Quads And A New Lifestyle

[professor_jonny]

I found a tractor for your farm xman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... yHl24QynOM

[grimlok]

Looking kickass dude.
Good progress.

[xman]

Love that tractor PJ but I'm sure I would roll it. I have rolled my buggy and it is very close to the ground compared to that tractor.

I now have all the plumbing supplies to do all the plumbing like the pressure pump, piping, fittings etc so I expect to start that soon. I also have all the steel to finish the upper roof and the front face including the doors. I went down last week but only overnight so I did nothing major other than finish of the kitchen cupboards, practice fit the doors on the workshop to house doorway and front door. Junior and I also did a bit of weed spraying, something we haven't done for some time because of all the house work. The Fire season has started so all fires need to be in the 44 gallon drum we call Ted. Yabbys are back out from hibernation so we'll be eating fine very soon I imagine. Also heaps of rabbits so they will be getting cooked up. I've been reading up on how to cook those things that actually is supposed to make them nice to eat but I'm not holding my breathe on that one. My tractor is in the country but in customs so God knows how long there going to have it but I have many jobs to do with it including building a bridge over the two creeks just down the hill from the house so I can actually get bigger vehicles other than quads across them like the tractor itself. Once that's done I can access all the timber at the back of the farm. Sort of a "Catch 22" there. I need to build the bridges to get the tractor over to get the timber to build the bridges. May build causeways in the mean time. Tractor is also needed to build the dam wall to block the gully so I can fill it with water and start the fish off so we have fish. The tractor comes with a "slasher" so I can clear a lot of the "tea tree" that we have been weed spraying so after it is slashed, it won't grow back. Looks like we'll be back down again in a week or so for a couple of days so I hope to make some good progress. Crossing my fingers on that one. Anyway that's about it till my next visit. Until then aye?.

[xman]

Had to make a quick dash down the farm this week on account of the new tractor being delivered so we made it worthwhile and took a trailer load down. We stopped in at a servo for fuel and a coffee because we were a bit early for the tow truck. This is the last servo before heading off the freeway along the road to the farm some 70kms away from here. This is our tow vehicle that does all the carrying and dragging loads down the farm.

After about half an hour we were at the farm waiting on the tow truck carrying the tractor. Took this time to unload the trailer and put a bit of ant poison down on some ant nests near the house. These ants bite and it feels like a really bad burn for about an hour so that is why I like to get rid of them near the house and hopefully not get bite myself while I'm sprinkling there nest with the poison. Shortly after my poisoning of the ants the tow truck with the tractor arrived.


That's my youngest son giving the thumbs up.
These are a couple of the tractor's implements, the slasher or "lawn mower from hell" and the auger or 460mm post hole digger.

The tow truck driver drove the tractor around in the future workshop area, ( not me, I'm still a noob at driving tractors)



After that was parked and a bit of testing of the tractor the driver saw we had some old dumped vehicles and asked if we wanted them gone which we gladly said, "Take them well one that you can fit anyway".
So here is the one that went.


Glad to see the end of it actually. The other one is a ute and is a bit more discrete unlike this big white thing with the buckshot blast in the side. Well, I had to find some use for it. There was another up side to this white van being removed, I found the old owner's copper still and I well know how to put that to use. I spent many nights running my mate's still on his farm. Nothing quite as satisfying as sitting around the still watching the fire and drinking it as it comes out. Well that's about it. Sorry, didn't really have much time this trip but I now have a tractor on the farm. Now I can get some serious work done. Until next time.

[asbo]

Nice xman! Your tractor looks different to the ones we have around here, more glass.

We're building an extension soon so I'll get to drive the mini digger I'll probably put some pictures up as we progress, our building methods are completely different here in the UK so it'll be an interesting comparison.

I found the old owner's copper still and I well know how to put that to use.

Be careful, every now and then around here some chaps get blown up and killed by their stills, or arrested. Are they legal down your way?

[xman]

Nice xman! Your tractor looks different to the ones we have around here, more glass.

