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Old 09-20-2008, 08:09 PM   #21
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Having just bought a Mr. Buddy Portable to heat my home while Im at work. Im at work 15-18 or so hours a day. (thats what happens when you own a biz). My home is as big as a large Egg, 12x16 w/4" thick wood walls.

I am disapointed to hear that on the low setting the Mr. Buddy Portable uses so much gas. How many portable bottles is in a typical b.Q tank?

Was hoping to use Mr. Buddy Portable to keep things just warm enough to not freeze my water when its 32deg. outside. Still debating how to heat things when I am home. Not really enough room for a wood stove unless I can find something that would go under my cabin. It sits on a Mobile Home Chasis so I could put something under it and cut out the floor .

Sorry... dont want to take away from your elequint story.

Back to the Tale.
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Old 09-20-2008, 08:46 PM   #22
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Having just bought a Mr. Buddy Portable to heat my home while Im at work. Im at work 15-18 or so hours a day. (thats what happens when you own a biz). My home is as big as a large Egg, 12x16 w/4" thick wood walls.

I am disapointed to hear that on the low setting the Mr. Buddy Portable uses so much gas. How many portable bottles is in a typical b.Q tank?

Was hoping to use Mr. Buddy Portable to keep things just warm enough to not freeze my water when its 32deg. outside. Still debating how to heat things when I am home. Not really enough room for a wood stove unless I can find something that would go under my cabin. It sits on a Mobile Home Chasis so I could put something under it and cut out the floor .

Sorry... dont want to take away from your elequint story.

Back to the Tale.
Typical portable tank is one pound. A 20 lb. tank is . . . 20 lbs. One pound tanks are not an economical way to power any appliance. I use them for convenience only. My Q runs on a 10 lb. tank, which lasts several trips. I use the one pound tank for the Coleman lantern so it doesn't fall over.

My Coleman catalytic heater would last almost until morning in the tent trailer, keeping the temp in the tolerable range. Didn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning, but that's only because the trailer was so full of air leakage, and I opened a flap when using it.

I have a tiny 400 watt oil-filled radiator that I used last time we took the Escape out. I don't know how efficient it is since I wasn't paying for the electricity and Keath had his window open all night. If power comes with your site you may want to look into an electric heater. Safer too.

bags
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Old 09-21-2008, 11:50 PM   #23
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Typical portable tank is one pound. A 20 lb. tank is . . . 20 lbs. One pound tanks are not an economical way to power any appliance. I use them for convenience only. My Q runs on a 10 lb. tank, which lasts several trips. I use the one pound tank for the Coleman lantern so it doesn't fall over.

My Coleman catalytic heater would last almost until morning in the tent trailer, keeping the temp in the tolerable range. Didn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning, but that's only because the trailer was so full of air leakage, and I opened a flap when using it.

I have a tiny 400 watt oil-filled radiator that I used last time we took the Escape out. I don't know how efficient it is since I wasn't paying for the electricity and Keath had his window open all night. If power comes with your site you may want to look into an electric heater. Safer too.

bags

This might work for your small house..........(click link)

http://www.boatownersworld.com/dickinsonma...laces_p9000.htm
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Old 09-23-2008, 05:41 PM   #24
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Peterh,
Where are you? Can't wait for the next installment!
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Old 09-23-2008, 10:43 PM   #25
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"Twelve years ago when Peter proposed to me flowers.gif, he cautioned: "I never promise that life with me will be easy, only that it will always be interesting.""

I wish I'd thought to tell my ex-wife that when I proposed -- Things may have turned out differently! It was usually interesting, however!

George, the Coleman cats and the Buddy heaters don't produce carbon monoxide, however they do use oxygen which is why they have O2 depletion systems and require a number of square inches of ventilation (the Coleman Black Cat, 3000 Btu, requires 10 square inches of opening when running; it will run for 7-8 hours on one cannister of LP, according to Coleman).

When heating, I keep the window in the door and the window over the range both open a little bit which provides cross-ventilation.

