Margarit's sister Natalia is visiting from Washington. The girls are going through all the stuff that was put into storage when their mother was put into long term care. Hailey had to work on Friday and Monday of the long weekend. None of the girls were interested in coming out to Nordegg, even for part of the weekend, so I went by myself.
I headed out to the cottage on Friday after work. The further west I got into the mountains, the more traffic there was and it appeared that this long weekend, like the August one, would be busy. I arrived at about 9:00, just as the sun was going down. The days are sure getting noticeably shorter now. I unpacked, settled in, and got the fire going in the woodstove.
When I got up on Saturday morning it was heavily overcast and raining. It was a slow steady rain, and more than just a drizzle. My weather station showed an accumulation of over 4mm by late morning. The rain let up and the skies began to clear and by afternoon it was just overcast. I put some sidewalk blocks into place by our entrance. These are stepping stones that were made down at the shop in East Coulee, and I picked them up there last weekend.
There is a lot of concern about Radon gas. It is apparently the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. Not sure exactly what the statistics are and whether it is a close or distant second. I'm guessing it is probably the latter. The new building code called for us to install a pipe in our basement for the future collection of radon gas, although there is no requirement at this time to actually collect it. We didn't have to bother putting the pipe in because we didn't pour a slab in our basement, and just put poly and gravel down on the floor.
Radon gas naturally seeps out of soil and rock and is the byproduct of the breakdown of uranium. Its concentrations vary dramatically from one location to the next and over time. The US government states that a level of 100 Bq/cubic meter is safe. The Canadian government states a value twice as high at 200 units. The whole matter seems a little sketchy to me, but curious about it, I bought a detector. Often some of the worst locations are those structures built on solid rock, like us....
You can buy a test kit, leave it in your building for up to three months to accumulate the gas, and then send it in to a lab for testing. I'm told that the results are unreliable, incomplete, and sometimes are not returned at all. I opted to buy a more expensive detector. This is left in place for 90 days and records a long term average, a 7 day average, and a daily reading. As the levels naturally fluctuate quite a bit, it is the 90 day average that is supposed to be considered After 90 days you can reset it and use it again to take a reading in another location, or to repeat the process. I put mine down in the basement on the August long weekend, so it has been running for about a month now. For a while we were getting a reading that was a little over the safe limit. The long term average was 216, and I saw daily readings as high as 250. But since then it has come down and the long term average is now 185, and the daily reading 140. I'll wait until the 90 days are up before jumping to any conclusions.
There are fans that can be installed to exhaust the gas from the basement. But they are rather costly and complicated to install. And, more importantly the fan runs 24-7. They draw air from beneath the slab, or in our case beneath the poly and gravel. In my mind this is a waste of electricity and will draw a lot of heat out of a building that we are only marginally heating. Unless we get consistently higher readings, I'm not going to bother with this. We don't live at the cottage year round so our exposure will only be marginal. I think I might put in a typical bathroom style exhaust fan in the basement. If I run that occasionally when we are out there, I think it will help to keep the levels down. I will continue to monitor it all and come to a conclusion over time.
On Saturday evening my brother Wes stopped by. This was his first visit to the cottage. He was on his way from his home in Calgary, to his cottage at Pigeon Lake, and took a little bit of a detour. I threw together a BBQ with wings, steaks and baked potatoes. We sat around into the evening having a few drinks and playing guitar. Wes has been playing for 40 years and I'm just a raw beginner so needless to say, he did most of the playing. Around midnight we decided to get some fresh air and go out for a walk. The entire subdivision was dark and the only house with lights on was mine. Seems all the neighbors, at least the few that were around us, had turned in early. I have never experienced such darkness out there. There was very low and heavy cloud cover, no moon, and no artificial light except for my yard light. We attempted to walk down the road but couldn't see a thing without a flashlight. Even after waiting a while for our eyes to adjust, we could not see a thing. It was much like being in my darkroom...!
On Sunday morning Wes packed up and headed on to his cottage. I had a lazy morning and then eventually got after some chores. I had installed the last of the metal flashing trim on my foundation on Saturday afternoon. So on Sunday I finished up the installation of the last of the stone veneer panels to the foundation. I also started on the backfilling of some gravel around the foundation. As I didn't have a wheelbarrow out there, I had to walk around and move the gravel spade by spade. I took a break and went over to the neighbors place and had a beer. Rob and Brenda were relaxing in the afternoon sun by a fire and I joined them for a bit. A late afternoon thundershower rolled through and we got hit by a heavy dump of rain. It only lasted 15 minutes or so, but that was enough to make things muddy and put an end to my gravel shoveling for the day.
I wandered back to my place and made some dinner for myself. Homemade pizza is a standby for me as it is quick and easy to make, and more than enough to satisfy one person. Side benefit is that it does not create any dishes to speak of. I was really tired after working on my hands and knees with the stone veneer and then shoveling gravel. I read the paper for a bit and then turned in early.
My end of the suddivison was rather quiet and only some of the neighbors were out. The rest of the subdivison was pretty full. And there were lots of campers in the area. I heard that one of the group camps down the highway had 300 people in it. There were a lot of ATV's and dirt bikes riding around the area, which made it quite noisy at times. I really look forward to the end of the camping season and things getting quieter through the fall.
I slept in on Monday morning but eventually got vertical. After a late breakfast I set to work. I finished up the gravel, and then stacked a little firewood. By mid afternoon I set about the depressing task of packing up to go home. Tidy up the cottage, do the dishes, take out the garbage, empty the fridge, turn off the water heater and the pressure pump... the usual drill. I hit the road about 4:30 in the afternoon.
I was not quite ready to fight the long weekend traffic going home so I made a couple of side trips. I stopped along the Saunders Road and photographed an aspen grove. This is a fairly open grove and I was hoping that the late day light would be interesting. It was, but I think morning light would be better and will probably return in a couple weeks once the fall colors are out. I photographed here for about half an hour before continuing on my way. I followed secondary highways and passed through the town of Leslieville. I had never been here before and it was a pleasant little town, well treed, with a creek running through. I took a couple of shots of some old buildings in town. One was the shop of Jeff Bradshaw, an award winning pedal steel guitar player. He has played with a number of country bands including Ian Tyson. The building looked kind of abandoned and had a gig poster on the bulletin board from 2013. But there was a cat inside, so I guess it is probably still occupied.
After that stop I continued on my way, a rather uneventful drive, and ended up back in the city by around 8:30.
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