We're building an extension soon so I'll get to drive the mini digger I'll probably put some pictures up as we progress, our building methods are completely different here in the UK so it'll be an interesting comparison.

Probably would be but this is a shed design and I would expect this design to more industrial rather than residential. I built using steel rather than wood because of the termite and bushfire threat but would have been just as happy building in wood. I actually love working with wood and will use wood a lot more on the inside as the building progresses. The theme of the house is to be that of a hunting lodge and will use a lot of exposed wood beams on the inside and feature rock walls that I have been doing research about via the net. I look forward to seeing English building methods though. I love to see different ways of doing things and learning so please do post Asbo.

I found the old owner's copper still and I well know how to put that to use.

Be careful, every now and then around here some chaps get blown up and killed by their stills, or arrested. Are they legal down your way?

Well they are totally illegal but lets not worry about that small factor, aye. As for blowing up, we out here don't use the style of still one would expect Ennus and Elroy of Mississippi to be using. Out here we use what we call a "Safety Still". Rather than putting the still directly over the flame and raising and lowering the still or make the fire bigger or smaller to regulate the temperature, (which needs to be between 86 and 90c by the way for the still to operate correctly), we put the still's pressure vessel in a steel barrel of water and the flame boils the water which means the max temperature the pressure vessel ever sees is only 100c which is actually to high so ideally you run it slightly under the boiling point. This type of still is far easier to control the temperature and best of all, there is no way you will become part of the surrounding tree's bark like Ennus and Elroy would should the heat be to high or a blockage in the chiller tube. The other rule is, throw out the first cup from the still. This is wood alcohol because it vaporizes at a slightly lower temperature than the normal alcohol and wood alcohol will blind you as in loose your eye sight.

[asbo]

I think dad would have quite liked to do a timber framed building, his job is working with wood, but no ones really done that since the 1600's* since they're high maintenance. Also it wouldn't match the rest of the house so we'd have never gotten planning permission. Ours will be a brick and mortar affair to match the rest of the house which was built in 1937, although internally things will be fairly different i.e. flooring and insulation methods have changed a fair bit since then.
Dad had wanted to do the roof timbers the old fashioned way(since he could do it himself and thought it would be cheaper), but apparently its a nightmare getting it compliant with building regulations so it'll actually be cheaper to buy in pre-made certified trusses.
Are there a bunch of regulations you have to follow xman?

*I'm sure there are people who still build timber framed houses in the UK somewhere but all the ones around here are Tudor.

I'm glad to hear you know what your doing

[xman]

I just had a couple of days back down the farm and quite productive I thought for 2 days. The idea was to move the inner house wall out to the new extension so as to form one big house rather that a small house and a roof. !st the inner wall was taken apart in stages and the frame altered to suit the new wall and bolted in place. This picture shows the right and center walls removed with the left frame still in place, near the ladder...

This picture shows the right window and frame in place..

These ones, the other windows and frames in place. I had to build a temporary upper balcony to do the upper wall and doors.


Inside looking out..

Inside looking out with paneling and insulation in place...

And the outside..

Doors in place and it is now "lookup". Time to go back home till next time...
Left side top needs trimming to shape and the edge capping needs to go on the wall to roof edges but time didn't allow and the idea was to get it to lockup stage which is what I did. Until next week.

[xman]

Been down the farm the last 8 days with junior and had a bit of success on the house. This is what we got up to last visit with the new building having the high roof and the old building still having the lower roof. One day later we had the old roof off.


Second day we had the roof arches raised the required 500mm higher and a couple of the tophat beams in place for the roofing sheet.

Forth day, we had a big chuck of the side panels and insulation in place. We did the side sheets and insulation the night earlier because it has just been to hot and sunny to do during the days. It's been hitting 36c out here and it was windy so putting the insulation on in wind is impossible.





Couple of days later and after the whole front face came off so as to run the plumbing pipes across to the kitchen sink and the face now looks like this.

