EccoTemp L5 Portable Tankless Water Heater

At the cabin I don’t have a shower which isn’t a huge problem as we only walk a half block to some public washrooms and showers.  The problem is that Arlington Beach often hosts camps over the summer and you never know when you have to wait in line for 20 kids to get their showers done.  Wendy and I have been talking about installing an outdoor shower at the cabin

After looking around at some, we found the EccoTemp L5 Portable Tankless Water Heater.  While most tankless water heaters require expensive permanent installation, the Ecotemp L5 water heater provides hot water anywhere there is a water spigot and a garden hose. The L5 comes with a propane hose and a telephone-style shower nozzle. To set up the L5, you hang it on nail, attach the water hose, and connect the propane hose to a standard portable propane tank. The burner starts automatically when you turn on the water using the control on the shower nozzle.

The heater uses two D-cell batteries to run its automatic igniter. The heater has two controls: a water-flow dial and a gas-flow dial. In practice, you just turn the gas dial to "max" and adjust the temperature by varying the water flow. When adjusted to a decent temperature for a hot shower, the flow is perfectly adequate.

The heater must be used outdoors. Conceivably, you could mount it to the outside of a cabin and pipe the hot water inside. The water outlet accepts the same kind of flexible water supply hose you use to connect a sink's faucet to your household water supply.

I am not sure when I will get around to installing the outdoor shower but I am pretty sure what I am going to use to power it.

• Purchase at Amazon
• Manufactured by EccoTemp

How a Tumbleweed Tiny House Gets Built

According to the Tumbleweed website, this Fencl cost $19,148 in materials and after ten weeks of construction, retails for $53,997 plus shipping and applicable tax.

Depending on your skill level and determination it is possible to build one for a fraction of the cost of buying on already built. We do recommend hiring licensed contractors for the plumbing and electric work. When we build a house we hire specialist for those tasks. Typically, the electrician and plumber are the highest paid people per hour, so we keep the amount of their work limited to just those two areas. We spent less than $2000 to have that work completed on the Fencl.

When we build a house we usually hire a finish carpenter as the job foreman. We keep the number of workers at any given time to 2 or 3. Aside from the finish carpenter and electrician and plumber, the other crew doesn’t need as much experience.

Mark’s winter vacation cabin

Where was this when I was a kid and I spent hours outside trying to make the perfect snow fort?  I talk a little more about it over at Jordon Cooper Outfitters and I really need to order one for use up at the cabin.  I can see Mark learning to love outdoor camping with something like this.  Me, I’ll be inside with the heaters.

An inside look at a Tumbleweed Enesti

 

More information on the Tumbleweed Enesti can be found here.  You can purchase plans for any of the Tumbleweed houses here.

Checklist for Heading Back to the Lake

I don’t know when we will get back to the cabin but now with some packing out of the way, I have my checklist of projects to be tackled.

• I need to paint a magazine rack the same mochachino brown that our kitchen pantry is.  We don’t really keep magazines around the house but we tend to purchase them on our way up to the cabin and this way it gives us a place to keep them out of the way and off the floor or shelf.
• Along with the magazine rack I need to redo, I need to redo a really nice but really dated microwave table that Jordon found for me.  I needed a bit more counter space than what we currently have and with this, it should be perfect.  It will move some stuff off the table we use for a counter and at the same time give me more than enough storage space for some dry goods.  The table shouldn’t take the much work to get done and the advantage of doing it now is that the paint will have time to cure before it gets taken up there and used quite a bit.
• We have a massive checklist of stuff that we need to purchase for the first couple of weekends back.  I guess that is normal for anyone but working through the list now does make winter seem a little shorter and a little more tolerable.

Survive! & Survival Kits

As Jordon mentioned today at the Jordon Cooper Outfitters, I gave him a copy of Survive! by Les Stroud for Christmas and as a family have all enjoyed the book tremendously.

Today there was quite a snow storm in Saskatoon and since I am horrible for making and carrying out plans (it’s to the point where it is almost like a psychological disorder), I was just going to waste away another weekend with doing absolutely nothing more than puttering around (this drives the boys insane)  This afternoon Jordon got us all together and decided to see if we could get to Dollarama without getting stuck (there was so much snow the city transit was shut down).  We made it there fine and we picked up some stuff for the cabin.  Now as stupid as it sounds to do this in a blizzard in January, it did brighten up the day quite a bit and let us think about much warmer days at the lake.

