10/21/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up, I met Mike Pearson and his girlfriend, Linda, for lunch at the 59er Diner. There was a fairly big rockslide up near the pass which had two lanes blocked, but they had a lane open each way so there was no delay. After lunch, we proceeded to the property and arrived at about 1:00. There was no frog in the gate can.

I had a great time visiting with Mike and Linda and showing them the grand tour of the place. We fed the chipmunks, but the jays didn't come around until just as they were leaving. They stopped the car and fed them a few peanuts before they left.

After they left, I went to work to solder the plumbing I had put in place last week. But before I could do that, I needed to figure out which pipe was which. I should have done that before the trench was backfilled but I forgot. Since only one of the pipes is buried deep enough to avoid freezing, it is important that I use that one for the supply pipe and the other one for the drain. To figure it out, I brought my radio up and had it playing with the speaker directly above one of the pipes. Then, I went down to the creek and listened at the end of each pipe to see which one was louder. One of them clearly was. Then, I played the radio into the other pipe and went down again to listen. This time the other pipe was louder, so I was pretty sure I had identified which pipe was which.

With the pipes identified, I soldered all the fittings together at the loop, and I soldered fittings for hose connections at the other ends. Then I screwed on the hose bib and the hose fittings hand tight and quit for the day.

On Wednesday morning, I tightened the fittings with a wrench. Then I took off the screens I had put on the vent openings last week. I hadn't put window screen on with the hardware cloth and I decided that I should do both at the same time. I brought a new roll of hardware cloth with me so I made six pieces to fit the openings and I made six pieces of screen. Then I stapled screen and hardware cloth over all six vent openings.

Larry stopped by for a visit and we had a nice chat in the building, sitting in real chairs and looking out real windows. On his way out, we fed the jays and then greeted Bert and Ernie who happened by at that moment.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making a sawing jig for a Cub Scout project. I also decided to make a different one-way rodent valve for the building. Instead of using the small conduit pipe, I decided to use an 8-inch stovepipe that goes through the foundation about 5 feet off the ground. By putting a 90 degree elbow on the outside, opening straight down, I am sure that rodents won't be able to hop up the five feet and get enough of a grip on the sheet metal to get back inside the pipe. And, if they crawl out onto the pipe, I don't think they can go down the elbow and make the 180 degree vertical turn and get back up into the pipe.

On Thursday morning, I made a plywood ramp so that the rodents can get up to the stovepipe rodent valve from the inside. I put a few peanuts on the ramp and a few inside the pipe. That way I'll be able to tell next week if they were in there. Once they get in the pipe, I am sure that they will see that they can get out of the building that way if they want to. So when I finally plug up all the other ways they can get in the building, I think they will be able to get out but not in. If that doesn't evict them all, I will resort to traps of some kind. We'll see what happens.

Next, I winterized the trailer. I was pleased that the valve I had installed at the water pump worked fine. There was no water in the tank to dilute the antifreeze. Once the water hose was disconnected from the trailer, I connected it to the copper water pipes so that the water flows up the supply pipe, back down the drain pipe, and from there back into the hose that supplies the trailer. That way, there will be a constant flow of water through those pipes from now on. That should keep them nice and clean and keep them from stagnating.

After getting a couple jugs of water for my use for the rest of the day, I went up to the spring and poured a quart of bleach into the hose. That will kill anything that might be in the hose and pipes and it should be completely cleared out by the time I go back up next week.

It seemed that the flow out the end of the hose into the creek wasn't as strong as it should be. Yet, when I disconnected the hose from the drain side of the pipe, there was a lot more pressure than I thought there should be. I was thinking that there might be a reservoir of trapped air in the pipes or hose that would make it act like that. Or, it could be that the hose was stretched by the pressure. But, what I couldn't figure out is why, with that much pressure in the pipe, was the flow out the hose so low. Thinking about it on the drive home, the only explanation that seemed to make sense to me was that there was a kink in the hose under the trailer. I had pulled on the hoses quite a bit from under there and there was a good chance that could explain it. I'll have to check it out next week. I left for home at 1:20.