Room for Two

Now two of us can do yoga in the backyard:

Once again, lessons learned... Red and I did a bit more frame reinforcement on the second and third one than we did on the first one:

I think we'll be able to finish them up with one more short day of work.  There was great discussion amongst family and friends about which way all the lumber tops should go.  We finally agreed at the conclusion that they should all run the same direction -- more Zen, we said.

I am already thinking about the lavender I want to plant in between them.  And although they don't stink, I guess I should think about relocating the compost tumblers.  They aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing...

Rain Barrels: What I've Learned

High on my wish list when I bought my house was getting rain barrels in place to save rain water for my garden.  Thanks to Red, I actually had one rain barrel before I even moved in!  My house didn't have gutters so I added those, and I was in business.

 

Rain barrels seemed fairly straightforward to me.  Initially I was most concerned about appearance.   But as is so often the case, nothing beats practical knowledge gained from experience!  This past week I ordered and received my 6th rain barrel, which is my 3rd design; two barrels I bought from Sam's Club.  Two barrels Red and I built at the TAMU Urban Solutions Earth Day rain barrel workshop.  You can see photos of both types here:   http://my1929tudor.blogspot.com/2010/06/giddy.html  Both designs work, and both designs have pros and cons to them.  The new rain barrel has such a poor design that I am returning it and ordering a different one! 

When I lamented to my fellow green friend in Minneapolis about how difficult it is to find a barrel that meets all of my criteria, she said she wanted my criteria list.  (She's wanting rain barrels herself.)  I wrote up a list -- surprised myself at how much was on it, and emailed it to her.  She said I should flip it into a blog post.  And so, behold: 

What I've learned about Rain Barrels

Main Spigot location:  Just be aware of where it is in relation to the bottom of the barrel. If it's totally as low to the bottom of the barrel as it can be, it can be challenging to attach a hose. Optimal is 2-3 inches from the base so that you have some working room. Another solution to this is to have your barrel on a stand of some kind. Some are sold with matching stands, or you can use cement blocks, etc. to lift them up. Of course, the higher off the ground the barrel is, the better your water pressure.

A few barrels come with a second spigot halfway up the side of the barrel for filling watering cans. I don't see the need -- you can just use your attached hose. I don't think they would stick out far enough, anyway, to reach the mouth of the watering can, but I could be wrong.

Main hose attachment: e.g. ideally you want this to be a threaded spigot :  Some of my barrels have the hose attaching to the barrel by slipping a raw/cut end of a hose over a nipple and then the hose is clamped onto the nipple. In my experience, the hose falls off when the water pressure is too great and if you tug "just right" on the hose when using it. Your shoes … get very wet. I also like having an off/on control right on the barrel (as opposed to only at the end of the hose where you are watering plants) because if you want to swap out hoses you don’t lose all your water. Key, I tell you. Key. Live and learn.  Two of my barrels have a split spigot -- I can connect two hoses at once.  Convenient.

Overflow spout: type and location:  You really want this to be a port you can control -- i.e. again, ideally it is threaded with an on/off control. Why? So that you attach a hose to simply direct where the overflow water is going to end up, or you can either attach a hose to link to another barrel.

Where your rain barrel will be, and what your access to it will be, will determine the best location for the overflow: front, back or side. (I've determined that you can add a spout for this too -- we learned how in the Earth Day rain barrel workshop we attended. Not difficult with the right tools.)

Open/Closed system:  To me this means, does the whole lid come off for cleaning or water pump installation (for either controlling bacteria or pumping the water out) or do you only have access by sticking your arm only through the top area where the water drops in? I have both kinds. So far I haven't had to take the whole lid off and crawl inside for anything, but it's something to be aware of. Most barrels sold are closed systems. The re-purposed food container barrels are usually open -- which I think is my preference.

Lid Design:  Pay attention to the shape of the lid. Does it have an area that will (unintentionally) hold water? (Can you say, "mosquito breeding ground"?) Some of mine do (and some don't) and for the ones that do, I've drilled drainage holes in it so it drips down into the barrel.  Mosquitoes need 3-4 days of consistently standing water to breed...  (UPDATE:  If the barrel is full, the holes don't help; the water has no where to go.)

