First Tahoe Cabin Post

One minor problem with weblog categories is that sometimes you want to have a relatively long introduction, i.e., more than just the one or two line description at the top of this page. The obvious thing to do is to provide an informative introduction in the first post (unlike this post, which so far has been completely uninformative). Of course, if you do that, people will read the introduction only if they start reading your weblog category right after you start publishing it or if they are obsessive people who read everything, no matter how dull. In general, you should avoid the latter set of people in life. They are better known as stalkers. If you don’t want to end up as the featured subject in a poorly-made-for-TV movie on Tuesday night at 3 a.m., I’m telling you, avoid these people like the plague.

Hey, whom am I kidding? Virtually no one will read any of this blathering ridiculosity (it’s my weblog, I can make up words if I want to), so why should I worry whether no one will read all the posts all the way back to this introduction or if no one will read any of the posts. So there.

Anyway, if you’re still with me, we bought the cabin in a 50-50 split with Sandra’s sister and her husband. The downstairs is about 650 square feet. Upstairs there is a narrow loft, due to the steep slope of the roof. The cabin is on about 0.8 acres of land.

The big problems we have to deal with are inbound and outbound water and other outbound waste materials. The lot has a 12 feet deep hand-dug well. Even with an expensive water filter, we aren’t too keen on using surface water sourced that near to the surface, especially with a major road not too far away. Yum, yum, nothing like a little MTBE-laced water in the morning. The house also doesn’t have a septic tank. The shower, bathroom sink, and kitchen sink essentially drain into a hole in the ground. It doesn’t even meet your basic graywater trench standards. An Incinolet incinerator toilet dispatches human wastes. Our first big projects include drilling a well (which will likely need to be about 250 feet deep) and putting in a proper septic or graywater system. Because of required distances between the well, the septic system’s leach field, the property lines, a seasonal stream, and the road, the placement of the well and the septic system will be a significant challenge.