Sunday, April 26, 2009

Trailers, Water Damage, and Video

So here is the trailer my brother, Keeper of the Mountain, bought. It's a 30 foot prowler.








It had some water damage.













This is not a problem! He can rebuild it! He has the technology! Better, stronger, faster!








He kept finding more dry rot. To quote him:"The more we looked the worse it got. I decided that I would keep removing wood until all of the rot and mold was gone. At one point it became silly to stop and crazy to continue. We decided to rebuild from the start and have a little fun while we were at it."



Finally, the rot was all eradicated. Of course, this lead to another problem.









So, now it's off to the drawing board somewhere between this drawing...









and this model lies an idea for the rebuild. Watch the fun videos and stay tuned.



Friday, April 24, 2009

My brother, The Keeper of the Mountain, bought a camp trailer for $1,100 with some water damage. He decided to remove all of the damaged parts and ended up with a frame and axles. He's decided to build a cabin on what remains. With any luck, I'll get video of his efforts soon.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Domestic Avalanches

As I've mentioned before, the snow gets deep around here. The roofs around here that survive long enough to be old tent to be metal and steep. This allows snow to slide off instead of piling up deep. This puts ant vent pipes that go through the roof at risk. To the left here you see a deflector I put up a decade ago. It's just a piece of metal roofing bent into a wedge and hooked down with roofing screws. When the snow piles up and then slowly slides off, this splits the snow and saves the pipe.



My dad went for a stronger defector. This one is 2 years old. It's not as sharp, but is made of rebar and 1/8 inch steel and bolted to the roof with three large lag bolts.



A few feet away on my roof is another pipe a little lower on the roof. The sheet metal wedge on this one has been ripped off twice. I'm going to re-route this pipe out the end wall and patch the hole.



Last year the snow came down very light and collected four feet deep on the parents' house. It then rained and reduced that snow to about 2 feet. then the whole works came off in one shot in one night. This deflector was just a few feet away from the other one and just a little lower on the roof. It didn't completely tear it off, but it did bent it up good. These are the forces I have to design around.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Plans, Blueprints, and Architects

Any time you build a house you need blueprints to plan out what you are doing. If you have money and plan to hire out help, you will probably need to get an architect to draw up a set of plans. Since I have no money and am doing all the work myself, I get to be my own architect. I loaded Gimp onto my laptop, poured myself a cup of coffee, and drew them up.



I had Kinkos print it up big, and then I started writing notes on it.I will need to install two drain pipes before the concrete is poured. The red part is what I will be building, the black part is the existing bathroom/ utility room, and the X'ed out section is an existing wall I will tear out after I get the new structure weather tight.



I marked out the spot on the ground where I will build the new structure. As it stands, a portion of the septic drain field and all of the dry well system is buried under where I am building, not to mention the pine tree. It looks like my next job is to start digging.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Concrete Party

My parents, who are in their 70s, an family friend, in her 70s, my older brother, Z Mad Poet, his tiny wife, and myself gathered to pour concrete for the floor of the utility room and front hall on my parents house.

This tool is a heavy walled stove pipe with a bottom and a handle welded to it. It, filled to the brim, and eighteen 2lb coffee cans filled with washed sand and gravel make for a 5:1 ratio for our cement. The official ratio is 1 cement, 2 sand, 3 gravel, but our cement works just fine. Cement made this way costs $75 a cubic yard. We mixed and poured a yard and a half in 5 hours.

We made some calls about the cost of bringing it in by truck already made and just having it poured. It would cost about $85 a yard, but there is a 10 yard minimum.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Attack by Fire!

Some messes are big enough to justify an attack by fire. This used to be a camper. I stuck a chain through the camper and tried to drag it. I came apart instead.



I took the splitting maul to it to break it into small enough pieces to move. I ended up smearing the head with aluminum and breaking the handle. Fortunately the axe and hoe was enough to complete the job. Somehow the ceramic figurines concealed within the camper survived this.



With a little used motor oil and a propane torch, it lit quite well. I threw all of the camper parts onto the fire including the "non-flammable" parts.



It burned enthusiastically. I should take a moment to say something about fire being dangerous and you shouldn't do this at home and I'm a trained professional. Truth is I'm not a professional fire handler. I've just grown up with fire as a tool since I was born and have been playing with fire since I was 8. I've never had a fire I started escape me. My whole family has this reputation of with fire. Some of my early memories are of wood stoves that had to have their lids held down to keep the fire raging within from popping the lid off and escaping. Our wood stoves frequently glowed red hot. This long experience of using fire has honed our families skills so it's quite unusual for us to ever loose control of one of our fires.



Don't let anyone tell you Aluminum doesn't burn. The glass from the windows melted as well.



After about 3 hours the fire reduced to coals and burned for another 7 hours.This relatively small pile is all that remains of the camper.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Usefull Devices and Roof Patching

This wooden ladder was made from slab wood bought from a local mill.It's safer than most ladders because it has the hand rails that extend above the roof. It I attached it to the eve it would be even safer. If you build one, use screws to put the rungs on it. Even if you plan to only use it for one month, useful devices have this habit of sticking around a lot longer than intended, because, well, they're useful. This ladder is probably over 10 years old. The nails in the bottom rung pulled out on me, so I put screws in all of the rungs today.
I put the aluminum roofing material upside down and flipped it over several times while I worked with the lap cement. It does not seemed to have helped much with the mixing. It also leaked.

