Alan Howell
Starpath images
www.starpathimages.com

Alan, literally, answered my prayers. I wanted someone's beauty-seeing eye, and he delivered.  On top of that, he is kind, fun to speak with, well read, articulate, subtle, funny, and great with kids.  His understanding of light and the emotions/energy of a room are remarkable.  I'm looking forward to working with him again for portraits that are as unusual and richly toned as these shots of the house.  Thank you, Alan, for capturing the way our home feels.

There is a mountain of topsoil in my front yard.  It is next to the smaller mountain of scrap granite and in front of the larger mountain of play sand, which was not dumped properly and ended up being mostly on the outside of the sandbox instead of the inside of the sandbox.

On days like this I feel really overwhelmed and disheartened.  We've been at this for over five years, and we are still in the construction phase. I want to go to maintenance. Right this second.

Alan Howell is coming to visit this weekend and I am hoping that his eye is going to find some beauty here, and that he'll let me borrow his eye for a while.

Just came back from taking the trash out and realized that I forgot to mention the pile of bald tires (for the garden wall) and the pile of firewood (for the winter).

...not as easy in real life as it is in my head.

We got a dump load of scrap granite, totally saved from the landfill, and used it to pave our garden.  This took about 100 hours of sweaty, back breaking labor.  Then the invasive grass from our area came and covered it up in about, oh, 45 seconds.

We now have a load of tires, also totally saved from the landfill, and are using them to build a garden wall.  The wall is (in theory) designed to keep the invasive grass out of the garden.  The base of the tire wall is also a convenient spot to dump all of the granite we are not using.

Until then, though, we've got a pile of scrap granite and yard full of bald tires. I am feeling just a little tiny bit like a dump.

Z Stucco
Sam Zukerman
757.478.7211

Sam worked magic here at the Ship. In three days (really hot days, no less) he took our chopped up, visually traumatic east-end and transformed it into a gloriously unified front face. I am tickled every time I drive up to the house.

We've been trying to solve the problem of the east-end since we moved into the house and realized that our contractor never was going to build those retaining walls like the plans showed. We tried siding, which sagged and failed. We tried plywood, which buckled and popped. Then it sat like that for a few months because we just did not know what to do.

We decided to try a high end contractor, since our experience with low-end places hadn't really turned out so well for us. Enter Case Handyman, who recommended stucco. We had just the guy. Mashi has known Sam since High School and he was our very first call. He came out right away and gave us an estimate. The work was done a week later.

Sam told me, "I'll do a good job for you. You'll be happy with the work."
I've heard this many times before and Sam is one of the few who delivered. The work is spectacular. I recommend Z Stucco highly. Very.

BEFORE:
 



















AFTER:

We had drain-flies in the house for a while. Like 3 months. Thankfully, our friend bnmng helped us ID them. And IDing them helped us manage them.

The drain-flies are most definitely living in the planter. Covering it with screen helped. They were also living in an old water meter that was tucked into a corner, the tadpole habitat, the condensed water underneath the granite that covers the planter so the cats don't pee in it, and in the water that puddles under the bathtub when the kids forget to put the mat down.

We first noticed the problem in April. It is July now and we've finally got them under control. We still have a few of them here and there, but the are completely under control. If I forget to dump the mop water, we get a bug bloom. If the kids leave their water experiments out, we get a bug bloom. Any standing water in the greenhouse and they are on it, in it, and breeding. As long as we eradicate their habitat though, the problem is totally managed.

Our monthly average kWh use since May 2006 is 1165.

The 12 month average is 879 kWh, and I feel we've reached our consumption goal. This is the last post I'm doing on our electrical consumption, but I will continue to collect data and keep the chart current, indefinitely. Read more about our power use.

We plan(ed?) to dig out the planter to day.  The goal is to seal it from the top with screen, to discover if the black bugs are coming out from the top.  We are trying to eliminate one variable at a time until we get rid of the bugs.  There is also the possibility that:

• the bugs are flying into the house by coming up the pipes that drain into the planter. 
• for an unknown reason water from outside is flooding into our green house via ground seepage.
• the bugs are living on the water than condenses under the granite slabs covering the planter.
• the pipe that drains into the planter is too low, and so the planter overflows around that juncture.

It is raining today, though, so we may not actually get passed the possibilities and into any work today.

We're not exactly sure what bugs these are, so we call them walla-walla bugs.  They like water.

They live in our greywater planter and one hypothesis is that they come up through the rock (or the pipes) and then seek out anyplace in the house that has moisture.  Favorite hang outs include our shower, the kids bathtub, and the light fixtures above the sink.

Yellow fly paper is catching a lot of them, but they just keep coming.  And coming.  And coming.

I've covered the bulk of the planter with plastic in an effort to keep them trapped there.  This has not worked.  Another hypothesis is that they are living in the water that condenses under pieces of granite that cover the planter dirt.  The granite is there to keep the cats from peeing in the planter.  Of the two, I greatly prefer the bugs to the smell of cat piss.  But my first choice would be to have neither.

To deal with this we are digging the planter down to grade level and paving over it with brick over screening and sand, effectively sealing it up.  If the bugs still come when that is done, we'll add check valves to the pipes that drain into the planter.

Our monthly average kWh use since May 2006 is 1183. We are moving ever closer to a long-term average of <1000. This month's actual use was 805 kWh. I've been purposefully not turning on the heat. And it is not just to save energy. I think that running the heat in the spring raises the ambient temperature house's huge thermal mass, which makes summer cooling more difficult. Mashi and I sort of have a bet over this hypothesis, a huge bet, for millions of rightness points. In other words, I think that having a chilly house in spring will mean we need less A/C in the summer. He thinks it won't make any difference. The suspense! The drama!

This chart is from the May 2006 - present earthship power usage history spreadsheet. You can also read our energy audit that explains the power fluctuations over a 12 month period (2006-2007).