Utopia is More than a Place

Between our float cabin and the rock wall is a protected pool. In the summer, the water is warmed when the sun reflects off the dark rock, making a perfect, natural swimming pool.

And what would a swimming pool be without pool toys. This is our new one. It's called the Poolmate Utopia Lounge. Even though the water is still bone numbing cold, I can float around my pool on Utopia.


We purchased our Utopia online from Overton's for about $70 USD. I love the stablility and the durable nylon cover. Because the lake water is still cold, I've only used it in the chair configuration. If I cross my legs I can float around the pool without getting wet except for a bit of my butt. When summer arrives and the lake water warms, I can flip the padded seat out and use it in the lounge configuration while I float around and read on nice sunny days. And boy, am I'm really looking forward to that! -- Margy

Wood Stove Sock Puppet

They say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I've written frequently about the wood stove that is the heart of our cabin, especially in winter. Over the years, we've learned a lot about living with a wood stove. Not all of those lessons have been easy. One of the most difficult was smoke blowing back into the cabin, especially during windy storms. One solution was the installation of a revolving weather chimney cap.

The cap works well, but only if creosote is cleaned from it's underside and the chimney pipe. Because we use our stove almost 24/7 during the winter, we find that we need to do that cleaning once a month. We pick a fairly warm day and let the fire die. First we disconnect the interior pipe and manually clean it's interior, paying special attention to the 90 degree turn through the cabin's wall.

Next, Wayne goes up on the roof to clean the chimney cap and exterior pipe. When our good friend John installed our new cap, he also installed a new section of outdoor pipe with a T-joint and a built in clean-out hatch. This really works well for cleaning the vertical pipe, but it actually makes it harder to clean out the exterior portion of the 90 degree turn as the pipe goes through the cabin wall.

Here's where my invention comes in. I call it my wood stove sock puppet. We needed a device that was flexible enough to feed through the bottom of the pipe and up into the 90 degree bend to scoop out the creosote. A bent wire coat hanger, an old sock and some twisties from bulk food bags were recycled into the perfect tool. Now our chimney pipe can be clean from top to bottom.

If you need to more information about troubleshooting wood stove issues and problems, try some of these websites. -- Margy

• www. Chimneys.com -- Woodstoves and Woodstove Problems
• BC Ministry of Environment -- Reducing Wood Stove Smoke
  
• The Wood Heat Organization -- especially All About Chimneys
  
• Famco -- not our new cap, but similar
• Volko Supply Online -- describes downdrafts and wind loading

AirX Wind Generator

Our float cabin in Hole in the Wall is off the grid. We use solar, but from October through March the amount of sunlight available for power generation is limited because our cabin is in a water filled valley. On the shortest day, "sunrise" over Goat Island is at 10:00 and "sunset" behind the trees on the other side of Hole is at 1:00. So, as you can see, even on a sunny day we can't store up much electricity in our batteries.

One day while walking through Canadian Tire we spotted an AirX wind generator. We thought it was worth a try. The AirX is a 400 watt wind generator manufactured by Southwest Windpower. The blades start turning at 8 mph, but power generation doesn't start until about 10 mph. To reach the 400 watt capacity, there needs to be a steady breeze of 28 mph. Two special features include a charge controller that stops power generation when the batteries reach full charge, and overspeed protection to prevent damage during high wind conditions.

We only get winds in the Hole during storms, but now that we use the wind for power generation you won't hear us complain too much. Now you'll hear us chant, "We're making power, we're making power!" We'll, at least until something is swept off the deck. Here's our AirX in action during a recent storm.



Do you generate your own power? I would be interested to hear about your experiences. - Margy