Personally, I don't like any burning appliance to be running at night, so I should my Empire unvented LP-ODS heater off when I go to bed and rely on good sleeping bags rather than blankets, etc. When I get up in the morning, I fire up the Empire and start making coffee on the LP range, which heats the place up quickly (Scamp 13' doesn't have much volume to heat up!).

I consider the sleeping bag as a piece of survival equipment that is not subject to running out of fuel or electricity (and it has artificial insulation, not down, so it will even work when wet).

Since I don't have a hot water heater or a fridge, the only LP I use is for the heater and the range -- A ten-pound tank lasts a long time for me, with a steak-saver and a couple of cannisters as backup. Since the only electric I use is the lights, my single battery lasts a long time (I have actually gone more than a month several times without recharging it -- That's not good for the battery, however).
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Old 09-24-2008, 09:30 AM   #26
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Everyone else in the gallery is rolling on the floor.
Wait a minute...you ARE talking about our dearly beloved fiberglass trailers, aren't you? Where is the room that you are talking about for everyone to roll on the floor?? (sorry...I am a details person...)

Do you write for the soaps? We are still on night two!!! Can we have some more please? (taken from Oliver twist, holding out his bowl...I took writers privilege and changed the line to plural, as I think I speak for many...)

Pam
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Old 09-24-2008, 08:36 PM   #27
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we're waiting!!!!
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Old 09-24-2008, 10:07 PM   #28
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I'm sorry. I got a tummy bug Sunday night and was feeling quite sick earlier this week. There are places in my house where there's a place to sit, but no where to put a laptop. I've started the next chapter and should finish it this evening or tomorrow afternoon.

--Peter
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Old 09-24-2008, 10:54 PM   #29
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I'm sorry. I got a tummy bug Sunday night and was feeling quite sick earlier this week. There are places in my house where there's a place to sit, but no where to put a laptop. I've started the next chapter and should finish it this evening or tomorrow afternoon.

--Peter
Peter,
So sorry to hear you've been ill. We'll get off your case for the next chapter and let you recover in peace.
Best wishes,
Pamela S.
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Old 09-25-2008, 09:25 AM   #30
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I'm sorry. I got a tummy bug Sunday night and was feeling quite sick earlier this week. There are places in my house where there's a place to sit, but no where to put a laptop. I've started the next chapter and should finish it this evening or tomorrow afternoon.

--Peter
I'm sorry that you aren't feeling well... Hope you feel better soon. However, if you want a solution to keep typing...


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Also found at:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20078234

Hopefully this will bring a smile to your face...I think they will be installing these in our bathroom soon at work...helps with that down time!!

Pam
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Old 09-25-2008, 12:58 PM   #31
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what no place to set your L...A...P..top quick manufacture something this is a riveting story!!! (hope ya feel better)


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I'm sorry. I got a tummy bug Sunday night and was feeling quite sick earlier this week. There are places in my house where there's a place to sit, but no where to put a laptop. I've started the next chapter and should finish it this evening or tomorrow afternoon.

--Peter







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Old 09-27-2008, 12:40 AM   #32
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The cycle of the Sun and Moon have a reputation for rising and falling at very precise times. At the other end of the spectrum, the timing of a doctor's appointment is always suspect. The time on the appointment card may say 3:20, but no one is surprised if they're still waiting in the lobby at 4:00. Occasionally you'll even be shown in to the exam room ahead of schedule. And it's far from unusual to get a call to let you know your appointment needs to be re-scheduled for another day altogether. Can you imagine the TV weather guy announcing that Sunset will be delayed to tomorrow afternoon?

Yellowstone's "Old Faithful" also has a reputation for being timely, for erupting "on the hour." Take a quick look at its historical eruption times and you'll see Old Faithful has a bit more in common with a doctor's appointment than the rise and fall of the Sun. The best Yellowstone geologists can do is carefully observe Old Faithful each time it erupts and compare notes with the duration and vigor of previous eruptions, then make an educated guess that the next eruption will fall somewhere within a 20-minute window. When we were there Old Faithful erupted roughly every 90 minutes, and never on the hour.

