Home at last

David, they’ve gone above and beyond helpful. If Country Financial Insurance keeps doing things like they have so far all the way through I’d do commercials for them all day long. The only other time I needed them was hail damage on a car and they were top notch then too. When a bodyman says something like that about an insurance company that says a lot. Let us know how that grapple works!

Sorry I’ve been away from here for awhile, I’ve been busy. I’ve got a few more pics since the last time. This 5th wheel sure is well made. The company, Alpenelite, was in Yakima but has since gone out of business, not enough people wanted this nice of an RV. It’s a 2001 that the insurance company paid $13,500 for delivered and setup at the property plus they paid for a generator and another $2,000 or so for dishes, silverware, pots and pans, hoses, skirting, bedding, TV, you name it, everything to get it all set up. I have the original invoice from the previous owner. They paid $55,000 for it in 2001 :wacko: , and it looks like they used it 5-6 times. The underside is sealed up with aluminum, the tanks are all heated and insulated, even the dump valve has a heater. :good: Here’s some pics of the beginning of a ramp I’m building for Marianne’s transport chair, the skirting (including going around the propane tanks so if there’s a leak it doesn’t leak under the unit), and digging up the water line and putting in a frost proof faucet, and digging up the RV dump/septic clean-out and repairing it. I’ve got a 42 gallon transfer tank with inflated tires that hooks behind the tractor and just takes a few minutes to dump the black tank. Next is digging up the power line, a neighbor who’s an electrician is going to loan me a temporary construction meter and circuit box until the new house is built so we can get off this generator and part time power thing. A local propane company is coming up to move my 500 gallon tank that came with the greenhouse over to the 5th wheel, no more dragging little tanks down to the feed store every few days.

Thanks Bob. A fella does what he has to. It helps that my new cardiologist is the one that put the balloon pump through a vein in my groin up into my heart to keep me alive until the folks at OHSU could work their magic. He remembers that day, and said my recovery is nothing short of a miracle :yahoo: He also likes that I’ve slimmed down from a ballooned 205 down to 152. I even walk the dog every morning between 4:30 and 5:00 normally the 1.1 miles around the neighborhood, but only about 1/4 mile and back when it’s 12 degrees like this morning! I’m also glad I didn’t throw away those extra mobile home trusses from the tractor shed project years ago, they’re the perfect height to match up to the door of the 5th wheel and a gentle enough slope to make a perfect ramp.

Well, down to the last utility to get done. The propane company will be coming out soon to move the tank, it’s been postponed a few days due to insane winds and driving rain. I’ll have to dig the frost proof faucet back up and splice the line back together however. I found the power cable buried a couple feet deep, I’ve got 5 feet dug up, another 8 or so and I can put the temp box where I want it, gas for the generator’s killing me. The reason for pulling the faucet? I put it out by the street because the locate service couldn’t find it as there was no tracer wire installed with the plastic pipe. I found it however. It’s buried alongside the power cable in the same trench  :yahoo:  Now it can be right across the driveway from the 5th wheel too.

Hi Bob, no reconstruction yet, and I’d rather that wait until spring anyway. Our winters are cold and snowy, by spring the sky stays pretty clear here in the high desert. Building now would go a lot slower and wetter. I really don’t want moldy walls or floors that dry out later and squeak. As for the power and water the water is around a foot away from the power, two feet deep in a styrofoam box filled with fiberglass insulation. That’s all going to have to be dug another foot deeper to meet today’s code. At the left lower corner is where I’m bringing the cable closer to the driveway, I don’t want more than 50′ of extension cord. The reason so much is dug up is that the engineer for CEC (Central Electric Coop) wants enough to go up the post without a splice, and I’m moving it 8′ closer to the driveway.

Because I’m digging up existing for temporary use only I can keep it buried as is. When the new house is built it will all have to be 3′ deep, in conduit. Not sure what code is for size and type of line for the water but I do know that will be 3′ deep as well, and I’m pretty sure it’ll have to be something better than the nobody even sells anymore paper thin  1-1/4 brittle PVC I’m digging up now. :negative: I’m convinced that the roots from all the 30′ spruce trees along the route have compromised the old pipe, we never had anywhere near the water pressure I have now hooking up right by the back flow valve.

And now on another note. I stopped by a customers house who’s mostly retired and finishing up one of his own projects, a 57 Chevy panel. Not to shabby, eh?

PEX does seem to be the way things are going, I’ve noticed the home improvement stores are full of fittings for it. A few years back one of the bigger local car shows (over 1,000 cars) had 2 first place, 2 seconds, 2 thirds and 2 forth place trophies. This fellow did the body and paint work on every one of them.

Fast forward  a couple weeks from the picture in “general chit chat” and it was time to clear a couple hundred feet of driveway as the black tank was full 🙁                                                             The first pic is the car unburied. The initial clearing and finding the clean-out took a good part of the day. That box blade is a life saver, you can see it clearing a nice smooth surface in front of the transfer tank on the way down the driveway.

We’re just getting started on the house. I found out Deschutes County takes two to three months just to pull permits! (neighboring Crook County takes a few weeks) so I put that off for the winter for this very reason. We got three feet in one day, followed by another foot the next, with small amounts almost every other day. It broke a record from 1908 for February. The other day a 200 lb. icicle fell off a roof in Bend, damaging the house and breaking off the gas meter. https://www.ktvz.com/news/200-pound-bend-icicle-causes-damage-natural-gas-leak/1053534967 The next day the same thing happened to two houses in Madras. Can you picture a house in progress with 4 feet of snow on the bare floor and soaked studs and joists? I’m glad I chose to ride out a few extra months in the 5th wheel to avoid squeaky warped floors and a mold nightmare in a new house. :scratch: