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Jan 04 2012

Mount Rainier Forest Service Ranger Killed

Sad way to start off 2012. If you’ve been watching the television, you might have heard about Margaret Anderson, the Mount Rainier Park Ranger that was shot down and killed on New Year’s Day. Rangers had set up a checkpoint between the Longmire and Paradise areas in the park to ensure that drivers had the proper tires and tire chains for their vehicles.The gunman, now identified as Benjamin Colton Barnes, blew through the checkpoint and then sped toward an area called Paradise where Anderson and another ranger had parked their vehicle to serve as another roadblock. Barnes jumped out of his car and opened fire, killing Anderson and missing the other ranger.

Authorities found Benjamin Colton Barnes’ body yesterday, face down in a river in the park. Read more here.

Oct 06 2011

2 Comments

Security

Tresspassers at Scenic Hotsprings

Scenic Hot Springs has been having problems with trespassers for a long time now, but now they have trail cameras so they can post pictures of weirdos like this crew below. Scenic hot springs is now privately owned and allows the public to “soak” during the day for $5 but dosen’t allow night soakers. It’s a remote site so they have problems catching people in the act. Unfortuanatly it seems many of the tresspassers vandalize the tubs and the areas for no particular reason.

Hope they catch this crew, the guy has a shotgun??? What would happen if he had encountered the sheriff in the other trail camera pic on the dark trail up to the hotsprings?

From the Scenic Hotsprings Blog:
A continuing problem and one we are going to deal with, involving law enforcement. Two samples from last week . . . if this is you, you are not welcome at Scenic. If we catch you at Scenic we will have charges pressed.

I’m particularly concerned with the individual carrying what appears to be a shotgun . . . accompanied by half a dozen dogs and inadequately dressed accomplices. Are these also the people who tore down a metal roofing section, dragged it beside the soaking pools, and used it to hold a fire late at night?

A group of four (including a young child) and a guy with a gun.

See More tresspasser photos the Scenic Hotsprings Blog

Oct 03 2011

Special Features for your Remote Off Grid Cabin VIDEO

[Video Below]
I posted a log cabin building video from this guy last year. He’s taking us back and showing off some cool cabin features he made. He’s got a creek above the cabin that provides water pressure and powers his micro hydro system powering a single florescent lamp, no battery in between which I thought was cool and interesting. He also talks about how his cabin is weathering having been built like they did 150 years ago with site gathered materials. The cedar roof is keeping the cabin in good shape and no critters have gotten into this one that happens to be perched on the side of a cliff.

I was especially impressed with his security system that uses a FRS radio and a magnetic door switch to alert another radio if the door was opened with in the 25 mile broadcast range. Apparently he lives within 20 miles line of site from the cabin. Not that he has much to steal but I think he just does it to see if anyone ever checks out the cabin which is built in a very remote location on what may be public land.

One thing that I plan on adding to our cabin eventually is the copper coil he put in the stove pipe to heat water for his shower behind the cabin. Hot water heated from the waste heat from a wood stove sounds like a cool and useful way to get clean. Flipping through Lloyd Khan’s Shelter book series I’ve been inspired to build a rustic wood fired sauna in the woods on our property and I think I want to incorporate the shower in the sauna so that you can take an indoor shower/sauna in the winter or and outdoor hot shower in the summer.

Hand Made Hot Water Systems

A few years ago I found this gem of a book on Amazon. It’s called Hand Made Hot Water System’s and it’s got to be out of print but the ideas and drawings in it are priceless.

I think it’s 30 years old but it’s got great ideas in there that could save you lots of money on heating your pool, pre-heating your hot water heater or heating your shower directly.

Sep 18 2011

1 Comment

3D Models, Building, Cabins, Off-Grid Tech, Security, Shelter

Little Footprint Big Forest – Container Cabin Contest

A friend just emailed me this great design contest that just happened here in King County. The parks department wants low impact over night structures that are easy to install and maintain for guests in their parks. Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam was judge!

The challenge is to design an overnight structure re-using a surplus cargo container, which can be staged anywhere in King County Parks’ 26,000 acres of open space, and more specifically, on our forested lands that have minimal roads or utilities.

While I’ve questioned containers being use for building before, it mostly came down to it being more expensive. However in this situation the counties goals fit the containers perfectly. Strong secure structures that can be built off site, have minimal maintenance and have a low impact on the site. I bet they’ll be using an off-road fork lift to place these at site without roads like they mention.

Check out the entries below, they are really creative especially giving the counties requirements. Some very cool ideas to be gleaned from these designs. Hit the link below to read more on King counties page.

Congratulations to Hybrid Architecture for their REtain design, which was selected as the winning design of the Little Footprint Big Forest contest and was announced today at the Built Green Conference.

