CABIN CONVENIENCES
Make your vacation home as comfortable as you can for the amount of money you have to spend. Remember that the four major comforts in any house are light, heat, water, and cooking facilities.
Proper lighting is one of the most important comforts. You can get water from a stream and boil it, if you have to; you can cook and warm yourself with a fireplace, but you will find it harmful to your eyes to depend entirely upon candles or ordinary kerosene lamps for light. If you are building within range of power lines, by all means install electric lights, even if it costs a little more than you had planned to spend. If you want primitive effects, you can get them very effectively by a proper choice of fixtures without sacrificing good lighting.
Next best to public utility power is your own private electric plant, operated by a gasoline engine. Such an installation, consisting of engine, generator and storage battery, may be had for as little as $75.00, not including wiring the cabin itself. This minimum-priced outfit will light a small cabin and operate an electric iron and toaster. You can go as much higher as you want up to a $1500 installation, which will supply almost enough power for a small summer resort.
If you must get along without electricity, the best portable devices are gasoline lamps and lanterns. You should have several of them. They burn with a mantle like old-fashioned gas but give an intense white light and use ordinary gasoline. Be sure, though, not to use gasoline treated with tetra-ethyl lead. These lights are satisfactory for reading, and you can take a gasoline lantern out in a storm without danger of its blowing out.
In most cases, if you use your cabin only in summer, the fireplace will provide sufficient heat, especially if you have the air circulating kind so located that the warm air can be utilized in adjoining rooms. If more heat is required, and it will be if you use the cabin in winter, investigate the oil-burning heaters that combine directed heat with heat circulation and heat radiation. Portable oil or electric heaters are also handy at any time of the year. Central heating is generally not necessary unless your cabin is to be used as a year-round home.
Even though your cabin is beyond reach of gas and electricity, you need not be without modern kitchen conveniences. Oil burning ranges and refrigerators provide the same service as found in a modern city home.
If you are going in for real cabin comfort, you will naturally have running water in the kitchen and bath. The next step in comfort is an adequate supply of hot water. Electric, gas- or oil-burning equipment will give you all the hot water you want.
With an insulated storage tank you can have automatic hot water with an electric heater. The cost will depend on your power rate and you must decide if it fits your purse. If you have one of the so-called “bottled gas” installations, you can use this fuel for your hot water. An oil burning water heater will provide an adequate supply of hot water at reasonable cost.
Water-heating coils in the back of the fireplace or in a wood burning stove provide inexpensive hot water, but not always timely or in adequate amounts. It is possible to connect these coils with a storage tank that is also heated by oil or gas appliances, so that you only use this fuel when the fireplace or stove does not supply enough hot water.
Probably one of the most neglected comforts in the average cabin is the kitchen in general and the cook stove in particular. If the cook is to have as good a time as the rest of the family, the cabin kitchen should be modern and conveniently arranged. A wood burning cook stove does not add to the pleasures of feeding the family and guests. But a possible point to consider: a kitchen range is an excellent added heater in a cabin that is to be used in cold weather.
Today’s cabinet type oil range, with burners and fuel reservoir concealed, is as attractive in appearance as the modern gas or electric range. Burners are quick in performance and adjustable to any degree of heat desired. “Bottled gas” installations are also practical if your cabin is located where it can be serviced by the sales representative. The gas, compressed to liquid form in a steel cylinder, is piped to your stove like ordinary city gas. However, burners must be especially adjusted for it, or if you are buying a new stove, get one made for this fuel.
Refrigeration adds to the comforts of cabin life as much as to city life. If you have electricity, you can use the conventional electric refrigerator. Also available are mechanical refrigerators that use gas. Modern oil burning refrigerators also give effective performance and are usable anywhere, requiring no outside connections. There are two types—one having a continuous flame and the other requiring the burners to be lit about two hours a day, the burners going out automatically when the required quantity of oil has been consumed.
While the space may of necessity be smaller, the kitchen of the vacation home deserves as much thought in planning as that in the city house. Apply the same principles of convenience and workable arrangement and provide plenty of storage space, for the family on vacation does not ordinarily go food shopping every day. On the following pages you will find a number of kitchen conveniences that with a little planning can be incorporated into your cabin kitchen.
This diagram shows how the hot water tank can be connected with heating coils in the back of the fireplace or in the firebox of a wood-burning stove. A stand-by gas or oil heater supplies additional hot water when needed.
TO FAUCET KITCHEN STOVE TANK HEATER FIREPLACE INTAKE