Just getting started, need to move into CT with pets

[charchri4]

I don't really know how to say this nicely but as I see it you are killing yourself for nothing. Even non pet lovers can make sense out of owning a critter or 2 but to be in such dire straits as you and keep on caring for an army just makes no sense. They are impoverishing you and draining you in every way possible. We can talk trailers all day but even if you could afford to fix up your trailer there is no solution to house that many beasts in such a small space in the climate you are in.

Again I don't mean to be cruel but your beasts are literally eating you out of house and home and the solution is downsizing not building this trailer.

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

WOW Jim

Thanks for your explanation, you really do have the determination to build the great wall in China.
Let me share i've been inspecting RE for 30 years & have one of the most expensive crazy built trailers on this forum, so I know a little about RE & building trailers.
You can look at my trailer under http://overthetopcargotrailer.blogspot.com/ MtnDon - also is building a smaller - less expensive version of my trailer.
MtnDon build starts here - he is also in a hot & cold climate so I would recommend you follow build to the letter - if you wanna live inside yours http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=58336
you are gonna need insulation up the wazoo & done correctly - so I would recommend mine or MtnDon - which is also your size.
if you follow those directions you can cool with a $100 wall a/c and heat with almost nothing.
So I hope that helps for your trailer build


In view of your house, your correct you would need to hire an Industrial hygienist - and the bill starts at $1,000+ KaChing
If you house had major remodel new sheetrock 10 years ago & you have rusted copper pipes - Chinese sheetrock.
if your house is very old 30+ years - generally I would start with some kind of water leak in the basement.
There are 27,500 different kinds of Mold - all houses have them, 99.9% don't make you sick - but the bad ones will kill you.
Mold needs a constant water source, food source & normally high humidity. A little 12" spot somewhere won't make your whole house sick.
You could really have a soft and moldy bath floor & shower walls ?
if you have central a/c then you could also have some mold sh** in your ducts ? if you could have someone look at the ducts and MOSTLY the evaporator inside to see if they are clean ?
Its quite possible there is something in the water - have you had it tested ?
its possible there might be a underground gas station leak that is migrating into or under your house ?
Is it possible that there is a cancer cluster in your area - and many others are sick ?
you might also be environmentally sick " sensitive "- to stuff thats in the air (( i'm sorta like that )) a 5 gallon gas can in the basement would do it for me

HERE IS A CRAZY THOUGHT. Why don't you call 10-20+ local home inspectors in your area or within 30 - 50 miles...
Tell them about your medical situation, section 8 & your sick cats & dogs, YOUR BROKE and see if some of them would come to your house & snoop around a little ? PRO BONO !!
you would actually be doing them a favor - because they normally never get to see this kind of misty. We just see the same boring sh** day in day out.
I'm in Calif but if you called me with your story , or sent me an e mail / letter, I would be more then willing to come snoop around your house for an hour to see whats up ? No CHARGE !!
Generally if your house really really has a problem one should be able to see or smell or taste something, somewhere ??


If you find a big problem - then have your landlord sell the house & look for a new place....
since you guys seam to be best friends - & have great relationship.


If you really wanna do the trailer thing I and MtnDon would be glad to help....
Personally I'm up to the challenge to see if it can work
but I'm saying up front your trailer idea its gonna be a really tough row to hoe....
No one here lives full time , with 8 pets in very hot and very cold climate....
so there is NO GUIDE BOOK ....for your experiment or guarantee of success.

Cheers Jerry

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

Jim

ONE MORE TRAILER THOUGHT !!
So personally I get sick if I get within 2 blocks of an RV propane heater, since your also somewhat sick....
maybe you would have a similar problem ? Propane and pets also make excessive condensation - rusting your trailer frame.
Marine heaters are $1,000 normally

In that case you can only heat with electric, or i'm also using hot water in my storage tanks to heat the trailer...
all stuff you need to know & build for before you get started.
REMEMBER colder outside = MORE interior condensation. Like 0 outside & 70 F inside - lots of water
you can't ventilate at zero or -20F unless you like freezing a lot.

[Chilly Willy]

Condensation becomes the number one worry come winter. And you must ventilate. Even if you heat with electricity your own lungs will turn a confined space toxic. How fast depends on the cubic feet of space available. With yourself plus several pets in a 6 x 14 x 6 confined space I wouldn't risk sleeping at night with it sealed up. A lot of trailers aren't air tight, but if you insulate and it's done right it may as well be.

