Awaiting the storm

We've had bits of rain on and off over the weekend, but at this point it's a gorgeous Labor Day out there. Looking at our Casita just sitting there always makes me anxious for our next trip. Today however, I'm more concerned about how it's going to look later in the week. Hopefully with the house on one side and that lattice fence on the other, it will be reasonably well protected from any flying debris breaking it's windows. But, that tree behind it has some large branches way up high.

In 2017 with Hurrican Irma

The last significant storm we had here was Hurricane Irma two years ago. It's winds had fallen to a peak of 59mph when it hit Orlando, but it was still pretty nasty. There was a lot of wind and rain, and some significant branches hit the Casita. The worst part though, as it is with many of the big storms here, was that we were without electricity for days. Florida's still pretty humid and hot this time of year, so it gets a bit sticky. Fortunately, we have a generator large enough to give us light at night and fans during the day. But most importantly, it keep the fridge cold. Of course in a bind, we do have the small fridge in the trailer that we can run off of propane if needed.

It certainly could have been worse

As you can see from the photo above, Irma surrounded the Casita with debris. Other than the branches in the previous picture, nothing really did any damage. The branches did break a few things though when they fell, as you shown below.

Damage to the Casita was all pretty minor

• The bathroom exhaust fan bit the dust

  Under the blue bucket is the busted up exhaust fan. The cover got destroyed, as well as some damage to the fan blades. I bought a new fan and it turned out to be pretty easy to replace. All it took was drilling out the rivets, scraping away the old caulk, disconnecting and pulling out the old fan, putting down a ring of fresh caulk, riveting the new fan in place, and screwing on the cover.

• The A/C shroud got busted up a bit

  Seeing that they are way too expensive (about $200 with shipping), I set out to try and repair it. Used reinforced the bigger cracks with fiberglass on the inside, and added epoxy along all the crack lines. Since someone would have to get on a ladder to see the top, I also epoxied the seams on the outside. It's been two years and about 4,000 miles of travel, and it's holding together fine so far.

• The toilet exhaust vent cover got smashed

  This should have been a simple one. All it really needed was to have a new cover snapped into place. When I grabbed the cover base however, it was all brittle and I put my fingers right through it. It still wasn't a very big deal, but I had to remove the old rivets and caulk, and install a new base like with the fan.