Don't bother with the barrels that purport to have a little area in the lid for planting a plant to make the whole barrel appear to be a gargantuan plant pot. In my experience, the space isn't big enough for enough dirt to support a plant. Or maybe I've just tried the wrong types of plants …

Hoses:  Longer is better. Two of my barrels came with 4 foot hoses. Not the most functional. They work for filling watering cans, but I can't reach to water my garden or beds to water directly. I'll be replacing those.

For my other 3 barrels, I bought a 45 foot hose and cut it into 3-15 foot pieces. Then I bought an adapter that turns a raw hose end into a threaded hose end, and put a no-kink adapter with an on/off function on it on the end of that. The no-kink adapter thingy has metal spiral covering about 4 inches of the hose.  About $5-7 each, but totally worth it to have one on each end of the hose. (Red and I spent a crazy long time in Home Depot hose department figuring out how many of what kinds of hose connectors to buy to meet my needs. Still didn't get it quite right and I need to go buy more. It just shouldn't be that hard...but somehow, it is.)

Support/Location:  Most barrels are 50 gallons. 50 gallons of water weighs 417 pounds. Be sure you have a solid footing under your barrel or it may tip over. (And break off the nearby house spigot, causing you to call a plumber in the middle of the night. IJS)  Also in that vein, unless you want to drain it to move it, choose a location that you are committed to … you simply cannot move them full! I built a wheeled square to put one on, which was great, except that I didn't have a concrete pad to roll it around on -- just dirt -- and of course the wheels just sunk into the dirt. Waste of time, that was!

All of that being said, I do really love my rain barrels. It's amazing how fast they fill up, and how long it takes to empty them! Saving me a fortune.  My roofs collects well over 715 gallons when it rains once inch.  That is a LOT.  They are rarely empty.  There is something therapeutic about hand watering baby plants with a watering can of rain water... even my dog prefers to drink water ouf the rain barrels versus out of the tap or garden hose.  She knows...

Click here to read about the benefits of collecting and using rain water and to get the calculation for how much rain your roof could be collecting:  http://www.conservemc.org/rainbarrelbenefits.htm

Omigosh!!

I did yoga on my new platform this morning -- it was fantastic.  Just -- fantastic.  And it's not even done yet!  I am giddy.

I also came up with an additional design plan for them this morning -- I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I'm super excited about it.  I'll show you when I get it done.

Happy, happy, happy.

P -- thank you for the great purple yoga mat.  It's my new favorite.

Namaste'.

Sunflower Delight

My sunflowers have sprouted!  That's record time...

All but one pot has a sprout! 

Yoga Platform Progress II

I suspect I should really name this Yoga Platform Progress XIV, but who's really counting?

Last week I spent several hours -- as in probably 20 or more -- behind a shovel in my backyard.  Between the backsteps extravaganza and the pending platforms -- I was diggin' it.  I was the hot-diggity girl.  The hot diggity girl diggin' the diggin'.  Ahhh ha ha ha.  Okay.  I was not diggin' it anymore, but I had to power through and finish.  Friday was my deadline to dig up the grass for the third platform.  My sister was arriving the next day, and Red and I planned to build the platforms Saturday morning.

Note:  I (italicized "I") planned to construct and complete all 3 platforms.  Because, you know, the hard part is done, and this last part will "just take a minute."  Red, on the other hand, it turns out -- and as per usual -- had a much more realistic view of what would actually be accomplished.  I got the double-eye-brow raise when he realized I thought all three would be done.  I'm overly optimistic, what can I say?

I got off early on Friday (c'mon, act surprised) and headed to my garden shed for the shovel.  It was hanging in its place like an old friend waits for you at a coffee shop.  Quiet.  Patient.  I do feel like we bonded.  And you know, the shoveling must be all about technique and I must have mastered the technique, because the first two platforms took me 2 hours each, and the third platform took me about half that time.  Go, me!

Once that was completed, I was ready for the weed stop fabric.  It comes on a roll, and the width is 3' wide and then 50 or 100 feet long.  I bought one of each.  My calculation?  Each platform is 6'x7'.  I want the fabric to extend 1 foot past the platform, so that's 7'x8'.  7 times 8 is 56.  56 times 3 platforms is roughly 150.  (Okay it's 168 but stay with me.)  I bought one 50 foot roll and one 100 foot roll.  I think it's well established that I suck at math.  And after this exercise, perhaps we can add geometry to that list.  (I do clearly recall staying after school nearly every day of the semester of junior high when I was taking the required course of geometry.  Bless Mr. Matthews' heart -- he tried his best to explain to me but I just could not get it.  I barely squeaked out a C.  As a side note, he was also a scuba diver for the police department:  very interesting stories.  Much more interesting than, say, the spacial relations of trapezoids.  Perhaps that explains my love of Patricia Cornwell novels.)

