Attic venting

There were old heater roof stacks coming out of the roof of Columbine. Our pesty chipmunks were using them as their front door, so the MMAPers took them out and replaced them with proper venting.

New Windows (new to us)

We got 30 used windows from a retirement home in Denver. The MMAP (Mobile Missionary Assistant Program) volunteers have been working this week putting ten of the windows in at Columbine. Columbine is an office on the left side, a meeting room in the middle, and summer staff housing on the right. We will see a big savings in electricity this winter with the new windows!

Pinecones!

The attic of Columbine has tons of pinecones in it!

The ground squirrels for years have been going into the crawl space and up in the walls and into the attic.

We have had two guys getting all the pinecones out for the last four days. They work up there for two hours in the AM before it gets too hot up there, shop-vacuuming all the debris.

Ductwork and Insulation

We fixed the cold air intake and insulated the attic in Autumn. The cold air intake was all disconnected and was pouring in the warm air from inside the building up into the attic. We also started to insulate the roof. This should fix the ice build-up.

BayWeb

We installed BayWeb in Autumn, and ordered ones for Winter and Cedar. A big thanks to Pat and Patsy for donating the money to buy them! Each BayWeb will save camp $300 a year. It gives the administrator (me) control over the heat and monitors the temperature remotely via the internet. One of our biggest problems in the past during the cold season has been pipes freezing. Our old heating systems sometimes fail, and in the past if we didn't have a specific reason to go into a lodge we wouldn't notice it was cold until I saw our water storage tanks getting emptied faster than we could possibly be using the water. That used to be how we would discover the building had gotten so cold that the water - or even worse, sewage - pipes had frozen. With BayWeb installed in each lodge, I have it programmed to send me an email alert if the temperature goes above or below the parameters I have set for each one. I can change the alarm parameters for when people are in the lodges, which helps me catch a heater problem before it gets cold enough to disturb the guests. It also allows me to make sure the heaters don't get turned up ridiculously high. :) Learn more at BayWeb.com

Well that explains a lot...

We found the four bathroom fans in Autumn had no piping to outside, and were covered with insulation. Not only is this just gross, but it was heating up the attic space, causing roof damage by melting ice right into the attic! Also not so good for the bathrooms...

Autumn Attic

We got into the attic in Autumn and found three disconnected air vents, two squished air vents, and a disconnected air return. The vents had little or no insulation around them.