We've got gas redux

I haven't posted to this blog much this month because there hasn't been much to tell. The weather changes constantly. Snow, cold, sunshine, warm breezes, rain, wind, you name it we've had it. The road is slimy mud which makes going anywhere a real challenge. One of the neighbors had a friend of his bring a bulldozer up and do some work on the main part of the road which badly needed it. But once the surface was torn up and everybody drove on it after it snowed and rained, it turned into a horrible mess. So I have been mostly staying home and working hard to get the house ready for winter. Here's a picture of me on the front porch taking a break from all the work.

Almost exactly a year ago the guy from the propane company came up and pressure tested all my propane pipes and hooked us up to the big propane tank instead of the portable cylinders. When he was doing that, he could not pressure test the house at the pressures they usually use because the house propane pipes were all semi-rigid copper with small needle valves for the only shut-offs. I had already replaced the copper in the bathhouse with black iron. While semi-rigid copper is allowed for propane, he strongly recommended that if I ever add any new appliances that I have a plumber come up and replace all the semi-rigid copper with black iron. Well, this year I have a new hot water heater I want to add. But between the snow and rain and massive mud there is no way a plumber would come up here. Besides, this remodel is my career these days, so I figured I'd do it myself. I have spent the last few weeks under the house with pipe wrenches and fittings and black iron pipes replacing the whole gas system. What a pain. I'm finally done so once again, a year after I first announced proudly that we have gas.... we have gas again!

Here's the new water heater. It is a tankless water heater that hangs from the wall in the kitchen. It is not quite operating yet because I still need to vent it. But it is very, very close. Then I can wash dishes without having to heat water on the stove. And Tom will be able to shave in the upstairs bathroom. But most importantly, since the hot water pipes are wrapped up together with the cold water pipes in my massive insulation structures under the house, I am hoping that running hot water through them will add enough heat in those structures to keep the cold water pipes from freezing.

The other big project that has kept me busy is replacing the heater in the bathhouse. All last winter I struggled to keep the bathhouse warm. Every time the wind blew the pilot would go out. And sometimes when the wind didn't blow it would go out anyway. I had to use a kerosene space heater for backup on really cold nights to keep the pipes from freezing. This fall I couldn't get the old heater to stay lit at all. So I finally got fed up and replaced it with a new one that was made in Argentina and works like a charm. We've had three or four ferocious windstorms in the last week and it just keeps burning merrily away. It also has a much better thermostat and a lower low setting which keeps the room at a steady 65 degrees. It will make this winter much easier than last.

Here's a picture of the new heater. As you can see, I've made so many changes in the bathhouse that I'm going to have to repaint to fill in where things I've replaced were against the wall when they painted it originally. But that can wait.

Besides the hot water heater and the bathhouse heater, I've given the generator a tune up and changed the oil to synthetic oil which makes it a little easier to start when it is below freezing.

And I've been knitting in the evenings after working on these projects all day. I've made socks and hats and mittens and now I'm working on a sweater. I plan to be warm and colorful all winter.

So I'm almost ready for winter. Which is a good thing because next week I'm leaving for Whidbey Island again (after a visit to Tom in Richland). When I come back in December I'm hoping that winter will be here for good and there will be enough snow for the snowmobile. I've done enough mudbogging the last few weeks to last me until next spring.