Our new baby

We have been thinking about getting a dog for some time now, this week we did it.
Our new baby is a two and a half year old Catahoula Leopard x named Ash, she came to us from the SPCA.
We know very little about her background, but she is very well behaved, obeys instructions and doesn't bark. She responds very well to June and our grandson Jordan but is quite timid with me suggesting she may have had some bad experiences at the hands of males in the past. After just two days she is beginning to warm to me.

We had never heard of the Catahoula Leopard before; they are from the Catahoula Parish of Louisiana, and are dogs descended from Native American-created breeds. They are one of the longest surviving North American breeds.

We are very happy to give Ash a new home, after only 2 days she is very much at home with us.

Attacking the rodents

We have begun poisioning the rodents around the house, We have not had any problems but we want to reduce the rat population to improve the chances of birds nesting over the next few months.

We have manufactured 11 bait stations using 100mm drain flow left over from the house build. I cut 500mm sections then used a hole saw to cut a 80mm hole near the centre. A further 11 100mm lengths were cut and about 1/4 cut from the side to make lids that clip easily over the centre hole.

We have placed 6 bait stations on the other side of the stream spaced out between the container thru to the quarry, the remaining 5 are spaced evenly along the south boundary.

Bait station with the lid removed before adding more bait.
 
  

















Bait station nestled in the bush.









We went through $65 of rat bait in the first week, since then we have started using possum bait which has the same active ingredient but is 1/3 the cost. The rats didn't seem to mind the difference.

Three weeks on, the consumption of bait is starting to reduce so we must be having an impact on the rat population. We will need to keep up poisening the rats because all we are creating is a small vacuum in the rat population which will continue to be replenished by the surrounding rat populations.

Warm as toast

So far the house has been cosy warm, an early indication that having lots of north facing windows and good insulation makes a big difference.

The picture shows the midday sun streaming into the family room heating the insulated floor slab.

We haven't had any really cold days yet but early indications are we will be very comfortable.

We have added another couple of channels to the temperature data logging; the floor slab and the roof space.
Above is the graph of the past 7 days.
Blue is the inside temp; averaging about 21, max about 24 and min about 18 deg.
Green is the floor slab, hovering around 19 to 20 deg.
Cyan in the temperature in the roof space; peaking at almost 35 deg on the sunniest day the dropping to the same as the outside temp (red) during the night.

The green green grass of home

The new grass has really got established thanks to the mild wet weather we have been having. June mowed it last weekend for the first time.

The logging has begun

No, not with a chainsaw.
We have begun recording temperatures,  two sensors to begin with; inside and outside, but there are many more to come. Future sensors will record the temperature of the floor slab, attic, solar hot water collectors, under floor water heating system, wetback etc.
The underfloor heating won't be commissioned this winter so we will have a base year of data to compare the improvements it makes

The top line is the inside temp; the peaks near 30 deg were sunny days with the house closed up; lots of yummy solar gain.

For the technically minded: I am using the Maxim 1-Wire devices to record the temperature. These sensors are connected together using 1 wire plus a return wire, so 2 wires really. Each sensor has its own unique address allowing them all to be connected in parallel so wiring is easy.
I'm using DS18S20: 1-Wire Parasite-Power Digital Thermometer sensors connected to a DS9490: USB to 1-Wire/iButton Adapter which interfaces the sensors to the old PC I'm using to record the data. I chose 1-Wire products because they are cheap and easy to use. The sensors cost about $8 each and the USB interface about $60. More data on these devices can be found at http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/1-wire/

The best program I could find was LogTemp, although there are numerous others available and best of all most of them are free. I chose LogTemp because it was simple, does everything I require and much much more and runs in windows (many are for Linux). The setup was very sinple connect sensor to USB interface, load drivers for the USB interface from here http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/software/tmex/index.cfm and down load LogTemp from here http://www.mrsoft.fi/ohj01en.htm.

The power consumption of the computer used to record the data is a consideration because it needs to run 24/7. Ideally I would use an old laptop set to its lowest power settings but in the meantime I'm using an old 500MHz Pentium II running Windows98. This consumes about 45W normally but by turning off the hard drive this reduces to more respectable 21W. The shortest delay to turn off  the hard drive is 3 minuits, I'm making measurements at 15 minuite intervals, so the average is about 26W. I plan to try logging to a USB memory stick so the hard drive will never need to run.
If any one is interested in setting up their own data logger I'm happy to talk you through what I've done, contact me at m.fendall@xtra.co.nz.

Post script 10/5/10
Running the logging software and logging to a USB drive does not prevent the hard disk from starting as I had hoped. If anyone out there has an old laptop, even one with a stuffed battery, screen or keyboard, I would be pleased to put it into service as a data logger.
Cheers Mark

The local wild life

Some pics of the local wildlife in the stream.
Kopuku

 

Long finned eel

Crayfish

Then and Now

Three years ago we purchased a site that was no more than a rubbish tip. Now all the hard work has paid off, we have cleaned up all the rubbish and noxious weeds and have the beginnings of a lawn.

Play tme

Me having a go on the neighbour's 20 tonne digger last Sunday.

It was fun, could do better with practise, I'll stick to my normal job in the meantime.

More fill for the quarry

Before we finished the front lawn we had 7 truckloads of clay delivered to the quarry courtesy of our generous neighbour, Rodney. He spread the bulk of the fill and I finished it off with the tractor. June seen here inspecting my handiwork. I only got the tractor stuck once.

The extra fill will give us a firm base over the entire area, up untill now we couldn't mow anywhere near the stream without getting bogged down. If the whole area is mowable it will be much easier to look after.

It would be nice to spread some top soil and plant some grass but that will need to wait till the spring now.

It was pleasing to see our earthworks haven't adversly affected the stream life. Looking along the stream last night I saw numerous fresh water crayfish in the area where we have been working.