Haven

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A New Roof For the Shed

I was in town at 8:00 this morning to get the missing closures for the roof. I got home around 9:00 and Charles showed up shortly after that, then Laura arrived around 10:00. I was surprised to see her! We got a few sheets of roofing on together and then T showed up, too! I couldn’t believe that he came to do actual work. We managed to get half the roof on in the morning. Caroline showed up at one point with coffee and banana bread.

We took a break after that and I went in to call SaskPower. The power line to my neighbour’s house cuts across my property and is very close to the roof of the cabin. It is not installed according to code and I put in a request to have the line moved. We absolutely cannot put the new roof on the cabin until that happens. I really hope we can get this done by the time C&C return from their holiday. Before the new pole went in  yesterday, the line was high enough up that we could have avoided it, but now it’s even lower and Charles said there is no way he’s getting up there the way it is now. We shall see what SaskPower says…

By the time we broke for a late lunch, all the full sheets were on the roof. T declined to eat with us. Lunch was a repeat of yesterday, minus the ham. Charles is coming tomorrow to sheet the shed if the rain holds off, so I’m going to make ham and cheese pinwheels to go with the rest of the bean salad. Laura threw all the offerings into a tortilla and made herself a burrito. It was nice to see everyone enjoy the spread I put out.

The afternoon’s challenge was to cut up the last sheet to fit the final foot-wide or so section of roof. Laura is good at that sort of thing and she and Charles got it all sorted out. They did a really nice job cutting up the sheet.

Laura left after that and then it was time to put on the ridge cap! Charles screwed 1x4s to the west side of the roof to give himself foot holds. Once the 1x4s were removed, he filled the holes with the screws that match the roof, so you can barely see that he did that. The west side is also the least visible side, so it’s okay that the screw pattern is off and that some of the ribs got a little smooshed. There’s just no other safe way to put on the ridge cap with the equipment available to us.

Brian and Laura did the bulk of the work on the roof today and I commend them. They did a gorgeous job and I am very happy with the result! It even started pouring rain as Charles and I were finishing up, so the roof has already been tested. 🙂

The goal for tomorrow, weather permitting, is to get the new cladding and trim up, plus a door, so I can paint next week. We’ve thus far accomplished our goals, so I’m optimistic!

The shed looked really bad and I thought that I perhaps made a mistake bringing it in. But now that we’ve started to remove old material, I can see that there is no rot and that the building is square and true. So it might have been cosmetically challenged, but it is structurally sound and definitely worth putting money into. I am proud to have saved this building and to be giving it another 20 + years of life.

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Strapping the Shed and a New Power Pole

I can’t believe how fast this summer is winding down! I am so behind on my Haven projects, which are primarily to get the shed weather tight and to put new roofing on both buildings. I ordered the metal roofing the week before last and it came in this past Thursday. It comes in 3′-wide sheets and you order however many of them you need in whatever length. Charles and Caroline helped me do the math on all of that. You also need ridge cap pieces, which comes in 10′ sections, and ‘closures’, which we forgot and I will run into town for first thing in the morning. They fill in the gaps between the ridge cap and the sheeting as well as between the sheeting and the sub-roof.

Charles and I went to town on Saturday with his truck and flatbed trailer to pick everything up, metal sheeting for the two buildings, enough chip board to clad the shed (the rougher of the two buildings), and ‘strapping’ for both buildings, which are 1x4s that are screwed to the roof and then the metal is screwed to them. I helped him unload rocks before we went to town and I treated him to lunch!

This morning, he showed up bright and early as promised so we could get started on removing the old roofing from the shed (chip board over cedar shingles). My new neighbour, K, also came to help. K bought C&C’s last vacant lot and she is using it as an RV pad! She lives here three days and is in the city for four days.

Many hands make light work, so even with two coffee breaks in the morning, we had one side of the shed roof cleared and strapped by lunch. Caroline always feeds her crews well, so I made sure to have coffee and granola bars for the morning, which we enjoyed on our first break, then Caroline came by with more coffee and homemade muffins for our second break!

For lunch, we had a bell pepper and black bean salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, ham, cheese, cream cheese tortilla pinwheels, and more tortillas in case anyone didn’t like bean salad (I knew Charles would, but I didn’t know who else might show up to help). There was lots left over for lunch tomorrow, but no one went hungry. I also made sure to have a cooler full of cold water, ginger ale, and non-alcoholic beer.

We got the other side cleared and strapped by about 3:30. Another neighbour, T, who is our hermit and rarely seen, actually came and lent a hand and promised to return tomorrow and help lift the heavy sheets of metal up onto the roof! Wow! We all had a beverage of choice after all that work. K wasn’t shy and handed out granola bars.

While all this was going on, SaskPower showed up to replace my charred power pole! Talk about bad timing! Thankfully, by the time they arrived, we knew most of the dimensions we needed for the strapping, so I cut all the lumber before the power went out (using Charles’ chop/miter saw).

