Good Morning, home repair companeros.
It snowed an inch last night, after a week of "unseasonably" warm weather; when it doesn't freeze here in January I start to worry. And "freeze" doesn't mean a frost, it means the ground is frozen, and temps are as cold as they are gonna get for the season. Down to below zero, even, and occasionally, every decade or so some real shockers, like the 24 below recorded here by my neighbor in something like '94 or so.
Meanwhile, the first of the snowpack reports are coming in for our mountain rain-catchers. While November was dry, December kicked ass so we are ahead right now. I see this for myself, whenever I drive out of the valley and get up on the flat where I can see the snow on the mountains 30 miles away. I have even learned to differentiate between snow over there, towards the west, where it actually gets into the Pecos far enough upstream to get into my irrigation ditch. Snow over there, more to the east, OTOH, looks great but not a drop of that water will get to this village. Its course to the Gulf of Mexico will never enter the Pecos, or even the Rio Grande, as it flows to the Mississippi.
So that's one of the ways I place myself on the planet, how I see where I am. Meanwhile, 6 thousand miles away, events are at work, natural forces, that are determining how dry this coming summer will be. Maybe.
They (the big-picture meteorologists) see the surface ocean temperature in the western Pacific down a bit, which translates into an effect they call "la Nina", which translate into less moisture getting here from the western Pacific, our closest ocean, 700 miles to the southwest. I don't understand the science, but I understand it affects me. The link takes you to wunderground, probably the best private weather website going, if you want to learn more about the la nina/el nino SST (sea surface temp) anomaly and how it has effect all the way here in the southern mountain west US.
So the garage door is successful. I even ran out and bought a cheapo electric opener for no really good reason other than because I could. For the first time in my life, I can drive up in my car, push a button and the door opens, just like on TV. All I had to do was make the adobes, build the garage, salvage the door and store it safely outside for a year, get it home, install it and have the money to buy an opener ($160) and install it. Nothing to it.
I really appreciate all the words of caution the trusty "ad hoc cadre of construction pros and gifted amateurs" offered up last week in regards to that spring thing. It put me into the proper frame of mind to approach the task and not get hurt doing it. Thanks, guys.
Now all I have to do is clean up the garage, which has been accumulating stuff for a year with little attempt at order, because my work life has been 85 miles away for the past 16 months. Suddenly, all the house building tools have returned home and are clammoring for order.
Here's the building from last year. I don't have a recent photo that shows the mud plaster, the soffits, the straw-bale wall to the right, and the door.
That's the chickenpalace behind it. I'll point out that these are "passive" solar buildings, by virtue of being aligned towards the sun's path (South) and having glazing on that side. The overhang of the roof of the garage blocks entry of the sun in summer months, when the sun is high in its arc, while permitting the sun to shine directly inside during the winter months when the sun's path is low. The "mass" of the building, its adobe walls and concrete floor act as the heat sink, or storage, for the heat that comes in and releases it back into the room during the night. The north wall is built of straw bales, to insulate the cold side of the building where the sun oesn't warm it. In a residence, to keep it more efficient, I would also insulate the rest of the adobe.
The mud plaster is just that: dirt from the ground, mixed with some differnt dirt with a high clay content from a mile away, and plastered on with trowels. It will erode, in time, depending on the rains, and will have to be renewed periodically.
Show time.