EvoBilly Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 sounds like you will need to build more cabins there has been a real lack of builds from yoeddynz on here lately time for another big one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted April 17, 2015 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 17, 2015 We have one planned! We finished clearing the track properly up to the ridge and have started clearing the area up here- ask Horse about it. Jen and him turned up that morning and checked it out. Plan is to build a cabin the neigbour can tow up from his side with his excavator. But first thing is to get this toilet/shower block up. However that wont get worked on till Sunday because tomorrow its going to be 'installing a hoist day' 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tortron Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 Is the hoist used to raise people up.to.the zipline? Saw a place in the jungle just recently. But didnt stop because it offered over 5 km of ziplining and i cant process that right now 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoeddynz Posted April 19, 2015 Author Share Posted April 19, 2015 5km of flying fox? Wow. I'd have stopped. Hoist will be for supporting broken pushbikes by their saddles whilst fixing things/lubing gears. Could possibly lift a rusty car or two. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted June 19, 2015 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 19, 2015 Update time. Wow! I thought this would be a quick little write up but actually turned into an essay length spiel. Best you put the kettle on...So a fair bit has been going on in our little valley. I've been trying to remember to take photos but usually get carriedaway and have finished whatever before I remember. I did go up to the ridge a wee while back and take a pretty photo or two of the sunrise. Very nice up there. Cant wait to build a cabin for that place!Coming back down to the truck via the ridge track- Tuis playing morning tunes in the Lucerne tree next to truck.Since getting that lathe in place the shed has been getting used and sort of just evolving in doing so. Things/tools havefound a place. With the winter weather it feels cosy- especially in heavy rain. Really needs a wood burner or waste oilburner for the colder days because man can it be chilly in the evening. I will make something but accept that it will onlyheat up a little area and be hugely inefficient trying to heat it all. Maybe something arond the main bench/lathe areawould be good.One thing that we are both stoked with getting is the hoist. We could only afford it because we bought the secondhandlathe instead of a new chinese lathe. The bank balance is getting low as and we ummed a bit about spending the coin on a hoist but so glad we bought it instead of waiting because man its useful! I ordered it from trademe and had it delivered to a Nelson depot. Just managed to squeeze it in the van for a slow trip home which saved on the silly rural delivery charges.Shane came round the next day and helped put up the main structure. It went up pretty fuss free and seems fine for acheaper chinese hoist. I can see where the costs are cut when compared to a Heshbon etc but its strong and well builtwhere it needs to be. Currently we just plug the hoist into extension cord. Must order appropriate lecky supplies and lights then wire up shed!It dwarfs the Viva. Oh yeah- also note the steel rack we recently built. Was great to get all the steel we have found while clearing the block out of the rain and inside.Stepping away from the workshop we have been busy with many other things. First off we needed to get the ever growing piles of firewood out of the coming winter rains. Into our pile of telephone poles and old iron and we built this. I also nabbed some old wooden shed doors left outside a nelson garage doorplace. Free to take- i like. These I turned into a storage bin for all them little offcuts of wood that are a pain to stack. So now we have some storage but will need more. We have at least 50 pine trees big and small to chop down over next few years. Some in the gullies will just rot or be made into north shore style bike trails. Many we can use to keep us warm.Then that little sailing boat. The sun and the rain wont help it at all plus it was in the way- taking up space I couldfill with another old car. So more telepoles and the 6m lengths of NEW iron that had been left in the bush edge by previous land owner came in handy. We built this... (turns out to be also very handy for lawnmower, old pushbikes and bike trailer storage) Meanwhile our neighbour has offered us her field which was overgrown with gorse and blackberry for the past 20 years. We wanted to clear it out so our view was nicer and had been intending to ask her if that was cool. Then she just said one day- hey how about we make it into a fruit orchard. OK ! So it was out with the scrub cutter and chainsaw and with a couple of days hard graft we had it all clear. It looks so much better and the soil is amazing as it originally had two pigs there then getting nitrogen fixed by gorse for past twodecades. Next step is to plant it out but for now its just great the have a view with out gorse and masses of blackberry.Before..During..After...That little fence we have left up to plant grapes and kiwis on. We are both still very much newbies when it comes to growing things but no being