It doesn’t look like much at the moment. Truth is it won’t look like much when it’s complete. But…
It’ll work, and it’s a major improvement over what the ladies are living in now.
As the frame took shape, before I’d ever nailed on a single piece of siding, it became clear that moving this thing to its final location would require a full crew and a crane if I assembled it and then tried to move it. So I cut all the siding, assembled the doors, floor and roof, and then we brought it to the Lair in pieces. It’s got just enough siding on to make it rigid.
Tomorrow morning I’ll put it together, and then the neighbors and I will struggle and grunt and scare the hell out of the chickens as it takes its place in their yard.
On the water front (heh), Perplexed Joel is perplexed. We didn’t get any more sun this morning than on any other morning for the past four days or so, but today the well pump decided to do its duty with a vengeance. Every day I’ve checked it, the water level in the cistern has dropped. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it looked like we had a problem. I checked pump operation this morning and it was definitely pumping. Came back this afternoon and it wasn’t, and I didn’t know why but the “remote switch” light on the panel was flashing which is supposed to mean that the cistern is full. That hardly seemed possible given the system performance over the past few days. So I propped the ladder, spun the top off the cistern, peered inside…and the tank is completely full. Consistent behavior, this is not. But I guess I can go back to trying to locate the leak(s).
I raised the base/frame of my chicken coop(S) using Home Cheapo’s $.51 chunks of 4X4. It keeps them 2′ off the ground, offers shade for the critters, and makes it MUCH harder for predators to get in.
Yeah, I’m putting this one on some old concrete pylons that have been laying around. It’ll make it easier to clean, if nothing else.
Re: water issues, could you be having water level fluctuation in the well casing? The pump might not have any water to pump sometimes.
http://www.harborfreight.com/solar-rope-light-68353.html
For winter time’s reduced day length I put one of these up in my coop. No need to string wires from a powershed, no need to remember to turn it on or off, and the 8 hours run-time is the standard ‘Harbor Freight optimism’. Usually it’s only about 3-4 hours, which is just about right.
It’s not terribly bright, even in the rather tight confines for my small-ish coop (really just big enough for three levels of roost, and three laying boxes), but it was sufficient to get my girls’ production back up to snuff during the winter months.