At least until they are old enough to know that ‘crash’ is not a good sound.

But sometimes there are other items that we never think about that can be dangerous just standing there.

The DH and I had always wanted a small table (sometimes referred to as a gallery table; in some homes this is referred to as ‘the table we throw the mail on’) under a mirror in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs at Chez Siberia. With the addition to the Greater Chez Siberia Household of a grandchild a year ago, we ditched that idea for a small chest of drawers for TG (‘the grandchild’) and his ever growing collection of clothing, toys and little bits and pieces. We found a lovely one made in Pennsylvania out of oak and put it under the mirror to great effect.

Except for a couple of things. First, the floor there (like the floor in several other places in the house at Chez Siberia) is not exactly horizontal. And second, there is this huge floor grate for the forced air furnace, which further complicates the whole ‘where do the feet on this chest of drawers go?’ issue. So, even under the best of circumstances, the chest was, shall we say, not exactly firmly placed on the ground. Finally, as TG started pulling himself up on furniture, we had horrific images of his pulling this chest of drawers over and on top of himself. Not safe. not safe at all.

Now, there are a couple of options with something like this – we could have tried to even up the floor, which would have reduced the ‘tippiness’ issue, but still would not have eliminated the issue of TG using it to pull himself up. So, we decided to eliminate the ‘pulling it over on himself’ issue entirely by fixing the chest of drawers onto the wall itself.

The DH found a piece of oak trim from the rest of the work done on the house that was about the size of the top of the chest of drawers. Now, we debated on whether we should put a piece of oak that would go completely across the wall there, like a chair rail, but since we could not find a piece that long, the decision was made for us. But for someone else, that would be an option. In our case, the decision was made to screw the piece of wood directly into the studs in the wall (which is very old fashioned plaster, with lathe, metal mesh, and a sand finish), put screw eyes into that in appropriate places and match the places just under the top of the chest of drawers and put in the actual screw hooks so that the chest of drawers, for the moment, can be afixed to the screw eyes. We figure that with the wood actually screwed into the studs, the chances of TG being able to pull the chest of drawers over on himself by pulling himself up on it are pretty small. And when he is older and wiser, we will remove the screw hooks off the back of the chest, and unscrew the piece of wood out of the studs, patch the holes in the plaster, do a bit of camouflage painting and no one will ever be the wiser.

And the TG will NOT have one of those horrible stories to tell his children 30 years from now about how he lost his teeth when he pulled a chest of drawers over on top of himself.

Here are the tools and materials the DH used on this job.

Piece of oak trim – this is 1″ wide by about 3/4″ deep and is frankly a scrap left over from work done on the house; I think the carpenter ripped this himself.
Stud Finder
Wood Screws: 2, 3″
Screw eyes: 2
Screw hooks: 2, 1.5″ brass
Drill with appropriate bits.

Step One: Putting the wood in the right place. First, using his stud finder, the DH found two studs in the wall and marked them. Then he put the chest of drawers would be and put the wood just underneath the top of the chest of drawers on the wall and made marks so that he’d know where the wood was going to go.

Step Two: The DH measured in from the outside edges of the top of the chest of drawers to the corners, which is the strongest place and where all the internal reinforcement would be. He then measured in from the edges of the piece of wood and marked them THERE – those are the spots for the hooks and the hoot eyes as appropriate.

Step Three: Taking a drill and a pilot bit and with a helper holding the piece of wood trip in the appropriate place, the DH drilled through the wood and into the studs on the wall. He then started the wood screws in the holes and screwed the piece of wood in the appropriate place on the wall.

Step Four: Put the screw eyes into the spots marked on the wood and the screw hooks in the corresponding places on the back of the chest of drawers. Hooked the chest of drawers to the screw eyes installed on the piece of wood.

No toddler is going to move that thing.

Now, we’ve worked with batts before and one of the real weaknesses of fiberglass batts is that they are NOT impervious to mice (well, at least we think they were mice; we’re hoping they were not chipmunks or anything, ahem, larger). And once mice (or whatever) start to tunnel through that stuff, the whole R-value just goes to heck.

I am still trying to figure out how mice can tunnel/chew through fiberglass and survive, or perhaps they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good (that is, opening up nice warm places for field mice to hole up for the winter). But the DH figured that there needed to be some sort of ‘sealing up’ of the batt needed to take place, just to keep the mice out. Now, we already know that sheet plastic will not stop mice (they are almost as effective as rats at chewing through plastic, Rubbermaid(tm) containers and so on) and though something approaching extruded wire mesh (like window screening) would stop them, it would not stop moisture from getting to the fiberglass and once fiberglass gets wet, it holds moisture next to wood floor joists like a magnet (which promotes mold and rot).

So, we’re going with 1/4″ plywood. We’ll give this a test right now and unscrew it later and see how the area has done. In the meantime, here is our own DIY star, the DH, showing you how he does it. In this demo, he’s working in the front NE corner of the house, which is probably the coldest spot in the entire house, which makes the room above it (where I am sitting right now) rather uncomfy at the floor level.

