Well?? I made a major mistake with my heat system.... I bought it with the intention of using propane. Really bad idea. The local propane suppliers refuse to service a large propane tank in my neighborhood- "truck restrictions". I ran the heater on 40# tanks for a while, but the cost of per tank was pretty frightful! With the Chicago weather I was going through a tank every 4 days!!

    Luckily the temperature  was in the upper 50's for a week. I decided the solution to my problem was to convert the heater from propane to natural gas. Ugh.... I hand dug an 18" deep  trench 75 ' from the house to the back side of the garage. I ran a gas line, and also dropped a Cat 5  cable in with the gas line- never can tell when you might want to add a garage computer to the home network. Hehehehehee.... it's only acting as a phone line for the time being.

Yep! A lot of digging!

    With the heat problem solved I finished up the foam and glass work on the upper decks. I took a little break from breathing epoxy fumes and manufactured 75 "skirt battens". A skirt batten attaches  the top of  each finger skirt to the hull with 2 screws- I actually only needed 68, but I figured the time was right for making spares. 

75 "Skirt Battens" made from a single piece of sheet vinyl

    Time for some flotation! The flotation area in the bottom of the hull was sealed in prior steps- The idea being that it would be filled with 2 part marine foam. What a major pain in the butt! I did it per the plan, but I wouldn't do it that way again. I would hot wire cut floatation foam, glue it in place, and then seal the compartment. 

A zillion holes drilled in perfectly good wood... ugh.. But the foam needs to expand somewhere!

    During the foaming  you need to replace the wood "plugs" that were cut from the compartment. Once the foam is cured  you need to glass over all the holes that you cut into the compartment... 

Plugs sanded and reglassed into place.

    I had to complete a bit of glass work on the rear deck panel where the duct will rest on the craft. A foam seal fits between the deck and the duct. the raised area keeps the foam in place and helps to direct the air into the air plenum.

Rear deck air deflector.

    The next step was to install the "air deflector". The air deflector sits in the airstream below the rear deck. True to it's name the air deflector directs the air in a smooth manner around the back of the plenum toward the sides of the craft. The first step was to figure out where to put it! Lot's of masking tape, and a little layout work got the position located.

I believe in proper layout work!

    Once the position was laid out I needed to scribe the bottom of the deflector material so that it would fit properly. The material was one of the things that I ordered from down under. It's basically a piece of 1/8" fiberglass panel- folded in half. I used aviation tin snips to trim it to the proper shape.

"Scribed" piece ready to be cut.

    The deflector is filleted & fiberglassed to the deck.... holding it there at the proper radius can be a little tricky. I finally used big globs of "hot glue" to hold it in place. The air deflector gets a reinforcement piece filleted and fiberglassed to the back side of it. The reinforcement piece was cut from a square piece of 1/8" thick piece of Kevlar panel. Again- good layout work and aviation tin snips did the trick! 

Air deflector held in place with "hot glue". Reinforcing piece held in place with a clamp to hold proper shape while glassing.

Front of air deflector glassed in place.

Back of air deflector & reinforcing glased in place.

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