Hi Scott and whomever else. I had to chuckle at your comment on "wintering at this level". I've been at almost level zero for the whole month of September. Before you read the following I want to ensure everybody that I have kept a very good humour about everything that's happened. I have said that I enjoy living rustic but I must say that this month has been a little over the top. I've had some bad luck lately with my equipment and even though I had been planning all this for a while I just couldn't seem to get things to happen on time. Eg, First electrician suddenly realized he didn't have a business license for this area. Waited for other electrician to get back from vacation and then waited several weeks more. Waited for permit because of delays from spring flood in Alberta, blah,blah,blah. I still have no power as of right now, September 24th,but expect to be hooked up by the end of the week. My Aqua-hot has been down for about 2 weeks waiting for parts so no furnace or hot water. The coach genny needs a new voltage regulator but I can use it if I load it up to keep the voltage under control (it overcharges with a light load and the transfer switch won't let it through). The gas genny I bought has been working overtime and has been terrific although a bit noisy. I've been hauling in water in jugs from work and transferring it to my tank with a small pump. That works quite well actually. I have been using one of those camping solar shower bags for showers. I heat up water in a pot on a Coleman stove in the old mobile home kitchen, pour it in the shower bag and then hang the bag from a big hook I screwed into the ceiling above the old tub in the mobile home. Showering by flashlight in the evening. Actually that camp shower works pretty damn good really, believe it or not. I run the genny all evening with one electric heater in the coach to warm up the inside before bed. Then I shut it all down and hit the sack. There have been some darn cold mornings lately---right around zero celsius---about 32 F. I had frost on the windshield of the van this morning. Tonight I have run the coach genny for a couple of hours with three electric heaters running. One is in the bays underneath. It might snow here tonight. Talk about pushing the envelope, eh?
I'll be fine. I'm really not worried about anything but getting these things working before the weather gets even colder seems to be timed pretty close. My brother Scott has been just a terrific help as he always has been. He is an absolute master at analyzing and repairing pretty much anything. I honestly don't remember a time ever that he was stumped on fixing anything. He analyzed and researched that Aqua-hot, tested sensors, traced wires, ripped it apart and ordered parts. It has a melted swirler as well as the main electronic control box was faulty. A new one of those would have been about 700.00 but he took mine apart and found and repaired a bunch of bad solder joints. I took him on a trip to the Daytona 500 a number of years ago for helping me out on another crazy project. It's time I did something like that again. Actually, I could never really repay him enough. I must say that I know he enjoys this kind of challenge. He loves learning how stuff works.

I know people want pics of all this craziness. Coming up.