And the building now is all one, twice the sizes of the original and the mezzanine level all has a high roof .
Hoping to go back down in a couple of days to get a bit more done while I have the kids home for the school holidays. Still need to fit all the capping and new roof's gutters in place but the majority of the building metal work is finished. As a side note, I really am amazed at how much junior is learning and just how much effort a 12 year old boy can put in helping his father building this place, it really is maturing him.

Twelve months ago it looked like this.

[xman]

I went down for a couple of days this week to see if I could prepare the farm a bit for the nearby bush fires that have been burning in my state and were getting quite close to the farm so I didn't get much work done other that a bit of tidying up with the outside sheet metal and the mezzanine level steel frame ready for the flooring. I did get to move the radio though and I now have a hose and pump connected to the water tank so I can at least now throw some water out of a hose rather than just from a bucket. Don't suppose you guys know of the massive bush fires going on in this part of this country right at the moment. The biggest fire that just happens to be the biggest at the moment is in my area of the farm, has already burnt out over 160sq kilometers of land and the losses in sheep numbers already has exceeded a couple of thousand and is expected to exceed 10000 by the time this is all over so not a real good time at the moment. Luckily, no one dead yet and very little property damage so far. Anyway, on a lighter note, the wildlife running from the fire areas are settling in my area of the farm which I welcome..

I plan on going back down in a day or two once this heat has stopped for a bit. It has hit 37c twice at the farm now and actually 43c in Sydney. Tomorrow should be the last of this intense heat days for a week or so, let's hope aye. Till next post.

[asbo]

Don't suppose you guys know of the massive bush fires going on in this part of this country right at the moment.

Its been on the news here, but we only really hear about Australia and other non EU countries when something bad happens. Like the fires, earthquakes in NZ, shootings in the US etc. It does tend to paint a rather grim picture of the rest of the world.
Actually the exception to that is we had massive over the top coverage of the US elections. I don't think anyone really cared but the media thought we should.

[professor_jonny]

we just had a bigger quake last afternoon strong enough to unsettle you the epi center was 6 or so km from wher i live (opunake, taranaki)

[xman]

Been away a while down the farm getting stuff done while the boys have been on there school holidays, they have 6 weeks off out here, and they are just about done now. Well where to start, first visit was for four days and was stinking hot out here, it hit 47c in Sydney on one of those days but I was spared with only a 43c on that day down the farm. Lucky me I guess but had some nearby bushfires to contend with just to keep things exciting. The closest was only 3kms away but was well contained to only 2 hectares in size so nothing really to worry about. The next most worrying one was 29kms away but on a day with winds hitting 75kms/hour fanning the bushfire, that equates to about 1/2 hour away should the wind be none favorable. It was fortunate for me and the fire went to the coast burning out over 9328 hectares of bush on it's way. That fire still isn't out and started over 2 weeks ago. Here are some pics of what was left that I took from the road after it was re-opened after being closed for 3 days while I was there. Actually, for 3 days I couldn't go more than 10 kms in any of the 3 roads that lead to the farm from the 3 directions you can use to get there, all were blocked by fires.



Use to look something like this. This is the same road about 30 kms further along that didn't burn this time.

At night I could see this fire burning from the farm. A massive orange glow in the night sky.

The fires have been making driving the roads a bit of a gamble as all the wildlife is moving out of the fire areas and collecting in un-burnt areas. This pic I took 5kms down the road from the farm. Yes, these are kangaroos, about 70 of then in a paddock and any one of them will smash your car should you be unlucky enough to drive into one that runs over the road in your path and these roos can hop at 70km/h and don't need a road so they can come at you from anywhere and in my time of owning the farm, have nearly hit over 100 of them and have actually hit 2. Now it really is Russian Roulette driving.

Now, onto the farm. Been good getting quite a lot down but never all I wanted to do of coarse. None the less, all the mezzanine level flooring is now in thanks to this setup I made to lift the flooring up as my youngest son and I couldn't lift them by ourselves.

Let use get this done.

I was able to do most of the house wiring and a fair chunk of the plumbing. I managed to hook up another 2 of the 100 watt solar panels so now we have 400 watts of panels powering the 1320 amp battery bank.

