Cabin build thread (Page 5 of 5)
| lol i suppose it's possible that someone could look into the window, but they would have to be on top of a mountain in the national forest at least 4 miles away. 65 acres of trees and a 600' elevation difference to the nearest house means no chance of locals peeping. pretty much 45% slope down from the window so all they would see is the ceiling anyways |
  Well everyone told me not to but I did it anyway. River rock copper and cedar. If the rock starts to hold odor or mildew I’ll chuck it out in the forest and get more. Kind of a weird, outdoorsy spa feel in a cabin. I think it’s at home on this mountain in the forest Last indoor project is an elevated loveseat with an integrated rifle rack on one side, and a heater, ham radio amplifier and ladder on the other side, with storage underneath for totes and food buckets |
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That shower does look cool. I imagine you're gonna remove all the gravel and wash it outside when you need to clean it? My wife has long hair and what you have going on would be a nightmare to the point I may just toss the old stone and replace with new each time it needs cleaning. |
"Some of the greatest dads I've ever seen weren't so much perfect as they were willing to work hard to overcome their failings. Does that make sense?"
Yes. Yes it does.
Yes. Yes it does.
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Bit of an update. Even though I’m not running the boiler in the spring and summer I’m still checking the water level. I’ve had a very slow leak which is super annoying because adding water messes with the ratio of anti corrosion chemical additive. Since I couldn’t find the leak I replaced all the stupid shark bite with legit permanent connections and the leak magically went away. Those things are a stupid amount of money for unreliable connections. Also by end of week I should have 5 cords of wood stacked and drying. Stacked 3 since Wednesday. All other systems running remarkably well. Just about everything is debugged and in a maintenance mode which turns out to be a fair amount. Aside from 3 chimneys, the diesel air heater requires cleaning, as does the boiler and tiny wood stove. The incinerator toilet needs occasional maintenance, etc. |
| The wooden grate of teak was plan A. I was planning to do the whole floor in it. But I thought it would be annoying to stand on so I did this. Now that you mention it though it would be pretty easy to make a horseshoe shaped grate to just replace the rock if it becomes problematic. |
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Almost had a fire. 12v strip light plastic connector thing melted and turned black. Noticed it when one string of lights stopped working. The head was completely covered by trim wood for aesthetics. Debate in my head on wisdom of that. On one hand, no airflow means heat can build up. On the other no airflow means no oxygen so less chance of the wood catching. |
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Turned out to be an easy fix just took a while. Wild goose chase until I put fresh batteries in the multimeter and stopped being stupid. Anyways a few homesteady pics, stacking firewood, bush hogging the trees and the easy and safe way to take care of downed trees on the side of the mountain.   
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Bit of drama this week. I used to check my battery every day and then I got tired of it since it was always ok. So… I really didn’t check it this summer. Until yesterday when someone asked how it was doing. I looked and saw this  After a bit of troubleshooting today I discovered that apparently 28 days ago, one of the PV breakers tripped and so for the past month I’ve been running on half my solar panels. On the positive side, having a big battery means I was able to go a month and still only drop into the 60% state of charge range. And now that I’m waiting a week for parts to be delivered, I’m not panicking or having to curtail usage. I should figure out how to set some sort of alarm though when the SOC hits like 50% though. If they hadn’t asked, I might have gone another month without checking. |
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Originally Posted By Weasel_Master: A shot of your solar setup and wiring would be interesting. That's my fall project. I got some old utility poles from work to embed at the cabin and then get my panels mounted. Started researching controllers. Q Previous page (pg4) has it. Top is temporary solar setup the bear walked on. Then around post 12 is the new array on 6x6 posts deep in ground with 2x12 boards. Battery and wiring upgrades are near bottom of page. |
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Originally Posted By taliv: easy fix. breaker was bad. when i started opening the housing, water poured out. everything in it was rusty. swapped breaker and it's making power again. guess i need to figure out a way to seal the cheap chinese boxes It isn't so much sealing as it is regulating the temperature swings as much as possible. Shade them and keep them protected from wind. The temp swings creates a vacuum and moisture is sucked in. The moisture condenses on all surfaces. If you have them mounted flat with the lid up then change the mounting to a vertical orientation. Also drill a small weep hole in the lowest point. It should be protected from rain. This will allow any trapped moisture to escape and help prevent condensation. |
