GeoThermoMass

For years I have wanted to experiment with an idea of using the earth’s thermo mass capabilities as a means to reduce the heating and cooling demand of your home. So on Memorial Day weekend I decided I would dig up my back yard to experiment with the idea. Went to the hardware store and bought a bunch of pipe and tubing to put in the ground and some grounding rods to work as temperature conduits. I rented a mini excavator to dig a trench. My plan was to dig down about 9 ft deep (the temperature stays mostly constant below 12ft) and then sink grounding rods another 8. I was going to dig a 20 ft ditch and install 15 grounding rods. I estimated this would give me approximately one ton of cooling capacity.

So I put together a manifold of pipes and tubes (see picture). The manifold was to allow me different ways to test my theory. I rented a mini excavator and started digging. First problem, I hit caliche (dirt as hard as rock) at 4 feet and couldn’t go any deeper. The excavator would just scrape the dirt. I decided I had already made the manifold so I may as well put it in at 4 ft. Next I tried to pound the grounding rods with a 25 lb jack hammer. I could only get them about 2 ft into the soil. So I got an auger hooked it to a drill and could get down about two feet that way. So in all I was only able to sink the grounding rods about 4 feet. It was frustrating,

So I made a mess of my back yard. Spent a lot of money and couldn’t get it deep enough. I may still be able to get some information from it. I will have to see if it ends up saving me any money on my cooling bill. At least I tried to do one of my new year’s regulations.

April 2009

Last month I helped my daughter move to Idaho. Her husband is going to school their. It was a great brake from the regular grind of work. They were able to find a county home to rent. It’s great their closest neighbor is about a half mile away. There are fruit trees, a garden spot and lots of cows.

I’m really a country hick and loved being on the farm. I would trade them houses if I could move my job their. It was nice to get away from the desk job and spend some time doing real physical work. They had a huge crab apple tree that needed trimming so the owner let us use his chain saw and trim it. We also pruned the fruit trees. It was especially nice to be able to spend some time working with my son in-law and getting to know him better.

My daughter in-law also went with her daughter. It was good to be able to spend some time with them, my daughter and her daughter. I’m truly blessed to have such great children, son and daughter in-law and grand daughters. They don’t come any better, and it’s not that I’m bias. They and my wife are truly the greatest blessing in my life.


On our way up my son in-law and had the privilege of attending the LDS general priesthood session (A semi-annual meeting for men 12 and up) in the new conference center in Salt Lake City. This is the first time I have had the privilege of being in the LDS conference center. I was impressed by its size and structure, but I was more impressed to be in the same room with Prophets and Apostles. To hear them speak for our time, the things that are coming, and receive their advice how we should live our lives and prepare for the future.

It was also a privilege to be a building with 21,333 other good men. Not that any of us are perfect, but to be with that many other men who were listing and seeking to improve their lives. To think that there are also thousands more gathered in chapels throughout the world listing to the same messages. I sometimes get frustrated over all the evil in the world, but it’s comforting to know there are also a lot of good people. That gives me hope in the future. Hope in knowing that as the wicked get more wicked the righteous will get more righteous.

Someone Prayed

For college students good part time jobs were hard to come by. I found a job driving school busses in the winter which lead me to a job driving Grayhound Busses in the summer. I was responsible for driving the second bus when the first bus was full. I would drive from Flagstaff AZ, where I was attending NAU, to Gallop NM and spend the night and drive another bus back.

My wife was pregnant with our third child. She had started having contractions one evening and sure enough they called wanting me to drive one of the busses to Gallop. I told them my wife was in labor and they would have to get someone else. They said they would get someone else, so we went to the hospital. Unfortunately it was false labor and so we ended up going back home.

I got to bed around midnight but couldn’t sleep. I keep getting the impression that I needed to go down to the bus station. Because of this, I knew they hadn’t found another bus driver. I got dressed and told my wife I needed to go down to the bus station. She couldn’t understand why, I had not received any phone call telling me I needed to.

When I got their sure enough there was a bus full of very angry passengers. The bus station was closed and they had been waiting there for hours with nothing to eat and no where to go. Had I not come they would have had to spend the night in the bus. The bus station being closed they had called everyone they could think of including the police. Needless to say they were very happy to see me. I called and woke my boss up to tell him I was driving the bus to Gallop.

When I got on the bus, some of the more aggressive passengers started questioning me. The conversation went something like this.
“Did the bus company call you?”
“NO”
“Did the police get a hold of you?
“NO”
Then who called you?
“No one.”
A moment of silence.
“Then how did you know we needed a driver?”

