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big cardboard fire at the cabin
Saturday, October 16 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I'd forgotten to grind coffee last night while the generator was still on, so we had to run it this morning both for that and to repressurize the plumbing system, which had lost pressure due to a couple toilet flushes. I was the first person to poop in our toilet, and of course I'd made enough of a mess of things for Gretchen to add "toilet brush" to the list for our next shopping errand.
Once we had our his & her french presses of coffee made, it was time to write the array of letters for the day's New York Times Spelling Bee on a big flat cardboard box that had cotained the headboard for a bed. (The panagram was "adamantly" with "d" in the middle.)
My first project for the day was to replace the conventional circuit breakers for the upstairs bathroom and bedroom with AFCI (Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter) circuit breakers. Such breakers, like GFCI circuit breakers, connect to both neutral and hot. They actually have four connections: hot-in, neutral-in, hot-out, and neutral-out. The neutral-out must be connected to another terminal next to the hot-out, and the neutral-in is typically handled by a additional piece of wire coming out of the back of the circuit breaker. Initially it is coiled, but it can be uncoiled and run to the neutral bus. In the cabin's circuit breaker panel, though, you can actually use special circuit breakers that connect to an additional neutral rail, making it so you can use circuit breakers without that piece of wire. I hadn't known about this feature, so my circuit breakers included the neutral-in wire. It didn't take long to swap in these new breakers.
Next I replaced the 40-amp 240-volt circuit breaker supplying the car-charging outlet with a GFI version, since it seemed possible (though not certain) that this would be a requirement for that outlet. When I replaced this breaker, I had the complication that I'd cut the neutral line too short to reach to where I had the circuit breaker (since in a conventional circuit breaker box, the neutral bus can be far from where a circuit breaker is to be installed). I could've used a wire nut to extend the neutral wire, but I had no wire nuts big enough for an eight-gauge copper cable. So instead I shuffled the circuits around to make room for the big 50 amp breaker (I couldn't find a 40 amp GFI breaker) up near where its neutral wire had been going. With all of that installed, I went to test the car charging circuit and was disappointed to find that the GFI feature tripped immediately. It had been raining most of the time since we'd arrived last night and the outlet had been without a cover and exposed to the elements, so perhaps that was the problem.
Meanwhile Gretchen had amassed a huge pile of cardboard, and I suggested we burn it "Burning-Man style" out on the barren expanse recently graded atop our new septic leachfield northwest of the cabin. The rain had let up and the sun even come out, though more rain was predicted, and we figured we should have our fire while conditions permitted. But after I saw the cardboard all in one pile, I thought we should break it up into pieces to better control how quickly it burned. I was worried that too much radiant heat might damage the generator and the vinyl trim on our windows some 50 feet away. So we managed to have a hot burn that was still fairly in-control despite gusts of wind that occasionally rained sparks into the forest. Fortunately, everything had been saturated with rain a couple hours before. As the last embers of the fire were dying out, dark clouds blew in and a drenching shower commenced. That was about the best timing we could've hoped for.
After that, we closed up the dogs in the house and drove to Amsterdam to get supplies at Home Depot and Target. We used navigation, though it just confirmed a route that I had already memorized (driving from Routes 309 to 30 via State Street pasing though the north end of Gloversville and then heading down 30 to Amsterdam's motor mile, where all those big box stores and Burger King are located).
[REDACTED]
We went to Home Depot first, where Gretchen got a pedestal for our bathroom sink (it hadn't come with one) and a few other things while I was tracking down covers that would fit on an outdoor 240 volt outlet, replacement circuit breaker box labels (remember, I'd moved the breakers around), drain draps (1.25 and 1.5 inch; I didn't know which I needed) and supply hoses for the bathroom sink. With over $200 of stuff, we walked out of the Home Depot into a torrential downpour, which Gretchen ran through to fetch the Bolt.
Our next stop was Target, where we spent a very long time getting just the right home goods, including cheapo 3/$1 forks, a butter knife, and a single $9 kitchen knife, all for us to use until better things arrive. This was also the chance to get a much-needed toilet brish. Soon our car was full of steel trash cans, cloth laundry baskets, a bamboo dish drainer, and various pieces of kitchen cookware. In the grocery section, we stocked up on condiments like soy sauce, spices, and shelf-stable foods like pasta and jars of Rao marinara sauce. Meanwhile the sound of heavy rain could be heard on the thin roof overhead.
While I was ringing all this up at the cashier (delayed somewhat by a grandmother in line in front of me needing to have the Target app on her phone thoroughly explained to her), Gretchen ran over to the nearby Petsmart to get vegan dog food (we'd forgot to bring any with us). As she was ringing me up, the Target cashier asked me if I wanted the "protection plan" for one and only one item: the bamboo dish rack. I did not.
By then the downpour had nearly stopped and one could walk outside without being immediately drenched. But other showers were on the way.
After all that, I felt a little like I'd spent too much time in a museum. But back at the house, I started doing tasks once more. The one I tackled this evening was the installation of the pedestal sink in the bathroom.
Gretchen had been a little uncertain about whether the pedestal she'd bought today at Home Depot would fit the sink she'd bought some weeks before. They were both made by Kohler, but you never really know. It turned out that the two weren't really designed to go together. But to see the mismatch, one would have to lie on one's back and look up from below. We decided we could make the two work together and that it might actually be kind of great that they're not designed for each other.
In order to have solid wood to bolt the sink into, I had to cut out a rectangular hole between two studs at sink level and then fill that hole with structural wood. I didn't have a lot of options except for scrap larch, so that was what I used. It had been out in the rain for months, so I decided to dry it in the oven first. Gretchen had just baked us some frozen pizza (our first oven-baked meal at the cabin), so the oven was hot. But I decided to crank it up to 250 and let the larch cook a bit longer. I should mention that Gretchen noticed that the inexpensive gas stove she'd selected for the cabin is "so ghetto" that it doesn't even tell you when it's been pre-heated. You just have to guess. Or use a thermometer.
My structural addition to the bathroom wall was so minimally-invasive that it was almost invisible once I had the sink in place. But then I realized that I didn't have the proper hardware to finish plumbing the drain. In the tight space behind the sink, there wasn't enough room for the trap, so I had to place it to the side, which then meant I needed a flexible down-pipe from the sink's drain. Nothing is ever easy when doing this sort of work, particularly when civilization is such a long drive away.
By bedtime, there were strong winds and occasional cold downpours, and it looked like conditions were about to turn more typical for this time of year on the Adirondacks. So Gretchen and I dragged the futon off the porch into the kitchen area and went to bed there. [REDACTED]
Neville enjoying all the heat from the massive cardboard fire this afternoon.
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