Building a cabin in Alaska

[BigRed]

BTW, what does your SIL use for heat and electric during the dark months?

 

[actaeon277]

Fed by the Harding Ice Field. My wife and daughters swim in it at least once every trip. Have a 75 year old man on the island, that dives in from his dock and swims back to shore. Too cold for me.

Yup.
I don't do water below 70

 

[SnoopLoggyDog]

BTW, what does your SIL use for heat and electric during the dark months?

They have a house in town with a package boiler and hot water heat on natural gas. They also have a wood stove. A huge majority of dwellings in town are heated this way. The garages are also heated.

Their cabin on the island is twenty years old and has both a wood stove and LP wall heater.

Our cabin is fully insulated and people have stayed in it, in the winter. It just has an LP wall heater but they report that it stays pretty warm.

 

[flylo]

We did one almost like it in the western UP. Your going to roast upstairs in the loft like being in the sauna if you sleep up there & have a woodstove. Make sure where people sleep they have a window everyone can get thru in case of a fire as we had a fire & lost the whole thing. It was26 miles from town & the last 10 on rough hilly 2 track. If you use an Onan genset 6 golf car 6v batteries wired as12v you can start itremote, use a real muffler, a battery charger, an inverter & a switch the when the gen set starts it lets it warm up for 45 sec then switches to run the cabin on the genset while the batteries charge. Onan has an automatic choke & you can use bellwire. We ran it 1/2 per day & never ran low on elect. We put a 16'x24' & a 12'x12' deck with a 8x8 sauna, shower, an outhouse behind the sauna so we never had to leave the deck to bath or use the privy. We rebuilt it then I broke my back & it was just too tough to get back there. Enjoy it, it looks Great!

 

[SnoopLoggyDog]

We did one almost like it in the western UP. Your going to roast upstairs in the loft like being in the sauna if you sleep up there & have a woodstove. Make sure where people sleep they have a window everyone can get thru in case of a fire as we had a fire & lost the whole thing.

Every sleeping space has a window big enough to escape out of. That is also the reason we have doors on both floors.

I plan on putting a door on the stairway opening on the second floor. That way, we can retain the heat downstairs in winter.

My BIL just picked up a newer boat. This one will help us cross in rougher water. It has two motors so it can navigate areas with HP restrictions.

 

[rem788]

Kudos to the OP, not much more satisfying than building you own cabin This one took me, my wife, son and 4 friends 4 years to build. Just one recommendation for anyone considering building: Build the outhouse first!

 

[Evan]

That's awesome. I don't know if I could do the outhouse in January, but other than that, it's amazing. That's great they were able to realize a dream.

 

[gregkl]

Kudos to the OP, not much more satisfying than building you own cabin This one took me, my wife, son and 4 friends 4 years to build. Just one recommendation for anyone considering building: Build the outhouse first!

That is really nice!