Sunday 31 March 2013

Life On The Driveway

The big home renovation finally started.

Two weeks on from the last blog, the weather has only just shown any trend to the warm(ish) and I've had the furnace going all that time. I did find an electric space heater in the basement so I've supplemented the heating effort with that, but keeping those water lines ice free has been the main target so I have to do what I can.

In the past two weeks, though, we have been using Towed Haul as an emergency kitchen as well as somewhere for the hound and I to retreat to during the day. I did a heap of ironing in there and have watched a few DVDs. I also set up a high gain aerial and network card on the little Netbook PC so that I could stay on the Internet whilst out there. Airstreams are, sadly, brilliant deflectors of radio signals and unless you do something to counter the effect, connecting to a WiFi transmitter just a few metres away is nigh on impossible. Still, I cracked that one and without having to use an external aerial so I'm all pleased with myself.

I did have a minor issue with some water on the floor of the Airstream in the last day or so. I had a poke around in the space where the water pump lives and deduced that a valve on the anti-freeze intake wasn't completely shut. I've not had the problem since resetting the valve so I hope that the issue is resolved. I have to say a big thank you to the contributors on Air Forums for helping me out; it makes a pleasant change not to be doing battle on towing relating topics for once.

This coming week we have the prospect of staying a night or two in the Airstream because the main hallway in the house is being tiled. It's no great problem, of course, especially as we have everything we need out there on the driveway, but camping out there does seem a little strange. Still, we haven't felt the need to deploy the awning and get the deck chairs out; yet!

I'll sign off with a view of the driveway, complete with dumpster and contractor utility trailer; the Airstream's in there somewhere...