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3 1/2 Days Later

Compared to that roadway saw the jackhammer was indeed a relief. Got a lot done and the tool is back at the rental shop.

This is needed because the building has one working floor drain – some of the 40 year old cast iron is rusted through; we are adding functionality requiring drains & electricity in new locations; and the walk-in fridge/freezer floor needs to be insulated.

Thicker concrete, rebar, 6×6 mesh and cast iron pipes made day 1 the most difficult. Definitely hyperventilating.
The end of day 2.
Starting on the floor of the walk in facing SW. The line to the grease trap runs about under the opening which used to have a swamp cooler and now is covered in insulation.
Looking west at the close of day 3.
Looking west into the restrooms. From the right counter clockwise: urinal, unisex ADA, and unisex. The pink insulation is an ad hoc wall of the warm room which has a plug in radiator and hold items which permanently change when frozen such as paint, etc. This happened on that half day.
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Glad That Is Over

The time to replace building sewer has come; most of the floor sinks & floor drains don’t actually drain. I had never used a roadway walk behind saw before. Hopefully never again! The sonic force is nuts. Payment is by day plus millimeter of blade use. Thankfully the cuts were do-able in a day, and as no one wrote down the blade diameter there was no extra charge for any excessive use which may or may not have actually taken place. As far as I am concerned this tool can stay at the rental shop henceforth. The bathrooms are luckily too small for such a saw. The rental place has a handheld model which can’t be set down while running. Bent over indoors holding a gas motor spinning a disk which can cut through seemingly anything? At the moment I choose the tranquility of a jack hammer.

Looking east. Pizza oven covered in white tarp; ice machine in blue.
Looking east showing cutout to DW floor sink.
Looking west. Want the old forced air heater in the upper right corner?
Headed NE to the DW floor sink. That is the north wall.
Looking west. Red door is into mechanical room. To the left will be the walk in fridge and freezer.
The near white lines are for the triple sink floor sink; the lines going towards the covered pizza oven are for a handwashing sink.
Pictures or it didn’t happen.
An aqueous affair indeed. Tons of water. So much water. Gallons and gallons. Sopping wet. Glad it is shoulder season.
Those buckets and pail are for exhuming water from the not functioning floor sink.
Eventually the water seeped through the cuts, suggesting complete cuts which are good news for taking the debris out.
The walk in fridge & freezer location. Notice all the power cords are off the ground. The panel was off for the entire time and when cutting here the building main too.
The cut path also prepares for mitigating the damaged floor . The cut continues behind me to get to the Chocolate Studio.
Standing on something dry to turn the power back on.
Notice the framed doorway to the Chocolate Studio just to the left of the semi tarped pizza oven.
Missing tile and sloping floors make for adversity.
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Prefer Clean?

The Sage came with several top-quality appliances. One of them is the Rancilio MD80 Coffee Grinder. This grinder can pump out 7 lbs. of coffee per hour! It took longer than that to clean it let me tell you. Thankfully I found a video showing the process. It is anybody’s guess how old the scraped off goop truly was.

Before. Looks like the yearly cleaning has been put off a few times.
During. See the cleaned parts peeking in at the top of the image?
Detritus.

It is exciting making the equipment pristine once again. This grinder is the first appliance to be made shiny and not the least filthy of the bunch by far.

Like having food and drink prepared with clean equipment? We are working hard to make it happen. Please consider donating to support the re-invention of the Sage so progress doesn’t stop.

The finished product. I used the vodka in the upper right of the image to help detach the crud; also notice some of the tools needed for the operation to the left of the unit.
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Sweating

Under the mezzanine looking NW. This is where the bar stroage room was. The women’s restroom was on the other side of the green and white wall. Through the opening is the 2 Bedroom apartment whose kitchen is fed by these lines.

These days it has been cutting and soldering to get water from the mechanical room south. So far we have made it into where the bakery used to be with a 3/4″ for hot and one for cold as well as the 1/2″ return line for the recirculation loop. All water in copper will be filtered. This feeds the commercial restrooms, both apartments, the bar, the ice machine and clothes washing machine.

Not yet in place is the 3/4″ pex for carrying cold water to the toilets and handwash sinks. The commercial kitchen is going to have its own on demand water heater fed by its own 3/4″ pex whose water will not be filtered. There will be spigots in the different sections of the kitchen with filtered water, as you no doubt guess, serviced by copper pipe.

You can see the 3/4″ main throughfare running left-right. The nearest pipe goes to the upstairs apartment and the lowest to the 2 Bedroom bathroom.
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Anode Rods

We’ve started on reinstalling the 70-gallon water heater in the new mechanical room. This same heater will be part of the hydronic heating system via a water-to-water heat exchanger. Note the socket needed to remove the old and add the new was 1 1/16”.

Note there are 2 anode rods in the photo. I hope yours are in better shape than what was replaced.

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Up the Creek

From a beautiful fall walk on the North Crestone Creek Trail. We made it to about 10400 feet where the trail opens up and the mega boulders provide a magnificent perch from which to gaze.

On the way up
SW & down towards the trailhead
Looking east
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Roses

At our last residence the first plantings were 4 roses, one in the back yard and the rest in the front. Very important as roses are a major ingredient in rosewater; and aren’t rose baths essential?

What a surprise it was to see the Crestone area has roses and there is a rose garden in the courtyard formerly hidden by the old office. These beauties are being transplanted around the property as we plan to build a Health & Fitness Center at their current address including a gym and other goodies.

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Approximately 8000 Pounds

Dan of Mudslinger Masonry out of Saguache added the natural stone cladding to the Temp Cast core. We were all surprised the cardboard would be embedded forever.

Notice the second cleanout at ground level. The smoke goes around both sides of the Temp Cast core.
That’s one of 3 cleanout options for the chimney. We choose the eastern facing one, to the right of the chimney from this view. The air intake under the door is also visible as is the handless side of the damper.
That’s Dan!

Tshering and Ling left the embedded stone which sits just below the oven facing the hot prep area. This stone contains a “seed symbol” that is the essence of a mantra associated with an important 6th C teacher, Guru Padmasambhava. It is pronounced “Hung”. This syllable signifies a power that dispels delusion. What will be first cooked inside?

The recommendation are two burns, 50lbs of
wood each, 12 hours apart.
The inferno in full swing.

Here is to us enjoying scrumptious food and drink basking in the warmth of the hearth.