I still need to add the 2 X 400 watt wind generates up to it as well but that can wait. This current sun condition is supplying over 30 amps which is working fine at charging the battery bank during the days with only 2 amps required to run the fridge and at night the drain is about 5 to 7 amps for all the lighting and the fridge. All the roofing and outside sheet metal work is now finished. Very glad about that because the sun was giving me bad sunburn. I now look near native. It has been a very dry summer this year and my creeks are all but dry.



Mind you, the pigs know where to find the water as seen here.

We had to go out on the quad and chainsaw the track open clearing all the fallen trees because of the high winds that have hit lately.

Oww, the shooting balcony now has decking as seen here.

Still thinking of what type rails to put on it. We want something you can put drinks on the top of it. Open to suggestions on that. Other major jobs was the inside dry-walling or Gyprock as us over here call it Makes a big difference and starts to make it look "homely".


The insulation I put in the walls is glass fiber and I left this job till the last day so I wouldn't be itching for too long and itch I did. Just left me enough time to attach the drywall and do a rough leveling job over the joints so it will be ready to sand flat next visit which should be about 1 or 2 weeks away when I go back down to fit the 5 other window we ordered. Well that's about it until next visit.

[xman]

Another week and a lot more progress but this time no junior , he is back at school so I'm by myself in the wilderness. I was really hoping to show a video or two of the quad ride from one end of the farm to the other but although I did the ride with the cam recording, there was no video file on the camera to have in the cam when I got back to Sydney. Very, very upset by that. All was not lost though. I did get the trail cam setup again to see if the recent rain had actually brought back the wildlife. Well you be the judge if I was right aye.










Looks like I was right about the water bringing back the wildlife. This same location will have a big pond once I build the vehicle crossing a bit down stream. At the moment it is just a stream but once I build the vehicle crossing, it will be about 1.5 meters deep of water in the stream gorge. Should be a wildlife haven all be it man-made. As for the house, I did get a far bit done. Xbox and T.V. and radio temporary setup is going..

The back door balcony, ( the shooting balcony), is complete and just needs the handrail and paint but is quite useable as is.

You get a good view of the backyard form here to..


I started on the window frames and walls on the front door wall.....

Which included insulation in the walls, dry-walling and leveling followed by priming. Also put in some wall frames for supporting the daytime T.V and then practice fit it prior to painting in primer....



And then many hours of sanding and more leveling, It got a coat of primer to have it ready for it's top coat of paint
next visit...


Oww, as well as massive amounts of wiring and other assorted jobs that I did that are just part of the cause of building a house, I did receive the upper floor windows and after much cutting of steel in the baking sun and fitting, we now have 2 of the 4 upper windows fitted. I did this job on the same day as I was pictured on the quad by the trail cam.( Note the temperature of the day recorded on the trail cam photo. 46c.)
But after much cutting and sweating, the house now looks like this on one side anyway. Cool, starting to look more like a house and not a church. ..

And this from the inside....

I'm quite happy with what I got done this time although a lot was finishing off what I had started some time ago. I figure I have about a 1/4 of the walls done and that this end of the house should be near ready to use, sort of. I brought home a bit of work such as making a super long coax lead for relocating the radio aerial about 30 meters away from the house so as to finally get rid of the RF interference problems PJ has been helping me with in another post. ( More than one way to skin a cat aye P.J.) I saw my electronic engineer mate that supplied the LED down lights and he was not aware of the interference and is well underway to solve this problem by the way but it looks like the PWM circuit they use is actually at fault and that is in the lamps themselves so I don't expect any joy from that myself so relocating seems the way to go. I also noticed my USB recharger point was causing similar RF interference...

I figure it really can't hurt relocating the aerial up a tree some 30 meters away. Not only will it "possibly" remove the interference problems but it will enable the aerial to be mounted much higher than the house itself and down here, height is everything regarding RF reception.

[professor_jonny]

30 mt is long and you might get a bit of degredation over that distance, locating the aerial will help except if it is ground introduced.
every join you make in the cable will degrade the signal by aprox 3db or 50%, use of sweep tested belden rg-6 or simular would be good all the way up to satelite frequencys.