Charles and K screwed in all the strapping today. I did a lot of running around fetching things, preparing food, cutting lumber, and removing the old roofing.

The shed roof will be done tomorrow. C&C are heading out of town, so Charles said we’ll do the other roof when he gets back. He’s going to try to find time to at least cut the siding for me this week and tack it into place so that I can finish screwing it in on my own and paint it while they are gone. I’m in a hurry to get that done since I had to take my clothesline apart to make room to work today and I want it back up asap!

I was hoping to spend no more than $1,500 on this first phase of the exterior work on the graineries. I still have the closures and paint to buy and am at about $1,250, so I should come in right on budget! For the curious, the roofing is $0.98/square foot for coloured, so about $630 (including tax) for both buildings, plus $110 (including tax) for the ridge caps. I didn’t factor food for the crew into that part of the budget, but I’m at about $150 for that; much cheaper than a roofing crew! 🙂

I can’t wait to get the first roof on tomorrow. It is going to be so beautiful!

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A Non-Intrusive Way of Bringing Cables Into an RV

All of last summer, winter, and spring, I brought my internet antenna cable in through the office window, sealing the gap as best as I could with tape and, in the coldest month, towels. Bugs and cold still managed to get in. This summer, I was determined to find a better, yet non-intrusive, way to bring cables into my RV.

My impetus was moving to a new type of cellular booster. I’m not ready to blog about that as my system is not working as well as expected and I’m still exploring other options. So while I wanted to bring the cable in in such a way that bugs and cold couldn’t get in, I didn’t want to make any holes since I’m not sure my booster system is what I’m going to end up using permanently here.

If I ever get this booster working as well as I believed it would, I will likely put a hole in the roof over a cabinet, install the booster in there, and run the cable to it. But for now, the cable is out of my way and this is working out well.

My coax cable is in two sections, with its connector being at ground level. So when I had to move Miranda in a hurry a few weeks ago, I was able to show Caroline where the junction was and leave her to disconnect the two bits and coiling the part attached to the RV around the ladder while I did other things instead of my having to disconnect the booster from inside and scramble onto the roof to yank the wire out of the way. Unintentional, but perfect, design!

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My Digital Honeywell Thermostat and the AC

Back in November, I upgraded from an analog Duoterm thermostat to a programmable digital Honeywell thermostat. This remains one of the best mods I’ve made to my RV.

This spring, I did my AC maintenance and testing before the weather got warm. The AC did not run correctly and made an awful sound. It took me a minute to think, “What changed between now and the last time I used the AC? Ah, the thermostat.”

It would have probably been faster to check my post from November, which I only just did, as it explains exactly what was going on with my AC!

But I figured it out on my own very quickly and before thinking I had any major AC issues.

The problem in November was that when I hooked up the wiring for the fan on the AC, it would run as soon as the furnace powered on. I disconnected this wiring and had no trouble with heating all winter.

So the possible solution to the AC not working was to open up the thermostat and reconnect the fan wiring. Sure enough, that did the trick!

My AC runs great and while I just about never use it, I’m grateful for it when it gets unbearably muggy in here, like tonight!

I don’t think that there’s a way around the fan issue other than  making a radical modification to the thermostat to add an off option in addition to on and auto. So I’ll just disconnect it when I need heat and reconnect it when I need cold, which should technically be once a year each…

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Creatively Replacing Atwood Range Knobs

I use my RV range daily and it has taken a beating over the last six years. The knobs in particular have given me a hard time. They are made of lightweight plastic. I lost one a few years ago and another one gave out a few months ago, leaving me with just one working knob for three burners.

I tried to find replacement knobs at Camping World and RV part stores, but the best anyone could do was order some in and I wasn’t in the location long enough for that to be a good option. Forget ordering them online; with shipping I was looking at something like $100 for three pieces of plastic!

My engineer friend L had a much better solution. He went to a city dump and pulled an assortment of knobs off of barbecues and stoves.

When he arrived here for his visit, he tried to fit each of the knobs to the stems on my stove until he found a close match. The holes in the knobs were a little too small, so he carefully drilled them out so that they would fit. That was imprecise and some were a little loose, so he added a little paper to the hole to provide a tighter fit on the stem.

This week, I picked up some Gorilla glue and put a tiny amount in each knob hole. Gorilla glue turns into a hard foam, so when the glue was almost dry, I put the knobs back on the stove to get the shape of the stem, pulled the knobs off, and let them dry. End result, knobs with holes that perfectly fit my stove!

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The new knobs look so much better than did the old ones and are at least as easy to manipulate. They only have one line on them, which means the stove is off when it’s at the 12 o’clock position, but I’m learning to gauge the height of the flame by the line’s other positions rather than attempting to put a medium and low marker on the knobs as well.

I love having three working knobs again and, really, these look so much better than did the old ones. Thanks again, L!