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March 2, 2008 By

Unschooling Voices #13 is up.

Andrea sent me a link to some maze design research at the University of Waterloo, one of Canada’s prominent universities. I’ve always enjoyed mazes. What I find a bit amusing about the article is that in one of the programming courses I used to teach, I gave the students an assignment where they wrote a maze solving program.

Currently, comments on my blog are not working unless you are signed in. I haven’t had a chance to figure out why. In the mean time, if you want to leave me a comment, you can do it here.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Links, Unschooling Adventures

Unschooling Emma

February 3, 2008 By

Unschooling Voices #12 is up. Thanks, Kim.

Everyone in our house has the occasional tendency to start talking out loud midway through a conversation/train of thought going on in their head. Emma is no exception. There are times when she shows how astute she is.

Earlier this week Emma and I were in the office: her at one computer and I at the other. She asked me if we had any money left from selling the green house. I did explain that although we had spent most of it, we didn’t have to pay the bills for the green house anymore. She said nothing in the 5 minutes before or after that. Nor did she give any sign that she heard my explanation. But I’m sure she did. Prior to the sale of the green house she was aware we were running under a tight budget. For the last couple weeks the belt has been loosened a notch or two. Since last weekend we were planning on a shopping trip to Fredericton for this weekend. It may take a few months for her to realize that still having the green house was why we had to run on a tight budget, but I’m sure she will eventually.

Last night while sitting at opposite computers from the last story Emma asked, “Doesn’t war makes them bigger?” with a hint of don’t be silly. Again this came out in the middle of a good spell of silence. I looked over at her screen. She was watching the Schoolhouse Rock DVD. I had to watch the video for about a minute (the volume was low enough I couldn’t catch all the audio) before I figured out what this particular episode was about. It was explaining DEFICIT using a household budget to illustrate spending exceeding income. If we were a household that watched the nightly news, news channels, read the daily papers, etc. then I probably would have expected something like this from her. The truth is that we DON’T buy newspapers, watch news channels or the evening news. I’m still thinking through where she might have garnered the information for this conclusion. Out of the mouths of babes.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Unschooling Adventures, Us

Pellet Stove Install – Part 2

November 2, 2007 By

You can view all of the posts on the pellet stove.

When I wrote the Part 1 post, I had already learned that I was missing an adapter to connect the vent to the pellet stove. I am going to Fredericton in the morning to get it.

The story behind the story on that is that when I ordered the pellet stove I also ordered a vent kit for it. The pellet stove came in 2 days after I ordered it, but the vent kit did not. The folks at the store where I ordered the stove spent 2 days trying to find a kit somewhere in Canada in their distribution channel and failing that, when some might arrive in Canada. They were not able to find that out, so, I told them I’d see if I could find one over the weekend and I’d let them know on Monday whether or not to cancel the order. I did find one via the telephone over the weekend and arranged to pick it up locally on last Thursday.

When I called on Last Friday to ask about the adapter I was expecting that I would just be able to pick one up on Saturday. The folks where I bought the vent were not familiar with it and I had to get Andrea to look up the part number. They looked it up, and I was able to arrange ordering. The line of pellet stoves that they sell are designed to connect to the vent without the adapter. So, that’s something to keep in mind to check about the pellet stove since most of the ones that I’ve seen pictures of have the same exhaust outlet as the one we purchased.

Even though I knew at the beginning of last weekend that I would not be able to completely install the vent, the missing adapter did not prevent me from working on the install at all. Prior to the weekend, Andrea and I had moved the pellet stove (weighs about 230 lbs) into what would be a rough guess at its final location. This is somewhat dictated by the vent requirements (at least 4′ from any door or window, at least 18″ above grade, etc.). And once it was there, it looked right, if you know what I mean. In it’s rough position, we haven’t pushed it close to any of the tolerances (i.e minimum distance to walls, etc.) so we will be able to adjust it to a good fit for the vent. I did a bit of math to ensure that I would be in a position to make some final adjustments. but I’ll save that for another post.

Last Saturday, I was away for about 8 hours which put a bit of a dent in the work time for the weekend. But I chose Saturday for that because it was supposed to rain most of the day (which it did). On Saturday night I removed all of the remaining plaster needed to install the thimble and remeasured using the partially assembled vent to ensure that I was on target.

