Welcome to the Brew Hut

• This Hut is open to everybody on a first-come first served basis.

• The Brew Hut is maintained by the Varsity Outdoor Club of the University of British Columbia. A Hut fee of $5 per person per night applies to all users to support maintenance and to supply firewood. Fees can be left in the metal lock box or can be maled to:

Varisty Outdoor Club
Box 98, Student Union Building
6138 Student Union Mall
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 2B9

Heating and Fire

• The woodshed is located just west of the hut. You really can't miss it. Please make sure the door is closed up tight or it will get filled completely with snow and the wood will get wet.

• Firewood is lumber from the old hut (East down the hill), or scraps from building the new hut. Please leave some wood in the hut, ready for the next user, not a lot but a little. Wood that is stored underneath the hut is not to be used for firewood.

• Please be conservative with firewood, and only use the wood stove during winter. Once the scraps are gone, firewood needs to be flown in by helicopter at a great cost, and the supply must last the whole winter. The hut is well insulated, so running the coleman lanterns is enough to keep the hut warm in the spring and fall. If the firewood disaperars too fast and not everyone pays the $5 fee, the VOC will be forced to lock up the stove for paying parties only.

• The wood stove can be adjusted to either consume fuel rapidly and send all the heat up the chimney (knob out), or to consume fuel slowly and put out maximum heat to the hut (knob in). The knob should only be out when lighting the stove.

• Ashes go in the metal can provided.

• Do not cut or split wood in the hut or directly on the porch. Cut or split wood outside using another piece of firewood as a base.

• Do not cut any living trees. They take a long time to grow up here and do not burn well.

• If you want to keep the upstairs cooler than downstairs (when the wood stove is going), close all the downstairs windows. Cool air will then be drawn into the Hut upstairs through the roof hole where the stovepipe fits. You can open an upstairs window if you need more cool air.

• Fill stoves and lanterns outside.

• To light the coleman stove, turn the little lever on the fuel tank up and light it. Run it for 60 seconds before turning the lever down. This little leaver controls whether vapour (from the top of the tank) or liquid fuel (from the bottom) is fed into the stove. If the lever is turned down too soon, the stove is not hot enough to vapourize the liquid fuel. The fuel will pool in the bottom, underneath the burner where it is slow to evaporate, and thus the stove will burn yellow flames for a long time.

• This particular Coleman stove has a quirk where the fuel/air mixing chamber catches fire and the stove 'pops'. The only fix is to run both burners at the same time, which seems to reduce the problem.

Water

• There are 2 nearby tarns for drinking water, located about 100m SW and 100m E of the Hut. Please do everything you can to keep these tarns clean. Do not clean dishes, throw out food or go to the washroom in areas that drain into either of these tarns.

• There is a lake 500m E, below the old hut.

• In the winter, melt snow; the heater can be used for this.

• Treat all drinking water.

Outhouse

• The outhouse is 30m NE of the hut. Use it. If it's buried in snow dig it out and use it.

• Close the shutter on the outhouse window before you leave.

Others

• Remove boots before going upstairs

• Do not leave food or garbage at the hut. Pack out what you pack in. The only exception is white gas, which can be left in the lanterns or in the stove or in the 1 gallon tins.

• Close and latch all windows and doors when you leave. It gets very windy up here and we want to keep the mice and snow outside where they belong.

• Please report any hut maintenance tasks that you notice to the VOC to ensure that problems can be fixed by the next VOC party visiting the hut.

• Please add an entry to the hut log book (on the shelf) to let us know how your trip went.