December 15th
2003
I'm not feeling all that well today, so I am not planning to spend
much (if any) time at the bus today.
I thought that I would put out an update and work on the web site a
bit, so let me start by telling you about our sleep over at the bus...
The bus is awesome! It's comfortable to hang out in and feels
more like a cozy apartment than a bus. Having a working stove and
hot water heater made all of the difference and helped to raise my
spirit a bit. I've been feeling a bit discouraged and really
pressured to make the January trip to Quartzite. I think I can do
it, but it is a bit overwhelming to list all of the tasks that need to
be done (at a minimum) to safely travel the distance.
It was a really nice surprise to have Alan stop in for a visit.
He always manages to offer a bit of encouragement to us and helped me to
knock a few nonessential items of my "to do" list.
While we had the wood burning stove running the entire bus stayed
pretty cozy. Even when the rain started turning to sleet later in
the evening we were perfectly comfortable sitting on the couch without
jackets.
The girls stayed nice and warm in the back bedroom snuggled up in
their down sleeping bags and a couple of extra fleece covers.
Their room stayed comfortable and only a few degrees cooler than the
front of the bus.
Things changed dramatically at bed time...
I didn't feel comfortable leaving the fire going while we were
planning on sleeping in the bus, but without the forced air heater we
didn't have anything that could heat the bus the entire night. The
new propane "Mr Heater" we purchased for area heating only
lasts about 3 hours on a 1 pound canister of gas. We didn't have
any way of hooking it up to the main gas tanks and as we discovered
later, it could not keep up with the loss of heat in the bus
anyway.
We checked both smoke detectors and the carbon monoxide detector to
make sure they were on & working and then cracked the two small
vents above the front windshield to make sure that we had fresh
air. I closed off the damper to the wood stove about 3/4 of the
way to slow down the burning and keep some of the heat in.
Becky and I stayed up and talked for a few hours while the girls
finished their movies, took baths and went to bed. Becky and I put
another pressed wood log on the fire waited until it was burning nice
and steady and then folded out the couch and went to bed at around
11:00.
At about 12:30 in the morning I woke up. My face was really
cold and I couldn't get back to sleep because of the cold. I got
up and checked on the fire - it was almost burned out and needed some
additional wood. I put in a couple of smaller pieces of wood that
I had brought in from the wood pile earlier. I didn't want a big
fire, but the bus was getting too cold and I was worried about the girls
in the back of the bus getting cold. The bus warmed back up a bit
and I went back to bed.
At 1:30 or so Becky crawled out of bed and put some more wood in the
wood stove. It was becoming very obvious that we were not going to
be able to keep up with the cold for the entire night this way, but both
of us were pretty tired, so we just went back to bed.
At about 3:30 in the morning the smoke detectors in the bus went
off... It scared the crap out of both Becky and I. Becky
scrambled out of bed (almost falling off the edge on the way) and ran
down the hall to shut off the alarm in the back of the bus. I
asked Becky if she had checked on the fire and she said that she had
gotten up again a few minutes earlier to add more wood to the
stove. Apparently it was almost completely out, so when she opened
the door to the stove with the damper almost closed, a lot of smoke came
out. It was completely dark in the bus, so I doubt that either of
us would have noticed the smoke or remembered to open the damper for
that matter.
Anyway, with the lights on you could barely tell that there was still
some smoke in the air. The smoke detectors were getting ready to
go off again (the silence button only lasts about 5 minutes) so I told
Becky to go ahead and pull the battery out of the one in the back
bedroom so at least the girls could sleep...
We stayed up for a short while to keep an eye on the almost dead
fire. I decided that it wasn't worth the effort to keep getting up
to feed it and with the smoke detector now disabled, I wasn't going to
mess around with the wood stove any more. I put a new canister on
the "Mr Heater" and turned it to the low setting. I
closed one of the front window vents and shut the other one most of the
way. After a final check to make sure the fire was under control
and going out I tried to get back to sleep.
About an hour later, the side of my face was getting numb from
cold. I was sleeping next to the window and could feel a steady
stream of icy air coming off the glass and flowing right over the
bed. I cranked the "Mr Heater" to the highest setting
and tried to get comfortable... I was just too cold. I
couldn't get warm enough with our light weight sleeping bag and we
hadn't brought any extra blankets, so I tossed and turned for another
hour or so.
At 5:00 I gave up on trying to sleep and decided to get the bus nice
and toasty again so at least the rest of the family could sleep. I
checked on the girls and was happy to discover that the back of the bus
was actually not nearly as cold as the front. Apparently covering
the windows with plastic film made a huge difference. I put my
hand near the window and there was very little difference from the rest
of the room. The girls were sound asleep in their down bags.
The dog (who is apparently smarter than both Becky and I) had migrated
to the warmer back bedroom at some point during the morning and was
sleeping at the foot of Erika's bed.
I built a new fire in the wood stove and played around on the
computer for a couple hours until Becky got up. Then I made a trip
down the road for hot coffee and breakfast for the family.
I never quite shook the cold. Even around 10:00 or 11:00 my
legs from about the knee down felt very cold. All day yesterday
and today I have not been able to shake the cold feeling and I am
starting to feel achy all over like I am coming down with the flu.
The moral of the story... There is no safe & efficient way
to heat the bus with the current single pane windows. They need to
be insulated in some way almost immediately. Since There is no elegant
way to insulate the front "fish bowl" windows, I will either
have to isolate that area from the rest of the bus or put some ugly
insulation pieces in the windows on cold days... I dislike the
look of all that foil insulation that I see jammed up on the windshield
of so many busses, but I now understand the reason for it.
It dropped below freezing again last night and at 1:00 in the
afternoon (as I am typing this) it's 44 degrees F. We're all back
at the house with the heater turned up to 72 - I'm still cold...
Bundle up out there. |