Unwisely, when I started laying it down, I started with the 50' roll.  I say "unwisely" because after I used all of the 50' roll, do you know how much more I needed?  About 5 feet.  Had I used the large roll... I could have returned the smaller roll.  Yep.  I bought approximately THREE TIMES MORE than I needed.  Please.  Put me in a spelling bee.  I realize now my error, but that's fairly useless.  I'm sure I'll find a need for the remainder.

Saturday morning came, and it was cold.  Too cold.  Platform construction did not happen... a good house cleaning inside did happen, and I felt very ready for my sister's arrival late afternoon.  Fun ensued.  Fun that involved a cork screw and ottomans, not shovels.

Sunday morning Red came over and we calculated how much lumber we would need, and headed off to Home Depot.  As we loaded up the lumber cart we realized that it was going to be a LOT of lumber.  We bought all the treated lumber we would need for all three platforms, and then we bought enough of the untreated lumber for just one.  Theory being, we could fine tune our construction plan (remember we didn't exactly have instructions for the platforms) and, we reasoned, the really important part for him to help me with is the side rails upon which the platform would rest.  Despite the reduced scope, it was still sort of a lot of lumber.  In addition to the lumber we bought 2 boxes of wood screws, and 12 - 50# bags of pea gravel; er, pea pebbles.

Our first step was to determine what height off the ground the side rails should be.  I am developing a love/hate relationship (okay it may be one sided -- you figure that out --) with the 4 foot slope in my yard.  In doing that, we realized the sun was much too bright to actually see the laser that my laser level shoots out.  Even with the nifty red glasses that came with it -- pretty much invisible.  We went the old fashioned route of a 5' level.  It worked.

The support rails on the first platform went up pretty fast once we figured out the height. We added two cross pieces through the center of the frame for some middle support.  Red's electric drill is so much nicer than the rechargeable battery ones. 

Then we laid the boards on the diagonal for the platform.   When I stood in front of the lumber at Home Depot I realized that in my mind I had been envisioning 1" x 8"s not 1" x 6" planks, so that was a slight change up.  We laid down 10 foot long boards in the middle, going corner-to-corner, and then 8 foot and 6 foot boards as we graduated towards the corners.  We got them all on -- still hanging over the edge longer than they needed to be -- and got up on the platform to try it out.  Kind of bouncy.  The 1" thick boards weren't stout enough.  Ugh!  We pulled them all off, then had to pull out all the nails on them, and we added some additional 2"x4" cross supports.  Laid the boards back out, and re-nailed them down.  We used 10 penny nails in between the planks for spacing.  The corners are still a little bouncy, but it's better.

Red had a great idea for how to align the circular saw against a guide for zipping off the ends of the planks that hung over.  Figuring out where the guide itself should be aligned was tedious, but once we had the measurement it worked great for all 4 sides.  By the time we did the 4th side, though, it was late in the day and I was punchy.  At one point when we had made the wrong cut twice and were measuring for the 3rd attempt, I was laughing so hard than I had to just lay my head down on the platform.  It was a sign that we should call it a day.  But check it out!  Isn't it beautiful?

My original goal (and I knew it was just a goal...) was to have all 3 platforms be the same height. Due to the blessed slope in my yard, it turns out that really isn't possible unless I have the right hand side of them pretty darn high off the ground. This platform is 10.5" above ground level on the right hand side. That's a fairly comfortable sized step up. Two feet may not have been quite as comfortable. The revised plan is to have each platform a different height, sort of staggered.


The first platform is just about finished.  The last (lumber) step is to affix a 1" x 6' plank as a skirt all the way around, to hide the treated 2"x4".  Then I'll sand, stain, and seal it.  At least I think I will stain them... I won't decide for sure until they are all done.  So what you see there is as much as we got done on Sunday.  We didn't even get the side support rails on the 2nd and 3rd one!  Okay, okay, so it took a little longer than I thought.