I took the lid to one of the empty roofing compound cans and glued it over the chimney hole with lap cement.
I found that I got better results in spreading the lap cement on the upper problem spots with the 4 foot mixing stick than with the trowel. Once I got to the lower areas, the trowel worked better. If this doesn't stop the leak, then I will be looking to manage the leak rather than stop it.

I troweled on the can of aluminum tone roofing compound. I barely got done and it started raining.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Spokane

The North edge of Spokane is 30 mile from my place. By the time you get anyplace useful, you get 40 to 50 miles from my place. As a result, you don't want to just make a quick trip to Spokane for any old reason, because, for one, there is no such thing as a quick trip to Spokane, and two, it costs about $10 in gas to make the trip.

I went to Habitat again. I bought a 5 gallon can of Blackjack roofing cement for $23 and two one gallon cans of Polyurethane paint for $10. They did not have the aluminum roof stuff I used before, so I went to Home Depot for it. The same stuff that was $23 at Habitat was $76 at Home Depot. I only got one can. I'll spread it thin using a trowel instead of the broom like they recommend, but today I'll just set the can upside down.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

All eight post for the shipping containers are in the ground. We'll park the trailer with the container right about where the minivan is and jack them up. The post will be cut off once we know how high the trailer is.


The first foot of dirt is topsoil that will turn very hard once it dries out her next month or so. The next foot down is sand. Beyond that is sand and rocks. When it dries, the sand will flow out of your digging tools almost like water. The rock just stop your tools dead regardless of the water content.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The garage was built by the same guy that built the main part of the cabin. Snow has broken the roof, so we need another one. Shipping containers will serve as part of the structure. We will jack the container up off the trailer and slip a beam under the container and set them on these posts. The posts are too long right now because we don't know how high the container will need to be to clear the trailer. once we know that we will chainsaw the posts off to a reasonable level.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Once Upon a Cabin Dank and Dreary

I finished taking the hearth out of the cabin today. It was a four foot square made of 2x4s filled with old bricks, sand, and a little ash and sawdust. I don't like brick. Its functionality is too poor for me, so I stuck them in the driveway to serve as gravel.



It's dark and damp in the place. That really messes with someone prone to depression like me. After about a half hour I really need to get out of the place. I really need to get some lights in the place so I can work in there.Before I put lights in there, I need to clean up the wiring. It was originally wired with both 12 volts and 120 volts. I need to go in with my wire cutters and do some pruning. The blue plastic electrical box you see is warped from the heat of the wood stove that was in here.


Before I do that, I need to get it to stop raining inside harder than it rains outside. I think I found the leak sources in the upper roof. I'll see if I can take care of that Tuesday.

Disappointment is Drippy

I'm a little disappointed with the results of the roof coating I did. At the joint between the two part of the cabin where I coated the roof, I still have massive dripping going on. I suspect it is coming in higher on the roof and running down the under side of the steep attic ceiling and then comes out where the angle of the roof changes. This would mean I would need to do something to the North half of the roof of the main cabin even though I won't actually be living under it. Now that the 8 feet or so of snow we got here this winter is gone, I might be able to find the problem.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Roof Patching

Wafer Board, OSB, Oriented Strand Board; whatever you call this stuff, it's junk. There is a whole row of nails I put in this roof that just pulled themselves out of the OSB. This has contributed to the roof leaks the bedroom addition I built and I plan to move into about May 1.


The composite roofing I put up has plenty of it's own sins.In this case the material pulled the nail heads right through itself and then the wind pealed it up.

The old chimney blew apart in the wind and now lets in water as well.

I went down to the local Habitat for Humanity surplus yard and bought a damaged can of roof coating for $23. I chose a light colored variety for a reason. Once June shows up around here, it starts getting very hot. Light colored stuff will reflect the suns heat better. The solids in this can have settled to the bottom. I spent half an hour mixing this can and I still didn't get it mixed completely. The instructions say to use a broom to apply it, so I got our old broom out and used it like a giant paint brush. This worked quite well.


The first thing I did is spread it on the bare OSB and lay the roofing back down and walk on it. The Idea here is to glue it down I think I should have spread it on the underside of the roofing too, but I didn't. I'll have to see how it worked out in a couple of days.


I started a little ways up the cabin roof and worked down.


I figure I covered about 1/3 of the roof with the 5 gallon can I got. I think I will get 3 more cans. Two to finish the roof, and one for patching.


This stuff is very messy. I'm glad I opened the can on the roof.


It will cost me more to clean this broom than it will to just buy a cheap broom for the rest of the roof. I will also buy some disposable gloves as it doesn't come off the hands willingly.


I'm sure that any roofers in my audience will see something wrong with what I am doing. While I encourage you to tell me what I'm doing wrong, keep in mind I want to be tearing this down next year at this time.