out, cutting, gluing, and screwing the actual brackets together, Don drilled and chiseled mortises for the bracket tenons, which must fit exactly. Very finicky work. Each tenon will be glued and mortised into the backing plate, then pinned in place with two dowels, in holes slightly offset to pull the tenons firmly into the mortises.
Below: Don had to get inside the tank to remove the excess water and the algae. He passed full pails of water up through the access portal to our neighbor Dan.
Hummingbirds today!
Barbara hung up the hummingbird feeder this morning, and attracted them to the porch. Now we can sit in the porch swing and watch them. Three fought over the feeder this morning, while Barbara was watching and I was sleeping. Worked on the house all day, and went out to the porch to wash up, and nearly got attacked. Strange bird. Fairly big for a hummer, but it definitely made a low humming sound while it was flying. But it ALSO made a high-pitched, trilling whistle at the same time! Sounded almost metalic. I’ve see lots of hummingbirds in my life, but I’ve never seen one do that. Barbara’s bird book says it was a Broad Tailed Hummingbird.
Good work day. Dave, a friend from Provo, came out to help me get the water system going. He’s a professional handyman. He knows more about plumbing than I do, and since it’s so hard to get a decent plumber to come out here, I hired him. Today, we got the drain system hooked up, then ran wire to where the pump and pressure tank are going to be, to have it ready when the puup and tank unit arrives next week His wife, who is a friend of Barbara’s, helped her start the second coat of drywall mud downstairs. Barbara has taken over the mudding and sanding jobs and is getting quite good at it.
After they left, I started mortising the balcony support brackets. Got one mortised, cut, and sanded, ready to be doweled. I’m securing the mortise-and-tenon joints with dowels. Hard work, even with a drill to remove most of the wood.
A friend from California, who helped me with the electricity a year ago, was concerned that the brackets might pull out of the wall, and suggested a complex and labor-intensive way to support them with cables or chains. Didn’t seem right to me, so I started looking up engineering data: lag screw pullout resistance, weights of different species of wood, etc. Here’s what I found:
5/16" lag screws with 2" threaded length, properly installed x two brackets
pullout resistance in southern white pine (what I have) 306 lbs. per threaded inch = c. 600 lbs / screw
calculated moment for each of five lag screws. Totals: 10,000 lb-feet per bracket 20,000 lb-feet both brackets
Weight of balcony @ 1 ft. 130 lbs*
Max live load (3 adults @ 300 lbs. ea.) @ 1 foot avg. moment 900 lbs**
fudge factor for weight 170 lbs weight***
TOTAL MOMENTS: 1300 lb-feet weight 20,000 lb-feet resistance
“Moment” is weight or force x distance from fulcrum. (1 lb @ 10 feet = 10 lbs @ 1 foot)
Even if I made so many errors that the weight should be doubled and the resistance should be halved (errors of 100 percent), I would still have more than four times as much weight bearing capacity as I need. Some people call this, “over-building”. I call it, “good engineering”.
NOTES:
* I left out the weight-bearing effect of the “batter board” that supports the edge of the balcony that lies against the house, because I do not know how to calculate it. But it certainly supports around half the weight of the balcony and some of the weight of the live load. Since I do not know the actual location of the people on the balcony, or how to account for transient loads caused by their movement, I figured that leaving out the batter board support from my calculations should just about compensate. That’s why I over-build.
** Average weight of adults (men and women) is 185 lbs. I don’t know many who weigh more than 250 lbs. Only one of my friends is likely to weigh more than 300 lbs, but she is confined to a power chair and cannot make it up the stairs to my balcony, so I figure 300 lbs. is plenty.
*** Actual calculated weight of balcony was only 85 lbs. This seemed too light, so I doubled it, then added an additional fudge factor. I could build it, weigh it, then hoist it into position, but that’s a LOT more work than just building it in place. I’m the guy who’d have to do the work, so I opt for the easy way.
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