Month: November 2013

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Not As Much of a Cardboard Box As I Thought

Folks who ask me about living in my rig in cold weather have likely heard me say that at a certain point, it’s like trying to survive an ice age in a cardboard box. Well, it’s really not that bad when you have electric heat, plenty of propane, and are reasonably sheltered from the wind. It’s been really cold the last few days (dipping to -30C/-22F at night with ‘highs’ in the -20sC/-4C during the day) and I’ve been perfectly comfortable. And then last night, just before bed, the big OOPS happened.

I had put water on for my before bed cup of tea and thought that it was taking forever to boil. I went to the kitchen and noticed that the stove wasn’t even on. I was out of propane. You can just imagine the curse word that I blurted out. I was completely shocked since I have gotten really good at gauging how much propane I have left by how heavy my tanks are. But I had neglected to take into account one variable, the fact that I had a new tank in the rotation.

Earlier this week, Charles sent me home with one of his 20lbers that he thought was mostly full. As it turns out, this older tank weighs about twice as much empty as my 30lber feels empty! I thought that I had at least two days’ worth of propane at my current consumption rate and really only had about 24 hours’ worth.

It was almost 10:00 p.m., so much too late to go to town for some and definitely too late to go knock on neighbours’ doors unless it was a real emergency. I didn’t deem my situation to be that bad. I had the electric blanket and the electric heaters. It would be a nasty cold morning, but the night would be fine.

I turned off everything in the office to reduce my amperage draw sufficiently to be able to run both electric heaters on medium all night. I then pre-heated the bed and my pajamas, knowing from my winter camping experience that if I went to bed feeling warm, I would stay warm all night. I’ve made the mistake of going to bed feeling chilled and even having the electric blanket running all night wasn’t enough to make me comfortable. It was 17C/63F in the rig when I went to bed at 10:30.

The furnace always wakes me up when it cycles on, so with the chilly nights we’ve been having I’ve had to run it at night. I therefore haven’t been sleeping well. So imagine my shock when I cracked open an eyelid this morning and it was just shy of 7:00 a.m.! What a great night of sleep!

Part of my business in town involved going to the bank, which doesn’t open till 9:30, so there was no sense getting up. I just stayed in my warm cocoon and drifted back off to sleep.

When I decided to get up around 8:30 and pulled back the blankets, it didn’t feel nearly as bad in the rig as I had expected. I still had to pull on an extra sweater and was grateful that I had left the door to the toilet room open. The temperature was 8C/46F, not great, but much better than expected. If it didn’t require so much propane to go up from those temps to comfortable ones, I would leave my furnace off all night as I would sleep much better.

By the time I got the truck out of the garage, the propane tanks loaded, and had carefully driven out to the highway, it was just past 9:00 and I made it to the bank at exactly 9:30.

Next stop was propane, which I knew would take a while as I was getting 70lbs worth and there’s usually only one or two guys to fill propane and pump gas. So I went into the gas station and treated myself to a coffee. Such as small thing, but having my coffee made for me first thing is a joy!

I then picked up a few groceries and headed home. I got the furnace started before putting away the truck and food. It was actually colder when I got in than when I had left, 5.5C/42F so I have a long way to go to get to comfy temps, but the temperature is rising steadily. With the warm air blowing, it feels way warmer in here than it is, so I can get some work done.

The moral of the story is, get propane as soon as I switch to the last tank! I estimate I’ll need to go to town once a week if these temps continue.

I also need to figure out if it’s going to be worth paying my estimated $400 to $450 monthly cost for propane and electric heat to stay home or if I should move in with Laura. Since I have been very comfortable, productive, and am sleeping well, so far the answer is yes. I’ll revisit that question in a month or so.

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Making Life Without Running Water a Little Easier

This is not yet another post about conserving water while RVing. It’s about those times that, for whatever reason, you are unable to fill your RV fresh water tank but still have a plentiful source of water nearby to haul home in jugs.

