House prep and Berkey

Our Berkey Water Filter System arrived a couple of days ago. I had a bit of trouble with it, while I had it set up and have been running water through it I couldn't seem to get it right...

We ordered the PF-2 filters as well as the charcoal and all the filters need to be 'primed', now I couldn't figure out a way to do this and was concerned that perhaps I should have ordered the 'priming button' they sell separately. Apparently we have had so much going on around here that my blonde roots were hanging in my eyes because today I had what Oprah calls a lightbulb moment.

The water was coming out cloudy and I knew that it was the PF-2 that was causing it but how to purge it? Well, duh: I had run water through it before by holding it up to the faucet and at a low rate to get it in the hole at the top of the PF-2. Today I put the PF-2 in the sink drain, stuck the tan washer on top, grabbed my extending faucet and applied it to the top of the tan washer with forceful water pressure for 20 seconds. I had read this in the instructions on the 1st day, but.... blonde.

Crystal clear water! No more lugging those 5Gal jugs around and trying to find somewhere to fill them. We specifically wanted the PF-2 because they remove Arsenic from the water too and this place is known to have Arsenic in the water (not necessarily our area, but who knows?) We never drink the tap water here, though some people swear by it. Since ordering the Berkey a couple of weeks ago the community has been taken off the boil water advisory it has been under for 2 years now.

I did the recommended red food colour test - putting 2 Tbsp red food colouring in the top of the Berkey with the tap water and checking the bottom filtered water for any sign of red - None. Perfect. Tastes great too! (actually no taste which is ideal)

We started working on the house projects today, we ordered some 6x6x12 lumber for cribbing to allow us to create land on one corner of the house so that the deck can be a complete walk around, Brad removed what we call wave lumber from the lower deck (protects the small rocks from being washed out by waves) and had himself a little bonfire down there to burn some of the remnant lumber from the house build.

While he was sorting out down below, I went under the stairs, organized it and sorted through all of our tools. I changed a tool bag we formerly used when we were painting from a painting tool bag to an RV tool bag in preparation. Also, I came across many things that I can put into a garage sale and hopefully get rid of some stuff that others might use.

Normally if we haven't used something for 3 months I throw it out. That's my rule-of-thumb, or at least it used to be but since building the house 2 years ago - not so much. Given that we hope to have the house on the market in the next 2 weeks, I will begin going through everything and figuring out what we want to store, take, sell, donate and dump.

Personally, I am hoping whoever buys the house will also buy the furniture, but if not Brad wants to put our 'things' in storage until we decide where we want our 'residence' to be. THIS is another argument for another day so we won't even go there - yet!

In my mind when we get 'out there' and he sees what it is he will realize that we don't need 'sticks and bricks' (socially acceptable housing), but if he needs that then that is what we will get. It won't stop us from going off in the RV 6 months out of the year and I can live with that.