Step One: Measuring

Step Two: The Insulation

Step Three: Measuring and Cutting 1

Step Four: Measuring and Cutting 2

Step Five: Installing

Again, the list for what the DH was using for this:
Measuring tape
R19 Fiberglass batt
1″x1″ board as his straight edge
Retractable craft knife
Protective gloves
1″ wood screws
1/4″ plywood cut to the same size as the fiberglass batt
Electric drill with a screw-driver head on it.

The sill?

Yes, my little wombats, the sill. This is the big piece of wood that is put on top of, and is connected to, the foundation of the house and is the starting place for building the house (hopefully your home has a foundation of poured cement or cement block but if you live in a REALLY older home, it could be laid up stone, in which case, you have a whole different issue to deal with and you might want to check out “This Old House”, and the old house forums on the internet). The floor joists of the first floor are attached right to the sill and the subfloor and the finish flooring are attached to the floor joists.

But, Aunt Toby is getting a bit ahead of myself. To return to the sill. The sill is one of those places where the chances of cold air leaking in and the warm air escaping out are quite good; the top of the foundation is never, ever flat and smooth and the sill plate (or the timber) itself is not perfectly flat and smooth either. So there are all sorts of little cracks, crevices, etc. for there to be air exchange. In an older home, you cannot completely eradicate those little holes (unless you somehow find every single one of them and spray the living daylights out of them with that closed cell spray-in foam which has its own set of issues which we are not going to go into here), so you have to do your very best to seal them off.

Today, we are going to discuss and the DH will demonstrate how to insulate the sill in our back basement (the ‘new/old’ part of the house), using two-inch foam board. This part of the house has been cold since the day we finished the addition for the following reasons:
First: the furnace, although big enough theoretically to handle to extra space, is in the opposite corner of the ‘old/old’ part of the house in the basement and the duct runs have to go all the way across the house, through the basement wall and all the way across the ‘new/old’ basement to the floor registers before warm air from the furnace can go up into the dining room upstairs. Since there is a basement wall separating the new and old parts of the basement, there is this physical barrier to any of the heat in the old part of the basement coming into the new part of the basement.

Second: Since the duct run is going through this new basement, which is in effect, unheated, the duct is exposed to the relatively cooler (and in some cases, much colder) air of the new basement, so it is very easy for the warm air in the duct to be chilled inside the duct before it can even get to the floor register upstairs. We solved a good bit of that issue by insulating the duct work with big fiber glass bats and duct tape.

This project has actually been going on for a while. Last year, the DH and our son put two layers of foam board in between the floor joists (that is, if you were standing in the new basement and looked up, you would not see the wooden subfloor because it would be hidden by the insulating board) and started the process of insulating the sill in that part of the basement. The goal for this holiday season, when the DH has some time off, is to get the rest of the sill in that part of the basement insulated. He is also planning to do some insulating on the sills in the front, old, part of the basement, using a different technique, which will be the next post.

For the moment, however, we will be discussing and showing you how we did the blue foam board. For this operation, here’s a list of what the DH used:
2″ foam board insulation – this is something that you can find literally at your local hardware store or lumber yard.
small serated knife
straight edge
Roll of household aluminum foil

Step One: Measuring

Step Two: Cutting

Step Three: Installing

IMHO, flooding is worse than having a fire. Seriously. With a fire, everything is consumed and once you have cleaned up, you can build fresh and clean. There are no worries about black mold or other horrors hidden in trapped spaces. A little water in a basement can be taken care of with dehumidifiers and a pump. As you can see from the picture above (and let’s not forget New Orleans and Katrina, where people were trapped in their attics up to their necks in water and could only get rescue using axes to cut their way out to the roofs), this water is up to the first floor windows. That means that the basements are flooded to the joists; the first floors are saturated to the window sills. Anything from the floors up to the windows is completely soaked – and that includes any form of insulation in the walls, which will act as a wick to other parts of the walls.

So, even if the water only came to the windows in that photo, the people doing the wreck out in that building will have to demolish everything down to the studs from the floors to the ceiling joists. And they will probably have to take out the floors down to the floor joists as well. And open it all to the air and dehumidifiers, disinfectants and bleach to kill mold and bacteria which will certainly be there and will begin to multiply even before the water leaves.

Now, I have to admit that we had never done this before but we felt that as one of the lucky families in this area, we owed something back to the rest of the community to put in some time. Also, as people who have done demolition (albeit in our own home and not under any sort of horrific conditions), we felt that we could hold our own. Having gone through the experience, I’d like to offer some ideas and a check list for anyone who might be organizing this for a local organization, especially if you have not faced this before:

First and foremost: Do you have a specific home or neighborhood that you are focused on? Has anyone official and trained gone through all the homes and buildings in the neighborhood and done an assessment (it might be FEMA or the local emergency management people)? If so, are reports available for your use? It really is better to know, in a technical way, what you will be facing, literally from the ground up. If you will be working with really old buildings or homes (historic register or not), you will probably be facing laid up stone foundations and dirt floors and crawl spaces. After a flood, these will be slick, muddy and dangerous. If the building or neighborhood still has no power, you will need to bring in generators and work lights; otherwise, people will slip and fall. We won’t even discuss the breathing atmosphere in these areas. But again, having official assessments available will help you tell volunteers what sorts of conditions they will be expected to work under so that they dress properly – this literally may mean rubber boots and battery powered head lamps plus masks or respirators.

