11/16-18/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start and arrived at 2:00. As I parked, Bert showed up by himself. He got a few hugs and a couple biscuits. The temperature outside was 40 degrees. All the thermostats in the cabin were set to 50 and the temperature inside was 60. It looks like that is a good setting to leave the thermostats at while I am gone. We'll see if that works in colder weather.

I started a fire in the wood stove and then brought up some things I had brought with me. They included a length of carpet which I cut in half and made a throw rug for each door. They should help keep the floors clean. I have a pair of shoes that I change into as soon as I enter the cabin so I can leave my muddy boots at the door.

I checked the plumbing parts I already had, along with new parts I brought with me, and discovered that I still needed a short length of 3/4" copper pipe. That was disappointing because it meant that I wouldn't be able to finish the plumbing this week. It's a big job so I wouldn't be able to finish it all anyway. But I was hoping to at least finish the copper part at the top.

The first step, though, was to insulate the copper runs in the floor joists. I went down and scoped the job out. It looked pretty difficult because the two pipes were touching one another at a couple points and it was hard to pry them apart. They were also tight up against the sides of the holes in the joists in many places. The insulation is about an inch thick, so there needs to be about an inch of clearance all around each pipe in order to get it on. It looked like the solution was to enlarge the holes in the joist webs so the pipes can be moved apart. But I didn't know exactly how to make the holes. I took a shower and quit for the day still pondering how I was going to proceed.

On Wednesday morning Bert and Ernie heard me cutting wood for the fire and came up for hugs and biscuits. Once the fire was going nicely, I went to work on the joists using a 2" hole saw. I started cutting a hole in a joist right under where a pex pipe went through. I misjudged and the saw cut into the pex pipe a little. I felt really stupid. I couldn't tell exactly how deep the nick was so I'm not sure how I will deal with it. I might be able to cut the pipe at that point and put a coupler on there, or if the nick isn't too deep, I'll put the coupler on further down the pipe. I'll figure that out later.

With that mistake with the hole saw, I switched and tried a small saber saw. I was surprised at how well it worked. It easily cut through the web and it was easy to control the saw to make the holes exactly how I wanted them. I proceeded from joist to joist and enlarged all the necessary holes so that there was enough room for the insulation around each pipe.

Next I tried installing the insulation. I had two different types and I wasn't sure which was better. I only had three lengths of each, so it really didn't matter. I needed to use all that I had unless I wanted to delay the job until I could get more. It was hard forcing the insulation along the pipes and through the holes in the webs because it would get hung up easily and all the work had to be done while reaching up overhead.

About 11:00, when I had almost finished installing the pipe insulation, I heard the phone ring. And, of course, this was one of the few times I forgot to bring the phone down to the crawl space with me. I ran upstairs and answered it in time. It was a call from Michelle Malkin and the editor of "Human Events" with a nationwide telephone conference that I had been invited to join. I spent the next hour intently listening to a very interesting political discussion. Although I could have, I didn't ask any questions because I hadn't thought about it in advance. I didn't even know such a conference was going to take place. I did vote a few times though, when they presented questions for us to respond to by pushing buttons. The call ended at noon so I went down to the trailer for lunch.

It had just started snowing lightly when I went in for lunch. After lunch and a nap, I revived the fire in the stove and finished up the pipe insulation. Then I searched through some odds and ends and found a short length of 3/4" copper pipe. That was what I needed to put the plumbing together. So I began the assembly of the copper plumbing at the interface with the pex pipe.

The water flow path in the final plumbing will be the input from the spring coming in one of the pipes heading straight through the tee and straight into the pex plumbing. The overflow would make a 90 degree turn in the tee, immediately make another 90 and then return to the creek out the second pipe. When we are gone, water will run full bore through the overflow pipe to keep the water fresh. When we are there, we will close down a valve on the return pipe to provide pressure to the plumbing in the cabin.

I started out by sweating together a 1x3/4x1 tee, a short length of 3/4" pipe, and a 3/4" threaded female adapter. The rest of the configuration would be two lengths of 1" pipe to connect this assembly to the two pipes in the joists, the pex pipe assembly which will connect to the female adapter, and a 1x90 elbow to connect one of the pipes to the tee. Making the two lengths of copper connecting pipe presented a challenge.

The pipes in the joists come in at about a 45 degree angle and somewhat lower in the joists than the pex pipes. That means that the two connecting pipes have to have a couple curves in each one so that the ends line up nicely. The problem was how to bend those 1" pipes in just the right way so they fit.

Both pipes in the joists had bends at their top ends, but neither one was bent in a direction that made it easy to mate with the pex pipe. After looking it over, I decided that I would connect with those pipes back two joists so that the two connecting pipes wouldn't have to be too severely bent. That meant that the connecting pipes would have to be on the order of 3 or 4 feet long. I cut the pipes off where the connection will be made and then began working on the problem of how to figure out how to bend the connecting pipes just right.

I got the saber saw back out and cut or enlarged holes in the two intervening joists where the connecting pipes had to run. I cut the holes so that the pipes could make nice smooth bends and still go through the holes.

During all this work, I came up with an idea about how to measure and record the shapes of the pipes I needed so that I could bend the pipes into those shapes. The idea was to cut a 4-foot length of AWG 4 solid copper wire, mount one end of the wire into a wood plug that would fit inside the end of the copper pipe. Then by inserting the plug into the pipe, I could bend the wire into the shape I needed so that the end would line up with the coupling to the pex pipe. The wire would then provide a template for bending the copper pipe.

I made the thing as described and took it down to the crawlspace and mounted it in the end of one of the pipes. Then I bent it into a smooth shape that went through the holes in the joist and ended up aiming at the pex pipe. Then, just to see, I plugged it into the other pipe and discovered that the same shape worked for that pipe as well. That was a small stroke of serendipity.

I was now ready to bend pipes, but I was out of time and out of energy. So with the plan in place, I happily sat in front of the blazing fire watching the snow falling and listening to some of my favorite music. I would bend the pipes tomorrow. Life doesn't get much better than that.

On Thursday morning, there was only about an inch of snow on the ground. It was still snowing lightly. I started a fire in the stove and went to work bending pipes to match my copper wire. After learning a few tricks, I made a little progress with the first pipe I tried, until I kinked it.

I started over with a straighter piece of pipe and with a little more skill and knowledge. That one came out much better. Then I got another piece for the second pipe and easily bent that to the correct shape.

Then I took down to the crawl space, the two connector pipes, a couple of couplers, a street ell, and the assembly I had already soldered together and tried to fit them all together dry inside the joists. I had to cut one of the connector pipes a little shorter, but after that, I got the whole thing to fit nicely together, inside the joists, ready to solder. I marked each joint with a sharpie so that I could solder them correctly, and took them all back out and brought them upstairs. I can solder the whole thing together outside the floor, and then I will need to sweat only two joints inside the floor. I'll have to line the subfloor with sheet metal when I do so I don't burn the place down, but there is plenty of room so it won't be a problem.

I left for home at 1:30 feeling pretty good about my plumbing progress. The drive home was stunningly beautiful. New snow covered all the trees so it was like driving through a different Christmas card with each curve in the road.