Briana and I have started with the gardening. We have long wanted to take an active interest in growing our own food and we did grow a passel of herbs in the old condo but there was no space and when the real-estate bug hit, the nascent flora hit the bricks.

I our new place, in the West End of New Westminster, we have more space and we have tried some first steps. We aim for a true Victory Garden and we plan to be exemplars of sub-urban self sufficiency in some way or other. So far we have some kitchen herbs, tomatoes planted, squashes and zucchini, onions and chives and a few other tid-bits. There seems to be a massive movement gaining speed towards self sufficient urban farming but it could be the “hey, there sure are a lot of Honda Odysseys on the road” phenomenon, they day after you buy one.

So I have been reading some cool blogs and other blogs and wikipedias. And Briana has read a slew of super books including The 20 Minute Vegetable Gardener and Michail Pollan’s In Defence of Food.

Recently we attended a meeting with the New Westminster Parks horticulturalist and management staff and a super group of interested gardeners with the aim of establishing a community garden in the city for the benefit of all city gardeners. My first plan is to use the two vacant lost close to my house. In the satellite photo below, the houses still exist but the two houses closest to the south-east corner of Grimston Park.

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The space is not really suitable for much other than a parking lot or a community garden, and we all know what Joni Mitchel thinks about parking lots.

More to come.

Well we have done it. Photos are still to come but I can say now that we have moved in to our new family home. It feels so great to have this place. It has space, potential, wow, just everything we were looking for. Briana and I have been pinching ourselves and giving each other amazed looks over the last two days, as if to say “Can this be happening? We live here! Is that not great? I know, right?”

We dove in and got to work right away. The move in was smooth and uneventful except for a stream of dirty jokes from the movers and tales of younger days as a free lovin’ hippie back in Hawaii. Since then we have rolled around in home ownership like chickens in a dust pile (with extra clucking). We have had the obligatory trips to Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Ikea, with the promise of more to come. I have cut my own grass ( MY OWN GRASS) for the first time ever and improved my domestic drainage with the addition of a downspout extension, some 3/8 pebbles and a spade.

Briana has planted some tomatoes and herbs and generally done a million and one things to make this house our home. Wesley loves the place, everything about it seems perfect to him so he just toddles around the absurdly expansive rooms cackling to himself. Wagner, the dog, thinks that we are on vacation and at any moment he will be able to finally go home. Poor puppy, he doesn’t yet know that the space is his too. Not being on the New West Quay has really cut down the number of other dog he sees in a day so maybe he is just missing the domination of like creatures.

It is fabulous and exhausting. More and much more to do, a suite to rent and a life to lead. Check here again soon.

As mentioned in a recent post, our family is relocating to a new house. The house is an older one and in great shape but the furnace has been condemned and even if it was working was over sized for the house and very inefficient b todays standards. Where a high efficiency gas fired forced air furnace today would be rated near 95% efficiency, this one was just 60% or so. It is academic though. All four heat exchangers were cracked, making the unit a hazard so it needed to go.

I am making my plans to replace it and I am starting to consider a heat pump instead of a furnace. They use no fossil fuels and in our Pacific Northwest climate, the low temperature limitations of the heat pump are much less of an issue. To quote a random website:

In an air-source heat pump the air is cooled over finned heat exchangers, extracting heat into the evaporator of the heat pump. In a water source heat pump a similar process takes place as the water is cooled and heat extracted. In ground source systems a liquid is passed through a collector pipe buried in the source material or sunk into a bore hole and the heat accumulated in the liquid is then extracted in the same way that it would be in a water based system. Simple!

Right now I could go for a high efficiency gas furnace for $4,500.00 after rebates or spend about $8,000.00 after rebates for the Heat Pump system (that is right, cash from Ottawa and Victoria for both options).
For the heat pump, I would be paying for the electricity to run it, about the same as a refrigerator. For the gas furnace there is the cost of the fuel (of course) and some electricity for the fan. The gas consumption would be WAY less than the current furnace but still, the cost of CNG is not going to go down right?

Does anyone have any experience with this technology? I would appreciate some advice. The key is to get away from the carbon fuel and to lower my exposure to cost of living increases due to fuel cost escalation.

A new home again, this time a real house for our Family. From a downtown apartment to a 2br, 1ba condo at the quay, we moved back to my ‘backyard’ and set up shop for two years. We have loved our time here at the Quay in New West but the space is too small for us with the Baby and our bigger boy (and Wagner the Schnauzer).

So after some hunting and some Real Estate shenanigans, we have almost completed the purchase of the house above, near Lord Tweedsmir Elementary and next door to Grimston Park in New West. Our place here at the Quay is sold ad we are scheduled to move in early July.

The house has a great view, a great yard and a great basement suite that we an rent to make it all happen. Anyone looking for a super 2 bedroom suite near 22nd st station may want to get in touch. Perfect tenants only please.

Expect a housewarming announcement soon!