143 minutes

Regular blog readers will know that I'm known for being stingy. In fact, the joke is that I'm tighter than a Jewish Scotsman who's trying to save money. Anyway, you all know I dumped smartphones when mine started playing the fool back in October. Yesterday I had to pay my flip phone for the month. That came to $17.23 which I consider a real rip off. Over the last month they reckon I used 143 minutes/texts. As if it's not bad enough having to fork out $15 for 300 minutes (that I barely use), I had to pay an extra $2.23 or 15% extra in junk taxes! I'd be happy to go over to smoke signals.

So, today I soldered plug connectors to my wires for my small battery pack. That worked well. I have more soldering to do but it's all looking a load better. The next thing was to work on the under counter wiring. Well, I was not keen on going under the counter so I took the countertop off. That wasn't too hard. It was only ten screws.

Looking at my wiring I'd given myself somewhat of a problem. I'd used 30A cabling instead of 20A which made working with it rather challenging. I struggled valiantly or at least as valiantly as one can in 95F. After releasing one of my two cables from both ends, I couldn't budge it. There was nothing obvious holding it in place either. Taking an executive decision, I removed the other cable. With both cables cut loose I saw the problem. I'd connected the earths to a bolt that was obscured.

After junking my (probably expensive) 30A cables I pulled out some 20A cable. Then I went to cool down. Sweat was running off my forehead into my eyes and my tee shirt was soaked with sweat. I worked off and on for most of the day on the wiring with pauses in an air conditioned house as the internal temperature soared to 97F.

While I worked, I regretted that I didn't have my ventilation up and running. While I might get underbus odors from running with an intake directly under the bus, that might be my best way forward for the moment. If I put together a box that takes the Shop Vac filter with a PVC end into which my 3 inch fan is fastened then I can just build an all in one unit that should be relatively simple to attach. If the box is open on one face only or is set so that I can attach a 3 or 4 inch inlet hose, I can just install it and wait until I feel like doing extra work.

Eventually, dripping with sweat, my 120V system was completed. Last time I lay on my back under the counter doing it all and I think it took days. Today I just took the countertop up and did the whole thing in a day.

You can see the cramped space. I cannot imagine why I was lazy enough to work under the counter the first time around. I'd also way overdone it with the heavier cables. This time around it was nowhere near the fight I must have had last time.

My ventilation fan shifts a goodly amount of air. As I've already said, it can replace all the air in the bus in just seven minutes. That has to be my task for Monday.

The plan was to complete my extraction fan soldering and to complete putting heat shrink sleeving onto the wiring for my battery pack. I'd already done some soldering. I looked at the clock and something didn't feel right so I quit for the day. Better to stop rather than to plug on and make a hash of something and I'd already cut one cable a bit shorter than I'd like.

There you can see the plugs I soldered this morning and my yet to be deployed bilge fan.