12/14-16/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I had just caught a cold and was fighting it with Zicam so I was not operating at my peak. There was snow on the road all the way over the pass so I used 4wd all the way to Camp Serendipity.

I arrived at 1:00 and saw that the driveway had not been plowed. There was about 6 inches of snow on the roadway but with 4wd I had no trouble driving about three quarters of the way to the trailer. Rather than putting my snowshoes on, I post-holed through 8 inches of crusty snow to carry my gear up.

After lunch and a nap, I cut the 6" stovepipe sections to fit for the replacement-air duct. Then I spent quite a bit of time making a screen cap for the hole in the hearth where the duct enters the room. When I had made that hole in the hearth, I had made two nested bands of aluminum that were positioned over the hole I had cut, and plugged, in the subfloor. The inside of the bands had been filled with mortar, and the outside band was mortared to the marble slabs. When this assembly was knocked out, the two aluminum bands separated. The outer one still lines the hole in the hearth, and the inner one came out still attached to the more-or-less circular disk of mortar.

In the process of making the hearth, the bands had gotten deformed so that the hole was more elliptical than circular. This meant that the stovepipe elbow, which had to enter the hole had to be deformed to fit, and it meant that the screen cap over the hole also had to be made to fit.

Deforming the elbow was no problem because the metal is easy to bend to fit. But making the screen cap to fit took a little doing. I used 1/4" hardware cloth for the screen, which is intended to keep things from falling down into the hole, which will end up under one corner of the wood stove. To make the cap, I removed the aluminum band from around the mortar disk that had come out of the hole, and then used a mason's hammer to true up the top edge of the disk. Since this disk had the correct shape to fit in the hole, I used it as a template, or a form, for bending the wire screen.

I clamped the screen to the top of the disk, and then used a small hammer to gently bend the screen down all the way around to form a cylinder around the disk. I made a mistake by thinking that I wanted the screen cylinder to be 3/4" deep because that is the thickness of the subfloor. So after a 3/4" cylinder was formed, I wrapped a tight piece of rebar tie wire around the base of the cylinder so that I could bend the rest of the screen up into a plane parallel to the top of the screen cap. This made a sort of shallow straw hat looking structure.

I was happy with how it came out until I took it down to the crawlspace and pushed it up into the hole to see how it fit. It fit nice and snugly enough but when I went back up on top and looked at it, I felt pretty foolish. The screen, being only 3/4" deep was at the level of the top of the subfloor which made it an inch below the top of the marble hearth. I wanted it to be flush with the top of the marble.

While I was down in the crawlspace, I discovered that there was a lot of water inside the temporary tar paper pipe and on the outside of the section of stovepipe that connected to the cap on the outside of the building. I couldn't imagine why it was so wet, but the water obviously must have come in between the vent cap and the sill log. I figured that snow had blown onto the cap and that the water had gone in through that tight crack between the pipe and the wood. That was bad news. It would eventually lead to rot inside the sill log.

I was feeling pretty bum about the water, my ill-fitting screen cap, and the cold in my head that was stuffing me up. Since there was still a little time left, I decided to use it on something fun. I had brought a doorbell kit with me so I decided to start stringing the wires for it. That is a fun, easy job. I got the wires strung for the back bell before I showered and quit for the day.

On Wednesday, Bert and Ernie showed up right after breakfast for hugs and biscuits. They seemed extra eager for hugs, so we spent a lot of time with them sitting in the snow leaning up against me while I rubbed their ears, stroked their chins and necks, and hugged them around their shoulders. I think Bert is the most affectionate dog I have ever met. He got me in a good mood.

When I went to work, I started on the water problem. It didn't take long to figure out that the water hadn't come in from outside after all. Instead it was condensation that had formed on the outside of the stovepipe. The inside of the pipe was perfectly dry, as was the cap on the outside of the building. But the pipe coming into the crawlspace was at the temperature of the outside, which was below freezing, and the air in the crawlspace is damp and a lot warmer. Perfect conditions for condensation on the cold metal. The solution will simply be to insulate the pipe, but that can wait.