Second: What sorts of activities will the team be doing? If the building is still in the pumping out stage, then all the team can do is carry out anything that is not nailed down, pump out, and mop up. These require certain levels of experience such as knowing how to operate gas-powered generators and pumps but will not require anything esoteric in terms of tools. People will need battery powered headlamps, head coverings, eye protection, masks, rubber boots and gloves. If you are past the pumping out stage and are into the removal and demolition stage, things will get more complicated. Basements may need to be emptied of wet insulation, water softeners, furnaces. If this is in the country, there will probably be a fuel tank in the basement as well which might be in poor condition. You may need to contact the local home fuel company to pump this out so that that tank can be removed safely. We worked in a very old home and that basement was the scariest place I’ve ever been – filled with sticky wet mud, dripping insulation and Stygian darkness. You could see your breath down there. When the rest of the team started to do demolition upstairs and things started to fall from the ceiling, we gave up and went to work upstairs.

Upstairs, we faced some pretty interesting structural stuff – all sorts of different insulation products had, over the 100+ years, been used – something that appeared to be like cotton – which I think was kapok – had been stuffed into walls, along with some sort of blown in cellulose insulation. Plus, there were pink fiber glass batts all over the place. One of the things we came up against was that there were radiators under the windows, behind which were architectural wooden panels. No one had removed the radiators, so getting to the panels was difficult, but after we’d seen the sodden mess between the studs in the walls up to about 5′ in the room, we knew that behind those panels was more of the same. By taking out the casings, we were able to get to the panels and remove them, using hands and rakes to take out the wet insulation so that the wood could air and dry.

Third: Volunteers need to know to bring tools and equipment with them. One of the upsetting things about this was that volunteers had been told that there would be tools. The home owners had a single bucket with a couple of hammers and screw drivers. The DH and I had brought along wrecking bars (aka ‘crow bars’) and other tools and another volunteer literally brought everything from a ladder to a ‘saws-all’ with him. Luckily, the home owner had a generator so that we could run lights and the saws.

Fourth: There needs to be an organized work plan available. Another upsetting thing was that the team (which included a bunch of volunteer college students) had been dropped off at the home with no organized activity and no designated crew chief. Eventually, experience and willingness to give orders settled things out but it would have been much more efficient if someone with experience had been designated crew chief, that the ‘adult’ volunteers had been given a more realistic set of instructions and lists of necessary tools. If we’d thought about it and there had been more tools available, we could have trained the kids a bit in terms of doing demolition (they were great kids but had no experience) and I think a lot more could have gotten accomplished in that one day.

Fifth: Have a set up for washing up. When volunteers are going to be at a home clean up all day long, they are going to be, at some point of the day, eating and drinking. Just having bleach wipes is really almost worthless since no one is going to use one of those on their faces and even after you remove safety glasses and masks, there is dust and debris on your face and in your hair. The DH and I brought along two gallons of water, soap and paper towels and cleaned up twice – once for lunch and afterwards before we left. We did not use even a gallon of water but it was certainly helpful in terms of eating the pizza that had been provided with clean hands and faces.

Did we get the job done yesterday? No. We did not. There were about 12 of us (6 adults and 6 college kids) but we could have used another three trained adults with tools. I also think that because there was no work plan, although we did get about 80% of the work on the first floor done, we did not perform the job in the proper order. It really was more important to deal with the basement first (all that moisture is trapped down there and will give trouble on the first floor if it is not dealt with very quickly since winter is coming) and the DH and I along with our college student helper, were only able to get about a third of the wet insulation out of there before we had to abandon the cellar. And of course we did not touch the furnace, the water softener and nothing had been done about the fuel oil tank. This family STILL has a home that is basically unlivable and needs a lot more demolition and clean up before anyone can even start to put it back together again.

And the worst part is that in another month, it will be winter.

(Owego flood photo courtesy of Simon Hucko)

First and foremost, Chez Siberia is a very very lucky spot, from a topographic standpoint. Literally five minutes south of my house, our road was closed for several days from the flash flooding across the roads and five minutes north of my house our road…was closed for several days from the flash flooding. The first day this happened, the DH and The Boy ended up having to synchronize watches, cell phones and vehicles to find a spot that a) was not flooding (and they got lucky with that one too), b) that they could both get to (which was a challenge given the road closures in the area, and c) that they could use to somehow do a ‘back country switchback cha-cha” to get back to our house. The spot was about 10 minutes from our house, in a drug store parking lot but it took them literally THREE HOURS of going hill and dale, up and down, back and forth, finding every dog leg they could find (how the dogs felt about this, I don’t dare to ask) in order to find a little back road that somehow came down to our road BETWEEN the two closed spots. And even that one had an area where it was flooded and they did the ‘cross our fingers and drive slowly through it’ thing. Considering the number of people who were evacuated out of their homes and the number of homes that basically have been either destroyed or need to be completely gutted, the fact that my boys got home safe and we ended up with a bit of water in the basement was blessings indeed.

