Tankless Hot Water Heaters

I understand that tankless hot water heaters have been in use in Europe for decades.  We've had ours for about ten years.  When we built the house,

we had it plumbed for two heaters: one to run the kitchen and guest bath, and one for the laundry room and master bath.  The heater we got for the master bath has been a real gem; the heater we got for the kitchen has been a nightmare! 

Finally (Praise the Lord!) it fried it's brains yesterday, and we get to buy a new one.  So Granpa spent yesterday merrily shopping the internet.  Wow!  the prices have really gone down!  Now we could buy one for $200... but I don't think we will go that low.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to buy cheap.

Looks like we'll buy one off the internet that is apparently available from Sears or Home Depot.  Our son says that's good because if we ever need to replace a heating element it will be really easy to find the part (though we've never had to replace one in our master bath heater.)  I'm excited!

Being travelers has made us much more aware of our home and what we did right in building it.

•  The tankless hot water heaters drawn no electricity unless someone turns on the tap, so we don't have to pay ANY energy cost while we're gone.  (Awesome!)
• We put the house in the center of the ten acres - that way no one in the future can build their home close to the house.  There's a beautiful little spot in the back corner by a 100+ year old oak tree, but Granpa nixed that idea because of possible proximity to future neighbors.
• We chose wrap-around porches so the house provides its own shade and the logs are protected from weather and sun damage.  It's also easy access to the 18 windows and 2 sets of atrium doors we put in, so I can wash all those windows and doors very, very easily.
• We have exit doors from the living room, master bedroom, laundry room, and, of course, the front door, which makes daily living very convenient, but we put no doors on the west side of the house so we don't have to worry about those Texas summers coming in every time kids want to breeze in and out - and in and out - and in and out...  We also placed doors and windows so that, if the air conditioner ever quits, we can open them and get an instant breeze flowing through.
• As an entertainer, I don't have to "get away" from guests or family to chill out for a minute, so I chose and open kitchen/dining/living area floor plan.  I'm an okay housekeeper, too, so the kitchen doesn't need to be hidden from view.  I also put the kitchen on the front side of the house so that I could see Granpa pulling in the driveway from work, and I'd know it was time to put the ice in the glasses and the food on the table.  With about a two acre front yard I also get to watch the kids 'n grandkids playing outside while we grownups chat in the kitchen.
• All of our doors are 36" wide - inside and out.  That's so when we get really, really old we can get our wheelchairs in and out easily.  (I plan to have wheelchair races with Granpa around the wrap-around porch!!)  The guest bath has two door so it's easy to wheel in and out of it; the master bath has a removable cabinet that, when removed, allows a wheelchair easy access to the toilet.  The added bonus was when my momma had an accident and broke her ankle she could stay with us and her wheelchair was no problem!  We put in "tall" toilets, too, so transitioning from the wheelchair to the potty was easier.  (Granpa is 6' 4" so he likes the taller seat right now.)
• We have 9' ceilings in the bedrooms, and an 18 foot vaulted ceiling in the living room to help out with Texas summers.  (Heat rises.)
• Halls are wasted space not living space, so we have no halls.

Well, I could go on and on, but, suffice it to say that all of our traveling and living in other peoples constructions proves to us that we did good.  About the only thing we would change is the tankless water heater for the kitchen and guest bath - and today we get to do just that!  Woo-hoo!!!

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Cook Wagon (not to be confused with Chuck Wagon)

What's so interesting to us about the cook wagon is that Granpa and I worked with the SBTC Disaster Relief Feeding Units during the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustave and Ike.  Cooking on the move in the late 1800's and early 1900's must have been much like Disaster Relief cooking.  One difference would be that they feed upwards of 40 men, and we fed upwards of 4,000... During the Gustave/Ike deployment on Galveston Island, we combined three kitchens and turned out about 40,000 meals a day!

Their cook wagon was 10 feet wide and 16-18 feet long.

Cooking was done on a cast-iron wood or coal-burning stove.  (Don't cha' know that that wagon had to have a reinforced floor!)  They had the doorway screened off, but I think you can still see enough to tell how the interior was set up:

Just like in Disaster Relief, the cook's day began at 3:00 a.m.  These meals were made from "scratch."  Disaster Relief meals were pre-cooked meats and the rest was from scratch.

We cooked breakfast just for our crews, lunch was a hot meal prepared for walk-up lines or served from what's called Cambro's out of Red Cross or Salvation Army vehicles called canteens.

The Cook Wagon folks fed their crews breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sometimes between meal snacks!

Breakfast for them was hot biscuits, pancakes or muffins, applesauce or some other fruit, ham, bacon or sausage with eggs and fried potatoes, butter, jam or honey and lots of hot coffee - all cooked on that one itty-bitty stove!!

Dinner and supper would be meat, potatoes, gravy, vegetable, homemade bread, fruit, and a dessert!  A single meal for a full crew would require 20 pounds of beef roasts or more, 10 pounds of potatoes, literally gallons of gravy, several loaves of homemade bread (did you get that? homemade bread!) 5 or 6 pies, 2 or 3 cakes or dozens of cookies with milk or coffee to drink.

The farmer having his crop harvested would provide the food to be cooked.  With Disaster Relief, food was provided by the Salvation Army, Red Cross, or FEMA - all SBTC had to do was cook and serve.  As with the farmer, if we were given good food to cook it wasn't hard to find a team to do the cooking.

This is what a cook wagon looks like today.  This was the set-up in Port Arthur, Texas following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Meal prep was done in the "wagon" (18-wheeler trailer) and we had a walk up serving line.  The "yellow hats" are the SBTC team members. 