My plan is for full time living in northern Alberta, so potentially going below minus 40 and staying there for weeks at a time. I've been thinking that any ventilation passage would be located down low, so the warmest air inside isn't escaping rapidly. Also I'm thinking it would be located such that air passes through my dogs sleeping area, keeping them cooler and giving me a slight pre-heat, even if it smells like wet animals

A well insulated trailer with a plan for fresh air intake could probably be kept comfortable with a pair of electric space heaters. Just make sure any extension cord from the house respects the guidelines included with the heater. The wrong guage and length could result in power loss or heat build up in the cable.

I'd definately consider an air quality monitor / alarm a necessity.

For my chosen climate I was thinking I'd be adding insulation between the trailer skin and plywood like you mentioned, and also adding a few inches again inside the plywood and covering with another surface. My condidtions are somewhat more extreme though I'm also going to be using a couple redundant heat sources in addition to a wood burning stove... so ventilation and air monitoring are being planned for from step one.

One thing I need to research, and which may help you plan, is just how long a given volume of air will last.

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

Chilly Willy

sleeping in -40 below is no problem, you just need a nice fat eskimo wife.
Also at -40 below the air is much thicker if your at sea level
you should be good even in a coffin ....

You can use some small computer fans at -40 below , they will give you more then enough air
OR - if you sleep on a heated water bed and inside a expedition sleeping bag you will be fine
http://www.rei.com/product/795904/marmot-cwm-eq-40-sleeping-bag-

I would almost be willing to guarantee it

[Chilly Willy]

I would almost be willing to guarantee it

Thanks. It's tough to make a claim against that guarantee if you're wrong though

I've spent the last two winters in what is optimistically described as inadequate conditions. In the oildfield companies provide accomodations for workers
in order to get enough out of town people (essentially their whole work force) to fill their needs. My employer dumped a condemned womens prison in
his driveway, and hasn't provided propane to run the furnace for the past two winters. I've learned to be creative trying to not freeze to death using
only a 12.5 amp space heater.

Going to provide my own accomodations next winter. Couldn't really do worse, lol

[jisincla]

For the floor I want to say a single sheet of (linoleum, vinyl, laminate, etc), front to back with no seams. Price may be an issue. This would give you an easy to clean pet friendly surface, with no offgassing.

Ollie's has 6x8 foot sheets of vinly for $17.99. I'd need two, so there would be a seam where they go together, but not a whole bunch of seams like with tiles. Would that be good?

And how about the combined stain/sealer for decks? Would that work for the floor and/or the walls?

Jim

[Chilly Willy]

I don't have experience with the sealers. I imagine if the product hasnt spoiled, it's applied properly and given time to cure it'd work as intended.

When it's cold out, and warm inside, the dewpoint will sit somewhere in your insulation. Where you're likely to have moisture accumulate is in any cold spots.. for example the corner of the floor farthest from your heat source, or near where you're fresh air is coming in from. There's a couple ways to create a cold spot on a wall... the one being where your wall studs sit. Another way is to push something up against the wall. If the object is fairly large and has any insulation value (for example the side of a mattress or end of a sofa) you essentially change the insulation dynamic of your wall, drawing the dewline inwards towards the object. (essentially you're protecting that section of wall from getting heat). Same principle applies to placing items against the wall of a fridge, you can create warm spots. The outer areas of the object may feel warm, but your sheets will be getting mouldy where they press agaisnt the cold damp spot.

Having a seam won't be all that bad. I'm just thinking that if you are vigilant about keeping the place dust free ( a challenge with those pets ) the fewer seams the better. Less places to trap dirt away from your mop, and fewer places where moisture could approach wood.

Insulating walls and ceilings is relatively simple.... compared to insulating a floor. My crystal ball says you're not likely to insulate the floor, so another thing to keep in mind is that your flooring sheets will be expanding and shrinking as the floor temperature changes. That could pull the seam a little wider over time. Might be wise to proactively deal with it, and how you do that isn't something I can answer. On the cheap I'd say just keep the extra flooring compound left from sticking your sheets down, and gob it into the seam as needed later on. I'm sure there's better solutions lol

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

Oh humble chilly Wiily I beg to differ greatly , even at only 40 deg outside I had mold everywhere up the wazoo on my first metal frame trailer, there is a reason why most trailers have a wood frame vs a metal frame.
That's why I started from scratch with a new wood frame trailer. MtnDon is following my example I think he will post
good results when he's done. Anyone can heat & cool a trailer with 15,000 to 20,000 btu - but I can do it with zero heat
Down to 32 deg & only 5,000 btu cooling at 100F in full sun - 70 deg interior.