stressy types what grows will grow etc etc Our neighbour- well shes very green fingered and will help us out heaps. Plus there's the nerd net for info. Main thing is I'm enjoying this whole land thingee and planting stuff way more that I thought I would Then there is the track up to our ridge. We had been planning to clear it for ages so a day or so with the scrubcutter and now its way nicer to walk up. Horse and Jen happened to turn up one day whikle there were up here for holiday so they got a tour of our freshly cleared track. We have now almost cleared out the building site at the top where we are planning another cabin build. Not photos of the now cleared track but I did take this one the other evening when we went up to watch the sunset and drink beer. When we got to the ridge a huge deer went storming away from us over the gully. Quite a sight ! What is cooler was the picture on my beer bottle...Speaking of tracks.. Hannah went away on a few days trip with her sister who was visiting. While they were gone I hooked into the start of our first mtb track. We have always planned the first track to head as gently as possible up to the ridgetop- a gentle enough gradient for an easy ride or walk. I really wanted to get something done while hannah was away as a surprise. I cut, dug, raked, carted, stacked, walked, toiled, bashed a track through the Kanuka grove just behind the cabin over two days and built whole first track. I really enjoyed it and worked through till it was almost dark. I was knackered at the end of the second day. Hannah got back from the tramp and I surprised them both with my new track. Its still a touch too steep to ride up easily up so Ive worked out a path for a track that seperates off where it gets steeper and will head back towards the truck then back again. Pretty much..more hairpins = more track = easier gradient (but also = more work....)Big thing getting built right now is our outside bathroom. We have had this planned ever since first viewing the propertybut had not yet decided on where, what and how.The 'what' bit we have sort of picked away at since before moving here. Discussed over coffee or beer (but not both) we have gone over ideas that have come about from years of using various homemade showers and dealing with a variety of toilets.Fascinating stuff.The 'where' bit sort of just fell in place once the cabin was up in its new location. Its on a slope backed with bush whichis ideal for what we envisaged. Situated halfway between the cabin and the back of the shed its in a handy location for us and the cabin and its private with lovely views.The 'how' bit is just evolving as we build. Its an elevated building over composting toilet system. For now its the wellproven batch type setup with wheelie bins. Rotated as they fill with a minimum of 1 year composting in the bins beforegoing into a seperate compost area up off the driveway for another 6 months. Then the compost can be used in places like the fruit orchard and areas we are building the native bush back up. From all the reading we have done this is totaloverkill as far as dealing to any pathogens but hey. No harm there. Its going to be awesome having a decent setup that has a minimum amount of moving shit about, he he, and not have to pay or worry about involving outside services like septic systems.In the future Id like to build our own 'Clivus multrum' style system, a setup that uses a sloped bottom vessel and is continuous in operation. You can buy 1 m3 capacity units made in plastic if you have a spare $4000...which is an absurd price considering our 25000 litre tank cost $2600.I'll use stainless steel to make the structure. But that still involves more pingas and time which we dont have- the latter due to the longdrop filling fast.The grey water will be treated using a reed bed system. This is pretty easy espicially on our type of land because of the clay below. The water will only go down so far and then move along. Moving water through soil is the quickest way of treating it. It does not take many meters before any nasties are dealt to.First off we dug out the bank. This did take quite a while. I had to take breaks and sit down to sip at beer while lookingat the mountains. We would take turns at this after Hannah saw how nice that looked. Eventually a large 'void'? was created and funny enough a hill appeared somewhere else. Much of this hill appeared next to the graden because there's some very lush dirt with some mighty fine looking well fed worms in it.Kevin just watched or chased clods down the slope.We also had this fella stroll out of the dirt where we had sadly destroyed his underground lair. What a huge bugger he (or she) is.I released him later further up in the bush but not until Id worked out what brand he was.. Turns out he's of the 'Stanwellia' species- related to trapdoor spiders and quite rarely seen as usually underground. His burrow was massive and we had sliced right through it with the spade. See here for another one..http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11307026Then we planted four H5 treated poles set well down into the granity clay below. A thick plastic groundsheet runs up past the decking and right up the walls sealing in the treated plywood clad basement. The decking is insulated below with 40 mm thick insulation and the inside has reflective foil insulation. We want to create a heat trap to keep the interior as hot as possible so