Construction Journal Entry Week of 8/9/15

8/11-13/15 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

After a visit to the clinic to get my blood tested, then a pass by the Post Office, I stopped in to see Priscilla and deliver a package. Then I proceeded on to Monroe where I got soundly beat in a game of checkers by Uncle Charles.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 12:30. It was hot! After carrying up my gear in one trip, I got a roll of duct tape and taped up a leaky section of the hose going to irrigate Brian, the giant sequoia tree. I had taped the hose several times before but it had always been wet and it didn't work very well. Now the hose was bone dry so it was a good opportunity to fix the leak.

Even though the leak wasn't bad enough to prevent water from reaching Brian, I still wanted to fix it. Once the hose was patched, I turned on the valve to begin watering Brian. Then I had my lunch and a short nap.

When I got up, I went into the woods to check on the trees. There was a lot more water reaching Brian so I need to leave that valve open for only an hour in order to fill the depression around the tree.

Next I went to work on the next serious project. That is to complete the last 16-foot section of water pipe. I took my PhD (Post hole Digger) down to the creek where the pipe needs to go and began removing debris and fixing up the creek bed. There were a lot of old branches in the creek bed so I used the PhD to pluck them out so I could stack them out of the way. Then the PhD was the perfect tool to deepen and narrow the creek bed channel.

I have been thinking about this project for many years and up until a couple weeks ago, I wasn't sure how to go about it or exactly how to configure the plumbing. This last section of pipe is the very lowest in the entire run. It turns the corner after coming downhill from the spring where it then goes up the hill to the cabin. The theory is that any air that gets into the pipeline will bubble up and escape either at the springbox or through some fixture in the cabin. The absence of air in the pipeline will maximize the pressure in the cabin plumbing.

The low point of the pipe is in the creek bed and it will normally be submerged in the creek. So all these years I have been wondering how I am going to solder pipes that are under water. I had pretty much resigned myself to having to build a cofferdam upstream and then install a diversionary pipe to carry the water down and around my work site. That prospect always seemed to be daunting and I wanted a better way.

Well, this year, a better way showed up, I guess by pure serendipity. Last winter's snowfall was so light, and this summer's rainfall was so low, that all creeks and rivers are at near record lows. So the creek that comes out of the spring now fits in a channel that is only about 5 inches wide and 3 inches deep. After tidying up the creek bed so that there is only that narrow channel, I can bend the pipes up high enough above the water so that I can drain and dry them out and sweat the joints with ease. Then I can bend the pipes back down to the level of the creek bed. It should be easy.

After giving much thought to what kind of plumbing I need at that low point, I decided against installing any valves there at all. Instead I will install a Tee joint with a garden hose adapter attached. The adapter will normally be capped. By removing the cap, the pipes on both sides can be drained, and by attaching a hose filled with water, a siphon can be established if I need some help in getting the pipeline from the spring filled with water. I have had this exact problem several times as I have installed sections of the water line, so now I know how to solve the problem. It should work, and this is hopefully the last time I will ever have to worry about that problem.

The installation of this pipe section is actually quite exciting for me. Its installation will mark the completion of the longest-running (pun unintended) project at Camp Serendipity: the water supply system.

I began work on the springbox and its attendant plumbing in 1993 and I have worked on it intermittently over the entire intervening twenty-two years. There will still be maintenance work on the water system, but the installation of the system itself will finally be completed when I get that last section of pipe sweated in place. It will truly be a cause for celebration.

After the creek bed was cleaned out, I got a tape and measured for the length of the pipe section. It measured out to be 16 feet. Back in the crawlspace, I got out the last coil of 1" copper pipe that I had and made sure it had 16 feet left. It had more than enough.

Next I did quite a bit of strategizing about exactly how I was going to disconnect the existing temporary hose and to install the new pipe. One option would be to use existing couplers by undoing one end and sweating the new pipe into the old coupler. That is always a messy approach because it is hard to get all the old solder out of the joint enough so that the new pipe will seat all the way. After considering, and rejecting, a few options like that, I settled on what I think is the simplest and easiest.

The plan is to prepare the new pipe ahead of time so that the uphill end is straight and the downhill end is bent at somewhat less than 90º. Then the Tee will be fitted to the downhill end. The existing pipe coming down from the cabin will be bent to go uphill, and wherever that bend is tangent to the Tee, it will be cut there so that it can seat into the Tee fitting.

With the Tee installed dry, the existing pipe from the spring and the new pipe will be aligned so that they are tangent where both pipes are straight. The old pipe will then be marked at the end of the new pipe where it will then be cut and connected to the new pipe with a coupler.

I already had most of the parts I needed. Last week I bought the Tee, a brass garden hose adapter, and two brass garden hose caps. I already had a copper adapter with a 3/4" sweat adapter on one end and a female pipe thread on the other end which will take the brass adapter.