While we were out, we talked about our emergency kits in each of the vehicles.  They are uneven in quality and we added a couple of things while in Dollarama, first aid kits, some more winter gear, some water bottles,  and other assorted gear that we have seen Stroud use on Survivorman or read about in Survive!.

One of my favorite finds to put all of this stuff in was some $2 backpacks that are big enough to hold our winter gear and yet small enough to be tossed in the trunk of the car without taking up much space.  They aren’t exactly high quality but they are two dollars and since they aren’t plastic, the won’t be affected by the Saskatchewan winters.   We bought one for gear and one for our emergency kits for each of the vehicles so we can pack and go without having to worry if we run into some trouble along the way.  While we have an Eddie Bauer Essential Hiking Daypack Bottle in each vehicle, the bag works really well to carry the stuff the bottle doesn’t or needs to be topped up with more supplies for our family.

In addition to getting some emergency kits put together for the cars, we bought some stuff for our dopp kits as well as some stuff for a guest kit.  This is for those friends of ours who come up and stay but always forget something.  Well, I may be projecting there as I am the one that always forget something (I actually forgot to pack pants one time to the cabin).  The good news is that if you are my friend and come up to the cabin and forget something, we will have it there for you and I won’t judge you.

We also bought some supplies for the kitchen; a new colander, milk container for tea, and some oil and vinegar containers and packed them all up into some heavy duty plastic containers which will go a long ways in making a difference how I will store goods this summer.

Looking back at 2009 | The Boys

A look back at Mark and Oliver at the cabin in 2009.

The Shift Home | Modern. Green. Affordable.

 

The Shift Home is located in the heart of Saskatoon's Riversdale.  The home is located just three blocks from the Meewasin Valley Trails on Saskatoon's riverbank and the $300M redevelopment of River Landing, which is home to the Farmers Market, Lake Placid, Isinger Park and the future Rivergreen Ecovillage.  It’s a great addition to the city of Saskatoon and was developed by the people behind the Hayloft.

Earthquake in Haiti

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has a series of photos that captures some of the devastation in Haiti.  If you want, you can securely donate to Salvation Army relief efforts here or you come by and do what many others in Saskatoon have and make a donation at the Centre. The Salvation Army also has a photoset which shows much of the devastation on the ground in Port au Prince.

50 years

Arlington Beach is celebrating 50 years this summer and they now has a weblog to promote the event at familycamp2010.blogspot.com.  In addition to Arlington Beach turning 50, the Arlington Beach House is turning 100. 

12 Cubed

This is amazing and would make for a great looking and functional cabin in only 144 square feet.  It has a full-sized bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living area into a space measuring 12 feet by 12 feet by 12.5 feet.

• The bedroom includes a seven foot high closet, a double bed, extensive shelving, and space for a flatscreen TV. It also has large amounts of storage.
• The kitchen comes complete with extensive counter space, wall mounted cabinets, a stainless steel sink. It includes a fridge, a propane cook top, with the option for an induction cook top. Options also include a built in dishwasher, combination Microwave / Grill / Oven. With counters can be movable or fixed.
• The bathroom is spacious with an intelligent stainless steel floor design, full sized shower, sink, low flow toilet, and an on demand hot water heater.
• The living area includes a full sized work surface, slide out storage, and the option of book shelves. It also has an optional guest bed, and can be supplied with a couch if needed.

Find out more information at Twelve Cubed.  via

Update: The Globe and Mail has a story on the house

The Opera Pop-Up Camper

The Opera pop up camper has been raising eyebrows all across Europe and the first will be arriving in spring of 2010. It looks fantastic and you can find out some more at the Outfitters.

Looking back at 2009 | The cabin

We added this gazebo to the cabin.  It added a place to chill out in the evenings.

Wendy got the idea to add some interior lights and some candles.  It’s nice at night.

 We painted the inside of the cabin and added this rocking chair.  It’s not that comfortable but it gets the job done.

Here is the painted kitchen area.  

It took four or five coats of paint but I got the picnic table looking good.  I used a ranch red barn paint which I hope fades rather than peels.

This is our beer can chicken cooker.  As you can see we used some water in a Diet Coke can.  We used to some alcohol free beer later in the summer and it tasted quite a bit better.

This is Mark’s new day bed all made up.  Tucked in behind is his wakeboard.

We finally got rid of the 3/4 bed that we had endured and instead bought a queen sized bed to the lake.  There is a lot more room both vertically and horizontally.  It makes for a lot more comfortable nights.