I thought “how do I answer this one, I want to be honest but they will think I’m crazy”.
So I simply looked out over the bus full of passengers and said,
“Someone Prayed”.
The bus went silent, as I looked at them a lady in the third row, isle seat, sheepishly made the slightest hand signal, which only I could see.
I said, “That’s why I’m here.”
I then got in the drivers seat, started the bus and drove them to Gallop.

It wasn’t the anger, rage and phone calls of the aggressive passengers that got them safely to Gallop that night. It was the lady in the third row who humbly prayed.

Fireproof

Last night we rented Fireproof from blockbuster. Part way through I found myself thinking that it was just a come to Jesus movie. But it actually had a good plot. It was about a fireman who ends up trying to save his marriage, with a lot of the struggles that most marriages face. It included his struggles to overcome his selfishness and additions, and coming to truly love those important people in his life. Problems we all face.

I realized it was one of the first modern movies that weren’t promoting Sex, Violence and Homosexuality. It is getting more and more difficult to find good movies. Is it getting to the point that the only movies they aren’t promoting evil are from a few religious groups. Clearly the division between good and evil is widening.

Satan has most all the modern media is serving him and promoting all forms of evil. A company would have to pay millions for that much advertising. By they have willfully become his advertising network. The sad thing is that he doesn’t have to pay, we pay for it. We call it a little entertainment. It is no wonder we are considered by some to be the great Satan, if this is all they have to judge us by.

Goals

OK, it new years and everyone is making these goals. I wasn’t going to do it because I usually don’t keep them anyway. But I decided to do it anyway. So here is my goal.

Take one of my multiple invention ideas and complete it.

OK, that's it, my one and only goal. All my life I have had tons of ideas but never felt I had the time or money to do it. Most of them are related to energy conservations or efficiency of some sort. So this year I’m going to do it. I will post what it is and the results.

Also, I would like to also finish my back yard, put in security cameras, organize my garage, loose 15 lbs, work on a book, etc. But those aren’t goals they are tasks, which I will try to do also.

A Christmas Gift

There is a woman in our neighborhood that recently lost her husband. She has been really struggling with all the aftermath. She had a lot of the, angry at the world and God attitude. The happy ever after had not worked out for her. She was now stuck with four kids to rise on her own while having to work two jobs to support them. I went with another man from our church to visit her. In our church we often go visit the needy.

We were visiting at the door; there was clear reluctance to let us in. I ask her if she was set for Christmas, she said “she was still working on it”. I thought “OK she needs the $100.00 in my pocket” (see Aug 07 blog), she resisted, but I insisted. Strong woman, reminded me of my mother who was also a widow. She was a strong woman, was going to do it own her own and didn’t want charity, even if she desperately needed it.

We were about to leave when she invited us in. I told her I understood some of what she was going through. Not that I had gone through it, but that I had lived it from the point of view of a child. I understood to some degree where she was and talked to her about it. It was clear she needed some one that understood. We talked about some of the things she was going though. I tried to make it clear that I understood and didn’t in any way think she was bad or anything other than normal.

Talked about how difficult it was to go to church and see all the couples sitting with their kids and spouse. How she feels like a misfit, but goes for the children. How the happy ever after didn’t work out for her through no fault of her own. That life for her wasn’t fair. That it was going to take years for her to get through it all. She was moving out of her house and we talked about the need to start over and leave some of the memories behind.

As we went to leave I went to give her a quick hug. She started crying and just needed held for a moment. She needed to be cared about by someone who simply cared about her as a person with no other purpose or intention.

She has a hard path ahead of her, as do a lot of other single mothers. It is not possible for me or anyone else to take the path away. Though occasionally we my have the opportunity to help along the way. I was glad that for a short “moment in my life” I was able to give a small token of service, and in memory of my father (see “A White Christmas” below) I was able to give some wood (thought it was refined into green paper) for Christmas.

A White Christmas

This is a story that was published in the Dec 05 New Era. Being its Christmas time I decided to add it. Left is our last family picture, taken a little before the story below. I'm the little boy on the left standing in front.

Wood for Widows

White Christmases were always the best! Christmas Eve I would sit at the window, watching the streetlight, hoping to see flakes of snow falling. We didn’t often have snow for Christmas but it was bitter cold and it was supposed to snow. I stayed up watching for snow until my mother insisted I go to bed. I prayed that night, hoping that morning would find the ground covered with fresh fallen snow.

On Christmas morning I woke early. To my joy, the Christmas tree was surrounded with presents. The excitement gathering around the Christmas tree and discovering what treasures waited inside the wrapping paper made up for still not having snow. As my dad passed out the presents, I stacked mine in front of me. I was eager to see if my pile of presents was larger than my siblings. Especially my older brother Ron, he seemed to always get more and nicer presents than me. I understood he had polio when he was two, leaving him crippled in both legs. It seemed my parents were always nicer to him, though other kids often picked on him.