What do 26,000 acres of open space, public recreation and a cargo container have in common?

Conservation. Sustainability. Public Recreation. Aesthetics. Forest Stewardship.

The Situation
King County Parks is looking to balance the natural and built environments to create truly inspirational accommodations that:

* use salvaged and locally-sourced materials
* are economically achievable, both for us to build and maintain and for the public to use
* can be replicated across our 26,000 acre system

The Challenge
King County Parks and the GreenTools Program have teamed up to create a competition that we hope will inspire designers to integrate the principles of conservation, sustainability, public recreation, aesthetics and forest stewardship.

All submittals must be received by August 22, 2011 by 4:30 pm PST.

The Judges

* Dow Constantine – King County Executive
* Stone Gossard – Sustainability advocate and Pearl Jam rhythm guitarist
* Kevin Brown – Division Director, King County Parks
* Art Wolfe – Wildlife and Landscape Photographer
* Eric Corey Freed – Principal, organicArchitect
* Kim Munizza – Principal, Mithun
* Aaron Adelstein – Executive Director, Built Green
* Chris Toher – Executive Vice President and General Manager, Skanska
* Bill Schwartz – Manager, Small Projects – Capital Improvement Program, King County Parks
* Andy Wappler – Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Puget Sound Energy
* YOU! Enter to win a chance to join our all-star judges panel.

Here are my favorite entries:

Jan 06 2011

2 Comments

3D Models, Cabins, Security

Secure Shipping Container Cabin

Secure Shipping Container Cabin Design

Just found this cool project blog at Tincancabin.com. Steve is making a very secure cabin using 3 shipping containers. His goal is obviously the security of his remote cabin while he’s away. I really wish we had something like this after 2 break-ins, yes I said 2! Maybe more on that later, but I digress. Shipping containers really make sense here and he has a unique idea arranging the containers so they are intact and there are no windows when the doors are shut. The Cabin has a gable roof which is another interesting idea and makes it much more cabin like.

Secure shipping container cabin doors shut

Container doors shut

Container cabin interior

Steve’s really good at Google Sketchup too so follow his blog and check out his interior designs of his cabin. It’s very spacious and well thought out for it’s use even though it’s only 450 square feet. Read more about the initial design here: http://www.tincancabin.com/?p=17.

Keep up the great work Steve!

Tagged secure cabin design, shipping container

Dec 15 2010

4 Comments

Security, Solar

Camouflage on new Trail Camera

After the breakin I’ve been on the look out for solutions to catch and or deter would be thieves. Here’s what I’m thinking of using to hide the cameras, Camouflage cloth tape. It really helps break up the body of the camera and help it blend into the environment. I don’t have any trees at my house so I could take pic of it strapped to a tree.

So this is the 2nd type of trail camera I bought after returning the Tasco 5.0 MP trail cameras. It’s a Primos Truth Camera 35 and it has been on the market a few years with success. It was $89 at Cabelas and has 10 extra LED’s for more night range. It also has a much more sensitive PIR sensor than the Tasco, it senses movement and heat out to 40 feet. I tested the Tasco and only got 12 feet max, with is almost useless for my purposes. This one runs on 4 D batteries instead of 4 AA’s so the body of the camera is bigger. It also displays the temp on the photos and has a few more features.

A YouTube commenter showed me a link to Bill’s Blog that shows how he made a off grid solar powered web camera. His is in his back yard where he didn’t want to run power to it. A Very clever design but he’s got Wifi and I’d have to use a cell adapter and pay phone charges. After seeing this I realize my system would be similarly expensive and way too big to hide so I don’t think we’re going to do it. It would be cool though!

http://billandkaren.net/blog/?p=409

Nov 22 2010

1 Comment

Our Cabin Posts, Security

First Snow!

snow on cabin road

Nate and Fielding walking up from the gate

Went up this weekend and we had about 6 inches of snow at our place. We didn’t expecting any snow to be there but that doesn’t mean much I guess. We’re about 1700 feet. Nate, Aaron and Fielding came out just for the day. We setup the trail camera to see what we catch. Also we hauled back the rest of the valuables. I’d tell you where I hid the camera but that would defeat the purpose 2 more are on the way. Also we got the stainless chimney up in the cabin. We reused almost all the parts from the yurt but the interior black stove pipe was too badly crushed in the yurt collapse and after beating on it for a few minutes it was clear it wasn’t going to work right and not leak. So next time I go up I’m bringing some new pipe.

wrecked wood stove

Chimney with the support we built. Tin hat flashing still needs to be trimmed to make it look pretty. This is a "budget" install

With the snow that is falling on the mountain it gets harder and harder for people to get up there. Eventually cars won’t be able to get up there and the residents who do live on the mtn will have to walk out ( a few miles) or use a snow mobile or snow machine for Canadians. We did see a few people had staged their cars lower down the mountain in preparation for the coming snow.