Yellowstone National Park has around 500 active geysers in its nine geyser basins. More geysers are located within Yellowstone National Park's borders than all the geysers elsewhere on Earth combined, and each geyser has its own character. Some, like Old Faithful, have a very regular and spectacular eruption patterns several times a day. Others bubble with small eruptions every few minutes. The Giant Geyser often goes dormant for years only to burst back to life with huge eruptions that may occur every few days or week. The Steamboat Geyser, with it's bursts of water reaching skyward the length of a football field (300+ feet) is the world's largest, but only seems to erupt after an earthquake. The reason for this variability is each geyser's unique plumbing system, a myriad of rocky passages that allow ground water to seep deep into the ground of Yellowstone's super-volcano. As the water works its way downward, it absorbs and deposits minerals from the ground around it, which widens some passages and blocks others, creating a container that holds the water pat while the lava below heats it boiling and beyond. Eventually the pressure builds to the point where the water demands release, and WOOOSHHHHH! The geyser blows.

Like the geysers around me it appears that I, too, have acquired a kind of quirky predictability in my life. Problem is I hate being predictable. It's, like, something that happens when you grow up, you know? So it may be 2:30 AM, and it is true that I am (once again) crouched on my haunches in a cold, dark trailer, looking at a cold, dark (and decidedly unpredictable) space heater, but this time I am sporting black flannel pajamas with a repeating print of a woman's lips running all up and down my legs.

Bright lipstick-red, stick your tongue out at predictability, lips. It's enough to send shivers down your spine. Or perhaps that's the temperature in my trailer.

I may be a rebel in pajamas, but I am a defeated rebel. My "Plan B," my "Portable Buddy" has failed me. Now I have two choices: depend on power from our half-charged battery to run the furnace for the rest of the night, or practice cold weather survival skills with my wife.

Earlier on in my story I told you a battery is like a bucket of water with a hose coming out the bottom. When the bucket (battery) is full, the water pressure (voltage) in the hose is high, and water flows freely when you turn the tap, but as water empties out of the bucket, the pressure drops and the water doesn't flow as quickly. That really is a pretty good analogy, but it leaves one important thing out: bad things happen when you let the bucket get low or go dry.

It's a great analogy, but "lead acid" batteries don't really hold water under pressure. They store energy using chemistry. When you dip two strips of metal, one made of lead the other made of lead dioxide, into a bucket of sulfuric acid the acid tries to eat away at the lead dioxide. It really wants to do that, but can't without a way to magically get some electrons to leave the bucket and somehow jump across to the strip of plain lead. Connect a light bulb to the two strips of metal, and the magic happens: a chemical reaction releases the "dioxide" from the lead, pushes electrons through the wires to and from the light bulb (making it glow) and the battery acid gets to make a new chemical called lead sulfate. The thing that makes lead-acid batteries so wonderful is you can push the electrons back into the battery and the whole process runs backwards. A lead-acid battery can be recharged!

Recharged within limits. You see there are two different types of lead sulfate. One is a soft, crumbly form like the carbon graphite in a pencil, the other is a hard crystal that's like the carbon matrix of a diamond. When the battery's voltage is high, over 12.4 volts, most of the lead sulfate the acid makes as the battery pumps out electricity is the soft stuff, but as the voltage drops lower, the battery makes more and more of the hard crystal. The annoying thing about batteries and lead sulfate crystals is they can't be converted back into lead dioxide. Worse yet, the lead sulfate crystals can collect on the metal strips and clog up the works. This is why a car battery that's been run down several times can't hold a charge. This is why it's a bad idea to run your trailer battery down, too.

And this is why, when I went to bed with the battery voltage hanging at 12.4 volts I really didn't want to run the furnace all night. It's 2:30 in the morning, and I just switched the furnace on.


