Solar Burrito

This is how the cabin looked on Sunday, the day we  left. Sorry I didn’t get a photo when we arrived but I got it in the video below. You can see all the icicles from burning 3 loads of wood in the stove the night before. It was cold! I woke up in the middle of the night because the fire went out and I was freezing. I had a headache and was very nauseous, due to carbon monoxide I believe. We need to do something about that, not sure what now. Aaron felt fine but he was in the loft and I was by the stove on the futon. There are lots of cracks and gaps in the cabin where there is no siding and in the floor, so the cabin is not sealed up tight by any means but maybe it’s too tight to burn that much wood? I wonder if putting  small vent hole by the stove to allow it to draw oxygen would work or will we have to keep a window more than cracked? The stove draws great BTW. A detector is in order for sure.
Check out that rough sawn board and bat siding that Aaron, Nate and some Vashon friends did in October. I was out of town and thought it looked great, still not done but it’s a 10 year project I’m really liking the look, we’re slowing putting the rustic back into the cabin, which has been built with mostly dimensional store bought and free materials so far. There’s even a notch in the belly band and a metal flashing piece that fits snugly and will keep the water from getting behind the siding.

Video of our Short trip. It was just over 24 hours and realize how cold it can get up here during the winter!

Front view of the roof. The deck already makes the cabin feel better and the roof just adds to that because everything below the roof and the deck will stay dry and that keeps peoples stuff out of the cabin where we have limited storage or actually no storage now. LONG SENTENCE.

The cabin’s solar system performed better than I expected for the entire trip. We arrived with the panels covered with snow so they hadn’t charge the batteries for days and it was below 20 degrees. Further reducing the power output potential is the position of the panels and the Winter sun barely gets above the trees. However the batteries were full at 12.8 volts and we used the lights and watched a movie on my laptop with no problems. The batteries were full again when we left. I think we’ll have to expand the system to having a removable inverter wired into several AC outlets on the deck. We also used it to charge 3 Porter Cable Tool Batteries during the day.

View from the underside. I like the rustic look It’s built strong to survive the winter. I’m glad we went up to attach the roof before a huge snowfall or I think it wood have collapsed. The guys had to leave in a hurry last time as they took their boat from Bellingham and had to get back before dark so they just barely attached it by toe nailing.

This is how we left the cabin on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t take a photo but there is two layers of wood below the tar paper to keep nails from poking through. We could have done this a few different ways but this is what we ended up doing since we had a lot of extra T1-11 siding we wont’ be using.

My buddy Kevin made this Camp Taint Sign out of curly maple. Don't ask about the name...