Sunday, May 7, 2017

Moving swiftly onward

The other day, in the store, I looked at water solutions. I'd been thinking about plumbing supplies in order to put a simple faucet inside the bus connected directly to a mains inlet. There are so many plumbing parts on offer that the whole thing is looking pretty darned confusing. I decided to let the matter rest for the moment or at least until as I wrote this, I wondered about putting a 5 gallon bucket with its lid securely attached, connected to the water supply but with a float so it acts as a cistern. Water can then be pumped out as needed with the advantage that if the float failed or the water pressure got too high, the lid would pop off the bucket rather than flooding the bus.

Today started with my looking again at my wiper system. The motor was jumping and clonking at one point in the cycle. That, I identified as a bolt that was fouling the rotor arm. A few adjustments later and the bolt was correctly fitted and the arm was no longer being fouled. While I was st it, I adjusted the wiper orientation so it is now identical to the other wiper. There is one tiny fault in that my wiper shaft is not quite horizontal. It's not far off and it does work so I'm not too bothered.

Having done that, I briefly considered fixing the one 120v socket but as it was a fine day, I decided to leave the socket for a rainy day. Thus I thought about the steel angle and steel flat stock that I bought from Tractor Supply. It being a fine day,  I pulled out my angle grinder and my welder. The plan was to make a start on my forced air ventilation system.
In Harbor Freight on Saturday, I'd picked up an angle clamp that would hold two objects together to be worked on and keep them at right angles. I was very careful, welding. I just tack welded since the material then took it out of the clamp in order not to destroy the very lightweight clamp. Once I'd removed the work, I clamped it to a steel girder to complete welding the angle. I had to wait for it to cool before rotating to weld the other side. Each angle was two welds and two sets of waiting. Thus, it took quite some time. Eventually though I was rewarded with a completed frame, even though it was very slightly but totally usable warped.
As can be seen, my little Honda lawnmower engine filter fits very nicely inside, as intended. The plan is to mount the engine filter behind a louvered door on the bus skirt then put a CPU fan behind the filter to blow cool, cleaned air into the cabin of the bus via plastic plumbing piping.
Now you should be able to grasp an idea of the concept. My next problem will be to locate a funnel to reduce the tube cross ection to 1.25 inches in line with the size of pipe I wish to use. I'm choosing that size because that's the size of my hole saw. Bigger hole saws just cost money and I'd really prefer to speed up the air flow anyway, which is what the funnel will do.

Now, I'd been thinking of a door but as I wrote this, I realized I don't need an actual door. A single louver could just hinge upward and be secured by simple screws at the bottom. The only thing I'll have to wait on is installing my ventilation unit. That will be dependent on my forthcoming front solar panels and my being able to get underneath the bus again.

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