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Post by biggkidd on Oct 11, 2017 7:35:34 GMT -6
I have no idea how to write a story so bare with me I'm trying. This is basically a story about living on the cheap off grid. It's more to pass along what worked and what didn't than entertainment.
I am a 46 year old single father with MS. I was diagnosed back in 05 after falling out in the floor. I was unable to get back up or talk, couldn't write either. Which made life interesting to say the least. So I had lots of time on my hands and nothing much I could do. Other than read that is. So I was all over the internet reading PAW fiction after I found out about it. But on my way to PAW fiction I came to the realization that our country was coming apart at the seams. It was pretty obvious things couldn't continue as they had been. You could say my eyes had been opened by my own personal SHTF!
A little back story to help put things in perspective. My background is in simple construction and basic mechanics. Your normal everyday uneducated joe, a high school dropout. The only thing I really had going in my favor is that I usually understand how things work. I can fix just about anything that doesn't have a computer. I can also build simple structures without plans. My dad was a house builder when I was growing up. So I had been around construction since I was young. I had a love of speed too which led me to build a few fast cars. Which in turn gave me a pretty good understanding of mechanics.
We also had a second child the first week of September 05. She wasn't due until Dec 28 so you can guess she had several health problems of her own. Pretty sure the stress of dealing with my issues is what caused her early arrival.
It's late 06 or early 07 and I realized we couldn't continue living as we had been. We simply couldn't afford it I was unable to work. I was back able to talk some and walk with crutches or canes. Now I had always wanted to live way out in the country up in the blue ridge mountains. Being in poor health with two daughters one of which had health problems as well. I knew I couldn't move my family but so far out in the sticks even though my wife was game. So we decided we would at least get out of the city on a few acres. We started hunting for land we could afford with the idea of staying fairly close to the town we had grown up in. We knew we couldn't afford to buy another house right then. What I did was refinance our home to pay off all other debts and leave enough for a sizeable down payment on some land. We spent a year or so looking even though the very first place we looked at was just about perfect in my opinion. Other than the fact it was about 50 miles farther out than I thought we should go. Not to mention much more ground than I thought we could get. Anyway we ended up putting a down payment in the fall of 07 and closing it in Jan 08. 36 acres of timberland. Amazingly enough it was cheaper than 5 acres in the area we were trying to go. Not exactly the project for a cripple to take on. It was so tight with trees you couldn't even drive a truck on the property. Yet here we were me with a chainsaw in one hand and a cane in the other. We made a driveway of sorts. Then somebody I knew asked could I remove an old camper from their property for a few bucks. So I got paid to remove this broken down old 70's era camper. We carried it out to our new land. We thought it would give us a dry spot to sleep better than the tent we had been using.
We had our house up for sale. I had bought it before I got married and even though I had refinanced I still had right at 100,000 in equity. The idea was we would sell it and build something small on the land. Then the bottom started falling out of the financial markets. Houses weren't selling at all. We could only afford to pay two mortgages for so long, a little over a year it turned out. But before that happened people were getting crazy. Then we had some scary things happening in our neighborhood. So we decided to move out to the land and stay in that old 22 ft camper until the house sold and we could build. Now 4 people in a small camper and winter is coming on. This is august of 08 and it's already getting cold. We had put one of those small propane wall heaters in. We burned about $200 in propane that month. No way could we afford that it wasn't even real cold yet. Not to mention all the gas we were burning for power running a 5,500W generator for power.
So I started thinking out of the box. We needed to use wood for heat if we weren't going to go broke before christmas. You can't exactly fit a wood stove in a 22 ft camper with 2 small children. So I built a barrel stove with a heat exchanger on top. We surrounded this with dirt filled cinder blocks for insulation. It had ductwork pulling cold air out of the camper and hot air rising in to the camper. I'll try and find a picture of it to post if I can figure out how to put pictures on here.
I've got to stop and get some work done. More later If you guys want me to continue this let me know otherwise I will be more than happy to delete it.
