My 15.75 x 30 Jemez Cabin

[MountainDon]

Code? No idea. Actually this is something that is not addressed by code as far as I can tell. Gas refrigerators are allowed. My solution comes out of left field, so to speak. I can't see where a reasonable concern would come from though. Of course an inspector might have problems if he can't think outside the book.

This is basically the same thing that works on RV's and my RV fridge stays lit driving down the interstate passing and being passed, head wind crosswinds or tail winds. The RV fridge never blew out once. The Servel/Dometic 400 (same animal) went out probably 6 times in a couple hours with the purchased vent kit. With a week's service under the belt my solution has burned strong and constant.

I don't see how a flapper could be used as there are only convection currents moving the air; not enough force to open thr typical flapper, IMO. . I deliberately placed the lower vent above the floor level to keep direct drafts from "bothering" the burner flame. Note the burner head is enclosed but the standard covers are not air tight and is right down at floor level (left rear of unit).

John, the minimum clearances recommended (1" on sides and rear and 4" top I believe) are to permit sufficient air flow to the rear of the refrigerator and up over the top. Air is needed for (1.) combustion (to lower left rear) and for (2.) cooling the condenser coils at the unit top rear. It doesn't matter where that air comes from, as long as it can move freely. The typical installation requires that side wall and top clearance for the air to circulate to behind the unit and then vent out the top.

A thermostat controlled fan would help circulate the air and permit a flapper, but I fall back to my RV experience and say that is an unnecessary complication, IMO. Also unnecessary and unwanted power use when off grid.

One more thing I was going to leave till later, but now is as good a time as any to mention it. I will be installing a baffle behind the refrigerator at the height of the condenser coils. It will bridge the space between the cabin wall and the condenser. It will come to within a quarter inch of the coils. This baffle forces all the rising air to pass through the condenser. Without a baffle there is approximately 5 inches of clear space between the condenser and the wall. The path of least resistance is for the air to bypass the condenser. A baffle makes the condenser cool better. Again, it's what I did in the RV many years ago on the recommendation of an experienced RV technician. The RV refrigerator noticeably cooled better and used less propane to boot.

Marks RV also recommends this; see HERE; tip is at the bottom.

[MountainDon]

A while back in this thread I had a small context for naming our property.


The winning name was Pine Ridge.

Our son made us a sign. He flame cut it from 3/16 inch steel plate, ground the face and cold blued the steel. He presented it to us on the stained pine board as pictured below. I put the PT pine 2x6 board mount together and screwed it up to a tree near our cul de sac entrance.

[MountainDon]

We bought a new tool.    A wood chipper. We won't have to burn as much (at all ?) to get rid of cut slash. It handles up to 3 inch, actually 3 x 4 inch but none of our trees seem to grow oval branches.



Fifteen horsepower. It handles everything I've stuck in the feed quite well so far.

Video...

[MountainDon]

Announcement and question.

We have sold the old ('83) RV!!!  The one that traversed the SW with us for a few years. The one we lived in from day one on this mountain property. Hoorah!!    It took a few months and we dropped the price just to be rid of it.

Now we are going to commence construction on a bunkhouse. A place for guests! That could be you!!  Something in the 14 x 14 or 14 x 16 foot range.

What do the readers/viewers/members/friends think? Should I carry on under this topic or should I start a new thread? "My/Our 14 x whatever Bunkhouse" or something???  

[duncanshannon]

1 vote for a new thread!

[OlJarhead]

New thread!

Hey I just never thought of the chipper approach to slash!  DOH!  That might be an answer to a problem I have -- lots of slash and no time to burn.

Thanks!

[Sassy]

Nice sign your son made    The place is looking right comfortable & a fine place to hang out at.  You've really done a great job.

Do you use your screened in room much?  

So you're ready for more, huh?  Looking forward to seeing your progress!

BTW, chipper seems to be working good.

[Barry Broome]

I say new thread Don. Great sign too.