[Chilly Willy]

I'm not sure where you differ exactly. You had mould, so I'm assuming a moisture issue, and you fixed that by going from a metal to a wood frame. I stated that moisture would collect on cold spots, and that those would be where the wall studs are.

I'm not going to debate metal vs wood frame in a trailer, since the trailer is already a given.

The general strategy is to keep temperatures above the dew point so the vapor from your breath doesn't condense on surfaces before it has a chance to ventilate outside. I'm just pointing out possible trouble areas to consider.

I can't relate to california climate, I start sweating before it's warm enough for the snow here to melt. Couldn't you avoid moisture by just ventilating fresh air into the trailer at a higher rate? The ambient temperature in California is probably quite livable year round if you're from the area, and if you dehumidified the incoming flow.

[jisincla]

Condensation becomes the number one worry come winter. And you must ventilate. Even if you heat with electricity your own lungs will turn a confined space toxic. How fast depends on the cubic feet of space available. With yourself plus several pets in a 6 x 14 x 6 confined space I wouldn't risk sleeping at night with it sealed up. A lot of trailers aren't air tight, but if you insulate and it's done right it may as well be.

Do you have a recommendation for how to ventilate it? And I'm thinking if I get a dehumidifier, are there any that self-drain through hoses so I don't have to carry (and given my dyspraxia, very likely spill) tanks full of water outside to dump? I'm thinking I could set it up so the dehumidifier drains through whatever opening there is for ventilation.

My plan is for full time living in northern Alberta, so potentially going below minus 40 and staying there for weeks at a time. I've been thinking that any ventilation passage would be located down low, so the warmest air inside isn't escaping rapidly. Also I'm thinking it would be located such that air passes through my dogs sleeping area, keeping them cooler and giving me a slight pre-heat, even if it smells like wet animals

Okay, I don't know anything about construction, but I do know about surviving in an unheated space. If you have dogs, SLEEP WITH THEM! They are excellent warmers!

In a previous post I mentioned that my current condition of government-subsidized poverty is much better than the unsubsidized poverty I lived through while on the Section 8 waiting list and also waiting for my SSI eligibility determination. That was during 1988-89 when I was homeless for fourteen months, with three dogs and a cat. We lived in a van that was not nearly as good as the van I have now. Its heater didn't work, at all, and often the engine didn't either, so we spent a lot of time being stranded. It didn't go down to minus 40 where I lived at the time, but there were a couple of nights when it was down to minus 7F (minus 21.7C), which is plenty cold enough to freeze to death. The dogs literally kept me alive through that winter. I found this out for sure one night when a kennel operator offered to let the animals stay at his kennel for free overnight because it was so cold. That left me alone in the van. Wearing multiple layers of clothes and several pairs of socks, plus a winter coat and gloves, and bundled up in a sleeping bag, I was still so cold my hands and feet were numb and it started being hard to breathe. I ended up going into a university building and sleeping under a desk, where a cleaning person and I badly startled each other around 4 a.m. But on another night that was even a little colder than that one, with the animals in the van, and two sleeping bags zipped together so there was room for all of us to huddle inside, once our combined body heat had warmed up the bag I had to remove the coat, gloves, socks, and all but a regular layer of indoor clothing because I got too hot with the multiple layers and coat. The cat went all the way to the bottom of the bag and curled up by my feet and kept them nice and warm. The dogs stretched out on either side of me and enveloped me with their warmth. With the animals in the sleeping bag, I not only survived those frozen nights, I was actually comfortable. Venturing out of the bag in the morning was pretty miserable, but the nights were fine.

You know where the expression "three dog night" comes from? It means a night that is so cold, you need to sleep with three dogs to stay warm. There are lots of news stories about children wandering off and getting lost in the cold, and being found alive because they were cuddled up with dogs. Examples:

http://www.foxbaltimore.com/template/cg ... 4gjYvldX0o

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... e-1.198038

http://www.dogheirs.com/larne/posts/288 ... girl-alive

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/19/pup ... -boy-warm/

http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/n ... minus-10c/

http://petoftheday.com/talk/showthread. ... -overnight

http://www.dailystormer.com/a-dog-in-ar ... -his-life/

And here's one involving an adult who was injured in a snowmobile accident and saved from freezing by his dog:
http://jezebel.com/this-hero-dog-saved- ... 1538331085

If you're dry, out of the wind, and have blankets or a double-size sleeping bag, and dogs, you should be fine at night.

Jim

[Chilly Willy]

Trickle draining water when it's below freezing point will eventually cause an ice jam, and whatever damages from the water backing up inside. A good compromise would be to have a resevoir collect the water, and have a drain through to the outside which you manually open occasionally.