promoting a decent heat in the compost.Inbetween building we cleared out the bush around that area. When intially clearing the land last year of gorse we worked up to the bush edge and only so far in. We had left the gorse hiding within because its dying back anyway. But this area was still pretty bad so a few hours and we not only had a lovely little spot but yet heaps more firewood. Some of the old gorse was huge! So much more light into that area and on the bathroom.The pile on the left is gorse from just that little area.Above this we've built a nice solid little bathroom that measures 4 m2. It'll contain sssb - the shitter, a shower, a sink and a bench. Then we built steps using some more of the telephone poles. Its quite high up and we have to allow for our olds etc when they visit so easy to climb steps they had to be. Must build a rail soon because man I'd hate to gotrippin off that ledge...We have made a little track through the bush and once tidied up will be a sweet way to walk to the bathroom from the truck. The steps come right down to this track.We picked through our pile of Rimu, picked out some possibly nice bits- possibly because you really cant tell until it goes through the planer. These became window and door frames plus some rafters. When the main shed was delivered the piles of sheets were protected some extra packing sheets in a dark grey colour. There were just enough of them to clad the roof with a decent overhang. Sweet! We still have a little left over for another wood shed too My old boss gave us a whole heap of wood leftover from his house build. All Cedar, Macrocarpa and some Douglas fir. Ideal timbers for building things with! So the Douglas fir we ripped down and planed then made doors with. They are barn style doors and Hannah has oiled them. They look nice. Photos later of them completed but heres a action shot..Hannah painted the outside of the window frames with paint left over from the housetruck. Then I scored 4 litres of 'mist green' paint from nelson house parts. Its the same colour as the water tank and similar too the main shed. It should help the building blend into the bush nicely. I have a neat idea on an overlay method using random wood to break up what will other wise look like a tall painted ply building. I think it will work well. We will see. Here is the building so far with the primer coat on... 45 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kempy Posted June 25, 2015 Share Posted June 25, 2015 Geez you guys don't muck about!, living the life though, very cool indeed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoeddynz Posted June 26, 2015 Author Share Posted June 26, 2015 Cheers- trying to stay busy although last week or so has been more chilling in truck during cold evenings we have been having! Have almost got enough stuff to complete the compost toilet setup so shall report back soon with some notes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tortron Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Double decker dunny? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Sparkle Posted June 27, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted June 27, 2015 Awesome progress guys! Looks sweet. Kinda reminds me of this; 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danger Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 Progress is looking awesome guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yetchh Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 Fuck.. so jealous of the hoist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoeddynz Posted July 3, 2015 Author Share Posted July 3, 2015 Both of you come up for tea. ! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 20, 2015 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 20, 2015 Updates on our tower of turd. But first- a pretty photo from a couple of weeks ago. Awesome sky! Right. Back to the palace of poo. We left off last time with a distinctly unfinished looking building. Since then its been top coated and the door frames, front wall on the lower half and trim bits filling in up to the apex's have all been seen to. Its looking heaps better. It still has my planned wood slat overlay to finsh the exterior off plus a couple of other little bits but otherwise the exterior is sorted. That's a relief. We have also put down stone along the path. Was getting slippery in the rain. Next up was to roll up the stainless poo chute. I cut rings from treated pine to glue around the exterior.Then clad the exterior in Rimu we planed and cut to size. Topped off with a nice wooden toilet seat. We were building this lot one friday night a couple of weeks ago- because we are such hardcore party goers. Anyway- the Pukekos didnt invite us to their party and the Wekas ignore us. I cut a big hole through the floor and passed the chute through. Its screwed down from underneath. The whole thing turned out grand! Quite happy with it. Much nicer than a silly square box like most compost toilets Ive seen. With this design its not taking much more floor space than a normal toilet pedestal so you can actually get your heels back when it comes time to venture forwards and wipe away dangleberries, clingons and tugnuts. Riiiight. With those lovely mental images out of our heads lets just move along yeah. Onto the thunderbins! First off I need to sort out some ventilation for the bins. Winter time is OK because any pee sitting below