Who knew our house has Jeffries tubes?

I just got home from a 10-hour plumbing extravaganza. I spent most of the time on my back in the crawlspace beneath the house, cutting  and glueing together sanitary plumbing. I felt like I was in the Jeffries tubes on the USS Enterprise. I’m grateful that I am of relatively small build, and also that I am still fairly slim and limber. There is about 16 inches between the bottom of the joists and the earth below, so there was a lot of commando crawling, flailing wildly for tools, and banging my head into the structure above. Yes, I am sore. I must make sure to do a thorough job, though, as I am certain I will not want to go down there to fix things when I am in my sixties.

But, I am really close to done, which is exciting. Sometime next week, it will be technically possible to bathe in our tub. Though, with no supply plumbing yet, you’d have to heat the water on the stove and pour it into the tub with a bucket. Just like Guatemala! I mentioned this to Emily as a joke. She did not take it as a joke; she wants a bath very badly. So maybe we will have a post in the future about bathing in a house that is all exposed structure and tools lying around.

This afternoon I also got to experience one of the benefits of having an off-the-grid home. We had a fierce storm today, and as I was driving back from the cottage, I had to stop for a utility crew that was blocking most of the highway as they worked to remove a large fallen tree that was lying in the roadway, well tangled up in some power lines it had pulled down. I assume my neighbors were without power, but I hadn’t noticed. The worklights and saw and drill and so forth had been going all day without missing a beat.