Working on the electrics etc

Friday was so perishing cold all I did was to go to the store to buy plumbing parts. I didn’t get much but it cost plenty. I ended up with plastic tubing and a stop cock then a length of flexible hose with a spray gun from a kitchen sink on the end of it. The current plan is to install a water inlet that comes from the outside via a pressure reducing gizmo that I found in Walmart for about $8. That reduces inlet pressure to 40-50PSI. Then the piping carries the water into the bus where it meets a stop cock. From the stop cock it goes into Pex tubing straight to a kitchen spray gun. That allows me to refill water containers while sitting in the bus and even to squirt water into the sink even though the hose will never be part of the sink. As the hose was coiled when I got it, it’s having to sit with heavy things anchoring it now as I attempt to straighten it.

While I was out on Friday I also picked up a pair of LED lights in 12V with a G4 fitting - also from Walmart. They’re 2.5 Watts offering 250 lumens. Now I compare those with my 350 lumen GE lantern and they’re way brighter. Go figure - this lumens measuring is total nonsense! Better to measure in candela. That’s something everybody can understand. Speaking of candela, I’ve still not yet done a candle comparison. I must do that soon!

There, you can see my Walmart LED lightbulb with one of my nasty cheap-ass lanterns in the background. Two things are immediately apparent. The first is just how horribly dim these lanterns are. The second is that they’re very blue. Blue is, of course, not a color that should be used at night. It’s very bad for sleep rhythms. This is why Apple has their iPad change from blue to yellow at about 8pm. The body associates blue with daylight and keeps the body awake during that time.

 Needing to fasten my cables to the wall at the back of the bus, I found these cable securing things. They’re stick-on and plastic. Ideal. No holes to drill. That’s the theory. In practice, the glue isn’t worth a damn and the things just fall off the wall without any help from dangling cables. That’s despite a claim that they can hold up to 40LBs. Being mildly skeptical I did take∫∫ the cautionary measure of buying some steel cable loops. It’s going to be challenging running the cables all the way up the wall because of construction already in place but I’m doing my best.

There you can see the beginnings of the cables being fed up the wall, skirting my OSB insulation and the reclining back wall of the bus.

Meanwhile, thinking about my lighting - which I’ve decided to install anyway - I was looking at lampshades for my lights. I picked up a couple of solar pathway lights at the dollar store since I couldn’t find any cheap plastic drinking glasses to spray and cut down. If it works out I can modify them then I will. Meanwhile somebody gave me a couple of other things that looked potentially usable.

Trying the light bulb thingy. It’s OK but not that interesting. In its favor is that it has a built-in pull switch. On the other hand though, while it has a pull switch, it’s rated for 6v not 12v. It’s also a bit wider than I want. I looked at where I’d mount it and the obvious place seems to be on the post at the end of the bed where it can shine on my desk area nicely. Mounting it in my place of first thought - on the partition wall is also possible though unreachable from the bed. Similarly the drinks container is interesting but probably not quite what I want. At this rate I might end up with bare bulbs!

I forgot to mention my entertaining trip to the store yesterday. I drove to the store (about 5 miles away) and spent ages selecting what I wanted. I got to the checkout after filling a cart with wood (for a different project) and my electrical and plumbing items. When it came time to pay, my wallet wasn’t with me! I’d left it in the house so I had to ask them to hold my stuff and dash back to the house to get my wallet (which contained driver’s license, medical card, insurance and registration as well as my cards and cash). Now that’s something a professional bus driver should never forget! Anyway I dashed back with them and they’d been very good - they’d kept my cart to one side. They seemed surprised when I returned but what the heck... I don’t run around shopping and filling a cart for fun!