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Post by pbbrown0 on Oct 11, 2017 10:44:31 GMT -6
Don't even think about deleting this. You'd better give us MOAR or someone may have to hunt you down and stand over you waiting while you pen another dispatch.  Seriously, biggkidd, your experiences and problem solving efforts are invaluable to all of us. Thank you for sharing and PLEASE continue. Don't apologize for anything you see as your shortcomings. Others are only seeing the value in what you are sharing, and the inspiration of your determination and resourcefulness in overcoming difficulties and obstacles. |
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 11, 2017 13:04:25 GMT -6
Keep it coming! Making a ducted outside heater out of a barrel stove is a bit of genius. I can guess one or two PAW stories that might have sparked the idea of external heat but getting a barrel stove converted for the purpose took some serious thought.
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Post by crice118 on Oct 11, 2017 15:32:35 GMT -6
I have a friend with MS and I sorta understand where you're at, hope you're not on the $1,000 month MS meds like she is. Please, please continue. Life is experiences tried and not all of us have had the opportunity to try everything. Your experiences are invaluable. What you've done is experience shtf before the big SHTF to see how you would cope. I spent a winter in a RV 8 by 28 all the feature comforts but no water, sewer, electric and I turned on the Big Buddy heater to heat up the RV to around 50 degrees, blankets and layering up and only spending sleeping there mainly while I looked after my animals and I only used about 5 to 6 of the little 20 lb propane cylinders. Blocked off underneath and put hay under there and on really cold days and nites the dog, chickens and even goats stayed under there while the winds howled and snow covered the ground, at times I had to make them all get out but they would only stay out if weather was calm. Bottom of floor their roof helped them and they helped their roof/my floor. Now I know I can do ok during a winter with no power cause I got an acre of woods with a lot of dead stuff which I will be cutting soon to cure out. The more you try before you need it the more you will know what does and does not work (and you can tell us so we can gain from your experiences).  |
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 11, 2017 16:37:23 GMT -6
So wood heat for a camper. I haven't been able to find the old pictures I could probably ask the Ex and she may know. I made your basic everyday barrel stove. Then I cut another barrel long ways so I had a piece like a trough. Which I had to cut the length down some to leave room for the chimney pipe to exit the stove out of the top. I welded the trough like piece upside down on top of the stove. It made an airtight chamber that collected heat from the stove. Above the door in center of this piece I made a hole for 6" duct pipe to fit in. I slid a piece of duct all the way in to about 3" from the rear. In the rear I made 2) 6" holes for ducts as close as possible to the edge. The chimney pipe came up in between them they stopped inside also about 3" from the front. Air from the camper came in the front duct all the way to the rear of the chamber then through the chamber back to the front. Where it entered the 2) ducts for the return trip back out of the heat exchange chamber and to the camper. By doing it this way the air spent maximum time inside the heat chamber. Since heat rises and cold falls we brought the heat in about 18" above the floor near the ends of the camper and the pickup for cold air to return to the stove was the existing floor register near the center. I hope y'all can follow what I did here. Guess I could attempt to draw it out but my drawing is even worse than my writing...
Next we took 8x8x16 cinder blocks and built a room around the stove. Filling each layer with dirt as we went. This thing was roughly 3 by 4 feet and maybe 3 and a half feet tall with the center of the front left open to access the stove door. Tossed a piece of sheet metal on top with cinder blocks around the edges and insulation in the middle and another piece of metal on top to keep everything dry. That was weighted down with whatever was handy to keep it from blowing off.
Anyway you slice it this was way overkill for heating a space as small as this camper was. The first night it was hooked up and running we woke up about 2:30 am sweating bullets thinking the place was on fire. It was 18 or 20* outside and had to be over a hundred inside. We jumped out of bed and grabbed the kids and ran out. Being out in the wind in less than freezing temperatures soaking wet with sweat was no fun. But I did a walk around and couldn't find anything amiss. So then started pulling ductwork apart thinking it must be burning inside the ducts. Nope no fire anywhere but inside the stove. We left a couple windows open partway the rest of that night and went back to sleep.
When I go to build things I seldom have any type of drawn plans I just tend to build what's in my mind. Which may lead to a lot of hindsight saying should have done this or that different. But that's half the fun learning on the fly. So now we had heat. It was often hard to keep warm enough without cooking ourselves half to death. But we got the hang of it after a while.
