Monica

Please share a link to this post with any SCA (etc) or tiny-homes people you think might be interested.

I have a house on a flatbed trailer. It lives at Cooper's Lake in western PA, where Pennsic is held. When I set out to build it, I first got Dave Cooper's approval of the plans so there would be no issues with using and storing it there. All was good. But times have changed, there are new people with new business interests running Cooper's Lake now, and many of the "old" trailers, including mine, have been evicted. In my case, my trailer has to be gone after Pennsic 50, this August.

The trailer is not road-legal; it's only been driven on Cooper roads for the last 20 years. Legality aside, I doubt the trailer would be safe at real road speeds. (The campground has bumpy dirt roads and traffic moves at 5-10MPH.) It's not practical for me to disassemble the house and rebuild a smaller version of it to take to and from Pennsic every year: I don't have the storage, the towing vehicle, or the fortitude. I don't think I'll go to enough more Pennsics to justify all those costs.

Perhaps you have those things, and interest? Or perhaps there are parts you can use?

Parts of the house are in good to very good condition and could perhaps be reused for a different building project. The roof was new in 2019, put on a month before I got the eviction notice (sob). It's made of ABS pipe, cut to look like tiles, and it does a good job of both protecting and cooling the house. I can talk more about its construction. The loft floor is made of 2x4 tongue-and-groove whitewood and, being interior, has not been exposed to the elements. The doors are in good shape (you probably want to refinish them). Some other lumber can probably be reused for the right project.

I would be sad to trash all this if there's someone who can make use of it and who can come collect it in August. I'm not looking for money; I want to reduce waste.

If you're interested, please get in touch -- Dreamwidth direct message if you're here, or email to this user name at pobox dot com, or the contact form on my personal web site, or Mastodon if you know me there. Or feel free to comment on this post if you don't mind it being public.

Edit: Exterior dimensions: 10 x 20 feet, 16 feet high at the ridge on level ground (the trailer is two feet of the height).

A few pictures:

Front:

Interior:

A better view of that roof:

When our land agent had waited most of the day for the delivery and seen others go by who were after us in line, she went to inquire. (They had cell-phone numbers and email addresses for both of us, and she had personally checked in Friday and all seemed fine then. No calls or email were received.) When she asked after our trailer, she was told that it was unsafe, that they'd told us this in the past (not true), and that they would not move it. If anybody had ever suggested to me that my house was endangering their drivers, I certainly would have inquired further about what needed to change -- I would never knowingly create a dangerous situation like that. It took a while, but we eventually learned that the person in charge thinks it's too tall, wide, and heavy (factors that haven't changed since it was built).

He did not care that they've moved it every year for 15 years. He did not care that his predecessor, who'd been doing this for ages, approved the plans before we built. (Dave is ill and no longer involved with the running of Pennsic.) He did not care that he was springing this on us after land grab instead of getting in touch in advance or saying something when I paid the rent (in person). When our land agent said (after checking with the rest of the camp) that none of us had ever been told anything about a safety issue, he dismissed that.

When I spoke with him I was respectful and cooperative, taking a "what can we do to make this better?" approach. It didn't help. I'll try to talk with him again mid-Pennsic when things have calmed down, in case he was just fried from a long week of camp prep and said some things he didn't mean, but my hopes aren't high. I am also keenly aware that he holds all the cards.

Pennsic is a large event that requires a lot of work. Thanks to us they are now able to hold other large events, and do. We're less important than we once were because of that. And the individuals who built this relationship are largely absent now, after nearly 40 years of holding the event at this site. To those who came after it seems to be strictly a business relationship, while to the previous generation I think there was also friendship and respect.

Pennsic is large, and I suspect that there is no real harm -- actual or perceived -- in disenfranchising the very small number of people who unintentionally cause them extra work. Towing trailers, especially ones with buildings on them, is extra work. There aren't that many of us, and I've learned this has happened to some other people too. If we stopped coming, even if our entire camps stopped coming, would they care? I don't see that it would damage their bottom line. More than 11,000 people pre-registered for Pennsic this year; they don't need the few homeowners.

There is a Silverwing's law to the effect that only Pennsic is worth the amount of trouble that only Pennsic requires. I don't see why that wouldn't be true for both us and the Coopers. And perhaps both some of them and some of us are coming to the conclusion that it's not true -- it's not worth the amount of trouble that it requires. I'm speculating, of course, but this would not surprise me. The Coopers have a lock on Pennsic (by mutual consent with the SCA) for as long as they want it, but that doesn't mean they want each and every one of us.

I hired an outside tow truck (AAA to the rescue!) to move the house to our camp for this Pennsic, and have booked the highly-capable driver for the return trip at the end of the event. That takes care of this year. As for the future... we'll see.

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We did a scouting run last Sunday; some of the plywood sheathing had been water-damaged, so we noted where we'd need to replace what size pieces, and he who owns the pickup truck nicely procured the plywood for me. When we got up there yesterday and started prying pieces off, we found that the water damage was more extensive. The 2x4s in all four corners were rotted; we concluded that this was due to the trim we added after the initial construction. Apparently it was trapping water. So that's all gone now, and I'll have to figure out how to make the trim safe. Possibly the answer is "caulk eerything to death". (We've gone through five tubes of caulk without touching trim yet, so you might say I'm adopting that strategy.)

We also learned that the framing lumber wasn't pressure-treated. I just assumed it was. The damage was concentrated in the corners, so we replaced the bad pieces and added some sister studs in places, all with pressure-treated lumber. We also primed it even though it would be covered in plywood, 'cause, well, better safe than sorry.

So we had to buy and cut more plywood because of this, so while we were shopping I also picked up a power inverter. It's rated for 7.5 amps; it drove the 11-amp circular saw but not the 12-amp one. I guess there has to be a line somewhere. :-) (We have two batteries that aren't in cars, that we use to run lights in the camp kitchen and pantry for two weeks, so we used those to run the saws.)

At the end of today we had replaced all the bad wood that we're going to replace. (There are some iffy spots that we might tackle next year.) Everything is primed and some is painted. We'll pick some other Sunday to go up and finish the painting. Coming up with a new trim plan will probably be a winter project.

With luck, now that we have discovered and corrected an ongoing problem, future maintenance will be a lot easier.

2. I liked the time machine question Liam asked so, with no chance of death or injury what five events/people/things in history would you go back to witness? ( Read more... )

3. What music projects do you have going on this coming year? ( Read more... )

4. If you could have your Pennsic house made all over again, what changes would you make to it (or have Johan make to it)? ( Read more... )

5. You have just witnessed the murder of a loved one. You are safe and there is no danger to your life. You have the power to immediately kill the murderer or let them get away and potentially never be caught. What do you do? ( Read more... )

The weather was fairly cooperative -- a couple storms, but nothing that forced us to pull down the dining flies. It was mostly sunny and dry. I got all the way to Thursday of the second week before I had to start taking my once-a-day allergy pills every 16 hours instead; last year I was having serious problems by Tuesday of the second week, and I even went home for one night just to get away from the allergens for a while. (Today I still apparently have to take the allergy pills more frequently -- residual effects, I guess. With luck, things will be back to normal tomorrow.)

We ended up breaking down the camp yesterday. I'm going to make a separate entry about that, because it had Shabbat implications that make me uncomfortable.

( some stuff I did )

( score! )

( architecture )

( mechanical woes )