The bus was chilly inside today so I took the sun shades off the windscreen in the hope of getting heat inside. I also put the heater fan on. Thank heavens for plugin electricity! Speaking of electricity, I looked at electric instant hot water heaters and they just use way too much power. I’m trying to run off the commonplace TT30, 30A power supply. Thus, if I put a 15A instant water heater in then that leaves 15A available for whatever else. But it turned out the 15A water heater only raised the water temperature by 24F which if it’s freezing outside means the water could be 33F so a 57F shower doesn’t sound so good. The next model up which is 20A raised the temperature by 33F which means a 66F shower. Again, not too great. Add to that that I’m already likely using the 10A fan heater I’m using right now in addition to the 5A my fridge will consume and I’m running out of options.

Some people would say to use a gas heater. Indeed, gas has a lot to recommend it but for the fact it is full of water vapor. Humidity and rust would explode if I used gas regularly. I’ve already got some rust to deal with where I welded a plate onto the side of the bus. I need to revisit that with an angle. Grinder to smooth the weld out and repaint. Clearly I must have missed a pinprick with my painting. I actually quite like the heat from gas. I’m just not keen on gas because of its propensity to cause explosions and burns. I’ve seen too many gas explosions. While I do have a camping gas stove, it’s something to use outside. I looked idly at generators and decided they were way too expensive and way too much trouble - the same as large numbers of solar panels. Wind turbines just aren’t feasible for motorhomes either. Thus I decided to stick with plugin.

Bear in mind the cost of an electric water heater. Those things cost nearly $200 for the lower wattage heaters. I could get a 31A water heater for about $90 but then I’d have to raise my 30A to 50A and that’d add a whole raft of other problems. My solution - practical as always - heat water in a kettle, mix with cold in a cooler and pump straight from the cooler for my shower. Right now I’m pumping from the cooler with a D cell powered pump. I can see my raising that to a 12V pump very soon. Or at least - once I complete my 12V system and feel like installing another leg.

Completion of the cable attaching to the wall was fraught. The whole way I had to lengthen the wrap on each bundle of cables and extend the wires on each bundle of cables. One pair of connectors kept wanting to come undone and in the end my solution was to wrap the two connectors in heat-shrink sleeving and hope that the cables don’t come out of the spade connectors. If you notice in this image I’ve staggered the connections so that if something comes adrift, it won’t connect with something else.

It took rather longer than I’d anticipated but then I didn’t work consistently at the wiring. I got two of the bundles up as high as the roof and the other bundle ready to connect to the charge controller. That bundle contains the two battery cables.

Those cables, I had to shorten. It looks like my choice of 20 feet was about perfect as I only had to crop about 3 feet off them. My other cables have all been woefully miscalculated in length and have had to have several joins - some soldered and some with proper connectors.

And that’s what my cable bundle looks like. Pretty massive! I have three lots of cable wrap with a total of 11 wires with some going to the front of the bus and some going from the bedroom. A future set of wires might go to the bathroom. In that case, those would most likely be one for the shower pump, one for a desk light and one for a desktop USB charger. I’m not nuts enough to put a USB charger in the bathroom however. Or at least - not yet!

In fact when I said 11 wires, there’s already an existing wire going front to back so that makes a grand total of 12 wires. Quite a haul! I have to test them after wiring them to my fuse box in order to see if any need attention. I hope and pray they won’t because it’s going to be a real annoyance going through those bundles looking for errant connections.

After I’d finished for the day, I connected my 2.5watt, 250 lumens light bulb to a 12v battery and compared it to my GE LED lantern that claims 350 lumens. That’s 100 lumens more than my little LED bulb and it’s a lantern I’ve left alone. I have not frosted the glass.

I think you can see clearly that my lower lumen LED bulb is brighter than my higher lumen LED lantern! How can this be I hear you ask. The answer is as I wrote before - nobody knows how they should measure lumens. This is why candela make a much better measure. And as far as GE goes - shame on you, GE for faking the brightness of your lantern! In fact shame on GE for your shoddy workmanship on that same lantern whose handle just snapped off without any abuse.

As for my Chinese 4.5W LED bulbs, all I can do is wait to see what they are like when they arrive. I thought I had a bargain but Walmart  was the same price as eBay! I shall be interested to see how my bus looks with proper illumination.