Not long after we had the heater working it started raining and raining. I was starting to think we should have a boat not a camper. First day or two maybe even week everything was okay. Then the roof started leaking. I don't mean in just a drip or two I mean streams coming down all over the place. So we headed in to town to get some tarps. Oh this is fun red clay and a 2 wheel drive conversion van. We went everywhere but straight down the road. It was like bumper cars in one ditch then the other ditch. Road had a good crown and I'll be danged if I could manage to stay up on the road. What a fool perfectly good 3/4 ton 4x4 sitting there and we drove the van. Or should I say I pushed the van. Have you ever tried to walk with a cane in the mud while each step your boots gained a pound. We never did make it to town that day. It was 3 days later before I felt well enough to take the truck to try and retrieve the van. The girls had a ball swimming in the mud and throwing mud and rubbing mud all over I even think the ate some of it.
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 11, 2017 16:47:10 GMT -6
Crice
My MS meds are a bit worse. Insurance pays 6373.00 a month for the four shots I take. One every week and the side effects are horrific. I often think it's akin to having the worlds worst hangover after being run over by an entire NFL team. The side effects are not consistent either some weeks they last a day day and half other weeks they last 3 or 4 days. Every once and awhile I hardly have any side effects at all. I have thought about changing meds or stopping the meds BUT I'm doing pretty well even able to work part time and I don't want to lose that.
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Post by crice118 on Oct 11, 2017 17:07:48 GMT -6
what's your plan for getting off them in case something happens and they become unavailable, and are you in a state where cannabis oil is legal
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 11, 2017 17:22:01 GMT -6
what's your plan for getting off them in case something happens and they become unavailable, and are you in a state where cannabis oil is legal
Not sure but I think it is legal here. They need to decriminalize pot everywhere. One of my neurologist told me if I hadn't quit smoking I would have never know I had MS. They also told me I have had MS since I was about 15. They apparently can tell from the number and state of the scars on my brain shown during MRI's. Big Pharma is just like big oil they don't want anything that cuts into their profits who gives a crap if people die. Sorry sore subject. Mom's dealing with cancer and her sister suggested she try it even showed her proof it helps but she refuses because it's against the law. |
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Post by crice118 on Oct 11, 2017 17:55:14 GMT -6
If a doctor would prescribe it then your mom would have no objections cause then it wouldn't be illegal and she would have no excuse to not try cannabis oil. |
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 11, 2017 22:09:18 GMT -6
Went to attach a picture for this next bit and the file size is to large. Pictures can show a whole lot that can be hard to explain. Can we get the allowed file size increased?
Anyway jumping forward for a bit to spring of 2017 because I think this will interest many. I will go back in short order for other details.
So I've gone back to work part time running a lawnmower / small engine shop to make a few bucks while I could. Time and energy on the homestead are at a premium or in other words by the time I've worked and get home I just don't have anything left energywise to work with. Our hot water heater is a rocket stove I designed and built oh 3 or 4 years (maybe more) ago. It works great but cutting and splitting firewood takes energy and time I just don't have. Not to mention the time it takes to light the fire and feed it wood. So I decided we needed another way to heat water that didn't require any extra input from me. What I came up with is a solar water heater. Yeah it only works when the sun shines but that's okay since we have a 50 gallon hot water tank. It's just a standard electric hot water heater with the elements removed or disconnected. 50 gallons of HOT water lasts several days for just the 2 of us. I say HOT because sometimes it's nearly boiling when it comes out of the tap!
