Sunday, December 6, 2009

Good Weather Test, Building Again.

I woke up this morning to -28C/-19F. You would never know it was that cold outside until you look at the thermometer, the shack was cozy enough for a king and his dog. I'm not totally laughing yet though, there is much colder yet to come sometime soon. There was a bit of a draft coming from what I call my fridge under the bed, so I hung a blanket and closed the fridge off. The fridge is now a freezer in this weather. I have a thermometer under there and the last time I looked it read -2C/about 30F. My cold water bottle dos'nt need to be outside for awhile. I had to take my potatoes, oranges and onions out of there for obvious reasons. I can sure notice a difference in the shack with that all closed off. The shack is skirted. Nothing professional, just full size sheets of OSB leaning up around the shack with a tarp in front covering the propane bottles. I'm kinda hoping that will be enough to keep the propane flowing when the temps get down to
-40C/F area. They might get some of the shacks heat hopefully.

I was building pretty much all day. I needed the old backhoe, but she did'nt want to run without a little coaxing. I had to plug it in for a bit and charge the batteries. I hate starting it in that kind of weather, but it was either go now or wait a few days by the sounds of the forcast. It is this kind of weather that I would just love to be feeding a nice warm fire in my new cabin. When I first started this whole project, I kinda thought that I would have been living in my new house by now, maybe next winter. It was cold, but it was a nice day for building, the sun was shining and there was no wind or snow.

The top picture, one long side wall and one end wall framed. I have an idea, but I'm still wondering how many windows and exactly what size and where they will go. Hopefully I'll have it all figured out for tomorrow morning.
There's the floor, (picture taken on a previous date), still not nailed and insulated. I'm going to wait until I have it a little more closed in and out of the weather to do the finishing touches on the floor.


I finally got done with all the safety courses for work(I think). It's nice to get those out of the way. So far they have not called me for work this month. Good. It sounds like I should be slow until the new year. There's always a possiblilty they could be wrong, but I sure do hope not.
Well there's an update, I'm just loving the country life even if it is a wee bit chilly out. They are talking about some more snow soon. I sure hope they're wrong, yesterday I spent quite a bit of the day plowing a big dump of snow that we just had and I have it all cleaned up nicely. Well I don't know who I'm supposed to talk to about that, but if you happen to be reading this blog, no more snow please.

8 comments:

  1. Well, at least you have the equipment there to take care of the snow!

    Hope the little nest stays warm enough for you and the dog and that the work on the cabin continues to go well!

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  2. Talking about your "refrigerator" reminds me of back a few years ago, about 25, up in Montana, we had shelves along one side of the grarge for our "winter refridgerator/freezer". Front end down low next to door was freezer and back end up high was fridge. We had the biggest refrigerator in the county and it was easily expandable, Best thing, come spring it was easy to clean.

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  3. Wow that is a little nippy, we have no snow as of yet but some is supposed to show up here tomorrow but the next day they are saying plus 8. Sounds like your having a good time figuring it all out though, nothing like hands on eh.

    Whats your thinking on keeping the propane flowing?? I have never had a problem and it has gotten to -35 here last winter.

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  4. Thanks Jim. The backhoe was an excellent investment. So far the nest is cozy, almost too cozy. It's actually pretty hard to leave it and go outside some days.

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  5. Sometimes the simplest fridges are the best ones hey Bob. They're bigger and don't cost anything to run. I'm still quite happy with the one I have going on here.

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  6. Hey Coal, it is a little warmer here tonight, but it sure aint no plus 8. Everything I do here it seems I have more thinking going on than building, but I guess maybe that is better than building twice. I'm hoping I have no problems with the propane. When it gets close to -40 apparently propane could quit (boiling?) or something, I'm not real sure. I have the propane covered with a tarp and I am hoping that it will get a little heat off the shack. I can remember using a tiger torch in the real cold where it would almost go out until I held the flame under the tank for a bit, then it would fire right up again. That's good news that yours has'nt ever froze up, I'm just not real familiar with it in the extreme cold.

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  7. It's looking great Mark. I'd send warm weather and sunshine up to ya but I'm all out. :)

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  8. Well thanks for the anyway Jeanie. I'm starting to get used to all this winter weather stuff now anyway. If it warmed up I'd probably melt or something.

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