Day 126

First off, last night was the first night in the trailer using the stove with the space heater on half power. It was cozy warm...in the 70s. But, instead of keeping the fire going through the night, I wanted to see how well the heat would linger in the trailer after it went out. I'm not sure what time the fire went out... I would have to guess before midnight. But the temp in the trailer was 57 when I got up around 6. Back to the evening - I noticed from my digital thermometer that the trailer was *really* dry on the humidity scale. I had ordered a stove-top humidifier from Amazon to try to help balance things out:

 

I did get it up to boiling, and even took the lid off to allow more steam to escape, but the humidity percentage never got above 15%. I'll probably have to bring up the electric humidifier that I still have in Tempe.

Fast forward to today...

Sealing up the inside of the closet was next up. As with much of this project, I just had to design it as I went along. The inside of the wheel well is letting in a lot of cold, I'm sure. So I got to work on that part first. The only thing between me and the outside air is a thin layer of metal:

 

I had to put in a strip of wood on the opposite (left) side of the closet, to act as an attachment point for the platform I was going to install. Board and platform (with insulation) installed:

 

I went through a couple of ideas before settling on this one - rip-cutting 2x4s to be used as attachment points for the front-facing and lower panels:

 

Starting to make use of various scrap pieces. Front-facing panel in:

 

Floor insulation in:

 

Bottom pieces in. Closing off the right and left sides, plus an oiled piece to cover the gap between the bottom pieces:

 

The back wall of the closet is going to get a layer of wall boards and wool insulation, but I need to do some maintenance on my planer first - probably not going to happen this weekend, but I put in the wall studs anyway:

 

Since I couldn't go any further with the closet, I prepped the old shelf that my dad gave me to be hung by the back/east window. Some sanding and oiling, and it's good to go:

 

The heavy-guage extension cord was running late, but scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I heard the UPS truck turn the corner, and knew right away that it was early. Nice! It's a 100' cord which will allow me to run the heater on full power. We also got a heavy-guage splitter to go with it:

 

I'm running the heater on high tonight - with no fire - to see how well it does - the low is supposed to be 25...