A chilly December day

Today I had planned to go under the bus. As the morning was somewhat chilly, I ended up sweeping the bus, eliminating quite a pile of sand. That just seems to come onboard on my shoes. I have no idea why. The best method of removing it seems to be a broom. At work, various drivers use blowers to remove the sand but I look at the cost. $100 for a decent blower versus $1 for a decent broom. No contest!

Overnight I had considered putting a handrail up the stairwell and pulled out a couple of promising candidates. After adding a close-to 90 degrees extra piece onto my workbench that would facilitate my building a handrail, I decided I’m not ready for a handrail yet. It’s one of those things that would be a nice idea but isn’t essential and comes with logistical issues I just don’t feel the urge to overcome today.

Meanwhile I put the 7AH battery out with the 5W solar panel today to try to top it up some more. Interestingly, in my experimentation yesterday, I discovered that the cigarette lighter socket plug that fits my solar panel has the polarity wrong. Good job I checked that! That makes my plans to put a plugin solar panel follow more the path I’d previously considered. As I wasn’t sure of the polarity I’d decided to put the solar output through a rectifier. Now I know that’s exactly what I need to do so there’s no way around a rectifier.

Eventually I tired of procrastinating and realized that as the weather wasn’t going to reach a balmy 70F so I pulled out a sweater and put it on. Then I went to work under the bus. The first order of the day was to complete my power cable setup. That took hardly any time at all and even boring the hole in the floor for it was pretty quick.

Passing the power cable through the floor, it joined my other cables. I’ll sort them all out later. The next hole has to go three inches to the right of the rightmost cable. Then I’ll have all my cable runs installed. And yes, that is a Christmas tree. It hasn’t been used for several years due to a very non-Christmassy feeling in the area.

Under the bus the cabling is bringing to look quite respectable. There you see four cable runs. I cannot imagine there will be any more. I think that’s about it. Once the current cable run which was just four cable clips away from going through the floor is done, that’ll be almost it for the underbus 12V stuff.

I would have finished the cable runs but aside from my drill complaining bitterly about the cold and that it’s puny little Harbor Freight battery was going flat, the daylight was rapidly receding. Indeed after being summoned into the main dwelling house for a few minutes, I returned to find the daylight had gone and I was left to pick up all my tools in the dark. I wasn’t alone though - a feral black cat eyed my every move with great suspicion.

Looking under the bus earlier I’d found when I’d put the one run from the bedroom on, I’d just looped it loosely without fastening it but had looped it incorrectly. I had to pull it out and re-loop it around the frame and chassis. That didn’t take many moments though. While I was in front of the rear wheels I noted that there was plenty space to install fresh water tanks and sewage tanks if I so wished. That was rather heartening.

Inside I looked at the handbasin and pondered a water inlet that instead of feeding the handbasin just ended in a faucet under the handbasin that allowed me to fill my 5 gallon jugs. That would be quite easy to do. It’s not what I want which is an instant water heater but it could be a step along the road.

I shall be so glad when I don’t need to go under the bus to work on it. I’m getting more than a little tired of breathing mold, bacteria and eating sand. I’m tired of sand in my hair, sand down the back of my neck and grubby fingernails. Even as I sit writing this, sand falls from my hair and I’ve been in the big dwelling for the past hour!