I had an eventful day today. There's good news....and there's bad news. Let's start with the good news.
I met my brother Scott at his shop to pick up the stuff he carried home for me from Montana. This included the Vogelzang kit for converting an oil drum into a wood stove. Oh, I stopped on the way there and picked up a used drum---20.00. The kit was about 120.00 on ebay. It is the deluxe air-tight version. Anyways, our friend Shale was there as well and in short order had that drum turned into a wood stove. The pics at my place show it outside because you have to burn it in for a couple days to burn the paint off the barrel. It stinks pretty bad.











We're going to put it in the middle of the living room in the old mobile home with lots of heat protection. These things throw off a lot of heat and their capacity let's them burn for hours and hours if vented and dampered right. This will be just what I need to start cutting back on those diesel and electric bills.

The bad news is the reason I ran out of water is something broke back in the tank bay on that last bitterly cold night. The one where I think it hit -40 or very close to it. I was worried about that yesterday because I thought I had more water left than what the gauge was showing. I looked around yesterday and didn't see any water so I was puzzled. I filled up my tote tank at Scott's shop as well and pumped it into the coach when I got home. I didn't notice until I had pumped in about 3/4 of it that things were getting slushy on the ground at the left rear corner of the coach. Bummer. Scott doesn't think the tank broke. Probably a line or connection right behind the back wall of the water bay/sewer connection cabinet. That last night was just toooo cold. Oh well, I'll deal with it. In the meantime I need a way to shower. I had already thought of a plan in case something like this happened. I had noticed there is kind of a small shelf along the back upper side of the shower in the coach. I retrieved my solar shower bag and it's hook from the bathroom in the old mobile home. Then I dug around in the snow for my collection of lumber and fished out a 2x4. I cut it to the length I needed and then cut a couple more short pieces. These I nailed on top and then drilled a hole and screwed in the big hook on top. This gives me a little more height for the bag. It will be a sit down shower. I have a plastic stool I can use. This pic show the bag thawing out temporarily hung from the regular shower hanger.



It will work fine for now until Scott and I can open up that water bay and deal with whatever broke. I was doing fine until that last cold night! Forty below is extremely cold. I haven't seen it that cold around the Calgary area for probably at least 10 years. Maybe longer. I told Scott when I was moving out here in the coach it would be a cold,snowy winter because I was doing this, haha. I'm pretty sure we won't see another cold snap like that again this winter. I hope not anyway.