First I took a 4x8 sheet of OSB and a few 2x4's and made a shallow wooden box. Or in other words made a frame of 2x4's around the edges of the 4x8 sheet of OSB. Then I found an old pint of black chalk board paint at a local thrift store for a quater. So I slopped the paint around the inside with the help of my youngest daughter. I had ordered a 60 roll of 1/2 inch type K copper tubing for this project. That was the most expensive part at nearly $150 for the roll delivered. Then I realized that probably wasn't enough or at least there was a lot of space for more in that box we'd built. I couldn't afford another $150 for something I wasn't even sure was going to work. I don't mind gambling a little but not that much, I might not win! So I ran down to the local ACE Hardware and got a hundred foot roll of 1/2" PEX pipe. That was around $30. Now remember when I started this story I told ya I am not much for drawing out plans. I plan things in my head and build them as is. Well if I had drawn this out I probably would have noticed that A) I either didn't need such a large box or B) I needed more pipe to use up the space we had. Either way I had decided we needed more pipe. We used those expensive A-- sharkbite fittings to join these together. The water comes in from the tank through the coil of PEX then travels over to the coil of copper. Each type of pipe is done in a swirl type coil each wrap larger than the last. The cold coming in goes in the outermost wrap of PEX till it passes all the way to the innermost coil through each layer so to speak. (boy a picture here would be nice) Where it goes over and joins with the copper innermost coil using said sharkbite fitting. Then the water travels through each ever larger coil of copper pipe until it hits the outside wrap and exits the box. These coils or swirls of pipe were spray painted black. Darker colors absorb more heat! Then I caulked around the top of the 2x4 frame and had a friend help me set a sheet of Lexan on to enclose everything. I drilled and screwed the lexan down to the 2x4's with the caulk making an airtight seal. Traded a carburetor repair on a lawnmower for the sheet of lexan at that same thrift store. That was 20 minutes well spent!!! A sheet of that stuff is expensive and we were both happy. So now this solar water heater needs as much sun as possible. That's hard when you live in the middle of the woods. I decided it needed to go on the battery / power building. Hummmm that's 50 feet each way from the hot water tank. We then took 1 inch pipe insulation and forced two pieces of 1/2 inch PEX pipe through it. I already had that as I knew from the get go it was going to have to be somewhere in that area. Ran that back to the tank and shallow buried it. Now I had also ordered a cheap (2=1 1=0) 12V water pump from Ebay. I mounted that inside the battery building and brought the cold water line through the wall and connected it. Then back out to the solar water heater inlet. So what weve done is hook a 12 volt pump inline between the tank and heater. I used a couple sets of older Harbor freight solar panels that were looking to make an honest living to power this pump. Each set is rated for 2.5-3 amps something like that. These panels are likely nearing the end of their useful life since we've had em 6 to 8 years. It took 2 sets to run a pump that "only" required 2 amps IIRC. I had put a low voltage circuit (also ordered off Ebay) inline to keep from burning up the pump. Well that didn't work as planned. The lag between the pump turning on and the charge controller sending power caused the pump to constantly cycle. Next I ordered the smallest amp hour 12 volt battery I could find you guessed it on Ebay.
So several hundred dollars and a fair amount of labor later it's time to see if it works. Of course I had to be at work then. But I hooked everything up. Battery and panels through the low voltage circuit connected to the small pump. I headed off to work with the pump running (small battery had some juice in it) About 1:00 PM I had to pick up a mower near home so I made a little side trip. When I got home the pump was pumping much faster than when I left. Oh crud must have blown a line. I took off running to shut off the pump thinking all my hard gotten water was going on the ground. You see during rainy weather we collect water from the roof when it hasn't rained we pump water from the creek we don't have a well. (another part of the story) After cutting off the circulation pump. I noticed the house pump wasn't running as it would if water were leaking somewhere from a broken line. The pump just rotated the water from the bottom of the tank through the solar water heater back to the top of the tank on a continuous loop whenever the sun is shining.
As I hustled past the solar water heater I looked up at the oven thermometer I had installed to see what the inside temperature was. OH WOW it was about 74 or 75 outside and over 125 in the box. Cool I thought or rather make that hot! And in I went looking for that broken line. Nope no break opened the tap water came on out closed that and went back to the pump. When I went past the solar heater I notice the temp was edging close to 150. I thought the temp was rising awful fast. I hooked the pump back up and it was running faster yet. Looked up to the charge controller and it was reading just a bit over 13V. Well duh pump runs faster with higher voltage. When I heard the pump that morning it was running on the lower voltage of a not fully charged battery. Reached up to the line coming out of the heater to feel how hot it was when I did I noticed the temperature coming back down. The water going through the coils was actually cooling the box. That showed a great heat transfer rate was going on. We had hot showers that night that I didn't have to burn wood for for the first time in a long time. It was so nice! lol
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 11, 2017 22:36:56 GMT -6
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 12, 2017 4:58:29 GMT -6
Papa That's not a bad idea. I am however afraid the PEX inside the heater would overheat without the water flowing through it and rupture. If it get's to hot next summer I'll simply cover part of the box. I do like the way you think! The water only got crazy hot like that during long hot sunny days over 90*. Now temps are down and days are much shorter. I'll have to disconnect it soon once night time temps drop down below 28 or 30* for fear of the lines freezing.
