Thursday, November 11, 2010

Life After Grandkids

So much for the RVing life. Our first grandkids, both boys, came in February and April and we, with sappy grins, volunteered to babysit for the first year. Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade the time spent with them for anything and am actually wondering how well I will handle being separated if/when we leave. Right now we are pretty well ensconced in our son-in-law and daughter's driveway.

We had 30 amp service installed, plumbed in a sewer connection, applied heat tape and insulation on the fresh water line and installed skirting around the trailer to help keep it warmer this winter without the propane furnace running all the time.

The skirting is 3/4" R-Tech foam board found at most big box hardware outlets. It's screwed to a simple wood frame at the bottom. We're sitting on concrete or I would have dug a trench and just buried the bottoms. The tops are taped to the trailer with foil backed tape. The vertical seams are done with white duct tape. I hung two 150W lights on the leaf springs near the holding tanks for the extra warmth. The trailer bottom is enclosed and the furnace is ducted to provide heat to the tank and storage areas, but, what the heck, more is better. Right? The furnace is set for 64 deg and we have a 1500 W electric heater we run at night. So far, with the night time temps in the low 30's the furnace has only run once or twice so that will save me extra trips to get the propane bottles filled.

I bought 2 extra 30#ers and go fill them when 3 are empty. I looked into renting a bigger tank from the distributor, which at $99/year and a one time installtion fee of $120 sounded pretty good, but one of the contract stipulations was that you purchased at least two tanks full. That was a total of about 240 gallons at about $2.39/gal and was a bit more propane than I thought we would use.

Next project is to put that shrink to fit plastic sheeting on the windows. I'll leave a couple of the openable windows uncovered for ventilation.

And last, but not least, I ordered a dehumidifier. The windows have been damp in the mornings and the cheap bucket of white pellets just isn't enough.

Enough for now and I'll try to post more often but two babies are really kicking my butt...also giving me a good work-out. My back is getting stronger everyday and not hurting as much as it used to. Kind of like going in for physical therapy.