The Last "Band Aid"

I got some leak stopper for my roof. This stuff is thicker than the lap cement. I used it to seal up the can lid that is plugging my chimney hole. I then troweled the lap cement onto the remainder of the roof to seal up any little leaks. I believe it will still leak at the joint of the two roofs because the lap cement was the wrong stuff to use on the crack and rips of the steep roof. It just drained off.

This is the last "band aid" I'm giving this roof though. I don't want to spend any more time and money on this cabin than I have too. I want to be tearing it down in November.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.