Finally, a new beginning (Bangor, Hope: insurance, general contractor, inspection)
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When you prefix the Google search with "site:" and then put the URL of the site of interest, then a space and your search terms, it restricts your search results to only pages that come from that site of interest, hugely helpful!
And here I thought I was an advanced Googler. Good to know! That little tip is going to come in real handy. Thanks again, OutdoorLover.
The most economical building for storing equipment and vehicles is a pole barn.They are very easy to build and are rugged. If you go with a metal roof, go with a 5/12 pitch or more so the snow will slide off.
I've occasionally looked at steel garages but didn't know they were called pole barns. That would suit my needs just fine, as long as I could site it close to the house. While I'm still in good shape, when I'm older I won't want to have to trudge through a foot of snow to get to the snowblower that's across the yard. If I'm honest, I wouldn't want to do it now either.
For the first five years living here, we had no garage. We did not like that.
Then I extended our roof eaves out eight foot in all directions around our house, toward the driveway I extended it out 20 foot. Now we have space to park three automobiles plus a tractor and much outdoor equipment. On the Southside of our house the roof extension is done in greenhouse roofing, so that side of our house is great for growing citrus trees, figs and whatnot. That was a very inexpensive addition and it has improved our standard of living a great deal.
Now all winter long we can step outside without stepping into snow, we can walk to our carport and access our vehicles without any contact with snow. And there is no snow or ice on our vehicles.
All of our firewood gets stacked under a roof now. And it is baked in sunlight all summer long.
Our metal roof has a pitch of 1/10 [it drops one foot for every 10 foot of run]. The snow/ice pack slides off very slowly.
Our house is a steel structure, originally marketed to be an airplane hanger. I bought it as a kit, every hole was pre-drilled, all bolts, washers, and nuts were supplied. It was an easy build for one-man. Though I had no input to the pitch of the roof. It is what it is. This style of home is called a barndominium. I have high ceilings and zero internal support columns or walls. Our house is one big open room. 40' X 60', 2400 sq ft with 12' to 14' ceilings. After 20 years on submarines I prefer high ceilings over me, and I installed thirteen large picture windows, to give us a wide peripheral view of the forest that surrounds our home.
Your home sounds lovely. I can only imagine the views you must have.
I like that idea of greenhouse roofing on the extension. Do you block off the open side in the winter? Run fans at night to keep the air circulating, like the citrus growers do in the fields?
My take on the snowblower issue. I'm a senior woman, fairly active and stronger that most women. My driveway is about 15' wide by 60' long and fairly steep. My neighbor brought his medium-sized two-stage snowblower over for me to try. I actually wasn't able to handle it. It was too heavy to turn and I didn't feel safe with it. I also didn't like the thought of not being able to transport it in my car for repairs and being dependent on others to transport it.
So I bought a single-stage snowblower on Craigslist. These machines are much lighter. In years past the were considered insufficient for "real" snow, only capable of handling a few inches of light stuff. But in recent few years they've been greatly improved.
This is the one I bought: Toro PowerClear 721 E (E for electric start). $650 at Home Depot.
This machine weighs 84 lbs, about the same as a lawnmower. It operates basically like a lawnmower. Manufacturer says it can only handle 9" of snow, but I used it in much deeper snow and You Tube videos show this also. You just have to slow down and take several bites out of the same area, like mowing grass 12" high. It's not self-propelling, BUT the paddles turning forward pull it along to a certain extent and I found it pretty easy to use. It doesn't take a lot of effort. Most importantly, it really does throw snow a good 30 to 40 feet (which is important, so the snowbank along the driveway doesn't get higher and higher). I was amazed at how well it handled the heavy wet snow left at the bottom of the driveway by the town plow. (You have to be careful of that though because it has a lot of gravel in it, which wears out the rubber paddles.) It throws slush about 10 feet.
Drawbacks: It makes a terrible amount of noise; you need heavy duty ear protectors. The paddles have to be changed when they wear out. Pretty strong vibrations; be careful of carpal tunnel syndrome and put a piece of foam pipe on it to dampen the vibrations. Very difficult to get to the spark plug. You cannot leave gas in these machines for too long; it gums them them up really bad.