OK..water in the basement. We have the biggest sump pump made for residential use and we never lost our power (another incredible piece of luck and a blessing). How come we ended up with 4” of water in the basement? Well, the whole deal at the ‘getting rid of the water end’ of things out in the ditch next to the road is that the pump moves the water up out of the sump, through a pipe which goes out the upper wall of the basement to another pipe that is buried next to the house which goes to the ditch. As long as the ditch is empty or the water level in the ditch is BELOW the level of the pipe going into it, we’re in great shape. Once the water level goes above the level of the pipe in the ditch, something called a ‘check valve’ closes and the pump turns itself off so that the water doesn’t come back into the basement from the pipe. Which doesn’t stop the water coming up through the sump from getting into the basement, mind you, but this is how it works. Once things started to calm down rain and flooding-wise, the water level in the ditch came down and as soon as it uncovered the pipe, the check valve opened, started up the pump motor and the basement was empty in about 20 minutes. Not dry mind you, but empty. It took a couple of days with a dehumidifier to make it dry. If we had lost the power (and many people in our area lost their power for days and days) we would have been in big trouble.

Hence, “The Meeting”. Once we’d gotten through the worst of it, we all sat down and talked about what worked, what did not work or did not work as well as it should have, and what could have happened if things had been worse. Like –
If it had been the winter.
If we had lost the power for more than a day.
If other roads had been closed and the DH and The Boy had not been able to get home at all.

And, from that, we came up with a shopping list:
First item to be bought (believe it or not) was a water sensor/alarm for next to the sump. Because we never lost the power, no one thought to look at the situation down in the basement. If we’d known that the pump was not working due to the ditch level, we’d have hauled our Plan B. Plan B is the sump pump which we have in the FRONT basement (long story – our house has two basements – the front basement which is the old part of the house and which doesn’t have very much of a problem in terms of flooding especially since we built the addition onto the house, which is in back of it, has a double dug basement with French drains and a second sump), and a long enough pipe to go from the back basement, up the basement stairs, outside the house and all the way to the driveway. That pump in the front basement is rather ‘long in the tooth’ (as my mom used to say) so…
Second item to be bought will be another big sump pump which will be kept with the emergency pipes out in the garage (that’s another thing we talked about in ‘the talk”, which is that not all of us knew where all of the stuff was that was necessary to do this magic).

Third item to change – gasoline in cans. Just having a five gallon can of gas for the generator is sort of useless since gas degrades over time in cans. So, we will be making sure that by using the gas on a regular basis, the gas in the can is as new as it can be, we’ll be in good shape.

I’m sure we will be finding more ideas to discuss at a later time, but that is it for the moment.

Next: Paint.
As discussed before, a project that I have been putting off and needed to do were the door frames on the south side of the garage. Between the beating they get in the winter, the direct sun all summer and moisture from who knows where, the paint job that was done when the garage got installed was in very tough shape: peeling, cracking, and MILDEW (Aunt Toby hates mildew). So, because we had a dry week and a dry weekend coming up, I took out the scraper and cleaned off all the loose paint. Then I took out a wire brush and brushed them off thoroughly. I then washed them down with water with some chlorine bleach in it. And then I primed with a product that I seriously can recommend highly. Zinsser water based primer. This stuff is mildew resistant and rust inhibitive and is great used in challenging environments. Zinsser Primer

We’ll be following this up with two coats of exterior latex paint. This should last, even in this area, several years. I became familiar with Zinsser mildew-resistant products years ago when we had issues in the hallway by the upstairs bath. Nothing we did seemed to help that situation. We replaced the window with a bigger window. We replaced the bathroom fan with a bigger fan. No dice. Once we scrubbed down the walls, let them dry and painted with Zinsser bathroom enamel, we had no more problems at all. The whole product line is great and in terms of price it is highly competitive with anything else on the market that claims to do the same things.

Third: Honey
WE BEAT THE BEARS TO THE HONEY!!!! Finally. Years ago, when we kept bees, we did not have bear problems. The reason for that was because we did not have bears up here; they were still over the border in PA. Twenty years later, their range extends to about 60 miles north and west of us (bears move a LOT), and we did not realize the problems when the DH set up his new hive a couple of years ago. We lost the honey and because the bees no longer had their winter stores (bears don’t share well), the bees starved and died over the winter. The next time, the DH set up his hive on different property where they had not seen any bears, but he also put up solar powered electric fencing around it. In general, bears respect that. And this year, it worked. We got about 60 pounds of honey from that one hive, which given how horrible the weather has been from beginning to end was a pretty respectable harvest. We left the bees with a super that they had partially drawn out and filled with honey, plus they have the honey in the hive body (that’s where the bees snuggle down for the winter and where all of the baby rearing and pollen storage takes place – you want to make sure there is plenty of food there for them in the winter because bees don’t want to use much energy to get food when it’s cold outside). The picture at the top is pretty much at the end of the harvesting process, after the DH visited the hive, took off the honey supers (which look like drawers without tops or bottoms on them), brought them home, cut off the tops of the honey cells with his hot knife and spun out the honey in the centrifuge that we have. It’s then filtered and put into jars. Yes, this is raw honey. We don’t boil it up first; if we were going to sell it to the public, we would do that but for our own use, we do not. At this point, we will let the bees do their thing and get ready for the winter. We’ve had several frosts, but there will still be lots of plants such as asters and goldenrod in bloom for the bees to collect nectar from to fill up that other honey super so that they will be have plenty of food for the winter and the early spring before the new crop of flowers starts.