But search as I might, I could not find a 1" copper coupler nor could I find any scrap piece of 3/4" copper pipe. I was sure I had both but I couldn't find them. That sort of took the pressure off the project because it was a good reason to put the installation off for another week. That would give me time to do the job carefully and deliberately. With time pressure, it is easy to get careless and make a mistake.

On Wednesday morning, I went down to the creek and measured for the pipe again. I have been burned too many times for measuring once and cutting twice so I wanted to make sure. It came out to exactly 16 feet again. While I was down at the creek, I did some more brush clearing and creek channel grooming.

Then I got out the coil of pipe, unrolled and straightened 16 feet of it and cut it to length. I didn't straighten the entire length of it because I wanted a small radius bend on one end. I left that on the free end which made it easy to straighten the other end which I cut off.

I wasn't sure that a bent pipe would seat nicely in the Tee fitting, but after trying it I could see that it would be no problem. The radius of the bend could be a lot smaller than I needed and still allow the fitting to seat.

With the pipe cut, I prepared the ends so that they were ready for flux and solder and then put a cap on each end to protect them and keep dirt out of the pipe. Then I carried the pipe down to the creek to try the fit. I used the PhD to fix up the channel some more, bent the pipes a little more, and found that the pipe would fit perfectly. And, in my work, perfect is close enough.

About that time, Bill Odgers and his "dancing partner", Arline, showed up for a visit. Bill is in his nineties and had to take the steps slowly and carefully. I was really happy that the stone steps were finished otherwise he would have had serious trouble even getting into the cabin.

The two of them seemed to be impressed with the size of the cabin, the deck planks, and the beams. They gave me a lot of positive compliments which, of course, I felt good about. After a discussion on the front porch in near 90º heat, we went into the cabin which was delightfully cool. We went up to the loft where they looked at Dave's 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, the model of the cabin, and the bronze model of Mt. Rainier.

Arline was familiar with some areas of Mt. Rainier National Park, so she found them on the model and asked a lot of related questions. Bill was almost as impressed with the bronze model storage/traveling/display case as he was with the model itself. I had him help me in converting the case from storage mode to display mode.

Back down on the first floor, they asked about, and I gladly related stories about, various aspects of the project. These included painting (Bill does watercolors and he was interested in an acrylic and an oil that I had done as well as a watercolor of a bison done by some South Dakota Native Americans), the artesian water system, the geology of the rocks the cabin is built on, the wiring problems involved in installing switches and fixtures in a log column, the finishing of the logs, and the difference in results between Skip's method and the typical manufactured log house method (they knew of friends of theirs who had problems related to their log homes' settling, and I told them that with Skip's method there is no settling). It was a fun conversation.

I took a few pictures of the two of them before they left shortly before noon. I think they had another engagement and needed to hurry and leave so I didn't feel quite so bad for not offering them some lunch. I am not good with food or food preparation so it was just as well.

After lunch and a nap it was still 90º outside but I took the PhD back down to the creek and did some more clearing and grooming before I quit and took a very welcome cool shower. Earl called and told me that he had a friend who was looking for some Douglas fir timber. I told him that I had some that was inaccessible and that Robert Ferrel had first dibs on it. I told him I would call Robert and find out his intentions.

On Thursday morning, I called Robert and found out that he still planned to come over and tackle Phase II of the logging project. He said that there was still a little cleanup to do in "Little Yosemite" and he might do that next week. I was happy to hear that. He said that Tim Gelatney, the guy who bought logs from Phase I for use at Stevens Pass, was looking for more logs. He also said that the logs he got from Camp Serendipity were among the best logs he had every used.

After breakfast I went down to the creek again and did some more creek bed grooming. I also rigged a pulley in a tree with a rope that I can use to help manipulate the new pipe in order to line it up for soldering. I may or may not use it, but it is rigged and ready in case I need it.

Then, since Robert may come back soon, I decided to have him cut away a stump that is in the way of driving around the hairpin turn. He had told me earlier that he could do that so I decided to do some preparation. I used the warthog to dig out brush that had taken root and grown right next to the stump. Then I used the warthog to dig the dirt and rocks away from the stump so that the chainsaw wouldn't run into dirt. Then I got the spud out and used it to cut away the bark with its load of dirt trying to expose clean white wood around the base of the stump for the chainsaw to cut. It was tough going and I didn't get clean white wood exposed all the way around, but at least I got a start on it and did remove quite a bit. Robert can let me know whether or not more needs to be done before he can cut it.

It started to get really hot so I quit and went back to the cabin to cool off, dry off, put stuff away and get ready to leave for home. I left at 12:30 very happy with the recent progress and my time in the mountains.



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