Building Stuff

No doubt there will be another spike in lumber prices. There’s an awful lot of housing that needs to be rebuilt in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Prices had gone up during the pandemic when a lot of people were staying home. To keep busy a people did home renovations. Once things eased up a bit there was a housing boom. New houses were being built and older ones renovated. 

If you need materials for a house project you’d better pick them up now. 

I’d been putting off a few projects at my house waiting for prices to get a bit more reasonable. The prices at the local building supply stores had dropped below that of the big chains. It helps to be close to local saw mills. It felt good to be able to buy the lumber I wanted. 

It had been a while since I’d built anything of significance and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it. In that way I think I take after my dad a bit. He never needed therapy; he had tools and stuff to build. He was almost always in a better mood after time in the shop. 

My complaining about lumber prices about to go up comes from a privileged position. It’s not like I lost my house in a storm. However, the projects I’m doing are necessary to get through the winter in good shape, so they aren’t trivial either.

-Sixbears

Sitting it out

It’s my guess that were are going to get some serious political shakeout by the end of the year. Politics will be almost unrecognizable by 2023. With that in mind it’s probably best to let some things run their course. Not too much I can do about it anyway. Try not to hate your neighbors. 

What I can do is pay attention to the basics. It looks like we are seeing some price relief in key areas: fuel, shipping, and even used cars are coming down in price. The housing bubble is busting in a number of of places. Not everywhere as some markets are still hot. In fact, there are areas of the country where prices never inflated all that much in the first place. 

I’ll probably put off buying lumber for house projects another few weeks. There’s a balancing act involved. Prices may be lower in the future, but my construction has to be done before the weather turns cool again. One year the price of 2X4s was so high that I ended up framing a well cover in peeled cedar poles. I could rough saw some of my own lumber but it’s a pain and time consuming. 

Dehydrated long storage food has come down in price. A friend of mine now has enough dehydrated food to last him about a year and a half. I’ve restocked some, but there’s more bang for the buck in other dried foods. Beans, rice, wheat berries and oats are good staples to have. Don’t forget lots of spices to keep things from being too boring. 

Our garden looks like a confused jumbled mess and that’s a good thing. Our raised beds are hidden behind the tall sunchokes so people don’t even know we are growing food. We also have a lot of flowers for bees. This fall the plan is dehydrate a huge mess of sunchokes. I really like them in soups and stirfrys. 

While the days have been pleasant, nights have been cool -down into the 30s even. Pretty chilly for July. I actually have the heat on right now.  On the bright side, we are still not quite in drought conditions. 

This could be an interesting hurricane season. There’s probably a good reason the weather folks have added a category 6 to the hurricane scale. Conditions look ripe for some interesting weather. If you live in a hurricane prone area better check your preps. Even if you don’t live in hurricane alley be aware that disruptions ripple through the country. Food and fuel supplies could get disrupted. 

Medications could become an issue. Locally we’ve seen a lot of supply disruptions and pharmacy closures. That could be because we are rural and at the tail end of supply chains. These issues could become more widespread. With that in mind we’ve been expanding our knowledge of local herbal alternatives. They’ll be better than nothing. 

There’s been a rise in religious intolerance. What I mean by that is religious people are being more intolerant of other’s religions -or lack of religion for that matter. One of the strengths of the US is that it’s a secular country. If you want to live in a theocracy move to Iran. 

To sum up, shore up your preps and remember to be kind to one another. Like it or not we are all in this together. 

-Sixbears

Wood Hauler

Yesterday I was checking over the trailer before using it to haul wood. The bearings didn't have any extra slop in them. I topped off the bearing buddies with grease. The tire pressure looked good, but that was going to be checked next anyway. However, what came to light next put the brakes on the whole project. About six inches of the tire tread had lifted away from the inner core, right down to the inner canvas. How the whole thing made it to the transfer station and back the other day was a mystery to me. Sometimes you get lucky and don't even know it at the time.

Today I'm on my way to pick up wood with just the van. By removing all the camping stuff, there's room for at least a cord of wood. My buddy claims he has at least three cords of wood for me, so that's at least three trips.

The engine was running a bit rough after I changed the diesel fuel filter. Something wasn't quite right. After sleeping on it, the though came into my head that I might have forgotten to reconnect something. It took some digging around, but eventually I found a plug that had been shoved to the back of the motor and out of sight. Reconnecting it should smooth out the engine. I got too busy to give it a test run, so I'm going to find out today.

Hopefully the van holds together long enough for me to haul stuff around. After the firewood trips I'd like to make a run to the building supply store fifty miles away. While a lot of stuff can be tired onto the roof racks of the car, things like full sheets of plywood and twelve foot lumber fits right inside the van.

I'm going to miss it when it's gone, but it will need more work than I care to put into a seventeen year old vehicle.

Sixbears

Bulldozer butchery

There’s a new owner of the land down the road from me. He’s putting in a new house. It’s his land; that’s all well and good. It saddens me the way he’s going about it. Now I understand bulldozers and excavators really speed up a job. I don’t have any deep philosophical objections to heavy equipment. They are just tools.

Oh, but the way they are using those tools. Just because your big machines can push all the trees over doesn’t mean it’s what should happen. That’s what they did, just pushed everything over e and buried some of them with gravel. The rest have been shoved to the side of the lot in a tangled mess. The landowner will have problems from this for years to come.

Eventually, they’ll want to clean up the mess on the side of the road. It won’t be easy. I was offered free firewood once from a lot that was bulldozed in a similar manner. After a few trips I refused to try and rescue more wood. It wasn’t worth it. Some of the trees were still under a lot of tension and would spring free as they were cut -very dangerous. The wood was covered in dirt which constantly dulled the chain. Footing was all lose rocks and boulders, not something you want to stand on with a running chainsaw.

All the buried trees will, over time, slowly rot. His land will develop sinkholes and bumps that will make it very difficult to have a nice yard. I can’t wait to see how they plan on putting in a foundation on top of all this fill.

Right now they are hastily dealing with some nasty erosion problems. It’s a good thing they are working far from the lake or inspectors would be handing out some hefty fines. In fact, they lucked that most of the wetland inspectors have been laid off.

With a little planning, they could have harvested all the trees they destroyed. In fact there was probably enough quality wood there to build a nice house. There are a number of sawmills in the area who could have done the work for a very reasonable price.

I hate senseless waste and destruction, even on a relatively small scale. The trend in house construction has been to level the land, turn it into a barren lot. Then grass is rolled out and new trees planted. Of course, the new trees don’t really mature well because they are sitting in compacted mineral soil. They look good long enough to sell the house.

Whatever happened to working with the land?

-Sixbears