Had I been able to place it on the south side directly at the house I expect it would work nearly year round. If it could have been built just down from the tank then I would have zig zagged the pipe in the box and let the water thermosiphon. I'd much prefer not having another pump just to circulate the water.
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 12, 2017 14:11:33 GMT -6
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 12, 2017 15:00:32 GMT -6
It's rated for 180. I expect like most things there's a 30% safety factor built in. The pressure and temp are both a factor when you start getting out of "normal" ranges.
Might just have to order one of those next time I have some spare cash. Thanks
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 12, 2017 16:12:45 GMT -6
Back to the spring of 09. We had a ton of rain during the winter and the branch (wet weather creek) that makes up one of our property lines kept water in it for several months. This is a lot closer to where the camper is than the big creek that makes up part of another property line. There's about a 600 foot difference in how far we'd have to pump water. So I thought I'd make a dam out of sandbags filled with earth to raise the level of one of the pools in the creek bed. We dug about a pickup truck load of dirt out of the hillside and filled bags. These were placed and backed up with head size and larger rocks. All the creeks here are filled with rock and the creek bottoms are all rock. Then we carried a deep cycle battery battery down to run a small 12V pump to pump water up to the camper. This is a steep hill just about a 1:1 grade and it went up over a hundred feet. The little pump just wasn't designed for that and just a trickle of water made it all the way up. But that was better than carrying buckets up by hand. So that's where we got water until the first big gully washing storm! The first storm washed away all evidence of our little dam. I was not a happy camper three adults worked on that all of a long 4 day weekend. Later we found sandbags full of dirt more than a mile away in the river. The branch meets up with our big creek which then flows into a small river. Where our big creek meets the river the creek is actually larger than the river! We have tried several methods of bringing creek water up some work some don't. From the big creek to the camper is right at 800 feet. With that 800 linear feet of distance is also a rise of nearly 130 feet of elevation. Finding a pump that can push water that far yet small enough to carry down by hand is not easy. We tried a harbor freight shallow well pump and a small generator. That worked for a while but took hours to get a few hundred gallons of water. Worse someone had to monitor it constantly. We burned up one genny and two pumps using this method. Next up I ordered a submersible deep well pump that would run on 110V current. That actually worked pretty good for a while and pumped about twice as fast. It just wasn't up to the grit in the water and soon ate the impellers up. Twice as fast was still pretty slow though. Now at some point during all this we had run 760 feet of 1 inch poly well pipe up to a hydrant near the camper. I think it was back when we got the first Harbor freight pump. Let me tell you even with the help of my three point hitch tractor mounted backhoe that was a JOB I never wish to repeat. In fact we never did finish that trench about 1/3 of the pipe lays on top of the ground to this day. Where the hill got to steep for the tractor we attempted to hand dig. Have you ever tried to dig a trench down through the woods? Well I'll tell you it's not for me some of the roots were near as big as my thigh! I very seldom quit anything I start but I QUIT that job after the first day! I couldn't hardly get up to use the restroom for a week much less do anything else. Sometime previously my dad had given me a PTO sprayer pump that had come in reverse rotation from what his tractor used. Sometime around 2011 or 12 I got the bright idea to hook it to a small gas engine and try using it. Now this pump isn't large in physical size but can pump 20 gallons per minute at up to 200 psi. Down side it has a maximum of 850-900 RPM. Small gas engines run at 3,600 RPM at their rated power. I had already learned that belt driven stuff with high strain doesn't work with small pulleys from using alternators to recharge our battery bank. So off to tractor supply looking for the largest pulley I could get that would fit. Also had to find a smaller pulley for the engine to get the speed correct. I think we ended up with a 12 inch on the pump and a 2.5 inch on the engine. Didn't take long just a few minutes in fact to burn up the first belt. In the end we ended up