No such luck. Today is breathtakingly hot here, so out came the step ladder and the drapes and up they went…again.

It isn’t that way for everyone – for a lot of people on the East Coast, it looks like this: And no matter how hot it is there (and for folks in the Catskills, I’m sure it is just as hot as it is here, since the worst flooding is about an hour and a half away from me), it’s a mess and horrible and a lot of people need a lot of help.

But I’m not bringing THAT up today. What I want to discuss is this:
And we all know THAT is coming as well, though it is really easy to sort of push that toward the back of our minds because a) it’s early September, b) it’s hot, and c) it looks as if cold weather is so far into the future that we can ignore it for a while.

Except, we can’t. Even with the rest of hurricane season in front of us, there are certain activities that need to get taken care of before winter shows up. Here at Chez Siberia, we have more than a few things to putter with before the temperatures get too cold to do it.
So, what is this?

Or, better, what are THESE? This is one of two doorways on the south side of our garage, which was put up a couple of years ago. Aunt Toby was absolutely sure that what was spec’d was ‘primed and painted’ but it’s obvious that what we got was primed woodwork only. So now, after two winters, two summers, one almost-hurricane, numerous thunderstorms, and so on and so forth, the primer was not enough to do the job of protecting the wood. So the primer is peeling off, moisture has gotten to the wood and it looks as if we have some mildew doing a dance there. Now, I have to admit – the south side of any building takes a whupping from the sun, which is very hard on coatings of all sorts. But paint does a pretty good job – if the wood has been primed correctly and then given a couple of coats of good quality paint. But the woodwork on these two doorways were not, so what I need to do is:
Take a wire brush and scraper and get off all the primer.
Let the woodwork air over a day of dry weather
Prime again, let dry.
Paint, let dry and paint and let dry again.

And as a reminder – paint is not happy in temperatures under 55 degrees F. So, I have a window here of about 6 weeks to find a couple of dry days to get this done.

Paint: It’s what’s happening.

And this, my friends is exactly what it looks like: A snow shovel. An aluminum snow shovel to be exact which, for some unfathomable reason, is out in the greenhouse (the other collection of snow shovels is out in the barn). And this picture is to remind me (and you, especially those of you who live in places which usually don’t have snow or don’t get much snow at all) to take a look at every piece of snow removal equipment in our collection to make sure nothing needs a handle replaced, or screws tightened or rust removed or anything untoward like that.

Because winter is going to come. And as a reminder, there was snow and ice (and a good bit of it, actually) in places last year which never see this – and people did not have snow shovels. Now, I’m not necessarily a big fan of gas powered snow removal equipment (unless we’re talking major sidewalk and parking lot removal) – but a good metal bladed shovel is worth its weight out there when you need to shovel out. If you don’t have one, go to your hardware store or home center and get one. Don’t waste your money on shovels with plastic blades – yes, they are light weight, but they are done after one season and you’ve wasted your money. Spend a bit more and get an aluminum or steel bladed shovel. They last for years. You can actually find ones that are made in the US – worth it to look for that.

Another thing that you can do (we don’t need to do it this year but it’s worth it to check) at this time of the year is caulk around windows and doors, any outside electrical or water taps. As a matter of fact, this is the time of the year when you can still do it because silicone caulk is another thing that requires temperatures higher than 55 degrees F. If you wait too long, it will be too cold to get that stuff to come out of a caulking gun. So, put that on your list of ‘to do’ now.

(the sun, the flood and the snow plow photos are courtesy of:)
Marshall Space Flight Center
Washington State DOT
donxfive

UPDATE FOUR:
Sunday:
9:00 a.m., 71 Degrees F, 76% humidity, winds: 5-10 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.14. Raining hard. Lost power at 8:30. Wanted a second bucket of water for flushing…just in case. Ran around the outside of the house to find… one of the downspouts did not have an extension on it to take the water away from the foundation (not a good thing in general but good for the purpose of putting a bucket underneath it), so I put a five gallon bucket under it, which filled to the top in less than 5 minutes. Now, a downspout extension will go on the hardware store list NOW.

9:30 a.m, 71 degrees F., 75% humidity, winds 5-10 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.11. The DH and our son out in the garage finally able to get the generator to work. The choke needed adjustment. Lesson learned: Having a generator in a box ‘just in case’ is great until you have to use it and don’t know how to make the thing run. Note to self: Next time we have this sort of warning, let’s all not only clean things up, tie things down and get the animals inside, but also do the drill on systems such as a generator.
Regular utility power came on at 9:35. Lucky us.

10:00 a.m., 70 degrees F, 76% humidity, winds 13 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.11.

