Saturday, January 9, 2016

A rainy day

I blundered today. When I went out to the bus, it was dry. While I was inside, it began to rain. I had hoped to derust the other side of my steel plates then to paint them ready for welding tomorrow since tomorrow is alleged to be going to be a dry day. We all know the weather forecasters speak with forked tongues though!

While I was in the bus, I sat down and completed my second 20A cable. The one terminates in a NEMA 6-30R which will plug straight into the NEMA 6-30C when the battery compartment is completed. Construction in failing light was not easy but was completed fairly swiftly. I have to say it doesn't look at all bad. It was confusing that the hot/cold pins had no markings other than X and Y which meant I had to look it up to see which wire should go where. I'll doubtless get the same issue when I wire the NEMA 6-30C.

Meanwhile, since the lottery is now up to $900,000,000, m'lady wanted a ticket so I headed to the store and bought two tickets. I don't so much believe I stand a chance of winning but I'd love to see somebody win $1,000,000,000 and be a billionairre for a day - before the IRS takes 50% and the state takes their 20%, leaving them with probably $400,000,000. It'd be hard but I'm sure that by economising they could just about live on that money! For myself, I"d be happy with any amount

When I went out I planned to stop off at a place where barrels were on sale. Oops... I was in thick traffic and missed the turning so I carried on to Lowes (hiss, spit). There, I realised I'd forgotten the piece of tubing I'd cut to take to Lowes for sizing! Still, I had a look at various plumbing bits. Then I looked at hooks from which I could hang my bucket. Looking at them, they would have had a difficult job coping with the lip inside the skirt on the bus. I passed on buying a hook. That was fortunate as it so happened.

On the way back home, I passed the sign where used barrels were on offer. The actual place was a long way down a lane. Down the end of the lane was a downtrodden looking mobile home. In the yard, a big dog barked noisily while some 15 gallon barrels stood to attention. The fellow must have seen me arrive and opened the door as I approached. He was very pleasant and didn't have change for my $20 so rather then buying two of his $8 apiece 15 gallon drums, I bought 3 with my $24.  They had contained some kind of brownish liquid wax. That was slopping about inside the drums so I made very sure the caps were screwed on firmly in order to avoid spills. Clearly the fellow worked where such barrels were used. I'm very happy with my barrels. I suppose I could put 3 grey water tanks or two grey and a black just in case I decide to put a flush toilet some day.

30 or 45 gallons of waste water is a very attractive idea because that puts me squarely into boondocking territory. I can carry fresh water in jerry cans and to be honest the risk of tampering with fresh water supplies accessible from the outside is low but nice not to have. Indeed, with the waste water, a faucet could empty that into a bucket or a hosepipe.

Looking around the bus today, I noticed a tag from a conversion company. I've never noticed it before but it looks like it was Tennessee hillbillies that did the conversion. Clearly some kind of professional hillbilly conversion.

Now that I have the barrels, all kinds of possibilities open up for plumbing. Of course, the things I would have liked to have done didn't get done. The path is there to go way better than just a bucket.

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