Driving past our property I wanted so see how far I could make it up the mountain in the liberty. Right outside our driveway a guy had unloaded a snow mobile and headed up the mountain so I was the only vehicle going up besides his sled. I followed his tracks up another mile or so and the snow became about a foot deep and had to back down a steep section almost sliding into the ditch. Backing down we took a different road down the moutain and saw the sled tracks going under a heavy locked gate. I recognized the description of the gate as a guy who came down to our place in May panicking that his place just got ripped off. He had a large cabin probably more like a house but I never saw it. He said they cleaned up out, taking 4 truckloads worth of stuff and busting his wood gate in the process. He mentioned that he was having a custom gate welded up so i assume this was it.

: Leaving with the boat working as a utility trailer. Exhaust is making a haze in the cold air.

Tagged snow

Nov 16 2010

12 Comments

Our Cabin Posts, Property, Security

Trail Camera Time?

Tasco 5MP Trail Camera

So I’m thinking we need a few Trail Cameras to help us sleep at night. Maybe catch a few crooks or have a chance to catch them.

The price seems to have come down and I found a new model on Amazon for $85. This Tasco is 5MP and has a night vision flash. I also got a 2 gig SD card so it should last months. http://www.amazon.com/Tasco-Trail-Night-Vision-Black/dp/B003QWRXOU

The biggest question is my mind is now where to hide it. Obviously I’m hunting humans not deer so I can’t just strap it to a tree. I also would like to get some vehicle license plates for the cops to see and some face shots to use as wanted posters .

I don’t’ want to hide it in the cabin or the shed since they may break in and take it.

So anyone have any ideas where or how I can hide this thing?

Tagged security

Nov 13 2010

17 Comments

Our Cabin Posts, Security, Video

We Got Robbed

We got robbed! So bummed right now. I came up to the property because I was stoked to put in our old wood stove to get ready to hike up into the cabin during the first snow… I discovered we got robbed! They broke open the shed, cabin and out house. They were on foot but they stole all the expensive stuff. They took our 4000w generator, my folding 3hp outboard we use on our canoe, Aaron’s 4×4 Honda Foreman quad and tons of power and hand tools. basically everything useful. F-ing Meth heads. Eventually I assume they’ll be back to take everything they missed. They didn’t take our solar panels, charge controllers or battery.

It’s depressing to think that the place we have to get away from it all is leaving a sour taste in my mouth and making me worry so much now. 3 years of trust shattered. Things have definitely changed at “Camp Taint”. If we ever do get a generator again we can’t leave it there. I suppose we’ll be switching to hand tools. No more fun fast canoe trips or making trails for the quad. Hauling all that stuff out there each time is going to suck, what’s the point of having a cabin in the woods if you can’t store stuff there.

Ehhhhh, What to do….

Mar 27 2010

4 Comments

3D Models, Building, Cabins, Security

Secure Cabin Design – Folding Roof

Cabin shown on hill

Here’s my version of a simple yet secure cabin. The idea came from Casey Brown an architect in Australia. His is all metal but a more doable version in my eyes would be made of wood.

To make it more secure for the off season or when ever you aren’t there there aren’t any window except on the front face where the swing down door covers.

French doors would be nice since they’re mostly windows and when they are open the deck would be an extension of the living space. This 3d drawing is 10×12 and the person in the drawing (he comes with SketchUp) is 6′ tall.

The swing down door would be sheathed in correlated metal and operated by a ratcheting boat winch reached through a padlocked window in the back of the structure. A couple of pulleys would be needed and the lifting beam should be a 4×6″ or so. I’m not sure how the structure of the door should be made but some welded 2×2″ steel frame work would be best to keep it strong and light. The drawing shows the cable split to support both edges because that’s what Casey did but this door would be much lighter than his so if the structure is stiff enough one 5/16″ cable could take the weight.

One important safety item that may be considered is some kind of brace when the “door” is in the up position. I think a few people commented on this. Possibly some swing down braces from the sides could lock in position. So you and yours don’t get decapitated if the cable fails!

: Cabin shown on steep hill

Here is Casey Brown’s amazing structure called “Permanent Camping”. It’s made of steel beams with copper cladding and has a rain water collection system off the roof. Transported to the remote hillside in Australia from it’s building spot in Sydney. The folding roofs provide protection from high fire danger in the bush.

Tagged fold-up roof, fort, fun cabin design, secure cabin design

Solar Burrito

Cabins, Shelters, Off-The-Grid Tech and other Fun Stuff

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