From Harbor Freight I went to Home Depot to look for the wire I needed but they had none. As it was on the way, the next stop was Tractor Supply for some steel angle and some bolts. I’ll have to remeasure under the bus since I’m now going to be bolting to the open section ribs as opposed to welding to the closed section ribs. I ended up with two approximately 5 foot lengths of steel angle that are way lighter than what the bed frames had been made from and much more suitable for my needs. If all goes well, I might weld them tomorrow.
After Home Depot, the next step was Lowes (hiss, spit). There I got two 20 foot lengths of 10 gauge red and black wire. Those will be perfect for my battery connections. If you recall, I’m having to put in two wires to the charge controller because of the insane way that the unit doesn’t seem to want to let me use a common ground. I’m hoping it’ll allow me to do it this way. Otherwise, I’ll be enacting the product of my research into alternatives to using a charge controller.
Having been to Lowes where I still couldn’t get any 14 gauge twin cable, I went to Autozone where I managed to get single cables in different colors. I might be back there for more wire when it is time to do the internal wiring.
Today started with an icky tummy. I’m thinking I’ll have an icky tummy tomorrow too. There’s just something moldy I smell underneath the bus. It’s definitely something in the soil. I’ve tried using those breathing masks but they make my face all wet and make it hard to breathe. I’ll just put up with the icky tummy and make sure I do the underbus stuff solely on Saturdays so I get Sunday to recover before I start work on Monday.
Speaking of breathing issues, my car suddenly came up with a “check engine light”. Having an inkling it might be the engine air filter, I whipped it out and looked at it. It wasn’t as dirty as I would have liked it to be before changing it but I changed it anyway. An hour or so later, the check engine light vanished. Switching it out took all of 30 seconds. Pop the hood, undo two clips, pop the cover off the filter box, flip the filter out, pop a new $16 filter in, close the cover, redo the clips and close the hood. Done. Now, a garage would have charged $50 for the filter and probably $100 in labor. I still think a check engine light for the air filter is stretching it a bit - especially when the filter wasn’t completely black.
Of course, the one thing I forgot to get when I was out was longer self-drilling screws. Now I’ll have to scrounge around the miscellany of screws and parts to find some! One of the things I did get was some 2032 coin cells. Out of curisiosity I put a new one in my anemometer. It seems to work now. I’m wondering if the anemometer is one of those gizmos that one has to leave the battery out of until it’s used. I have a camera like that. It’s an old Canon S1 IS that cost about $500 back in 2004 but which now is utterly valueless. At best, I’d probably get a dollar for it, selling it. The rapid depreciation of electronics and their equally speedy obsolescence is exactly why I don’t do electronics.
In a similar vein, my dad always ranted about people that would buy a washing machine then simply throw it out while it was still good and buy another three years later. The fact is that when a washing machine or any such thing goes wrong, it’s usually better just to chuck it away than to hire somebody to fix it. By the time the standard $50 - $100 call out fee plus parts and labor are included, it’s usually around half the price of a new washing machine. So it makes sense to sell it for a low sum after half its estimated life and put that toward a new one then let somebody else deal with the relic when it finally dies. With anything electronic, when it goes wrong is usually the time to buy another. I had a cheap tablet and the USB charging port broke. Repairs would cost more than buying another. I had a Nexus 7 tablet and the operating system went and corrupted itself. I just woke one day and it wouldn’t turn on and just kept going through a reset cycle. Nobody wanted to repair that even though I’d have gladly paid money since it cost $200. Thus, these days, I don’t throw money at costly electronics and just have the cheapest and trash them when they break.
Well, the icky tummy won today. Just as I was getting ready to go under the bus to get a little work done, it took me to the bathroom for the Nth time today. By the time I returned, darkness had fallen with a thud! All is not lost though, even if I don’t go under the bus tomorrow, there’s always Saturday next weekend. There’s not a whole lot to do with the current cable in terms of attaching and my connectors should have arrived which will allow me to connect the ends of the new bits of cable to the old bits.
Fastened to the door frame on the entrance way of the bus, it really illuminates the stairway well. The light produced is nowhere near perfect but then few of these battery powered things seem to be up to much. Mind that’s my experience of LED lighting anyway. I bought 4 LED bulbs in Lowes (hiss, spit) Black Friday sale two years ago. One of those bulbs that were alleged to last 12 years is still working. The other 3 quit rapidly, turning into disco strobes on their way out. It was at the disco strobe stage that they made their way into landfill.
As I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of LED lighting. Though all the stores and governments are pushing LED lighting, it’s still a developing and emerging technology. It’s not yet out of Beta stage. For at least the next ten years they’ll be testing different versions on people until finally they get something stable enough to actually be worth buying. By then, of course, a realistic life span will be available. It won’t be that pie-in-the-sky 10 and 20 years. It’ll be something like 2 years or no different from the incandescent bulbs that cost a fraction of the price and which can be recycled easily.
This whole concept of recycling is laughable anyway. Aside from a very few somewhat enthusiastic people that have bought into Green propaganda, nobody recycles anything. It’s just not worthwhile. Why should Joe X spend time sifting through their garbage sorting things into the vast array of types and grades of materials when they can just dump the whole lot in a black bag and let the garbage guys take it? Indeed, if there was no garbage guy then you can bet your boots it would be packed into the trunk of the car then emptied into the nearest dumpster or dumped where nobody can see it being dumped.
One of the things I got was 10 gauge wiring. Though I’m not going to be able to install that this weekend, I’d planned on doing it next. Next weekend though, it looks like I’ll be working on finishing what I should have today. Tomorrow though, I should be able to at least start welding my battery holder together. Even if I only do the bottom and the verticals, It’ll be something.
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