[MountainDon]

Do you use your screened in room much?  

Couple of times a week on average I'd say.


I think I'll do a new topic on the bunkie. Debating when to start... 

[Alasdair]

Now we are going to commence construction on a bunkhouse. A place for guests! That could be you!!  Something in the 14 x 14 or 14 x 16 foot range.

What do the readers/viewers/members/friends think? Should I carry on under this topic or should I start a new thread? "My/Our 14 x whatever Bunkhouse" or something???  

Looking forward to the new thread. Don't rush on our account though Don, we'd love to come stay but we can't possibly make it till next summer! 

[duncanshannon]

Start the new thread when you start the new project!  (start early in the project).  will be fun to read and given the history of your posts, thorough and very helpful for folks learning. 

[MountainDon]

We have mostly cooler weather up in the mountains. However, there are a few days in the summer when the temperatures get high enough to be uncomfortable for a few hours. The cabin interior temperature also gets a tad warm. We bought a Haier air conditioner, one of those with the hose that fits through an insert in the window. It worked quite well. Not needing to run it for hours on end I found we have sufficient reserve to get by without requiring running the generator. At least so far that's what I think.

The window panel and hose connection was a slight bother I didn't like. So, I put on my thinking hat and came up with an idea. Venting directly out the wall would work. Alas, it was not so simple as boring a hole through the wall at the same height as the air outlet on the back of the a/C. That level was right in line, centered, with the electrical wiring in the wall. I built an offset vent box. The air from the A/C enters near the bottom and exits up a foot or so. That was determined by the exterior siding. The vent exits about the middle of the Hardie plank siding. The vent box was sized about 20% larger in cross sectional area than the area of the A/C outlet to minimize restriction to air flow.







The box is screwed to the wall. A five inch diameter vent pipe passes through the wall to vent the hot air out the wall. It works well. I thought I might need to tie the A/C in place with a bungee cord or something but so far it has not moved on its own. I still may do something to tie it in place.

[MountainDon]

Just a note to say I spun the winter food storage portion off to its own thread.

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=11079.0

[MountainDon]

Karen was off in NY state for the week. I worked only 2 days this week because of fall break. So I spent most of the time off at the cabin. Wednesday afternoon I had a pleasant surprise upon arrival.



That's just a smidgen less than 1.6 inches of rain in a 24 hour period.

The ground was nicely soaked. Going by the condition of the road in most of the rain was spread over several hours; not much erosion on the hill. So what does Don do when the forest floor is nice and wet. Well, burn slash of course. Thursday was extremely windy though; gusts to 50 mph and no matter how wet the ground was I don't like fire and high winds. I was up at 6 AM Friday to a dead calm.





I burned 10 piles we had prepped and covered with tarps over the summer.



The fires were pretty much burned out by noon or so. By 2 PM is was misting rain. By 3 PM as the temperature dropped it turned to sleet and then snow. The next morning I awoke to 27 degrees F and almost 2 inches of snow.



I forgot to turn off the game camera and found I had 27 videos of me tending one fire through the day. 



One of the burn spots on Saturday morning. The fire was pretty much out. I raked the coals and then raked snow over the fire spot. The snow didn't melt; fire was out cold.

[Gary O]

Great timing Don.
I hope to have the same.
Headin' to camp in a couple weeks.

[MountainDon]

Saturday the sun was out by 10 and the snow melting. I had marked a dozen or so trees for thinning on Thursday and Saturday morning I felled them and cut them into lengths I could handle. The afternoon was spent hauling wood up the slope, one piece at a time. I dragged and piled tree tops and slash branches for a future burn.



This morning I cleaned up all but the smaller branches. We now have more firewood looking for a place to warm...  Have more wood than takers...



We are getting close to having thinned to the optimal number of trees, or rather basal area per acre.



The above is looking up the slope to the north with some of the water breaks I threw together a couple of years ago. Gazebo top center, cabin porch roof just visible right top.