After hurricane Rita, SBTC decided the Salvation Army kitchens were too hot and cramped, and they developed a way to roll out cooking equipment under a tent and prepare meals outdoors in an airy, expansive environment. SBTC's purpose in doing disaster relief is to me the needs of people in distress - including the need to have hope when they have lost everything and don't know what to do next or where to turn to.  We share the hope that WE have found for ourselves in Christ Jesus.  You know, when I find something really, really good, I want to share that with all of my family and friends - and even strangers!  And there is absolutely nothing better than eternal salvation through Jesus - and all you have to do is say a simple prayer:

Dear Lord, I thank you for being that bridge to God.  I thank You for giving Your life so many years ago that I may have eternal life in heaven.   Please forgive me for things I've done against Your will in the past.  From now on I will try to live my life using the Bible, Your Word, as my guide.  Lord God, it is in the name of Your Son, Jesus, that I pray.  Amen

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Dallas Cowboys

Woo-hoo!  Granpa's ready!

Thirsty Steam Engines

Remember, Walla Walla was founded on wheat.  In 1899 they raised it for about 25 cents a bushel and the average yield was 25 bushels per acre.  I  tried to discover what wheat prices were back then but didn't find a quick answer.  If  you can discover it, let me know!  The Walla Walla Daily Statesman reported in 1899 that residents:

Babcock had  5,300 acres in wheat
Reser had       4,500 acres
Pickard had    2,800 acres
Upton had      2,200 acres
Bradbury had 2,200 acres
Struthers had  2,000 acres
Crocker had   2,000 acres
Wheeler had  1,500 acres
Wilson had    1,400 acres
Welch had     1,200 acres

Dat's a LOTTA WHEAT !!!  No wonder they need new-fangled machinery, and those steam engines were thirsty beasts.  Some early steam engines were the Case, Advance Rumley, Russel, Minneapolis, Best Gaar Scott...  Lots of competition for the farmer's dollar.

But waggoners were still necessary.  So, someone built a water wagon just for those thirsty steam engines:
 

You drive it down into the nearest body of water and let 'er fill herself up!  (Worst case scenario had the driver using a bucket to fill it - what a major bummer THAT would have been!!!!)

Another specialized wagon was the "header box" wagon that was used in harvesting the wheat:

This baby was enormous.  As long as a wagon's axles were kept well-greased and out of the winter weather, they lasted a long, long time.  Why one side was twice as high as the other I'm not sure.  Maybe it was as wide as a stalk of wheat was tall, and the "head" stacked higher than the base of the stalk so it needed a higher side?  Nowadays agriculture colleges like Texas A&M have downsized crops so that all the growth is in the harvestable part of a plant and the stalk is a very minimum height.  Pretty smart, huh?  I wouldn't know whether to downsize the wagon or just load more crop into it...

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Canning the Harvest

While we were in Walla Walla, our host home asked us to take care of their vegetable garden while they visited their condo in Maui.  Okey-dokey.  (We tended their million rose bushes, too.)

Well, we harvested way too many cucumbers to eat - so I canned a dozen or so jars of Bread and Butter pickles:

My recipe makes for some pr-r-et-ty spicy pickles - with sliced onions, too!

Toward the end of harvest, women, then and now, end up with a bit of this and a bit of that.  I suppose that's how relishes came about.  My momma's recipe calls for apples and onions, colorful red or yellow bell peppers, cabbage...  You grind it and chop it and and cook it, drain it overnight, can it (I don't know why it's called "canning" when WE always put it in jars!) then give it a hot bath for 5 or 10 minutes.  Take it out, wait overnight for them to cool enough for a vacuum to be created and seal the product for a long, long shelf life.  (I think it's neat to sit quietly reading and hear those jars seal themselves with a slight, quiet, metallic "thunk.")  But, this is not the end of the season, and I don't have "a bit of this and a bit of that."  Besides, we have jars of relish (we call it chow-chow) at home from a year or so ago...

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Ox Shoe Chute; Wagons and Sleighs

Again at Fort Walla Walla...

Did you know that oxen have to be shoe'd just like horses?  How would you like to be the ferrier that gets to shoe that ox?  Well, those guys are smarter than you think; they built a chute to hold that critter up and still:

When I study it closely it reminds me of a guillotine.  A pulley system lifts the top panel, the ox puts his head through, and the panel is lowered.  My cousin in Chillicothe used to use a similar contraption to hold his cows for innoculations and spraying their eyes with "purple stuff" to prevent pink eye.  The only difference is that an ox wouldn't lift his foot to receive the shoe and this jobber-do came equipped with a sling that would pass under the ox and then be ratcheted up to literally lift the ox off the ground so that the ferrier could get those shoes on.  (Cows don't need shoeing because all they are ever expected to do is walk around eating.  My father-in-law always wondered how black cows could eat green grass and give white milk...)

This is a "dray" wagon - think 18-wheeler flat bed's of today.  This would certainly load easier than today's 18-wheelers:  look at that itty-bitty ground clearance!  You'd think back then they'd need MORE clearance!  Maybe big stuff gets cross-country in a train car and across town on a dray...

And then there's the sleigh.  (They used to heat bricks, rocks, or put pans of hot coals in the footboards of the sleigh to keep feet warm and toasty.)  This was definitely for people transport.  Not a lot of wagon work done in the winter time.  Winter time was used for repairing harnesses and equipment in order to be ready for spring planting. 

It was time to be carding and spinning and weaving all that wool sheared from the sheep, too.  The kids had time out from a lot of their chores to catch up on school work they couldn't get to because the crops had to be planted or tended or harvested.

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