with a 5 or 6 inch pulley on the engine and the 12 inch on the pump. We have to be real careful to keep the engine throttled down so as not to over speed the pump. Needless to say the engine doesn't like having a load like this on it while throttled back. It shake rattles and rolls like an earthquake. But we are still using this setup today. It can fill a 300 gallon tank in just about 18 minutes. Can you say fast. The engine is an old briggs and stratton 5 hp tiller engine installed on a old powerwasher frame. The pump is similar to or maybe the same as this. www.zoro.com/hydro-spray-pump-cast-iron-5271706/i/G4702031/feature-product?gclid=CjwKCAjwpfzOBRA5EiwAU0ccN10eUXtAVg3XLpgmEigOIvSSiCM4b3K-BAWZqKzmvaILTLlbWkQtSBoCTEgQAvD_BwENow you have to remember how far and how high this is being pumped through a 1 inch well line and hydrant then through 100 feet of 3/4 inch water hose to reach the water storage tanks. |
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 12, 2017 16:36:45 GMT -6
Tidbit I just remembered that goes along with the water pump. Year before last I went down to the creek to disconnect the water lines since freezing weather was coming on fast. I got down there and there was no need one of the bears had done it for me. Must have been one big bear as both pieces of 1 inch poly line were snapped off within a foot or so of the pump. From the tracks and tooth holes in the gas tank and engine I would say he just picked it up in his mouth and shook it until it broke lose. Neither pipe had a tooth mark but the gas tank had more than I felt like counting. Bent the frame pretty good too. I had to do some straightening before it could be repaired and run again. Since then the engine leaks a small bit of oil too. Guess he didn't like my pump. The bears around here will tear anything that smells like man to pieces if it's not right in the yard or high traffic area.
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 12, 2017 20:21:08 GMT -6
Depending on the drop of the creek and the flow rate, you might want to investigate the ram pump. They are water powered and can lift water higher than the level of the water stream that powers them. It's not efficient, but the water will be running in the creek regardless of your use so efficiency doesn't matter. I don't know how much lift you can get with a ram pump but it has the great advantage of not needing outside power. If the water is flowing, the pump is running. As long as you have adequate storage, the pump's delivery rate can be small. One quart per minute is 60 quarts/hr or 15 gallons/hr or 360 gallons/day. You must protect it from freezing but that is true of any above ground pump. The pump makes some noise but it's not as loud as a gas engine. Here are a couple of references: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ramwww.instructables.com/id/Hydraulic-Ram-Pump/There are more references online and a number of videos on youtube.com |
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Post by crice118 on Oct 12, 2017 21:13:29 GMT -6
with the water on the place are you using a small hydro-generator or water wheel, remember our ancestors used water wheels to grind grain or you power a sawmill or you can generate electricity or you can move water or you can, etc. etc. seems a shame to let that power go to waste, a water wheel could run like a conveyor belt to get some elevation of water (like a ferris wheel and close to the top coming down spill the water into a trough, if angles right you could have a series of pools which is powering smaller conveyors till you keep a steady stream of water trickling in, any overflow you could reroute for flowing down and generating power or divert back into the top pool which trickles down (think gears as in a ten speed bike) you probably already had the image from the first line but other like me might not and need images to see it
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 13, 2017 6:18:20 GMT -6
Unfortunately the big creek of which I have just under 200 feet along my property has virtually no fall. The water stays between 12 and 18 inches during normal weather. After rain or especially storms I've seen it rise near 6 feet and turn into a wild white water mess. This creek is 24 feet wide until the corner where it crosses off my land. At that point a good bit must go underground as it drops to 11 feet wide and 5-6 inches deep.
I have looked into all kinds of ram pumps and power making options for the creek. I did see on possible under water power making device that MIGHT make some power there. With the storm wash we get though I am not sure anything could handle those times.
The branch only runs wet after rains and also gets major flash floods several feet deep and wild.