My fatal error was buying a "used three-times" machine on Craigslist. It did not work; had multiple problems. Seller took it back home, supposedly did a tune up, and it still didn't work. I took it to a repair shop and put $325 into repairs. Still didn't work. Seller agreed to refund my money, made an appointment to pick up the snowblower, didn't show up, sold his house, and now even the police can't find him. That's when I learned about his police record. The machine still sits in my garage.
I don't recommend buying a snowblower on Craigslist. Buy a new one and you'll have a warranty.
Would I buy a Toro Powerclear 121E new today? I would be tempted, especially because I could return it to Home Depot if it didn't work. There are other brands of single-stage snowblowers to consider. You can learn about snowblowers at this great forum: https://www.snowblowerforum.com/
My main point is that today's lighter single-stage snowblowers are a viable option in many circumstances, especially for women
Thanks so much for the real world experience. I thought single stage machines would be too difficult for me to handle, and not powerful enough for more than a few inches of snow. I'm glad to hear they're now a viable option. Good point, too, about having to depend on someone else to transport a large blower.
While I haven't been burned on Craigslist, I have been on eBay and it's not a good feeling. When it comes time for me to buy one it will be new with a warranty. I simply don't have the knowledge or skills to repair machine that doesn't work, so hopefully by the time the warranty runs out I'll have found a reliable shop.
"Farrar Carpentry Services, a general contractor in Bangor, said busy contracting companies are booked out for a year and the ones that aren’t should raise warning signs to homeowners. If they aren’t busy, there’s a reason,” Jordan Farrar, owner of the general contracting company, said." True words.
That's honestly my biggest concern. Moving to a new area and finding trustworthy, reliable contractors and tradesmen isn't easy. I plan on baking a lot of bread and muffins to bring to my neighbors when I ask for recommendations. And then I'll just have to sit back and wait for the work to be done. I'm going to have to learn patience
Your home sounds lovely. I can only imagine the views you must have.
I like that idea of greenhouse roofing on the extension. Do you block off the open side in the winter?
No. we have not blocked any of it.
I feel that through out the winter months it adds a lot of light and warmth into our home.
Quote:
... Run fans at night to keep the air circulating, like the citrus growers do in the fields?
I grew up farming. We had almond orchards and we sharecropped* other almond orchards. Big fans or 'smudge pots' were common to prevent frost damage during certain parts of the year.
We have not had any need for fans here in Maine.
*- I was recently required to attend a re-education seminar as a condition to continue serving on a committee of a non-profit I am active with. In this seminar, one of the things they were teaching us was that only Blacks have ever experienced sharecropping. No white person has ever sharecropped. Sharecropping was invented as a method of holding the Blacks down in our society. As an older white male, my comments were not welcomed nor allowed. But yes, I grew up sharecropping.
My family were 'Okies'. Farmers from Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Texas when banks locked their doors, seized all personal savings accounts and foreclosed on all farm mortgages, causing those farmers to go through the 'Grapes of Wrath' economic refugee period. Old photos from the 1930s and 40s, of migrant farmworkers living in Model Ts and picking berries, that was my people. My earliest photo shows me in a cotton diaper sitting in blowsand, tethered to a grape vine, my elder siblings were using me as a row marker for which row they were picking.
"Farrar Carpentry Services, a general contractor in Bangor, said busy contracting companies are booked out for a year and the ones that aren’t should raise warning signs to homeowners. If they aren’t busy, there’s a reason,” Jordan Farrar, owner of the general contracting company, said." True words.
That's honestly my biggest concern. Moving to a new area and finding trustworthy, reliable contractors and tradesmen isn't easy. I plan on baking a lot of bread and muffins to bring to my neighbors when I ask for recommendations. And then I'll just have to sit back and wait for the work to be done. I'm going to have to learn patience
As a contractor, that sort of statement from any contractor can be fair, or it can be self-serving.. and all he said was 'there is a reason'. Example: When you start in contracting (like in most endeavors in life), you have no reputation and no record. But that does not mean you are not going to be good at your work.