Tennessee Squire
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First deep freeze and 4+ inches of snow passed uneventfully but well over a month before winter. Could be a long one. Trying to track wood usage in the boiler. I’m currently estimating 7.4 cubic feet of wood per freezing day. That’s roughly 18 days per cord. With 5 cords stacked, I have enough for about 90 freezing days. If we froze all winter I’d definitely need more. But Dec and March are above freezing and use a lot less wood per day. So still hoping 5 is enough to get me to spring even though I plan to replace a cord as soon as I use it. Also some gratuitous fall leave pics   
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the mystery of the disappearing water two days ago, 1100gal tank was full. temps got to about 5*F overnight, then were freezing pretty much all day yesterday. Today I go outside and hear both pumps sounding weird. I check and tank is empty. Couple inches in bottom, drained down to bottom of the port. So clearly, the water left through the PVC pipe as intended. Entire water system is empty. 0 pressure in the pressure tank. Just a tiny bit of water in the pex lines. Trickles out of sink for a few seconds then stops. Can't find any leaks in the system. No giant wet spots in the dirt under or around the cabin. No giant sheets of ice anywhere. Boiler's been running and using a pool heater to heat the tank, so the water would probably have been around 50* in the tank. 180* in the boiler circuit. Checked boiler and water level is full, and used a chem strip to test the water which still showed 350+ ppm molywhatever which means the anti rust chemical hasn't been diluted. I could maybe see how a PVC valve I use to drain the tank could have cracked and let the water flow out. That's happened before. However, that would not explain how water was able to escape the pressure tank, given the one-way check valve, and running pumps. Unless the check valve is defective, the water almost had to have escaped downstream of the pressure tank. But again, I'd think 1100gal would leave a pretty big wet spot and given the freezing temps, a sheet of ice. Now I have to wait until the next rain to get some water to test for leaks. good thing we're supposed to have a warm couple weeks coming up. -befuddled in TN |
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Originally Posted By taliv: First deep freeze and 4+ inches of snow passed uneventfully but well over a month before winter. Could be a long one. Trying to track wood usage in the boiler. I’m currently estimating 7.4 cubic feet of wood per freezing day. That’s roughly 18 days per cord. With 5 cords stacked, I have enough for about 90 freezing days. If we froze all winter I’d definitely need more. But Dec and March are above freezing and use a lot less wood per day. So still hoping 5 is enough to get me to spring even though I plan to replace a cord as soon as I use it. Also some gratuitous fall leave pics https://i.ibb.co/SXWXk63q/IMG-5437.jpg https://i.ibb.co/QFZXHKjd/IMG-5436.jpg https://i.ibb.co/nNqjYcBR/IMG-5443.jpg Great colors, yeah I'd want some extra cords of wood |
Carry it, shoot it. (repeat forever)
Swing Your Sword
Swing Your Sword
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got half inch of rain, which was enough to pressurize the system. didn't take long to find the leak! deep inside the instant propane water heater, a copper tube ruptured. was a gusher. hard to believe 1000 gal of water got pushed through it and there wasn't more evidence on the ground. but who knows? anyway, just took a few min with the sharkbite pex connections to bypass the propane unit and restore a leak-free path for hot water using only the water/water heat exchangers. i only use the propane unit in the summer anyways so i guess i'll have to replace it at some point, but no rush. |
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Originally Posted By taliv: got half inch of rain, which was enough to pressurize the system. didn't take long to find the leak! deep inside the instant propane water heater, a copper tube ruptured. was a gusher. hard to believe 1000 gal of water got pushed through it and there wasn't more evidence on the ground. but who knows? anyway, just took a few min with the sharkbite pex connections to bypass the propane unit and restore a leak-free path for hot water using only the water/water heat exchangers. i only use the propane unit in the summer anyways so i guess i'll have to replace it at some point, but no rush. Family place in NM has 1800gal capacity that feeds several cabins, uncles rent 2 of them in the summer and all it takes is some city people with no mind to water use to drain em in a day, much less with a leak |
Carry it, shoot it. (repeat forever)
Swing Your Sword
Swing Your Sword
I want to share this for anyone planning solar and battery to consider when sizing.  My system just went 38 days between full charges. That takes me back to late November. December for us was very unusually low rainfall. We normally get 3” or so in the month and we prob only got half an inch. However, cloud cover has been dense and we just haven’t had much sun. To combat this, I’ve added two temporary 460w solar panels (almost 30% increase to my permanent 6, which are two sets of 3 490w panels) at a much steeper angle. Watching the chargers, I’m getting almost as much from the two panels as I get from each of the 3 panels which I think is because of the steeper angle. Without the two extra panels, I don’t think I would be at 100% yet. My plan now annually is to take the temp panels down for 3 seasons and put them up when the days are short late Nov/dec/jan. I guess the point I’m making is I chose to upsize my battery from 12kwh to 69kwh instead of adding a generator and dependency on fuel supply. That 5x jump still gets me down to the 20-30% range in winter. and that's TN latitude, not crazy northern latitudes |