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 13, 2017 7:19:36 GMT -6
During the winter of 08 and spring of 09 I removed the 6 trojan T-105 batteries from our golf cart. Next I removed the 1,200W Victor modified wave inverter from my work trailer. I put the batteries in a large plastic tote and wired them to the inverter. Thank you lord now we can power the dorm fridge and a few lights without listening to the generator all the time. But the big plus here was we could save some of the very expensive gas we were burning. IIRC gas was up around $3-3.50 a gallon at the time. Next I took another old 5 horse engine and the frame from a blown up generator and an AC Delco alternator and built a battery charger. This worked but was hard to keep belts on. So I tried different size pulleys and this and that even chains. Nothing worked well considering the load on the system. Finally we did end up with some big pulleys that would keep a belt for a while maybe a month or so. Then we started burning out these old used junk yard alternators. We had added more loads to the power system though. These 5 and 6 horse power engines couldn't stand up to the load though. After running through several I had laying around we started buying HF = Harbor Freight 6.5 honda clone engines with the extended warranty. We at some point moved up to 100 amp alternators also. This system does work just not the greatest. I have no idea how many engines we carried back and exchanged at HF! Or how many alternators we burned up.
While all this was going on I contracted with a local timber company to cut some of our timber. We had them take about 6 acres of non prime timber. This all came off the road front. Big mistake on my part should have taken off the back and left the road view blocked. But what's done is done. This gave us a little working money to build an addition on to and over the camper. For roughly $5,000 we framed out a 20'8" x 24' right around and over the camper. This took care of the roof leaking problems. lol Also being a "camper addition" no permit was required. We set the room in front of the camper on blocks on top of the ground and put 6x6 posts on the far side of the camper. This allowed us to have a 12x24 room over top of the camper and the 12x24 room in front we were building. Now this has a seriously steep roof like a 14/12 pitch. Did I mention I'm deathly afraid of heights. We had no plans or material list when we went to get materials. We did manage to get everything we needed in one load and all the scrap that was left didn't half fill the back of our pickup. Lucky or good? Doesn't really matter since we didn't have any funds to waste. Now keep in mind I am still walking with a cane or two sometimes. Climbing ladders and such was hard. But it got done. It took nearly a year before all the shingles were on. I couldn't tell you how many times we had to replace renail the tar paper down. I could only take about 20 minutes on a ladder before I was wiped out. Many and often brakes were required.
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Post by crice118 on Oct 13, 2017 12:28:53 GMT -6
but you persevered, that is the big difference in who survives and who doesn't ms aside, your experience and capability makes a valuable asset, not everyone can visual and the construct, people will pay money for that skill, you might be afflicted by ms but God gave you avaluable asset in your skills
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 13, 2017 13:38:42 GMT -6
Thank you crice. What you say has some truth to it as people are always trying to hire me. It's not quite as bad now that I have my own little shop. Then again that's being closed at the end of this month. Not for a lack of work but sever things added up just make it the most sensible decision.
Wish there was a vehicle section. That's one of my current projects. Not quite a PAWV but not that far off either. In fact we are going to possibly buy another truck for this tomorrow even though we have several now. What we are looking to buy tomorrow is a 1990 F250 4X4 supercab long bed. It's probably going to need a complete frame off rebuild. I know the transmission is bad and the body is rough.
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Post by crice118 on Oct 13, 2017 19:42:01 GMT -6
train you some auto body students or use shade tree mechanics as apprentices, one paw I read, can't remember which one, guys fabricated stoves and woodburning vehicles - build some drum stoves for the mechanically inept or rocket stoves or, composter bin which rotates, look at the old tools and equipment and shtf you're already known and people would be coming with materials while you get paid for know how and experience
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Post by cutter on Oct 13, 2017 23:04:38 GMT -6
Biggkidd, I'm glad you did this. I have learned a few things and I think you solved my garage heat problem. I'm also fairly sure you solved my leaky roof problem, when I get the cash for the parts together. You keep writing and I'll keep reading. Thanks a million.
P.S. I may steal some of your ideas for my storylines too. Hope you don't mind.
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Post by biggkidd on Oct 14, 2017 4:47:12 GMT -6
Cutter use anything you want anyway you can. I have some other heating ideas coming yet. Rocket stoves are awesome. For heating shop / garage space barrel stoves are hard to beat. They start throwing good heat five minutes after lighting they are the fastest wood large space heaters I know of. The metal is thin so no time is lost of course this also means they start going cold as soon as the fire is out. No mass to warm up or cool off. Now inside a house a traditional wood stove with lots of mass makes much more even heat.
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