Story time FWIW: The best excavator I've ever known was illiterate.. he grew up in the Blue Ridge Mtns and never went to school. Think of a LOT further back in the mtns than the Waltons.... His wife taught him to 'cypher' (do arithmetic) so he could figure up and quote work items, but he could not write up a quote...he had to point at each number and say " this is for the road, this is for septic, this is for stump-hauling...'. So if you judged him by literacy, he was a 100% fail. But Freddie Dedrick could lay in a road or dig out a foundation hole in difficult terrain like nobody's business, and was 100% competent, fair, diligent, and honest.
Your bread and muffins plan sounds pretty good! That is similar to how I found Freddie all those years ago. Like you, I am getting some recommendations from locals in our rural WY build, but forging ahead on some others on my own. if it makes you feel any better, the problems are the same but worse than in Maine. Try 2-3 years out for GC/builder wait lists in that rural area; it is crazy.
To have the snow removed on YOUR schedule, when you need it
To save money. $50 (or more) for plowing x 10 storms = $500
Plows tear up your lawn. Better to blow the snow where you want it instead of pushing it across the lawn.
It's sort of fun, except for the noise. There's something satisfying about using a snowblower.
Exercise, though I admit there are much better forms of exercise
Where I live, a senior woman can be outside shoveling 4 feet of snow for days on end and not a single person will stop to ask if she needs a hand. There's no upper age limit for this. I once stopped to help a woman in her 80s shovel her driveway. It was 4:30 p.m. ("rush hour") and car after car drove by her without stopping to help. Another time I stopped when I saw an 80-year-old woman wandering around in near darkness in the winter on a very icy road. She had Alzheimer's and was lost. Same thing: dozens of people drove right by without stopping to help her. I'm hoping things are different in Maine. Are they?
I have shoveled snow. I have plowed snow, and I have blown snow.
Two-stage snow blowers are the best in my opinion.
Plowing will gouge the ground, lifting up established lawn grass and pushing it somewhere else.
The first time you plow, lets say that you push the snow back 20 foot. Two weeks later that snow bank you have created is now a mountain of ice and it is snowing again. So the second time you plow you can not push it 20 foot any longer, you can only push it 15 feet when the fresh snow comes up against the previous snow storm's bank. With each progressive storm the place where you can push the snow gets smaller and smaller. About half way through winter you have nowhere else to push to snow.
Snowblowers on the other hand do not gouge the ground and the they can toss the snow 40 foot in any direction you desire.
The biggest problem with a snowblower is if it is windy there is a possibility that you may blow snow in your face as you are trying to steer.
Two-stage snow blowers are the best in my opinion. Plowing will gouge the ground, lifting up established lawn grass and pushing it somewhere else. The first time you plow, lets say that you push the snow back 20 foot. Two weeks later that snow bank you have created is now a mountain of ice and it is snowing again. So the second time you plow you can not push it 20 foot any longer, you can only push it 15 feet when the fresh snow comes up against the previous snow storm's bank. With each progressive storm the place where you can push the snow gets smaller and smaller. About half way through winter you have nowhere else to push to snow. Snowblowers on the other hand do not gouge the ground and the they can toss the snow 40 foot in any direction you desire. The biggest problem with a snowblower is if it is windy there is a possibility that you may blow snow in your face as you are trying to steer.
I agree with you on these points, Submariner. Plow guys are in a hurry; they don't have time to take too much care with your lawn. If you're shoveling snow by hand in a bad winter, your 15-foot-wide driveway gradually narrows to 6 feet with 6-foot snowbanks on each side! I'm sure two-stage snowblowers are more powerful, but for an older female, a strong single-stage could very well be adequate. In a bad storm---say 24" of snow---I blew the driveway twice with the Toro PowerClear. That worked very well. It may sound like double the work of a two-stage, but believe me, it's 100 times better than shoveling by hand. My main problem with the PowerClear is that these seem like temperamental machines, much more so than a lawnmower. Note that a machine like the PowerClear can also do sidewalks very well and clear paths around your house, like for access to your electric meter and oil fill pipe.
And---here's something the OP has surely not thought about---in order to remove snow from your roof with a roof rake, you may have to create a path around the entire house if the snow is very deep. A single-stage snowblower could do that too. I also have large snowshoes specifically for packing down paths (old wooden ones).
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Why you would want to operate a snowblower?