One of the things I’ve been keeping myself busy with this weekend is making some winter fleece clothes for my grandson. Our house is a lot cooler than his house and he spends a lot of time here with us, so I need to make sure we have plenty of snuggly clothing for him here, especially because he will be starting to walk this winter. I already finished a black set with a sailboat on it. Our son came up with this ‘Buck Rogers’ space ship design for an applique. I put this on by hand, with a buttonhole stitch, which worked out really well, considering we lost the power and I wouldn’t have been able to finish the front if I had been depending on my sewing machine. The zigzag power lines at the bottom are done with doubled up sewing thread, in a chain stitch.
LAST UPDATE:
7:30 p.m., 67 degrees F, 71% humidity, winds out of the SW at 2.9 mph, Barometric pressure: 28.50. Little bits of rain still around. We were lucky here; others in the county and nearby were not so lucky. Lots of flash flooding of the ‘usual suspects’ in terms of streams. Police were evacuating some roads in rural areas. About 50 miles from us, in the Catskill Mountains, a little village, Margaretville, was completely flooded and Governor Cuomo went down there. The water was up to the fenders in his SUV. Margaretville is in a valley which drains from the Hudson, Delaware and Susquehanna rivers so they have had more than their share of massive floods over the years. Everyone will have a big job cleaning up in the coming week. For the moment, though, we’re done here.

So. Here we go. One of the things that people forget is that you don’t have to have the eye of the hurricane go over you to get effects from a hurricane and actually in many places it’s not the wind – it’s the rain. And rain is not your friend sometimes. We’ve had a very wet August here; the ground is saturated, which makes it very easy, given any wind at all, for trees to come down on power lines and knock out the electricity. Losing the electric at Chez Siberia is really, really bad.

First: We are in the country, that means that everything here runs on electric power. The pump for the water (which means no water for drinking, washing or cooking and no water to fill up the toilets after they get flushed). All the appliances. If it were the winter, we’d be looking at no heat from the furnace either because a) the ignition of the system to burn the fuel oil is and electric spark and b) the furnace is forced hot air which requires a fan which requires…electricity to run.

Second: The house at Chez Siberia is at the bottom of a slope, which produces a lot of hydostatic pressure underneath the house. A couple of inches of rain and we are looking at 18″ of water in the back basement — except for the fact that we had a huge sump dug back there and the biggest honkin’ pump made installed with pipes going up and out to the ditch at the road. This pump literally runs almost all year round. Which is why if we lose the power, we end up with 18″ of water. Now, don’t ask me why we chose to put the freezers down there – a far better choice would have been out in the garage. Eighteen inches of water (even if you have freezers and fridges off the floor) can knock out the motor and compressor – trust me, we know this and have had to replace a freezer more than once. Once we had so much water down there that it lifted a completely full freezer off the floor and floated it across the basement. Hello? So, this time, the DH went out early this week and got a generator which will be set up between today and tomorrow so that WHEN we lose the power (because we will lose the power; that is almost a guarantee), we can rotate it among the pump and the two freezers (like, two hours run the pump; then an hour on the freezers) to keep the water off the floor and keep the freezers cold.

So. If you look at the picture above, what you see is….nothing. That’s right. Nothing. We took down the awnings from the deck and put those away. We moved all the potted plants into the greenhouse except for those two huge ones that are tucked into a little nook formed by a bay window and the front door. They will be safe there. I think.

So, what did WE do to prepare?
Bought water and batteries
Charged everything up
Filled up the cars with gas
Got a generator and a gas can full of gas
Cleaned off the deck and anything outside the house that could fly was locked down or put in the garage.
I defrosted stew beef last night and this morning set up the crockpot with the meat, broth, carrots, onions and celery. Why? Because I have power NOW, so I need to do things that I need power for NOW. If I needed to do laundry, I’d be doing that right now, too.
I’ve got a five gallon plastic pail that I’m filling with water to use to flush the toilets (remember? no power, no pump, no water for the toilets).
We have six gallons of water in milk jugs put aside for drinking.
I’ve got my meds all set.
We’ve located any paperwork (we won’t need to evacuate, but it’s always good to know where the passport, birth certificates, insurance papers, and so on ARE, just in case you need them).
We harvested what was harvestable out of the garden.

What have we NOT done, that we need to do? Well, we have chickens and turkeys outside and as soon as the wind starts to pick up, we will be hustling those guys into the shed with food and water for the duration.

From a weather standpoint, here is what things look like this morning (we have a weather station up on the hill – how long that will last under any sort of sustained high winds is another question):
Saturday:
7:00 a.m., 66 degrees F, 73% humidity, winds: 0, Foggy, barometric pressure: 28.73
9:30 a.m., 69 degrees F, 70% humidity, winds: 1.6 mph from the SW, Foggy, barometric pressure: 28.73

I’ll keep updating over the next two days.
Everyone out there – stay safe.

UPDATE ONE Saturday, 12:15.
73 degrees F, 72% humidity,winds: 1.6 mph from the NW, Cloudy but bright, barometric pressure: 28.73.
Things here are pretty quiet. We are waiting. My neighbor, Mr. Optimistic, is out on his lawn tractor, cutting away. The DH and our son have gone to the movies. I’m sewing – because I still can. A winter fleece outfit for our grandson. Big change from when I made clothing for my kids 30 years ago — this is in black and red. Very smart looking and rather grown up except for the red sailboard on the black top. Before I’m done, he’ll have a matching (only with a space ship on the front) red outfit and a couple of shirts, but if we lose the power, all bets are off. Thank goodness he won’t need these for another couple of months. Question: Did we over-prepare?

