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Saturday, August 29, 2015

A plank? Really?

What with working from 8 til 4:30 with no lunch break and having not slept well the night before, I was exhausted after work. Thus, today's significant achievement was solely to visit Lowe's to spend $38 on yet another plastic plank.

Arriving home, I measured the soon to be shower base at 36 inches or rather, slightly under. I cut two 36 inch planks and one 24 from my 8 foot plank.

Tomorrow I shall trim the 9 inch wide planks to 7.5 then make the ends match and trim the ends so that the tub fits well into the mount.

Looking around Lowe's, I didn't get any inspiration for alternatives. The sole thought would have been treated 7 ply the same as I used for my toilet lid. That would have required copious quantities of brackets to secure it. The plastic planks solution can simply be glued to the PVC floor. I might screw the end pieces together but they'll be glued too.

I didn't buy more than just the plastic plank because that'll take me a lot of tomorrow and when that's done, there's the closet chain to erect and the breaker box to install. There's more than enough to keep me in mischief until the end of next weekend!

Thinking about power, I thought I'd come up with the final solution to the electricity problem. I remembered a gizmo that could be fed butane, hydrogen, propane or methanol to produce electricity. It had no moving parts. Hunting for it I kept finding references to products about to be released, products that had generated large sums of crowdfunding in the past and some very expensive cellphone chargers. I found nothing that could produce even 200watts.

Reading further, there was a Forbes article about the total failure of fuel cells to take off. It seems the gizmo is called a fuel cell. Reading yet further it transpired that they're relatively simple devices that could be built with very few tools and components. The problem is that platinum wire is needed in large quantities. That's why they have never taken off - nobody will pay the price when cheaper albeit Heath Robinson affairs are available in the form of generators.

Power generation keeps returning to wind, solar or generator. Solar is just horribly expensive. Wind is cheaper but pretty awkward as the generator needs to be mounted then unmounted for travel. Generators seem to work out as the most economical option.

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