[OlJarhead]

Great posts Don.  We're just starting to get some of this kind of work done ourselves.  I've managed to trim most of the trees within 100-150 feet of the cabin up to between 8-12 feet but have much work yet to do....maybe in the spring I'll get that tractor!

[MountainDon]

We had more snow, something a little over an inch. This was good and bad. On the side of the good, we burned a lot of the trash tress; some from the debris on the ground and others we culled/thinned from the acre+ we're working on now.  I shot a little video of one of my neater piles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idI2KiU3SH0

The bad side of the snow was after going up and down out hill a few times it got slippery. The Jeep handled it with aplomb until I hitched the trailer, laden with fresh cut logs for firewood. We had a touch of excitement going down. We have a couple small water redirecting berms across the roadway at a slight diagonal. I was crawling in second-low when we went over the first. As the rear axle went over the first berm it got slightly light. The weight of the trailer gave the rear end a little twitch to the right and it started to come around. To the side with the drop off. Whoeee!

Anyhow the rear end slide stopped about a foot from the edge, the trailer jack knifed a little. But back in low-low I inched it ahead and down the hill. That'll teach me to remember and use chains. 

[OlJarhead]

Chains are my best friend now!

[MountainDon]

We had an enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend. Thursday was a turkey dinner at home with our son.  Friday we were on the road to the cabin early.

I meant to mention that we've been working on some of our neighbors land. We're doing it for free, in part a self preservation thing; if we reduce the fire danger at some future point we may be helping to head off a disaster. Plus, we've struck a deal to get access through our neighbors land to ours in exchange for some work. Ok, it's not a legal easement, it's only a verbal agreement, but it helps us a little.  Followers of this thread know we have a steep hill as the final approach from the national forest up to our property. It faces north and holds snow and ice like a magnet holds nails.

This winter has been worse than the previous, with the early October snow, plus a couple of other light snows. Our hill is still snow and ice and requires chains even though the rest of the trip is fine on A/T rubber. Hence the deal. The neighbors road has a more gentle approach and gets some sun. So we have a key to use and let ourselves in.

We finished with the first part of the neighbors land for now. I didn't think far enough ahead to take a "before" picture. Here's an "after" with part of one of the burn pile circles in the foreground. There are still too many trees, but this is a grand start.



What did it look like before?  Sort of like this. Lots of fallen trees and limbs on the ground. Lots of standing dead....



Then we got back to some of our own land. We've been neglecting the south end. We've been putting it off. It's a fairly steep hillside and in places is as trashy as above. Lots and lots of standing dead, fallen dead and too many "broomstick" trees.

So we cut trees and more trees. We picked up fallen logs and branches and made piles for many a future burn. We tarped some.



That's typical of the slope; steeper in places, less steep in others, but hard to walk on. No wonder we put it off, huh?

So I cut trees, starting with those already fallen. Then on to many standing dead Ponderosas, Doug Firs and Aspens.





We made piles of some, but have a lot more to pick up and get ready to burn. And this was only a small piece.

[MountainDon]

The still images do not do justice to the hillside thinning we've started.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu6smdGkS1M&feature=feedu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2LKmcMxEoY&feature=feedu

If I sound like I'm out of breath, at the time I was. I'd just finished more or less non stop cutting for about an hour and should have waited a few minutes before getting the camera out.    But I wanted to throw some logs around for a little while longer.

[Sassy]

Wow, you guys have been busy!   

[rick91351]

Hey if you need some more practice or experience.  I have a couple virgin areas I have not gotten in to yet up my way.  You could tack on to your job resume and you could use our names as references.     It helps one to stay in some sort of shape does it not?

 

[MountainDon]

It is hard work and does certainly keep one in shape. More fun than just walking for exercise or going to the gym. 

In some ways the hardest part is waiting on getting the perfect weather to burn and having that coincide with having time to be there.

[John Raabe]

That is good hard work Don. Makes me think about all the work I need to do at my 5 acres. Thanks for that!