For the ‘belt-and-suspenders’ crowd, you can never, ever over-prepare.
UPDATE TWO: Saturday, 7 p.m.
The radar is showing bands of rain (the red and yellow stuff for the wewather radar aficionados) at the edge of Irene crossing over our area at the PA/NY border in central Upstate New York. Although we are ‘scheduled’ for rain at 9 p.m., given what we are seeing in terms of cloud cover and so on, I suspect the rain here will start before then. The DH and our son went out to do chores and also to bring in the turkeys. Even without the ‘help’ of the effects of a hurricane, turkeys are great flyers and will take off given half a chance. Not tonight, kids. Not tonight. The prediction for rain tonight is in the 2″ range, with winds picking up overnight into the 25 mph range. Tomorrow will be worse.
78 degrees F, 66% humidity, winds: 5.4 mph SW, Heavy Clouds, barometric pressure, 28.64

But also, I just want to remind readers in the Northeast and in eastern Canada who might never have experienced this before, even if you don’t get a direct hit from a hurricane, you are still in danger of damage from wind and heavy rain and if you are at the coasts, we are talking major flooding, I think.

So.

Again, if you have never experienced anything like this, you have several really important things to think about in the next 24-48 hours.

How close you are to the coast? How low-lying is where you are currently located? These are two separate issues. For folks in coastal areas, you are exposed to a lot more danger in terms of the hurricane itself and need to make sure you are familiar with evacuation preparations, especially if you are in locations such as Long Island where evacuation routes are limited. For those folks are away from coastal areas, the issue for us is how low lying we are and the possibilities for flooding. For many of us, even without a hurricane, we would get flooded if several inches of rain fell within one hour. Trust me on this one – if you already have those sorts of problems, it’s time to make arrangements now…not Sunday afternoon.

If you had to evacuate, what is the highest point within 10-15 minutes drive? If you have friends with whom you can camp out in their livingroom who are located at a high point, give them a call and make arrangements NOW. Offer to bring a cooler full of food, ice, bottled water, flashlights, battery lantern, fresh batteries, clothing, a bag of charcoal or a cylinder of LP for their grill, battery powered radio sleeping bags whatever you have for the stay. Pack an ‘entertainment bag’ – books, coloring stuff, paper, and games. Even if you don’t have kids to bring with you, sitting in the dark with a laptop with a dead battery is not a way to spend this time. Think of this as ‘if I was stuck on a desert island’ sort of thing – what would you take with you?

If you are situated on high ground and can stay home, here are few things to think about. If you have storm shutters (and I’d be surprised if you do – you probably have an old house and they are out in the garage someplace), get ‘em up…NOW. At the same time, you can still lose your power, which means that certain functions within your home will not be operational. As long as you keep the doors to a fridge or freezer closed, the food will stay in good shape for a day or two. After that, you will need to start cooking and eating it. If you have the chance, buy a couple of bags of ice and put those in the freezer; if you lose the power, you can transfer meat and other perishables to a cooler with the ice. For cooking (and of course, this is AFTER the storm has passed and you are still without power – everyone understands that, right?), I am a big advocate of outdoor grilling. Make sure you go into this with extra bags of charcoal that you can keep dry if you are using a charcoal grill or an extra cylinder of LP gas. Yes, it’s possible that it will not be considered chic in your neighborhood to cook outdoors – but trust me, if everyone loses their power, they will be in the same circumstances you are. Do NOT bring a grill inside the house. Period.

Do you have a battery powered radio? I realize this sounds hopelessly archaic but if you lose the power, you won’t be able to use a desktop and laptop batteries will only last a couple of hours. Having extra batteries is an absolute must, if only for flashlights and battery powered lanterns. Having a battery powered radio will allow you to access news and weather. Folks who are more technical can look into power inverters at places like Radio Shack and buy an extra auto battery to run items.

Water. If you live in the situation with a well and lose power, you will not have water to drink, cook with or flush the toilets with. Quick like a bunny, go to your local grocery store with a bakery operation and beg all the five gallon buckets with lids that they will give you. Wash and rinse them carefully and fill with water NOW, seal up and put into storage. Identify one toilet as the one that will get used and once your circumstances with the weather have settled and you know you have no power, park one of those buckets next to the toilet and instruct everyone to just do their thing and DO NOT FLUSH. Make one person responsible for throwing down a half a bucket twice a day to flush the toilet. Keep the buckets with water for cooking and drinking separate. If you have pets, make sure you get extra water for them, too. Barring the availability of extra buckets, buying some water at the store is a good idea.

Babies. If you have a baby or small kids in the house, you have a whole separate class of food and other care goods that you need to make sure you have several days worth of supplies in storage for them: formula and clean, sterilized water to make it up with, diapers, and so on.

At this time of the year, we only have to worry about flooding and power; we’re not in a situation where snow load or temperatures are factors.

The last time we faced anything like this was Hurricane Bob in 1991 – there are many many people who are now adults who do not remember this or have never experienced it, so we need to all take this very seriously and pay attention to whatever emergency management announcements are being made. Contact your county emergency management office and ask them for guidelines.

Stay safe. Stay dry. If any of my readers are from hurricane-prone areas – what works best for you guys? Here’s a list from the federal government which has many items that I did not even think about: readiness kit

(Amazing photo of Hurricane Jeanne from 2004 courtesy of Kakela)

And don’t ask me why except perhaps people there suffer indoors in the winter and when the weather gets nice, they are so desperate for warmth that they jump outside without proper protection from the sun. Or perhaps it’s more genetic in terms of the percentage of people who live in those areas who have fair skin, light eyes and relatively little melanin in their skin for protection.