----------

Sorry about the lag between the last chapter and this one. I really enjoy this kind of writing, but to do it well I have to be able to get into the right frame of mind. The stuff I wrote late last weekend after my tummy acted up just didn't have the right sparkle. (A better way of putting it is my sense of nausea kinda spilled over onto the page. It was gross!) Wednesday night's attempt was better, but I was still holding my nose when I read. I hope you like this one better.

There is one more story chapter in this tale; I'll follow that with a less-humorous epilogue that talks about my solar charging system and some changes I'll be making. I'll get both done this weekend. Sorry I kept you waiting.
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Old 09-27-2008, 08:38 AM   #33
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Thanks Peter - glad you're feeling better! We are enjoying the story (and the travel log).

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Old 09-27-2008, 09:53 AM   #34
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get a call to let you know your appointment needs to be re-scheduled for another day altogether
You have Kaiser, dontcha?

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Old 09-27-2008, 09:55 PM   #35
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Like the geysers around me it appears that I, too, have acquired a kind of quirky predictability in my life. Problem is I hate being predictable. It's, like, something that happens when you grow up, you know? So it may be 2:30 AM, and it is true that I am (once again) crouched on my haunches in a cold, dark trailer, looking at a cold, dark (and decidedly unpredictable) space heater, but this time I am sporting black flannel pajamas with a repeating print of a woman's lips running all up and down my legs.
After the first night's problems, I would have found a place with electric hookup for the second night. Because I'm a weenie, I guess. One tough night would be enough to do me in. You're a brave man! (And those PJs... most men are afraid to admit to their cross-dressing, LOL!)
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Old 09-27-2008, 10:38 PM   #36
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There is one more story chapter in this tale; I'll follow that with a less-humorous epilogue that talks about my solar charging system and some changes I'll be making. I'll get both done this weekend. Sorry I kept you waiting.
Peter,

I've enjoyed every word and I especially like the way you weave science into your narrative. Could it be that you teach science or history as a profession?

You're damn good at it.

baglo
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Old 09-28-2008, 01:16 AM   #37
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I've enjoyed every word and I especially like the way you weave science into your narrative. Could it be that you teach science or history as a profession?

You're damn good at it.
Thank you for the compliment. I majored in Biology when I started college, but before I could finish my degree I was abducted by computer science aliens who were willing to pay me money to write computer programs.

Ever met a rich biologist? Me neither. Rich computer nerd? Hmmmmm. Suddenly computer work sounded a whole lot more interesting.

Somewhere along the way I decided to write about computers, and then people started offering me money to do that, too. Must not be very good at it, though. Some copies of the books I've written showed up, but I can't read them at all. It's like they're written in Portuguese. (And French and Italian).

I got tired of working with computers a while back, and decided to go back to college to finish that biology degree and to find a new profession. So I've decided to become a Medical Radiographer, and that's been taking up almost all my time lately.

I still like to write, though. Some day someone's gonna pay me to do that again . . .
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Old 10-02-2008, 12:43 AM   #38
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"Look around, see if you can find another one that looks like this" I said while holding up an oddly shaped item. This is our last full day in Yellowstone and we're well off-trail somewhere in the midst of Buffalo Plateau near Hellroaring Creek, scrounging for treasure in the grass. We'd cut off the trail to hike across the plateau and to the creek, and had just turned around and started our way back when we came across a long-dead buffalo. All that's left of the poor fellow is a collection of dry, wind-swept bones. The oddly shaped item I'm holding up is the bison's fourth cervical vertebra, one of the bones of the neck.

It's massive. Two of these buffalo neck vertebra stacked one on top of the other are almost as long as all seven bones in my neck put together! So we're both scrounging in the grass and acting like we've lost our contact lenses somewhere in an acre of grassland. I'm trying to collect the whole set, all 29 vertebra from the buffalo's head to his hips, but carrion have scattered Mr. Bison's Bones over a large area, so there are gaps in my collection. I have collected five of the seven cervical, ten of the fourteen thoracic vertebra (two more than people have), four of the five lumbar vertebra, and the sacrum, but I want more.