I will have spent a sizable chunk of 2013 in this position and finally have a system that almost makes me not miss being able use my holding tank. It helps, of course, that I can have a hot shower any time I want, something I was sorely missing on the beach last winter, as well as access to free laundry. But that still leaves having water handy for dish and hand washing as well as freshening up.

When it’s warm out, like it was on the beach last winter and on my property during the first part of the summer, I don’t miss not having hot water at the ready. I’m fine with washing my hands or freshening up with cool water. I heat up a kettle of water at the end of the day for doing the dishes, but that’s the limit of my need for hot water.

But when it’s cold out and you only keep your rig at about 60F, washing your face with cold water in the morning really sucks! Heck, even washing your hands with cold water after using the bathroom is less than pleasant. It’s also nice to have hot water on hand for making hot beverages during the day.

After spending so many months hauling water, I’ve got my method down pat.

I start with hauling water home in this Reliance 5-gallon water container:

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On the beach, I used a similar containers by Reliance in a flexible material, but both developed leaks (after three years of great service) so I replaced them with what I could find locally.

This is exactly as much water weight as I can carry a few staggering steps, like from my truck or Laura’s wagon to the rig*. What I like about it is that it has a tap, so it’s just like having cold running water. I have it set on the table by the entry so it’s out of my way yet accessible. When Neelix needed his perch 🙁 I would sit my water container on the stool by the counter. This is a much more desirable location.

(*It’s about 100 feet from Laura’s back porch to my rig so the only way I can get the water home without breaking my back is by putting it in her little heavy-duty wagon!)

I also have a typical water container used with water refrigeration systems that I can have filled at the grocery store:

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Laura loaned me a pump for this container, but I haven’t try it yet. If it doesn’t work well, I’ll transfer from this container to the other one.

Hauling water from Laura’s is really luxurious because her water is potable and I don’t have to filter it for drinking. It’s a treat to be able to open a tap and have drinkable water!

Next up, hot water. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I needed a large capacity Thermos-type unit, preferably with a pump so that I wouldn’t have to worry about lifting and pouring from a heavy container with dirty hands.

I happened to find this vintage double-Thermos unit on eBay for a great price and it matches my kitchen perfectly!

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If I’m going to have something like this sit on my counter all winter, I’d much rather it be aesthetically pleasing! As you can see, I can pump water directly into the sink. Each side holds exactly one kettle’s worth of hot water. And they don’t make ’em like they used to! I have added hot water in the morning to find it still scalding in the afternoon for doing dishes. It was then still nice and hot for a before bed wash and was still pleasantly warm in the morning for the morning wash! Pretty impressive!

Now, what’s that in the sink?

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I do my laundry at Laura’s, but I find that dish cloths and the like pile up very quickly. So I make it a point to wash what I used of those that day in the sink, using a kettle of hot water to soak them first in a little bleach and soap.

For the bathroom, I get water from the kitchen in a large bowl and I refresh it as needed during the day.

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If my hands are particularly dirty, I wash them in the kitchen using my hot running water! 🙂

Finally, I spray all my used dishes with a little soapy water from a spray bottle:

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Since I do them when they’re fresh, no soaking is necessary. I wipe everything clean, then rinse with the hot water from the Thermos. Having the hot water at the ready guarantees that I wash everything right away instead of waiting because it’s not worth heating water just to wash a bowl and spoon and ending up with a huge pile that needs loads of water to wash.

So that’s how I’ve been getting by without running water this fall. Hauling heavy jugs is a pain, but between that and the propane, I’m getting good exercise!

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Typing Like Mad

Today marks a full month since I moved to Laura’s yard. It feels like a lot longer than that!

