….under the house.

Imagine you built a house (level) on a 30 degree slope? That means that the front of the house is elevated on legs/piers, stilts/posts and the back of the dwelling is almost at ground level. That is what we have and the height difference is about 20 feet. The front deck is 20 feet off the ground. That also means that, as you go back up the slope (under the house), the floor of the house is slowly encroaching on your headroom as you go. By the half-way point, there is about eight feet of headroom but five more feet up and it is six feet and another foot up, I bump my head. From there on, everything is done bent over.

Our water system is also on the rock. The cisterns sit on the rock, the pipe line to the house sits on the rock and the plumbing pumps and such are built on a shelf under the house – just above the rock. It’s exposed. Of course, I did things over the years to keep it all from freezing and that has mostly worked. But not always. We’ve had more than a few pumps and ball valves for instance. There have been a few winters where the only thing to do was to drain the system, use pre-filled water totes and simply wait out the typical one, maybe two week freeze. That gets to be a pain as you get older.

Well, everything gets to be a pain as you get older but some things I can make better. Not all my plumbing can be fixed but house plumbing is something I still control. And, after some hesitation, putting all that of that system (the vulnerable stuff) in an enclosed heated space made the most sense.

Well, in theory it did. But OMG, working under the house on a slope and building a mouse-proof, warm room is a bit of a task. It was hard to make Sally do it.

I’m joking (kinda). I built the room but there were quite a few times when the space was tight and the yoga was lacking. Sal did a lot of the ‘tight’ work. She is also very fastidious when it comes to mouse-proofing so Sal was essential.

We are 3/4s done. The room is built. The machinery moved (always requiring fixes as you go). It is mostly mouse-proofed. I just have to add the heater. It does not need to be a fancy, modern, blah, blah, blah piece of machinery…any heat source will do and I only need it for say, two weeks.

But I got carried away. I bought a Chinese Webasto knock-off. They are diesel-fired heat exchangers that were and are popular with truckers, van-living nomads and, oddly, a lot of OTG’ers. Probably same reason. “I can afford two weeks of diesel heat to get through the worst part. My wood stove will serve the rest of the time.” They are cheap, simple, very efficient, safe and essentially portable. Win-win-kinda. I bought an 8Kw heater. I think that makes about 20,000 btus. It would heat 400 sft in freezing weather quite easily.

I have 48 square feet and it is only four feet high. Basically the space of two cords of wood.

If I had insulated the room, it would be way, way too much but I did not. But it is still too much. I have a small kerosene heater that will likely do the job. I am gonna have to test it all out before it is needed. I will probably go with the diesel and let the room get really warm….and maybe duct some of that extra heat to the house…I dunno…I am sure it is a science of some kind (Thermodynamics?) but I am more inclined to wing it, see how it works, make some changes and check it again. That’s my style.