How do palentologists find all Mr. Dinosaur's pieces for their collections? None of the bones we're looking for are buried, they're all here just lying in the grass somewhere. Yet we've been searching for over half an hour I'm still missing five vertebra, the sun is hanging low in the sky, and we're a long way from the trail head.

It's time to head back. I assemble what we have, take a picture, then turn my back on my collection and head for the landmark that shows us where our trail home is. About half-way back to the trail head we stop at the cat-walk suspension bridge over the river for a pictures of the sun as it sets over the hills. Soon we'll be back home, back in our trailer one last time before leaving the park the next morning. We'll wash our dishes using running water that's pumped using solar power that has been collecting in our battery since we left earlier in the day, read our books using LED lights powered by stored sunlight, and doze off to sleep with the furnace fan switching on and off through the night.

Those first two nights when we had so many problems are behind us now. We made it through the second night in better shape than the first, snug and warm in a heated trailer. At 11.6 volts our morning battery voltage was bad news, a warning that we had again drawn the battery well down into the sulphation range where damage to our battery was likely.

After that second night the solar array jacked the battery to just 12.7-12.8 volts, well short of the 12.8-13.2 volts I'm used to seeing at the end of a sunny day on solar. By itself that would not be a problem, but each morning the battery fell into the 11.6-12.0 volt ranges, so the battery was loosing voltage faster than expected, too. My expensive, $160, spiral "absorbed glass mat (AGM) Optima battery no longer held a full charge.

So we will return home and map out some changes in our solar and electric system, but even though we had some malfunctions, our solar system made it through. We read by electric lights, carefully used our water pump to provide water for the toilet and to wash ourselves and our dishes, and ran our furnace each night to stay warm against the cold outside. We did not need hookups to make it through the 20-degree nights at Yellowstone.

Leaving Yellowstone was a sad thing. We have left so many things we would have liked to do undone, and missed many things we could have seen had we been in Yellowstone earlier in the year. In late fall the spring runoff has run its course and dried up, so Artist's Paint Pots do not bubble and perk as they should. Spring flowers that bloomed and painted the grasslands in color have wilted and blown away. The young elk and bison that romped in the flowers have lost their careless, youthful zing and cuteness.

So we will be back. There will always be something to go back to at Yellowstone.

==========

This chapter spells the end of our Yellowstone tail. I'll be back in another few days with a more boring, technical article that talks about the changes and choices we need to make to improve our trailer's dry-camping performance. I hope you enjoyed my story.

© 2008 by Peter John Harrison. All rights reserved.
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Old 10-03-2008, 08:48 AM   #39
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I may be a rebel in pajamas, but I am a defeated rebel. My "Plan B," my "Portable Buddy" has failed me. Now I have two choices: depend on power from our half-charged battery to run the furnace for the rest of the night, or practice cold weather survival skills with my wife.
There is something I am confused about...in the previous segment, you got Mr. Buddy to work, and then it failed again? I have one...I am interested in seeing if you know why it failed? It is our primary heat choice. Thanks!

Pam
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Old 10-03-2008, 11:12 AM   #40
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Please pardon my curiosity about an indelicate topic, but....

Dry camping also means camping without a sewer connection. Scamp blackwater tanks are only about 9.5 gallons. This is quite a bit less than many conventional trailers.

About how many days do you average before you need to pull up stakes and visit a dump station?

Obtaining an endless supply of electricity means that tanks (fresh gray and black) are probably the limiting factors in dry camping stays. How limited did you feel by tank capacity? Do you use a porta-tote or similar auxilliary tank?

My wife and I have a D-19 fiver, and we have had problems managing our tank situations. We are learning, but start worrying after about three days. I can kind of check the blackwater tank by holding a flashlight against it at night. Gray is not checkable, but should correspond to the easily checked fresh water tank.

Still, there's not a bunch of capacity, and I wonder how long a camping trip you think you can go for?
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