Rainy Day and Monday

I woke up this morning to a soaking rain. No, that's not entirely true. I woke up at 4 AM when my two vicious hunters decided to lick me in the face because their food dish had gone empty, but that's a separate subject. As it stands yesterday, we are 1.75 inches short on rain around here. That may not sound like much, but the entire month of June only dumps an average of 1.86 inches of rain, so this morning's rain is a good thing. This is the first rain I've received that allows me to note where the cabin still leaks. I have identified three leaks in the areas I use, so I can now keep important stuff out of those areas. Also good about this rain is that it confirms that putting the tire compost bins under the eve to funnel more than the usual amount of rain into them is working as well.

I got some more information on on Prowler Rebuild this morning from my brother, The Keeper of the Mountain. The windows are Low-E windows from Pella. I'm not sure what their specific stats are, but they aren't your grandfather's windows in that there are more good qualities to them than being able to see through them.

I'm a long way from putting windows in my place, but I've picked out the basic type of window I have in mind. They will allow solar heat to pass right through them (High SHGC), but won't let heat escape through air leakage (Low AL) or heat transfer (Low U). Since each of the four windows I have in mind will point to a different point of the compass, so the they will each have a different sun shade designed specifically for their roles in the house's function.

To build these sunshades properly, I need to build myself a simple solar observatory. While taking my local Latitude line and adding and subtracting the tropic lines to determine the sun's angle at my local solar noon has some value, the value of actually measuring the angles of the sun once an hour on 5 key points in the year is an order of magnitude greater. The summer solstice is coming up in a couple weeks, so I need to get busy with that, or miss my oportunity for the next year. I'll write more about this later.

The Keeper of the Mountain assures me that he has no intention of hauling his trailer around much. Moving it will be a rare but possible thing, not a regular occurrence. This tells me that his use of nails and T-111 are not a big deal as it won't be suffering the torquing, flexing, and shaking a travel trailer would have to deal with. At 8.5 feet by 32 feet he is able to put a lot of quality stuff in it affordably. With lots of meticulous care of the external weatherizing maintenance, this could last 20 to 30 years without serious repairs.

One of the things I over looked, is that early in his project, he performed a spring over axle conversion. This is usually done to 4x4 trucks to provide greater ground clearance. In this case, he did it to get the wheels out of his living space. Both are very good reasons to do this.

I guess if you go to the lumber yard to pick up lumber with a minivan your operation may get called "cute." I recommend going with a pink minivan and nice bows on the lumber for the complete effect.