The Great American BBQ 2009

Last Saturday I somehow managed to find myself the job of helping out the competition for the World Brisket Open at The Great American BBQ 2009. I wish I could somehow figure out how to make that my full time job, walking around tasting BBQ and drinking a few beers with some really nice people. I recommend all of you trying to attend next years event it was a lot of fun. Here are a few shots from the day.
The Slaughter House Five team (otherwise known as the crew who started Oklahoma Joe's) were my host family for the day. My buddy Bryan is friends with them so we hung out all day and watched how the pros bbq.
The have rolling tool carts full of seasoning, brushes, thermometers etc.
One of the teams I checked on for the competition the guys who invented the Bacon Explosion (and yes I did try a bite it is good in a Heart stopping sort of way)
Their brisket out of the smoker.
slicing it up to enter the competition. They did not win or place in the top 10, I actually got to sample the brisket of the guys who won (Brew n Crew) and it was amazing.

Solar Pool Heater

Been a busy week on Roe Circle, Mark got started renovating the house next door, the Red house has the foundation back filled. This week I got the solar pool heater constructed. I've toyed with the idea in the past and we tried a variation when we first filled the pool in 2006. So after researching a bit on the net, and needing to buy a sump pump to help do some work on a friends pool the pieces fell into place. I'm using cheap irrigation pipe from Home Depot, $13 per 100 feet. Throw in some inexpensive fittings and a little tape and here you go.
Each circle is 100' of hose, they are all hooked together so that the water has to travel through all 500' before it reaches the pool. Thursday was our first non overcast day, we hooked up the sump pump to circulate the water. I put the pump in the deep end to help slow the water flow (takes alot of pressure away as your make the pump lift the water higher). Our test readings confirm that the heater works well. The surface temp of the water in the pool is 65 degrees (I bet the water at the bottom of the deep end is a degree or two cooler. At constant flow of roughly 2000 gallons per hour the water coming out of the solar heater was at 77 degrees. I'm not smart enough to calculate how long it is going to take us to raise the entire 18,000 gallons up in the 70's, I think we still lose alot of heat at night since temps still dip into the 50's.

I also have been working on the trellis for our pole beans to climb. I had a ton of Ipe scraps that are 1/4" x 1" that was used in stacking the Ipe I bought for the planters. So I painted some of it up to build the trellis. I was still deciding if orange or blue was the way to go. We ended up going with orange since the rim of the garden will eventually be painted blue.

Raised Garden Update

We got all the vegtables planted last week, along with mulching the new bed by the garage. The 2x6 will get painted soon enough, we are leaning towards a light blue. I'm also constructing a custom Ipe trellis for the pole beans to climb.

Weekend Follow Up and the Brookside Art Fair

The event Friday at Urbana went well, I don't know if we sold anything or not but we had a ton of people come through and it was a really fun evening. Check in to Studio Build for pics of the display in a few days. Jessica has been working her tail off in the yard the last couple of weeks on her days off. I've been too busy building furniture to offer a ton of help. The raised garden is finally taking shape. I was able to help Jessica add the compost, manure and dirt and till it in on Saturday. We are going to go shopping for vegtables today so we will follow up on that topic at a later date. Troy asked a few questions about the process on building the Ipe garden bed. When I mentioned wax and oil the Ipe I was referring to oiling the Ipe with a product called Penofin, it offers some protection to the wood to let it color and look hold up a little longer. The ends where waxed with a product called Anchorseal its a paint on wax that stops the ends of the Ipe from checking. The post are a different wood, the name excapes me I'll check on that.
In between furniture projects I was able to get in some edging next to the garage. The raised garden forced us to move some Peony's so we made a new garden bed next to the garage. It looks really nice and Jessica got all of the grass removed so we are ready to fill the rest of the bed with some more plants.
Jessica trimmed back the old Horsetail Reed and its new growth is amazing. I think it looks very prehistoric and I'm hopeing it gets a little taller than it did last year. I can see how it is known as invasive by the way it filled the planters.
Saturday night we made a trip to the Brookside Art Fair with our neighbors Eric and Elise. We were just going to wander around and look at stuff and wish we were rich enough to have a few extra thousand laying around to buy a painting or two. As we were walking through to last few booths on our way to the car we found an awesome artist making some really cool yard art. We purchased a couple of small pieces. First up is a piece from the gnome be gone series.