There are a couple of things I want to upgrade but I want to get the bus operational now rather than carrying out more upgrades. I've had my bus already two years and time is flitting past. One upgrade is to add a master breaker to my 120v plugin. That'll have to wait. I'm itching to get the bus operational.
Once it's operational, I have to sort through my stuff. I have several boxes with out of date papers, old tax returns and a whole load of other trash that needs to go the way of the dodo. Once all that is done, maybe I will take on some of the upgrades. The whole bus can be upgraded a bit at a time if need be.
My biggest failures so far are the woefully inadequate solar panels and my LED lighting. Combined
with a battery, they do actually work and power fans to ventilate the bus. His good that ventilation is, I'm not sure. As far as LED lighting goes, the supposedly bright LED lanterns are little short of abysmal.
Most of my lanterns have two or three settings aside from off:
- Setting 1 - There's a dim glow over there. Is that where that lantern is?
- Setting 2 - I can almost see the table the lantern is standing on!
- Setting 3 - There's a tabletop. There's a pool of light around the lantern but I still can't see to read or do anything.
Now, one of these lanterns is made by such a prestigious brand as GE. The others, the manufacturers were so proud of their work they didn't bother putting their name to it.
Sadly, all the manufacturers seem to have gone to LED lanterns these days. If somebody made a lantern that took krypton bulbs then I'd be interested. I know I'd get less battery life out of an incandescent light but on the other hand I get just as much illumination out of putting an unopened pack of batteries in a drawer as I get from these LED things. Indeed, the battery life would be better.
In the house I have been forbidden from bringing back any LED light bulbs. I bought 4 on Black Friday last year of which only one is still functioning. Given they haven't had but 90 minutes use a day or around 2500 hours out of their alleged 25,000 hour lives, that's abysmal. More do since they cost far more than a CFL equivalent. Indeed, in Lowes yesterday (the day after Black Friday) I saw huge boxes of those CFL lights at 89 cents each. I noted they didn't seem able to shift them. As my partner said, they're not worth having even if they were free.
It just seems to me that the world has been hoodwinked by the technology people. It has become normal now to buy an electronic gizmo then throw it out a year later and buy another. Not only is that very environmentally unfriendly but it's wasteful of money. The argument to ban incandescent bulbs was the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants. Rather than force power plants to clean up their act, in came compact fluorescent bulbs. How are these greener? Every part of an incandescent bulb could be recycled - metals, glass and the plaster. Compact fluorescent not so much - plastics are harder to recycle. Phosphorous and mercury rather more challenging but the glass and metals can be recycled. Coincidentally, a broken compact fluorescent bulb poses a serious health risk. Mercury is absorbed by the body and cannot be excreted. The first time you know you have breathed or ingested too much mercury, you'll be suffering the unpleasant side effects and there is no cure. In terms of life, compact fluorescents do last a bit longer than incandescent bulbs. Then there're these accursed LED bulbs. They claim 20,000 hours life yet theurctrack record is so poor the European Union had to specify that they must last a minimum of 6,000 hours. I've not had one reach 6,000 hours yet. In terms of recycling, it's 90% unrecyclable plastic. Not very green at all and at a replacement cycle of one every few months, terrible for the environment.
Now let's return to those LED lanterns. Like all this technology stuff they seem to have been designed by somebody with Aspergers. All these extra light level options. Who in tarnstion needs them? Throughout history too much light has never ever been a problem. Why then do we have this ridiculous dim, dimmer, where the heck is the darn lantern settings? I fully intend to do a comparison between my lanterns and a candle and I'm not going to be betting on the lantern being brighter than the candle!
Remaining to be done on the bus...
A mount for the battery for the solar powered fans
Retitling the bus as a motor home
Replacing the existing barrel hangers with my new hangers.
Other than that, it's all upgrades. I'm going to say construction is pretty much done. The upgrade phase follows.
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