More plumbing, more siding and a bit of determination…

This has been a delightful little week of progression with wall paneling, plumbing, window borders and siding having all come on a fair ways. Perhaps the most exciting happening occurred on Sunday afternoon when my neighbor got the plumbing ready enough to hook up to the hose and I watched as real live FREAKIN water came into my house!!!!

There’s nothing connected to the pipes (like a sink) or anywhere for the water to go (like a drain) so we just attached a temporary bendy tube doohicky and stuck it out the window, but it totally worked and it was totally wonderful The next step is to put in a gas line from the water heater to a propane tank and figure out my sink and shower faucets/ drains. Looks like luck put metal support bars for the trailer directly under my planned locations so the latter should be interesting.

My dad has had a chance to work on the house for the first time in over a month and we’ve been putting up siding all over the place in the last few days. I had been in a sort of building stalemate with cedar siding for a little while so I’m really grateful for the help.

Sometimes it seems like there’s so much to do that it can get procrastinatingly overwhelming. I have tendencies to start on several hundred small projects (with no particular regard for a sensible order) leaving lots of things partially done. While this is fun for my short attention span, it does little for the feeling of accomplishment that comes with actually finishing something.

But! I have become recently determined and procrastinate I shall not! I will finish the exterior of Little Yellow by this coming Sunday! I am on a mission! I am excited! I may be underestimating my time frame. Right, Sunday…

Plumbing started…

This weekend, my neighbor began the task of running pipes through the walls. Though I worked on more wall paneling and wasn’t much at all involved, it’s a very exciting step to Little Yellow’s housedom and is making a good dent in the list of things about this project that scare the pants off me.

I don’t really know the specifics, but the procedure included an RV water entry, a water filter, a 50 ft roll of semi flexible pipe stuff called pex and a bunch of other plumbing related things that I should probably know the names of. And of course there is the most important part which is my shiny new water heater.

It a tankless model (requiring a 12v connection and propane) called an RV500 from Precision Temp. I’m still not sure how it all works but I believe the 12v DC tells the thing to start working and the propane heats the water as it runs through the pipes. It only runs when a hot tap is turned on so it is supposedly very efficient, and is considerably more compact and lighter than having a 10 gallon tank on board. A review that helped my decision can be found here: http://www.rvdoctor.com/2010/03/product-spotlight-precision-temp-rv-500.html

I looked religiously for a less expensive alternative, but most everything else I found was either not intended for moving structures or not intended for indoor use. I also researched a cheaper competitor by Girard, but heard too many negative comments to be convinced. I spoke with the company I got my heater from before buying it, and they said they had stopped carrying the Girard because of numerous complications. So, I coughed up the funds and bought my very own RV500. It looks pretty mental to me, but my neighbour seems to find it straightforward enough so hopefully it’ll get up and running soonish.

Monday brought a confused little snow storm that has been hovering around the last few days, intermittently dumping down bouts of promising flakes between constant sputters of tiny slushy bits. Basically it’s too soggy for spending extended periods of time outside, so my dad and I have been working in the big house by the fire on my window seat bench. It was finicky and used a shit ton of clamps, but it looks half way decent and I’m looking forward to the sitting part.