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As you've probably gathered so far by reading through the website, Holloway Bar on McDame Creek is located in quite a remote area. There is no telephone service, the power lines don't reach this far, and you're pretty much on your own as far as the services that most of us expect to have to help us in our daily routines.
When Christina and Scott first started mining on Holloway Bar, there was nothing here but tailings from previous miners and the ghosts of the Chinese living on in the piles of rocks moved and built up by hand 120 years before in the 1870's. The first order of business was to get a place to live, and an old, used, bunkhouse trailer was hauled across the McDame and set up that first summer. What little power there was came from a small diesel-burning generator that was installed into a "portable powerhouse" - a converted travel trailer. The bunkhouse did have a shower, but all of the hot water was heated by propane. Everything was dependent on fossil fuels. In addition to being expensive to generate power and heat water, it didn't help the environment.
A few years ago, Christina and Scott decided to try to find alternative ways to generate power and reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. The Holloway Bar power project was the first piece of the puzzle. You can read more about the power project here. But, even with an electrical power source, you still needed to heat hot water for camp with propane, which although relatively clean-burning, was still expensive. So, Scott's mind went to work as he tried to figure out a better way to "clean up".
The first thing any fabricator needs is a source of raw materials. There are two things you need to know about people in the north. First, there's a lot of land and not a lot of people - so there are opportunities to acquire large tracts of land. Holloway Bar is the perfect place at over 400 hectares. Secondly, given a place to put things, northerners will turn into collectors and never turn away a possible source of raw materials.
Scott managed to find some appropriate raw materials and move them out to the mine. Here you can see a collection of "stuff" - an old 300 gallon oil tank and a 100 lb propane tank with an "expired" tag on it. These hold propane under pressure so have to be pressure-tested every 10 years. It's usually just cheaper to buy a new tank... You can also see assorted other pieces of metal and a welder in the background. Just what the doctor ordered!
Scott welded the propane cylinder inside of the oil tank. The bottom of the propane tank is cut and hinged so that it will open. Air for combustion can get in through the valve. We'll build the fire inside of the propane tank. Once you weld a chimney onto the other end of the "firebox", you've got a place to build a fire to heat water.