I'm living with dogs right now. Not freezing to death myself is part of the reason, the other part is that I'm not the type of person to step over a hungry and freezing dog on my way out to work in the morning. The company I work for is located on an Indian reserve, so there were several neglected dogs around, who are now my dogs. One is sleeping at my feet, other is along the base of my door, and her two pups are wrestling under my bed. At one point this past winter there was another adult rottweiller in my bed, plus the other 8 pups from the same litter on my floor. 13 dogs in my 8' x 8' room.

The dogs, plus my space heater still weren't enough to keep up some nights though. Ended up spreading my blankets on the floor to act like a carpet, stuffed my pillows against the window, and spare clothes jammed under my door to reduce the cold draft. Still left a draft around the sides of the door, but it was enough to stay warm. The coldest spot in the room was betwwen my pillows and the window, and so much ice built up there that the pillows stuck in place for about 4 months, and outside of smashing the window it would have been impossible to open.

Lets just say that I know where you are coming from with regards to keeping your extended family.

Having said that, I suspect the animals may have been causing the air quality issues in your home. Not finding evidence of mould kind of supports that. It may go beyond your pets too. If there are mice in the walls their urine evaporates and causes issues. Deer mice are notoriously toxic to humans. Something to think about.

edit for P.S. Forgot to address your ventilation question: Nope, I'm pondering the same question myself. OTTCT recomends using computer fans to actively move air, which sounds good, also sounds quiet. I would at a very minimum make sure there are a few small holes to prevent being air tight, and check those before going to sleep to assess frost buildup. For my own application I was going to let a doggy door be the point of exchange.

[jisincla]

Lots to read here, will try to spend more time reading and replying later. Right now it's dry and sunny outside, with no rain in the forecast for the next few days, and I happen to be having a relatively good day mobility-wise so want to take advantage of it and work on the trailer.

As I understand what I'm reading, the big concerns to address, right from the start, are ventilation and moisture. Do I have that right?

This morning I got everything out of the trailer except the futon, which my mom is going to help me drag into the house as soon as she finishes changing her clothes and her hearing aid batteries. Then the trailer will be empty.

I think I should seal/stain/moistureproof the walls first, because then I can work on the floor while the walls are still drying. I will try using the stuff from the Habitat ReStore. I will go downstairs and look around my dad's old tool bench for mixers and rollers and breathing masks and stuff.

In case anyone happens to see this and respond between now and when I am finished getting the futon out, collecting supplies, and preparing the area: Is there anything I need to attend do at this point (treating the walls with a stain/sealer) that will be important later for ventilation and moisture control?

Jim

[jisincla]

Ack!!!! My window still leaks! We got the futon out, and I brought all the staining supplies out to the trailer, opened the vent and the window before preparing to paint, and--there is water in the groove between the outer glass panel that slides open and the inner screen. Is this just normal? I'm thinking over time, and with seasonal freezing and thawing, it is NOT a good thing to have any water getting in there at all. What should be done? Is it a problem in the window itself (which I bought from a Craigslist seller so have no recourse after this much time), or something I can take back to the place that installed it and tell them to fix it right this time?

Jim

[Glenlivet]

Is it water that has leaked or condensation that has accreted on the window and run down? Usually a trailer's doors are opened in the daytime when it's warmer, and the trapped moisture bearing air when it cools later as night falls, drops its moisture on the best available hard and cold surface, usually the moisture will beeline for a window.

Again with the animals, I am reminded of a late fall drive I took to a friend's cabin, a good three hour drive. I brought the dog in my quad cab truck and he happily sat on the passenger seat (110 lb or so) Being late fall the truck was cool and after a while I automatically put the heater on, mid or so. The interior got to about 70 degrees and the dog began to pant, not overheat blow off heat panting, just happy dog pant. None the less at the typical 4 pant per second dog rate the animal quickly recycled about all the interior air and the dog-breath environment was a bit hard to tolerate. The windows fogged a good bit too, owing to the water the dog was blowing off.
I found that I had to drop the interior temperature to below 60 in order to get the dog breathing mouth closed and at a rate commensurate with its body mass. Any higher though and the dog began to pant and dog-ify the air at the former rate.
I just settled in for a cool ride, a bit cooler than I'd find normally comfortable.

I'd have to think that in a cargo trailer airspace about four times that of a quad cab truck, and occupied by four dogs and a man, the same effects are going to be found: big moisture problems and a rather unpleasant environment. (I didn't even count the cats)
I wonder if all and sundry occupants of the house now living in the much smaller cargo trailer, isn't just going to create an accelerated version of what happened in the house.