Today, I worked from home in the camper. I work one or two days per week from home instead of going into the office. That's the arrangement I made with my employer when I was hired. The weather forecast was calling for very high winds, with up to 60 mph gusts in the "higher elavations". I imagine the "higher elevations" meant the Smoky Mountains but wondered how much wind we would have here on top of the ridge. I was a bit concerned. From the pictures I've posted, you can see our trailers are surrounded by trees. In the last month, I had taken down most of the poor looking trees near the camper pad.
While on a conference call for work this morning, I heard and felt something hit the camper. I ended the conference call as soon as possible then went out to see what damage may have occurred. A limb had landed on top of the trailer and punched a hole through the awning that covers the slide-out roof. This hole needed patching or rain water might make it through the awning, through the slide-out gasket, and into the camper. I looked around at the scrap building materials. I found a piece of styrofoam and cut it to size. I then slid it over the top of the slide-out roof but under the awning that covers the slide-out roof. I pushed the styrofoam under the hole of the awning so that the hole would be higher than the surrounding awning areas to prevent rain water from trying to run into the hole. I then put some good old duct tape over the hole. Yes, it's Jethro Bodine work but it's effective. My wife has patched awning holes in the past with real awning material. However, I just wanted the item patched and done with. So I used what we had.
Thoughout today, the winds howled and the trees violently swayed. Each time the sound of the wind started picking up, it made me uncomfortable. The winds lasted for several hours. I watched one tree 50 feet from the house site fall and heard at least one other fall not too far away. We appear to have incurred only the damage to the awning. Two times today I chased down some leftover thin styrofoam basement waterproofing sheets that blew into the woods. After retrieving this material the first time I placed 3 bowling ball sized rocks on the stack. An hour later, the winds picked up the same stack of styrofoam sheets and sent them sailing into the woods again. I retrieved the sheets again and then placed about 8 rocks on the stack.
The task for the wife today was to put heat tape and insulation on the water hose that runs from the well to the camper. The wife caught a cold yesterday and is still feeling poorly. It was my intention to relieve her of the water hose duty and do it myself. It is supposed to get down to 25 F tonight so the hose needed insulating today. However, my independent wife would not let me do the water hose job and did the task herself.
My wife finished the water hose insulating job by late afternoon and got the water hose reconnected. I hate water hoses. They always seem to leak. On Monday, the wife started working on the water hose insulating task. We need 50 feet of water house between the well and the camper. She was hooking two 25 foot hoses together but could not get any two hoses to connect without significant leaking. We ended up throwing away 2 or 3 hoses. My wife found a single 50 foot hose that we had and hooked it up. It only leaked minimally with a drop of water dripping every 45 seconds or so. So we went with the single 50 foot hose. The water from the 50 foot hose tastes like it came out of a water hose. I'm hoping the taste eventually gets better. With potable water hoses in the past, I've experienced the "water hose taste" that eventually goes away after enough use. I hope that happens this time. The difference here is that this hose is not new.
When working on the water hose, the wife discovered that yesterday's rain had caused water to run under the well house and into the 2 foot deep hole where the pitless adapter connects to the well casing. Thus she asked me to dig a trench around the well house to divert water away from it. I used the backhoe to dig the trench along the back side of the well house but still had to do plenty of manual digging using a shovel and maddock.
We have placed a 100 watt light bulp in the well house to keep the water line and tank inside the well house from freezing. This evening I placed an electronic thermometer inside the well house to monitor it's temperature. The thermometer sends a radio signal to our digital clock in the camper where the temperature reading is displayed. We will monitor the temp in the well house tonight and tomorrow night during the sub-freezing nights to make sure the 100 watt light is providing enough heat. At this moment the outdoor temp is 39 F and the well house temp is 54 F at the point where the pitless adapter connects to the well casing.
The last unfinished piece of the camper move involved dumping the camper's black (sewage) tank. We have found through experience that we need to dump the black tank twice a week. We had not dumped the tank since Saturday before our move. There has been some earth work and grading since we installed the 140 foot camper septic line and I was hoping that the pipes remained undamaged. This evening before darkness hit, I had my wife dump the black tank while I stood at the septic tank and watched the septic line through an open septic tank lid. As soon as my wife opened the valve to dump the black tank, I could hear noise through my end of the septic line. That noise of rushing water through a hollow pipe was like music to my ears. Several seconds later I watched that brown liquid pour out of the pipe into the septic tank and you'd have thought I was watching something of beauty. In fact I was. I was now a happy man.
I ended up taking half a vacation day from work today because of the time I ended up spending on home tasks. After my wife and I finished today's tasks and the winds started subsiding, I finally started feeling that "Ahhh" moment. We have electricy, water, working septic, phone, internet, and no trees lying on our trailers. Tonight the wife made my favorite meal - homemade chicken and dumplings. You can see the pot on the stove in the picture. While I've been writing this post I've been eating homemade chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. Life is getting better.