Next I went to work on the screen cap for the hole in the hearth. After pondering my blunder for a while, I decided that I couldn't tolerate it so I bit the bullet and took the screen back out to re-make it. I clamped the mortar disk back onto the screen cap again and then tightened the tie wire loop around it again. Then with a small hammer, I bent the screen down around the mortar disk all the way around to form an inch-and-three-quarter cylinder. Fortunately the screen is made of wire that has almost no spring to it, so that it deformed nicely and was pretty easy to shape. I was happy with the final result.

The screen cap fit snugly in the hole with the top of the cap even with the top of the marble slab just as I wanted. And, the female end of the stovepipe elbow fit snugly and easily up into the cylinder of the screen cap. Perfect.

Next I went to work on the duct run. The pipe sections fit together well enough, but I was disappointed with the quality of one 2-foot section that I had bought at Lowe's and had brought up with me. It was supposed to be galvanized pipe, and that's what the sales receipt says, but it seemed more like it was aluminum, or a thinner gauge pipe than the ones I had gotten from Home Depot. The seam where the pipe snaps together also didn't look as substantial or positive.

Since the pipe run isn't exactly straight, the plan was to get enough play in the two joints between the elbow and the cap to get the run connected. The pipe sections had to be joined first, and then the elbow could be positioned in far enough so that it met the hole above and could be pushed up into the hole.

After I had joined all the pipes, I was pushing it together to get the elbow positioned and I heard a loud pop. I didn't know what it was, but the elbow had moved into the exactly correct position to go up into the hole. I pushed it up and then secured it there by screwing in a strap of plumber's tape. Then I went looking for what had made that popping sound. I went outside thinking that I had pushed the cap out of the wall. But I discovered that was not the case.

Back inside, I saw that the seam in that Lowe's section of pipe had let go and opened up on the end where the male end of the elbow had been forced in. This was pretty disappointing. I tried snapping the seam back together where it was, and it seemed possible so I set to work doing it.

I wrapped a few lengths of rebar tie wire around the pipe and one by one tightened each of these loops up as I squeezed the pipe seam back together starting at the end where it had not come completely apart. That worked pretty well to the point where there is only a skinny opening in the seam, about an inch long and about an eighth of an inch wide at the widest right up against the joint with the elbow. It could be made to work this way, by adding a couple more wire loops and taping it up good, so I left it the way it was, not sure whether I'll replace that section of pipe or tape it up the way it is. At any rate, I'll buy the pipe at Home Depot from now on.

By that time, I went in for lunch and a very welcome nap. Afterward I went back to work on the doorbells. I finished running all the wires except for penetrating the log walls to the outside, and I installed the chime and the transformer. I had quite a bit of trouble attaching the transformer to the electrical box up in the wiring closet. This box is identified as Box 36 on my electrical diagrams, but I discovered that I had labeled two boxes with the number 36. I will update the diagrams and re-designate the box in the wiring closet as Box 51. Eventually, with the help of an EMT adapter, I successfully attached the transformer to the box and hooked it up.

With everything but the pushbuttons installed, I tested the bells and found that they didn't work quite right. The back bell worked fine, but the front bell only worked once. You had to power the transformer down and back up again in order to ring the front doorbell again. Another disappointment. After checking all my work again, I called the troubleshooting 800 number for the manufacturer and learned that they were closed for the rest of the day. I figured I would do likewise so I took a shower and quit for the day.

On Thursday morning, I called the manufacturer and after a couple conversations and trying a few things, the doorbell system eventually worked right. I think the original problem was that the wire connections simply weren't tight enough.

Next, I installed the buttons on the outsides of the log walls. I used a home-made bit I had made to drill through the logs. The bit was made of a length of stiff wire of about 10 gauge. I had flattened a half-inch of one end and filed a facsimile of a spade bit on the end. This bit cut a nice tiny hole through the logs which the pair of wires just fit into. It made for a really neat installation if I say so myself. I happily rang each doorbell whenever I went in or out of one of the doors.

Just before I was ready to quit for the week, Mike showed up to plow my driveway. I moved my truck out onto the road so he could work, and I invited him up after he finished so he could see the place. I took a few pictures of him as he came up to visit. He also gave me the name and numbers for a sheetrock guy. When he left, I closed up and quit for the week. I left for home at 1:15.