the drain away wont really smell. But we all know how bad a loo can smell in summer if not vented. Even though this design should see very little urine sitting in the bottom of the bin I still want a decent fan system- especially if we get a hot summer day combined with a visit from the Tasman netball/vollyball/cheerleaders team and they all need to go for a squat. Computer fans. Cheap- often free. I picked up two decent sized ones from the Nelson recycling centre. Only need one but good to have a spare. The fan ony draws about 0.2 of an amp so barely anything. Checked it and it works well! I needed a housing that would allow for easy maintenance and swapping of fans so I made one from cedar and made it to suit the 70mm drain pipe fittings we bought. From this elbow there is now a 3m long vent pipe with mesh and a stainless rain hat on top. The whole lot bolts to the rear wall as such... Then onto the Thunderbin. I riveted a length of pipe down the inside. Just one rivet up near the top was enough. This is to supply air/allow wee fumes to get sucked up to the top as the bin fills. Then I used some steel mesh supporting plastic barstools left over from the concrete shed pad build. These hold up an old oven grill. Over the oven grill I laid some alloy mesh and that's held tight against the sides by a bent piece of 5mm steel rod. The grill mesh and rod will all be made out of stainless steel for Thunderbin two but we were not going to make another trip into Nelson for this one. It can be changed over to S/S when we empty it in 12 months time. Over the mesh I laid down some newspaper. I felt happy in the knowledge we would be shitting on some random swarmy looking real estate agent.. On the newspaper I put layer of leaf litter from the bush floor. Then a helping compost from the bottom of our compost bin, which included worms. Then more leaf matter. I'll let you guess what 'plops' on top of all this lot. The bin rolled into place. We bought a spare lid for the bin. This has been cut out and another rolled stainless chute slides up over the main chute. Its attached and sealed securely to the lid and stays always in place on the chute. When it comes to bin swapsies time the rubber seal, an old bike tube, is rolled up, lid and sleeve slide up, bins swapped and lid placed back down. The lid is sealed to the top of the bin with foam rubber. I have gone belt and braces in making sure no flies will get in. So long as people leave the bloody toilet seat down after the have finshed the evacuation/reading car magazines process! Any excess wee that makes its way through drains away downhill to a 20 litre container out side. This can be checked easily and emptied back into the toilet to be re-absorbed or diluted with water and poured around in the bush so feeding any trees. [/url] The bathroom is a lovely place to be. It gets really early sunshine and warms up really quick. One can sit with the top half of the door open and look through to the bush. Hannah has started the floor. Insulation is down and we have run a heap of Rimu we got from sidesways sickness shane for the floor. Will look great. After that is done its then onto building the shower cabinet , sink and plumbing etc. Oh we also took time out from the bathroom build to finish clearing the hillside up to the main track just along from the bathroom. Wow- so many natives rescued and now ready to flourish in the new found sunlight and we now have yet another huge pile of gorse to cut up for firewood. Photos mid clearout.. Plus a while ago we scored this 'interesting' mini Easter Island head. It was down a bank outside Ladaspeeds work. Hannah was working there so shane helped her lift it into the car and she brought it home. Its now hiding up in the bush waiting to surprise. Would be a bit trippy if one was on 'shrooms and came across this at night. I'll finish off with a photo of the gully down near our driveway entrance. In the colder weeks we have had it doesn't thaw out. Pretty damn chilly down there. Quite cool the vast difference in feel compared to the north end that gets the sun. Compared to this the same day... 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HighLUX Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Whens the woodfire heated hot tub being built? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
durty Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Whens the poopfire heated hot tub being built? 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steelies Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 you guys rule. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mof Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 They really do 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyteler Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 I think you need to consider vinyl wrapping the commode with a photo reproduction of the bush behind it, so if you were looking from a distance, you wouldn't even see it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Steelies Posted July 21, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted July 21, 2015 let the record reflect that KY just suggested camo yinyl wrap 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyteler Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Fuck, I knew someone would say that. I DID NO SUCH THING! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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