[xman]

The aerial I made is a loop aerial and uses twisted pair cable between the mast and the head unit which then connects to the car radio aerial input cable. I found it works sweet on AM and FM which I wasn't expecting thinking I'd need to swap between the AM and FM aerials depending on what I am listening to. I have however found the aerial is directional so some sort of rotation mech will be needed I think especially if it lives up a tree. This is the aerial kit. Click on the PDF for it's specs.
http://secure.oatleyelectronics.com//pr ... 00b71e3139

It does pick up AM stations from 240kms away without "directing it". Being twisted pair I'm thinking 30 meters may not be an issue but time will tell.
When I first built the kit, it wasn't working at all so a visit to the designer and that was sorted. Because I'm using a car radio and the kit is designed for a ferrite rod aerial radio, I had to "hard wire" the head unit from the aerial leads direct to the plug that goes into the car radio aerial input, problem solved. Simply cut the old loop wire that the radio had to be placed inside and solder one end to the + and one end to the - on the aerial input and it should work and work it did. Well until I turn on the LEDs down lights that is but only on the FM, no effect at all now on the AM. The AM is working fine now since I moved the radio away from the power room. Now I'm hoping moving the aerial away further may cure the FM issues as well. What do you reckon?.

[professor_jonny]

if you are using a non screened cable between the head unit and mast it probally wont make much of a difference it is now that the signal to noise ratio probally drowns out the rf so you dont get a problem now with the gain from your aerial on am.
aerials like that can have a very good gain.

i once used a metal slinky attached to a fishing rod and just cast it over a tree and it worked great. they stretch quite well.

[xman]

I'll be using Cat 5 and the extra cables, I only need 4, will be tied together and hooked to the ground . Being twisted and the extra cables being grounded, I'm not expecting any issues and at this part of the unit, it isn't a radio signal as it's broken into 4 signals or at least 2 as there are 2 used to power the mast. I may need to use 2 of the spare wires to power the rotation setup when I come up with something though. The Cat 5 "should" allow long range between the mast and the head unit and best of all, Cat 5 is cheap.

[xman]

Another 5 day stint down the farm and a load of stuff done on the house but this post is just showing what a quad ride around the front 10 acres is like around and through the pine forest. Have a close look at around 2.50 in the video timeline and also 3.20. At 2.60 the quad is doing 70-80km/h. ..The video is bumpy but that is what I get for bolting the cam to the quad I guess. I update what I got done on the house later.................


Video should play just clicking on the pic.

[xman]

I had a couple of weeks away from the farm while the local house has a bathroom makeover but this week I was able to revisit the farm for five days to get a bit done. Starting to look more like a home as jobs get knocked over. The back balcony that over looks the valley is now finished after a paint job and it's railing to keep the drunks in. Nice outlook of the valley from the balcony.



Winters starting to set in and it won't be long before the woodfires see service again. Sunsets like this are a sure sign of the approaching winter.

I got a far bit of the interior painting finished. Also installed the last of the top floor windows. Started work on the front balcony which will look exactly like the rear balcony will a view of the front forest.




Would have been nice to get the front balcony finished like the back one but the weather and time didn't allow. I have the railing but it needs to be cut to size so maybe next time.
Trail cam got a bit of use. Can't forget that as I know a few of you like to see the farm's locals. I wasn't really expecting much animals this time because I only saw one rabbit and one wombat the whole time I was away unlike the last visit where I was seeing packs of roos along the road in packs of 60 - 70 that weren't moving off the road until I nudged then with the car bumper before they would move aside. Only ever seen this once in my life before where the roos felt so safe in such large numbers, the car isn't seen as a threat to them. Anyway, on with the trail cam shots-
Here's a big arsed wombat-

A roo with her joey-

Another roo that didn't mind the trail cam by the looks of it...

And these are just assorted pics unlike the ones above that are actually videos that play if you click on them. ( I'll extend the video play time next time so it records longer).





Well, that's what I'm up to till next time, see y'all.