Installing the thimble requires that the opening in the wall be framed in. The issue that I wanted to deal with before I started framing the hole was keeping the cellulose insulation above the opening from falling into the opening while I worked. The interior wood wall made this easier, but the same approach could be used with the sheathing on the outside of the house. This is the basic process I followed:

  • I drilled 3 3/16″ holes above that square that I was going to cut out.
  • Using a spade bit, I drilled a 1″ hole at each upper corner of the square to be cut out.
  • Using a reciprocating saw, I cut a rough 1″ hole across the top of the square between the 2 holes made with the spade bit.
  • I cut 2 pieces of double strength corrigated cardboard about the length of the hole (9″) and 1/4″ narrower that the depth of the wall cavity. (This implies that I measured the cavity to see how deep it was.)
  • I put the first piece of cardboard in through the hole and pushed it lengthwise until one end of it was up against the stud on one side of the opening.
  • I put the second piece of cardboard in and pushed it against the opposite stud.
  • Finally, I pushed the cardboard up above the 3 holes drilled in the first step and pushed a 4″ spike into each of the 3 holes drilled in the first step.
  • The result looked like this:

On the inside wall, the 9″ opening was cut out of the middle of a single board which is at least 12″ wide. I lucked out in choosing this this spot for the vent because the board had a crack near the bottom where the opening was going to go. So, for the next step I did not have to drill the bottom corners with the spade bit. Following the template I’d drawn on the board, I cut the sides of the opening down to the crack and removed the rectangle of board. The insulation behind it looked like this:

To complete the framing in:

  • I removed the insulation to about an inch below the bottom line of the template and about an inch to the left of the opening and put it into a grabage bag. (The opening is deliberately about 1/2″ from a stud on the right.)
  • I cleaned up the hole using the reciprocating saw to square up the 3 sides already rough cut and cut the bottom line.
  • I cut the 3 pieces to frame in the hole.
  • After dry fitting the frame, I pushed the top of the frame up against the 4″ spikes and pulled the spikes out of the wall.
  • After getting the top frame piece in its final position, I drilled 2 pilot holes above the opening and used 2 wood screws to secure it in place.
  • With the bottom piece of the frame being held roughly in place by the insulation under it, I secured the side using 2 pilot holes and wood screws.
  • Note: I added a temporary wood screw to the side and bottom to make it easier to maneuver them once they were inside the wall cavity.
  • Finally, secured the bottom piece of the frame using 2 pilot holes and wood screws.
  • Once the opening is cut in the outer sheathing, the framing will be secured to that, the existing stud and to the other pieces of the frame.
  • Here’s the final result of the weekend’s work:

Filed Under: Pellet Stove

Unschooling Voices Is Up

November 2, 2007 By

#10 is here.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Unschooling Adventures

Bravo

October 29, 2007 By

I don’t normally talk about news in the blog. I talk about politics even less. Actually, several years ago we stopped watching the news on TV and buying newspapers since we found them so repetitive and narrowly focused to the point of being annoying and a waste of time. If we are looking for news, we use the internet.

The title of this post is directed to the President of Ecuador, who has asked for permission to set up a military base in Miami. A reasonable request, one would think.

HT: Roy

Filed Under: In the news

Pellet Stove Install – Part 1

October 25, 2007 By

Last weekend Andrea wrote about the buckwheat hulls in our wall. We are in process of installing a pellet stove for heat this winter. There is an oil furnace in the basement. We don’t intend to use it. The first reason we looked at alternative sources of heat was that neither of us like oil heat. We haven’t owned a house that had oil heat. But, we lived in one for part of one winter and didn’t particularly care for it. And, I found a study which said that wood pellets cost about half as much for the equivalent heat in heating oil. Even if that is somewhat off, it would still make sense if the cost was based solely on the cost of fuel.

The other factor we considered was cost. If we were going to use the oil furnace, there were a few issues we were going to have to deal with. The oil furnace has not been used in 3 years, so it would definitely need to be serviced and I doubt we would have gotten away without having to replace some parts (we do know the fan works ok). The oil tank is so old that it does not have the tag on it indicating when it was manufactured (which means it is too old to be used). So, we would have to buy a new tank. Finally, the chimney is not quite up to code because it does not extend above the roof line enough. So, we were looking a potential cost of $3-5000 to get the oil furnace in working order. Getting a pellet stove setup and ready to use costs in that same range (most of the variance comes from range in price of pellet stoves). The particular pellet stove we purchased in manufactured in Canada but the design is licensed from the UK.

