Weeks of 10/24/10 and 10/31/10: I skipped going to Camp Serendipity because I was in Florida visiting with John and Harold intending to see another shuttle launch. The launch was delayed for a month after a few false starts so we didn't see it.

11/9-11/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way I stopped at Doug's RV and bought a gallon of antifreeze. This would be the latest I had ever winterized the trailer so I was hoping I wouldn't be too late. There was a little snow in the air above 2000 feet and there was a little on the road up at the pass. There was supposed to be a winter storm coming and I figured that I had gotten ahead of it.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 11:10 and was eagerly greeted by Bert and Ernie. I hadn't seen them for about three weeks so they seemed extra excited.

In the cabin, the thermostats on all the heaters were set to 55 degrees but the temperature in the cabin was 65 degrees. I'll have to learn where to set the thermostats while I'm gone to keep the temperature somewhat above freezing. Evidently 55 is a little too high. The temperature outside was about 35 degrees.

I cut some wood and then built a fire in the wood stove. When the fire got going good, Dave Westermann showed up to give me my final electrical inspection. We started outside where I uncovered the conduit at the bottoms of several of the potholes he had asked me to dig. Then we went inside where he checked off the remaining items I needed to correct. He signed off my permit and told me that I am all done with electrical inspections. Hooray!

After Dave left, I moved my stuff into the trailer, had lunch and then took a short nap. Then I revived the fire in the wood stove and went to work vacuuming the log walls in the loft. Since there had been so much insulation dust on the floors, I figured there might be a lot of it on the walls too. But after vacuuming, I hardly got any dust in the vacuum so I decided not to vacuum the walls downstairs. There was no dust on them to speak of.

I quit early and took a nice shower. It snowed lightly but only a skiff had accumulated on the ground.

On Wednesday there was no new snow on the ground. I guess that was the extent of the storm that had been predicted. After breakfast I went up and cut some more wood for the stove. The flock of four gray jays showed up for peanuts during the work. While I was feeding them from my hands, Bert and Ernie also showed up. If I held my hands up high enough, the birds would still eat out of them even though the dogs were rubbing against my legs.

After going down to the trailer for dog biscuits, I went back up and started the fire in the stove. Then I went to work and filled the potholes back in. I was glad to have gotten that done before the snow arrived so the holes wouldn't be left open all winter.

Next I disconnected and drained the hose on the front porch so that it wouldn't freeze up. I'll hook it back up in March when the scouts come up for a camping trip.

I got out the plumbing parts that I have and looked at the job of extending the copper loop and connecting the pex pipes further along. I realized that I still needed a copper tee so I decided not to work on plumbing until I had all the parts I need. Instead, I decided to work on the heating and ventilation system. It is important to get this done soon because I want to circulate the warm air from the loft down into the bedroom at least. Eventually I will duct it over to the bathroom and utility room as well, but the way it is, I can either direct the air to the outside, which is the normal summer mode, or directly into the crawl space. Either way, the replacement air will be drawn up into the cabin from the crawl space which is a bad idea. By ducting the air from the fan into the bedroom, there will be no need for replacement air. I still need to provide replacement air for the wood stove, so installing the combustion air duct will be another high priority project for this fall.

While I was in the crawl space, I heard the water heater making a sort of hissing sound. That didn't seem normal to me and I was concerned that it might be boiling. I went up to the bathtub and turned on the water. The water wasn't extra hot and some air came out of both the hot and the cold pipes. I figured that during the time I was gone, enough air had gotten into the system to cause that hissing sound. Sitll it didn't quite make sense to me. But the hissing sound stopped so I didn't worry much more about it.

I started on the ventilation system by selecting a 2-foot stovepipe and cutting a hole in it to accommodate a "robber", which is a rectangular sheet-metal duct that interfaces with a round duct in order to "rob" air from it. As soon as I got the hole cut, I realized that I had chosen the wrong size pipe. The pipe was 5-inch and should have been 6-inch. I'll need that 5-incher later so no harm was done, but I felt a little foolish for the mistake.

I didn't have a short 6-inch duct, so I cut an 18-inch piece from a long one and installed the robber on it. Then I cut the rectangular hole in the bedroom floor where the register will go. By the time I finished, it was lunch time.

After lunch and a nap, I made the sheet-metal assembly that connects the floor register to the robber and stovepipe below. Since the stovepipe will run beneath the joists, and the joists are 11 7/8" deep, the robber isn't long enough to reach even with one 4x10 extension. I needed another 3 inches, or so, so I cut that out of a length of 4x10 rectangular duct material. That material consists of just two adjacent sides of the duct, so you have to fasten two together to make a complete duct. I made such a duct about 3 inches long and connected it to the extender. With all the pieces connected and screwed together, I taped up all the joints and seams with high-quality metal duct tape.

Then I started installing the ductwork. This required many trips up and down, first to get the assembly to seat in the hole in the floor, and then to measure and cut the stovepipes and get the elbows required to connect the register assembly to the fan assembly. It was very awkward working in the crawl space because of the big boulder and uneven bedrock in that corner. Moreover, I had most of my scaffold frames stored there and I decided to work around them rather than move them. This just exacerbated the problems I was having simply as a result of being a novice sheet-metal worker and HVAC installer.

I got one full length section of pipe connected, although not screwed down, and I measured for another section, which was somewhat shorter than a full pipe. After cutting the pipe to the measured length, and trying to connect it up, I realized that it was about 3 inches too short. I realized that the old carpenter's rule of measuring twice and cutting once also applies to sheet-metal work. Frustrating.

It was about 7:30 so I decided to quit for the day. The water heater was making the hissing sound again and it made me wonder again. I went upstairs and took a nice shower. The hissing stopped after that. I went down to the trailer for the night.

On Thursday morning, I started another fire in the stove, and fed Bert and Ernie and the gray jays as I had done the previous morning. Then I went to work winterizing the trailer. I went through the steps of my IV method and it worked without a hitch. When that job was done, I went back to work on the sheet-metal.

In another example of serendipity, I discovered that the remnant of the first 6-inch pipe I had cut was exactly 3 inches longer than the pipe that was 3 inches too short. I had the piece of pipe I needed without doing any more cutting. But since this pipe had two female ends on it, I had to do a sex change operation on one end of it. Fortunately I had bought the tool I needed to perform the operation. I worked the crimper around one end of the pipe and in no time I had a proper male end. I took the pipe down to the crawl space and discovered that I couldn't install it without removing the register/robber assembly from the floor.

After a few more trips up and down from the bedroom to the crawlspace, I got all the ductwork connected and taped up. I had also temporarily taped up the end of the pipe that will lead to the bathroom so that the air would be forced to go up into the bedroom and couldn't leak into the crawl space. Next, I switched my home-made duct valve from summer mode to winter mode so the air would be directed to the bedroom instead of outside. It was very gratifying to turn the fan on and feel that warm air from the loft come blowing up into the bedroom. I'm almost ready for cold weather. I closed up, packed up, had lunch, and left for home at 1:35 feeling almost elated about my electrical inspection and my working HVAC system.