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Originally Posted By taliv: learned something new this winter ... despite popular opinion, pex will in fact split when frozen Eww... Hope it didn't cause much damage. |
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
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Winter update. Short story is we got about 12+ inches of snow and I couldn’t get up and down the mountain to restock my wood. (I keep about 5 days of wood up top due to limited space and the main wood storage is about 500’ lower elevation.) So when the wood ran out, the boiler got cold, everything froze. Low Temps were near zero for several days. (2-4 days below zero). And once again everything froze. Been slowly working on fixing all the plumbing. Finally have running water again indoors after replacing cracked heat exchanger, cracked pex, all 3 pumps, propane instant heater etc. This time, I ripped everything out and thoroughly insulated my plumbing box. Rerouted pex and relocated pumps. Relocated the electric fuse box etc. It’s smaller since there’s 2” foam sealed on top bottom all sides and the door. But relocating everything actually made working on it a little easier.  Still working on insulating outside the box by building plywood boxes around the pex lines and insulating inside them. This summer I’d like to build a compressed air system to blow water out of the pipes so I can winterize it if I’m not planning to run the boiler. |
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Originally Posted By taliv: Winter update. Short story is we got about 12+ inches of snow and I couldn’t get up and down the mountain to restock my wood. (I keep about 5 days of wood up top due to limited space and the main wood storage is about 500’ lower elevation.) So when the wood ran out, the boiler got cold, everything froze. Low Temps were near zero for several days. (2-4 days below zero). And once again everything froze. Been slowly working on fixing all the plumbing. Finally have running water again indoors after replacing cracked heat exchanger, cracked pex, all 3 pumps, propane instant heater etc. This time, I ripped everything out and thoroughly insulated my plumbing box. Rerouted pex and relocated pumps. Relocated the electric fuse box etc. It’s smaller since there’s 2” foam sealed on top bottom all sides and the door. But relocating everything actually made working on it a little easier. https://i.ibb.co/35k20ZXB/IMG-5771.jpg Still working on insulating outside the box by building plywood boxes around the pex lines and insulating inside them. This summer I’d like to build a compressed air system to blow water out of the pipes so I can winterize it if I’m not planning to run the boiler. Can you drain the pipes by opening a low-point valve and pour RV anti-freeze down the drains? |
"Some of the greatest dads I've ever seen weren't so much perfect as they were willing to work hard to overcome their failings. Does that make sense?"
Yes. Yes it does.
Yes. Yes it does.
|
Originally Posted By tree-hugger: Can you drain the pipes by opening a low-point valve and pour RV anti-freeze down the drains? My system (same stove) is just water, but people around here frequently use antifreeze in their lines for this reason. If you are at frequent risk of freezing up, I would definitely recommend going that route rather than trying to drain and refill (especially off grid with limited water resources) |
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Cool new pics! Side note not necessarily directed at the OP….just a general observation…I think a lot of people underestimate how much energy goes into keeping a place above freezing. I’m a huge fan of rigid foam sheets whenever applicable. |
"It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things."
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
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Originally Posted By tree-hugger: Can you drain the pipes by opening a low-point valve and pour RV anti-freeze down the drains? So there’s two circuits. The heated water. And the heating water. The heating boiler circuit is closed and like loon said, can be solved with about 150 gal of glycol / antifreeze. However I did add a drain at the low point. Unfortunately, the heat exchangers are complex meshes of copper and steel pipes to maximize heat transfer. It doesn’t lend itself to draining. I’m doubtful I can even blow it out with compressed air since it’s a 1” pipe. The heated water is easily drained. |
  Got the new and improved insulation on the outdoor plumbing. Hopefully it will be enough. We will find out on attempt number four to survive winter late this year. Got the boiler circuit and supply lines from tank wrapped together in insulation and then built plywood boxes around them. That should keep the winds off of them at least. Nice homes for all manner of critters too. Need to get some paint on them as soon as it stops raining and they dry out. |
Looks good! Hope it works, and I’m sure you hope so as well.