We also considered a wood stove. In pricing it out we found that the install cost was in the same range as the pellet stove. The issue we would be up against this time of year is that it would be difficult to get seasoned wood. Looking forward to future years, I also did the math on the cost of fuel. By weight, pellets cost about 40% more than local seasoned firewood. Pellet stoves do have 10-15% higher effeciency rating than most wood stoves do which should offset some of the difference in fuel cost. So, realistically, we will be looking at slightly higher fuel costs. To offset that the nice thing about the pellets is that they don’t involve continual cleanup and Andrea and the girls will have no trouble keeping the pellet stove in fuel.

Our house insurance requires that we document the installation of the main heat source. Since I’m doing it anyway, I thought I would share how to install a pellet stove here while I was at it. After deciding where we were going to put the pellet stove, I did some rough measuring and some exploritory surgery on the wall in the area where the vent was going. Tonight we picked up all the pieces for the vent except one. I put enough of it together, and after reading the installation manual, so that we could hold it in place to mark the area where the thimble will go in the wall.

Here is a picture:

Yes, we have wood walls behind our exterior plaster walls. Given the house was built 100 years ago, I think it was an interesting way to give the house some insulation. The buckwheat hulls that Andrea referred to were put in the wall between the plaster and the boards on the inside of the exterior wall. Behind the boards is blown in cellulose insulation. The white area is a plaster refinish job which was probably done just before the wall paper went on. The white area is slightly larger than the thimble at 13 inches high by 12 wide. I’m hoping that I am able to finish the installation this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Filed Under: Pellet Stove, Unschooling Adventures

The secret

July 17, 2007 By

I’ve heard it said that the secret to success is figuring out what you love to do and then find a way to make money doing it.

Of course, when you think about it, that makes alot of sense. If you are doing something that you love to do, then alot of the things that are common goals of working become secondary. A perfect example of that is making money. Alot of people work to make money so they can do things they like to do. If you are already doing something you like to do, you will probably spend less money pursuing other things that you would like to do. IOW, you will probably have less expensive tastes.

Without thinking it through in advance, I fell into something I love to do. I discovered in college, that not only was I good at my chosen profession, but that I also liked it. What I learned from teaching in college was that my students’ ability at computer programming was largely dependent on whether or not they liked it. I don’t believe that all professions will distinguish between those who do like it and those who don’t to the degree that programming does.

This time of year many homeschoolers are ‘off’ of school as they somewhat follow the societal school calendar. One of the beauties of unschooling is that there is no ‘off’ time and no ‘on’ time. The closest thing we have to that is learning for the fun of it. There is learning which we do which falls into the category of life skills. I learn things for work. We learn things to improve our life, our home, etc. But sometimes we explore in an area where there is no direct association with life skills. To me, that is our ‘off’ time.

If you’ve been following along in this and Andrea’s blog, you’ll know I’ve been working pretty flat out on getting our old house ready to go on the market. Usually when I get to the computer at night I’m tired enough that I don’t feel like writing. In the same vein, I’m having a bit of trouble transitioning from one thought to another.

The closing thought I’ve had for this post over the last few days has been that I hope that all 4 of the kids (Addison, Sarah, Meaghan & Emma) learn the principle I opened the post with in the course of their homeschooling ‘education’. Unschooling caters particularly well to that because they will have far more opportunities to discover what it is they love to do. Hopefully, we will provide them with avenues to discover how to make money doing it.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Unschooling Adventures, Us

The country fair

May 21, 2007 By

…is looking for submissions.

Filed Under: Carnivals

Winter Carnival

February 11, 2007 By

This week is winter carnival in town. Yesterday, Isaw the ice blocks set up in the town square and a crew working away at carving them. I took Andrea out this afternoon to look at the results and to snag a few pictures. Andrea took most of them partly because my glasses tint in the sunlight and I can barely see the lcd screen on the camera. In any event, with some ropping, one of the pictures I took is now my desktop wallpaper. If you click on it, you can get the full size image.


icy desktop

Filed Under: Carnivals, Images

Unschooling Voices #5

November 9, 2006 By

is up!

Question of the month for Unschooling Voices #6

What interesting activites, projects or experiments have your kids done this past year? We’ve gotten some really cool ideas from other unschoolers so tell us what you’ve done in 2006!

Filed Under: Carnivals, Unschooling Adventures
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