But no matter – skin cancer can be deadly and it’s a problem everywhere in the United States. As a matter of fact, one of the fastest growing cancers in the United States is malignant melanoma skin cancer (versus the Laura Bush basal cell ‘scrape it off/put a bandage on it and go home’ sort) in children up to the age of 18. This is serious, life threatening stuff, especially since people have a tendency to believe that children don’t develop melanoma. Even if they see changes in moles or marks on a child’s body, they don’t take the child in for an exam. Here are a few facts that should make you very upset if you are a parent or grandparent:
• Melanoma accounts for up to three percent of all pediatric cancers.
• Between 1973 and 2001, melanoma incidence in those under age 20 rose 2.9 percent.
• Melanoma is seven times more common between the ages of 10 and 20 than it is between birth and 10 years.
• Diagnoses — and treatment — are delayed in 40 percent of childhood melanoma cases.
• Ninety percent of pediatric melanoma cases occur in girls aged 10-19.
Skin Cancer Facts

Since skin cancer is caused by cumulative exposure to the sun (or to tanning beds – I think that last statistic about teenage girls and melanoma points heavily toward that activity), I think that we need to look very seriously about protecting our children right from the get go. Think about all the time you have spent in the sun – not necessarily at the beach, but perhaps at a park in the summer, not covered up, not wearing a hat, not putting on sun block. Think about the number of times you got a bad sunburn (I shudder to think about that – I got a couple at the beach growing up that actually made me physically ill). I was also given photo-therapy for acne as a teenager and I used to ski a lot when I was young (and the sun reflecting off the snow is as bad as sun reflecting off the sand at the beach). It’s enough to make you lose sleep at night.

No matter what age you were then or are now; no matter what the ages of your kids, it’s time to take a good strong look at how to protect them and yourself, especially if you have concerns about the chemicals in sun blocks. The Environmental Working Group did a massive study on sun screens and found some that provided inadequate protection, some that broke down with exposure to sunlight and some with chemicals that caused great concern. Many sunscreens contain chemicals that have been found to be hormone disruptors, which means that they are something you do not want to use on anyone under the age of about 20. Safest Sun Screen?

The best sunscreens, frankly, are the old fashioned mineral based ones – with zinc and titanium. Most effective

But, let’s say you don’t want to be smearing anything on yourself or your kids – how can you protect little guys, who are running, swimming, and generally going nuts, from UVA and UVB rays? Wearable protection, that’s what.
Long sleeves, long pants, and a hat. There are many companies out there that are producing UV protection clothing for the entire family. If you want to make current wardrobes more UV-protective, you can buy a UV-wash from places such as Dharma Trading. UV Wash

Or, if you sew, you can find UV-protective fabrics at places such as Rockywoods UV Protection

On the other hand, a basic rule of thumb is that the darker the color, the more UV protective it is – so even with a regular cotton shirt, a dark blue long sleeved tee shirt is more UV protective than a white long sleeved tee shirt. And closely woven materials are more UV protective than materials such as mesh or gauze. And dry clothing is more sun protective than wet clothing (so much for going swimming and throwing on a white tee shirt).
You can also find UV protective swim wear, such as is worn in Australia (which has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world and where in at least one of the ‘states’, all children’s school uniforms no matter what the age, contain a broad brimmed hat which is worn at all times outdoors), which contains options like swim tights or ‘rash guard’ shirts, bathing suits with longer sleeves and the light. A couple of places to find these are here:
Solartex

Coolibar

I’m not even going to go the vanity route here to talk about protecting your skin from wrinkles and aging – because if you protect your skin from the sun, you will do that automatically. But here are a couple of issues that really do need to be addressed:

People, generally, don’t use sunscreen or they don’t apply it properly or don’t re-apply it. Sun Screen Use

Using indoor tanning parlors has been found to be addictive, in that it is not just getting that ‘toasted’ look – users associate the activity with warmth, relaxation, and a feeling of confidence. Stopping tanning causes anxiety. Tanning Bed Use is Addictive

There is still this issue from celebrities (who do tend to hale from California and have that ‘golden tan’ look) that tanning is fashionable, with it, and makes one look healthy.

We need to protect our kids. There is no such thing as a ‘healthy tan’ and especially one for little kids.
Keep the kids protected. Show some discipline as parents and grandparents:

Want to go to the beach? Go early and leave by 10 a.m. or go late in the afternoon. Cover yourselves and the kids up. Hats with an all-around-the-head 3” brim, long sleeves, long cover ups or pants. Use an appropriate sunblock and take a sun shelter or big umbrella to produce shade and stay in it. Don’t stay for hours and hours. You aren’t there to work on your tan.

Remember: the Sun is very powerful and does many wonderful things for us in terms of warmth, light, growing food and so on. But for us and our skin? The small amount we get through exposure of our hands is enough for Vitamin D. Protect yourself and protect the kids – 20 years from now, everyone will be thankful.
(photos by handpicked, Mary Mactavish, AF Ross)