I took the summer too easy work-wise and now it’s time to make up for that. I’ve been applying like mad for contracts and, bizarrely enough, I’m suddenly getting tons of positive responses! I still need to dot a few Is, but it looks like I finally have as much as I can handle without going completely cross-eyed. The income isn’t great, but at least it’s steady. Most of the work is transcription, though, and that leaves me very little mental energy or desire to do any other sort of typing work. I’m now trying to get into a semblance of a routine that will give me a moment in the day when I can say, okay, enough for today!

I’m nowhere near that point yet, though. It’s 9PM and I have a couple of hours left to do today in order to make tomorrow manageable, although it will be more of the same.

Yesterday, C&C asked me to come help them finish insulating the inside of the addition, so I took half a day off to do that, although I’m paying for it now, hence the very long work day! But that was a good example of my making an effort to fit living back into my schedule.

I’d say all aspects of my life are going well, including the weather! Oh, we’ve had a few cold days and nights, but nothing that was unbearable, and the forecast for the rest of the week has us on a warming trend. In fact, tomorrow is supposed to hit plus 9 and if it does, I have to squeeze the emptying of my holding tanks into my schedule.

The new thermostat is definitely helping in that it’s getting me out of bed earlier in the morning, no small miracle! It was great yesterday to be able to set the thermostat for 55 while I was out all day but have it come up to 65 in the evening before I got home!

I’ve also modified my diet slightly to include more (good) carbs, which are making a big difference in how many fewer layers of clothing I need to wear! I’m still watching what I eat and am always surprised (and pleased) when I look in a mirror. It’s been a year of wonderfully positive changes!

The only thing that isn’t going so well is that the rig feels so empty. 🙁 I try to play with Laura and C&Cs cats, plus C&C’s wonderful dog, but it’s not enough. Yet, I know better than to recommit to a pet at this point. If I was near a larger city, I would try to get into fostering, but that’s not an option out here.

And of course it’s hard to be reading Croft who is in Salem, OR, right now, en route to Texas and to chat with my friend L about his impending departure for the Lone Star state, too, but c’est la vie and I’m not going to mope about it. Every decision I’ve made has led to this being the option for this winter and I’m not going to have a pity party about it!

Well, I’d better get back to work. Sleep would be nice at some point. 🙂

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Thermostat Tweaking

I’m having fun training my new thermostat!

According to the manual, how it works is that you set a time at which you want to have reached a certain temperature and the thermostat will estimate how long it will take to reach that temperature. For example, if you want to get up at 8AM to a rig that is at 60F, then the thermostat might start as early as 6AM.

For some reason, it takes me weeks to get used to the sound of the furnace cycling on and off at night and until then it wakes me up every time. So while we’re having these fairly mild nights where the electric heaters are enough to keep the temperature at 55F or higher keeping the furnace from cycling on unless absolutely necessary is a priority.

This morning, I had the thermostat set to reach 70F by 8AM. At about 5:45, it kicked on. At about 6:00, I was boiling hot and badly needing to get a few more hours of sleep (I’ve been swamped with work and burning the midnight oil). So I got up to lower the temperature threshold and saw that it was about 63 in the rig. I reset the threshold for 60 and went back to bed.

When I got up around 9:00, it was 60F in the rig and perfectly cozy for about a half hour and then my body temperature dropped. So I reset the daytime threshold for 65 and that ended up being too much. I finally settled on 63.

What’s interesting in all of this is that I need the temperature a lot lower than I thought I did and that I don’t have to work in increments of 5 or 10 degrees anymore. I think this new thermostat will make my furnace run more efficiently and it will be interesting to see if I notice a difference in my propane consumption.

Right now, the propane consumption has been negligible. I hadn’t had time to go to town to refill and was being super conservative with my bottles, thinking I was on dregs, but I had a full 10lbs left between the two of them when I finally got to town yesterday and I’ve been running on these so long I can barely remember the time before that that they were filled.

As for power, Laura has yet to analyze her power bills, but I’ve been using a Kill-o-Watt meter to track power usage with my electric heaters and it’s coming out to about $1 a day each so far, and that’s with them running 24/7 on low. So I’m not too worried!