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inter-trail wetland
Sunday, October 13 2024
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
It was cold and rainy all day, so mostly all that Gretchen and the dogs did today was snuggle on the couch in front of the fire. We drank coffee played Spelling Bee collaboratively for the first time since before we'd flown to Europe. But then I had some things I needed to do in the basement that didn't require good weather. I will be installing a two-zone minisplit in the cabin, with one of the zones in the basement. That required wiring, of course, but it also required a clear spot on the wall. I soon determined that the best place for the basement air handler was on the north wall a little west of the boiler. But one of the 3/4 inch copper pipes for the first floor zone was in the way. In this situation, most people would've found a different place to put the air handler. But I'm confident enough in my plumbing skills to decide to re-route the plumbing instead. This was complicated somewhat by the fact that the existing plumbing used exclusively crimp fittings, and I don't have the equipment to join pipes that way. I have to solder them. The problem with this is that crimped fittings contain rubber gaskets that cannot be allowed to get too hot, which means that I can't solder too close to them. Since I would have to be soldering closer to crimped fittings than is typically safe, I would have to wrap nearby crimped fittings in wet rags to keep them cool. Then it turned out that I had other problems: I had too few right-angle fittings, and I had very little acid solder flux. I could solve the first problem by clever re-use of some crimped fittings, which would then require me to do more protection of them as I soldered. But the other problem caused me to apply too little flux to some of the joints, which then produced very poor solder joints, especially with all the heat being pulled away by the wet rag on a nearby crimped joint. But it turned out that I did have enough flux if I was willing to scrape it out of the container. The key to getting good joints, it turned out, is to have a fair amount of flux outside the joint. (This is something that happens normally when I don't have to be stingy with the flux.) After initially thinking I would have to abandon this project until I got more flux, I was able to complete it. And when I repressurized the first floor zone, I was delighted to see that my soldered joints (some of which were pretty ugly due to troubles with the flux) did not leak.
Originally Gretchen had planned to maybe go to Mountain Hut Pizza to see one of the games of the WNBA finals. But she never got up enough motivation to leave the house. Instead she made us a meal featuring mostly rigatoni pasta, kale, and tomatoes (those last two mostly from our cabin garden). At some point I tried to take Charlotte and Neville on a walk in the rain, but they abandoned it immediately. So I went by myself with an umbrella, going down the Mossy Rock Trail to the dock. On the way back, I took advantage of the rubber boots I was wearing to walk from one end of a long, narrow woodland wetland that begins along the Mossy Rock Trail and then spans, as I discovered today, nearly to the original dock trail. This confirms that the straightest possible path from the cabin to the dock would have to cross this wetland, since the Mossy Rock Trail bows slightly around it southward and the original dock trail bows around it substantially northward.
Back at the cabin, I ran the electrical wire through the basement ceiling necessary to support the soon-to-be-installed minisplit. I used 12 gauge wire, though 14 would've been sufficient. This circuit will be one of those that can be turned on and off remotely using my ESP8266 Remote Control system.
A possible plan for this weekend was to spend another night at the cabin and then to drive back to the Hudson Valley tomorrow morning so Gretchen could be on time to work at the bookstore. But the cold, rainy weather had us feeling like we should drive back tonight. We left after dark and went kind of slowly. Something about the defrost (which was necessary to keep the windows from fogging up) made our car burn through miles at a rapid rate, giving us range anxiety before we even got to Preston Hollow. But then it consumed miles very slowly, and we had nearly 40 miles of range (from what had originally been nearly 150) when we returned to Hurley.
A view from the dock today in the rain.
Click to enlarge.
Looking north from the dock in the rain.
Click to enlarge.
Looking at the shore from the dock. Note the state of the stone "ice wall."
Click to enlarge.
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