We were quite poor and most Christmases were meager. My mother had asked Ron before Christmas if he was interested in a racecar set. He had told her, no, he wanted something else. When she asked me I had said “yes” trying not to sound too eager. It had worked. I had gotten the racecar set along with some of the other things I wanted.

We lived on a farm and always had chores to do. My father left to do his chores right after we opened our gifts. It was my job to feed and water the chickens. I was praying that my mom wouldn’t make me stop playing with the racecar set long enough to do my chores. When my dad returned he told me that he had done our chores for us including feeding and watering the chickens. I was excited, I could spend the entire day in the nice warm house playing with my new racecar set. He then said something to my mother about Blanche (an elderly widow down the street) who was out looking for firewood. Ron and I went quickly back to playing with our toys. That was my dad, always looking out for others. It seemed like the entire town depended on him to do things for them. Anytime they needed their car looked at, equipment welded, or a car pulled out of a mud hole, they came to my dad. Blanche wouldn’t come to my dad. She felt he was too busy. Besides, he had been in the hospital to have his spleen removed a few weeks before. His blood wasn’t clotting properly and the doctors had removed his spleen hoping it would help.

The next thing I knew my father was asking us boys if we wanted to go get some wood with him. I couldn’t believe it, on Christmas? I knew that wood was Blanche’s only way of staying warm and cooking. But couldn’t someone else get Blanche firewood, or at least couldn’t we just take her a little off our woodpile? Or wait until tomorrow, surely she had enough wood to last until then. But no! He wanted to go into the woods and get a whole truckload. I complained but it didn’t do any good. We were expected to go. So much for spending the day playing with my new racecar set.

We bundled up well and headed for the woods. At least it was warm in the cab of the truck, but soon we would be out in the cold loading the truck with wood, which happened all too soon. My dad was very good at getting his boys to help him. We each had our job, my dad would run the chain saw and cut the wood. Grant my oldest brother, would split the wood. I would load and my next oldest brother Ron, being crippled, would sit in the back of the truck and stack the wood. My dad was always good at making Ron part of whatever we did and feel important and needed. Eager to get back to our toys we all worked hard. He had cut a big tree and we almost had it loaded. I thought it was plenty, but my dad cut into another big tree. This is going to take forever, I thought, “I’m cold and tired and want to play with my toys and he is cutting down another tree.” We finally got it all split and loaded. At last we were headed home. It was nice to be back in the warmth of the cab of the truck again. All we had to do was unload the wood and then I could go back to my racecar set.

We backed up to Blanche’s house and started unloading the wood. I couldn’t believe it! There wasn’t of sliver a wood to be found anywhere in her yard. The only thing she had left to burn was her house itself. I was worried about losing time playing with my racecar set, while she was worried about freezing. As we were unloading the wood she came out of her house. My dad looked up and said “Merry Christmas.” She started crying, and my dad got down from the truck to console her. I couldn’t fight back a few tears myself. I tried hard not to let it show, but then I noticed a tear in my brother’s eye too. My presents didn’t mean anything to me now. The fact that I was able to help keep someone from freezing on Christmas day meant much more to me than all the toys in the world.

That night it snowed. My mother said she was glad that we had gotten Blanche firewood. I was glad too, really glad. Never will I forget the lesson and spirit of truly giving to others. But that wasn’t the only lesson that we learned that year. This act of kindness on my dad’s part would have an influence that would not be realized for years to come.

The next Christmas would not be so happy, we sat around solemn faced, after opening our presents. Finally Ron said, “lets go get wood”. Nothing more needed to be said. We all got our coats, hats and gloves and headed out the door. Again we were getting wood for a widow. But this time it was our mother. It wasn’t that we needed the wood, it was something deeper. Two weeks before Christmas my dad died on my oldest brother’s 16th birthday. He left seven children to be raised by my mother. But my dad had taught us to work. So my brothers and I would make sure that we had wood for the next year and each year after that.

I suppose that because of that one act of kindness, and the lessons that he had taught his boys, he assured that his widowed wife would never go without wood. We not only got wood for our mother but often we would get it for other widows. Often on Christmas day after we had opened our presents my brothers and I would go out after wood for one of the widows. Though it was never spoken openly between us, we were all doing it in memory of our father.

Times have changed and most people don’t use firewood to stay warm. So our tradition of getting firewood has died. There are few people in our society that are in danger of freezing on Christmas day but there are many who need warmed on the inside.