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 These
informal reports, filed every couple weeks by Roshi (and e-mailed
to interested members), are meant to provide snapshots of what's
happening at Chapin Mill, plus the who, how, when, and where of
it.
It is a relief to report that one of our toughest decisions is finally behind us: what material to use for the kitchen floor. It will be vinyl rather than ceramic tile. We were drawn to tile for aesthetic reasons, but ultimately the practical advantages of vinyl won out: it is slightly warmer underfoot, slightly better for kitchen workers' personal safety, easier to keep clean, easier for pushing rolling carts loaded with food and dishes - and half the cost. We hope to have the floor installed during the week of March 4th.
The kitchen's walk-in refrigerator is now fully insulated and finished inside. A couple of our staff will soon pay a visit to Strong Medical Center in Rochester to ascertain whether the refrigeration compressor used there is quiet enough for our building. If so, it will go in one of the utility rooms in the basement. If not, we may have to place it outdoors, near the kitchen.
Drywall finishing continues to be the bottleneck in the project.
To do the job at the standard we feel is required for this building
- it's not a motel - takes a great deal of time
and care. Moreover, this very repetitive work is especially wearing
and difficult for people over 40, male or female. Helen Fuller,
our multi-talented member from New Zealand, has finally needed
to take a break from the mudding and sanding after persevering
at it for more than a year. Mike Hurd has taken her place, and
just finished his first rooms - the chair and table storage rooms
in the dining area. Nhat Noen, also a good drywall finisher, lends
a hand as well, but is limited by problems with his wrists.
With most of the doors in the dormitory end of the building now hung, Nhat has turned his professional skills to the large window jam extensions in the temporary zendo (the future exercise room, in the basement). These are done with very wide boards of Douglas fir, the beautiful wood that is being used for the trim throughout the building. This week we're also working on finishing and painting the stairwells in order to install handrails (also Doug fir), which are required to get an occupancy permit.
Tom St. Pierre and Mike Hurd have been concentrating on getting
rid of the last of the floor squeaks in the reception area. Absolute
elimination of them is impossible because  wood's
dimensions change along with the ambient moisture content of the
air, but the squeeks have certainly been minimized. Our considerable
work with floor joist manufacturers and engineers has taught us
that the literature on how to deal with floor squeaks is woefully
inadequate. Actually, we now know enough about them to put together
an authoritative article for one of the building industry journals
ourselves!
Our high-tech heating system is ready to go now that John Pulleyn, Lou Kubicka, and some others have spent several hours with the contractor learning how to operate it. Controlled by a computer in the retreat center's kitchen office, it will give us the air exchange and circulation required to mitigate the ever-mutating microbes that might be borne by sesshin participants coming from all the ten directions.
South of the Creek - At the beginning of this month Chapin
Mill was struck by an ice storm that was followed by heavy winds.
The weight of the ice tore the limbs off a number of trees around
the property, and totally felled a few others. In the zendo that
night residents could hear the destruction as it took place. Electric
power was going off and on for about 24 hours - giving us a chance
to learn how our emergency generator  works.
A towering pine tree next to the barn shifted toward the farmhouse,
and when the ground thaws we'll have to keep an eye on it to see
if it can be saved. A few trees fell near the back of the retreat
center, with one just brushing the roof (fortunately causing only
negligible damage). Caretaker Trueman Carpenter was practically
dodging falling branches, and the clean-up operation had to be
delayed because of the danger. Nor could those of us at Arnold
Park help at first, as a driving ban was declared for all of Genesee
County. Our Chapin Mill neighbor, Max Mason, said that this was
the worst ice storm he had seen in the fifty years he has lived
there.
The good news: After the ice storm the temperature climbed quickly to the mid-40's, allowing the ice on the trees to melt before the high winds came. Otherwise we would have lost many more trees. Oh, and all this occurred the day before a Sangha workday there, so we had a good-size crew to clear the road that day.
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