It rained all day!

Today was the day designated for completing the bedroom wiring. As all things planned have a habit of not working out quite that way, thus it was with today’s plans. Murphy’s law was at its best today!

Starting work, I decided to use my plastic box rather than the metal box for my USB charger and voltmeter on the basis that it was ready cut and as it was raining outside, going out to cut the metal box would have been just nasty. I still had to make holes for the switch and the push button though as well as mount the box to the wall.

It was pretty gloomy inside due to the rain so I grabbed some wires and made a connection to the unused lighting circuit so that I had a temporary wire set up for the new light. Though it was low brightness, I used my 1.5watt bulb which allegedly produces as much light as a 10w incandescent bulb. I used that for the entire time I was in the bus. The interesting thing there was that the battery voltage barely dropped and picked up very quickly when the clouds thinned a bit. I’m on the right track with that light bulb and I’m only using 20 of my 35 watts of solar power too!

The first problem was as I set the light up, I blew a 1A fuse and had to replace it. When that blew I rectified the problem and noticed there was sufficient low voltage passing through to illuminate my light bulb dimly. I wasn’t aware the bulb was dimmable.

After that I found my box, with the holes cut and the USB charger installed would not close with the spade connectors attached to the USB charger. They made it too long. Now the real answer would have been to go to the store for some right-angled connectors but was I going to drive on a Sunday having driven about 200 miles a day for the past 5 working days and then some on Saturday? Err, no. I was staying in the bus! Thus I whipped out my soldering iron and soldered it all. Testing it I found I’d reversed my blue and white wires. Easily done so the wires coming into the box are white meeting blue and blue meeting white.

Until now the color scheme of my wiring had been mostly white for ground and other colors for other things. I do have a black ground in the cockpit but wasn’t too bothered about changing that. I ran out of white today so yellow is the new ground color for some of the wiring.

So, the box was completed and tested. It seems to work or at least, the correct lights come on. It still needs to be connected to the circuits. 

After that I lost a lot of time. I’d got a small aluminum box that I was planning to use as a switch box.   I’d spent ages trying to paint it. Initially I’d painted it purple to use in the galley but after I put a different box in the galley as a switch box I painted it pink in order to use it in the bedroom. Anyway, I drilled a couple of holes for switches and encountered the first problem. There were rails on the inside of the box that made making the switch sit level was very hard indeed.

Well, the problem was solved by making very sure the switches were manovered perfectly into place before tightening their retaining nuts. Then along came another problem. As with the previous box, the spade connectors stopped the switches from being mounted correctly.

At that point though, I was utterly fed up with working on this tiny little box and of trying to turn it into a TARDIS. I put it to one side and pulled out two switches that I’d bought some weeks ago. I used one for the bedroom light and how nice it was to be able to flip a switch to turn the light off and on! Even though the wiring was but of a temporary nature, it was wonderful. While I was at it, I used my second switch for the bedroom circulation fan. That was so nice in the summer.

Of course, having used both switches, I had no switch to use for the bathroom light. Now I really can’t see the brown smelly stuff! I plugged on with wiring and putting wires into conduit while securing the conduit. I needed a hole in the bathroom wall for the conduit and so I drilled one. In fact the hole had to be redrilled several times as each time it was slightly bigger than the last but not quite big enough. Finally I managed though and passed the conduit through.

Eventually those wires will be connected to a switch. That won’t happen until next weekend though as the extra switches ordered today won’t actually arrive until probably next weekend. They’re coming from the USA so they will not take long. Stuff from China always seems to take forever! I’ve quit ordering stuff from there. 

I continued with the cable conduit. The light and the fan both need to be connected to the wires in the conduit and the wires for the light need to be extended as they’re too short. I quit after I made an error and taped the two conduits together to merge them into a bigger conduit without realizing my light wires ended at the end of the smaller conduit. It just seemed the ideal time to quit. 

Remaining to do in the bedroom - extend the short wires. I’ll probably use yellow to extend the white and I believe I have enough blue to extend the blue to the right length. Then to connect the wires to the light and the fan. Finally I’ll secure and connect the conduit under the desk. 

Having completed the immediate electrics, the next thing to do will be to add switches into the system so that the solar supply can be switched on or off and so that the battery can be switched on or off. I have a switch on the way that’ll do the solar. The battery switch I have yet to obatain. Having said that, the solar system needs to be connected so that the front and rear panels work together.

I’ve already mentioned my plan to add an entry point for an external solar panel or even a wind generator. What I’ve not mentioned is a further idea which is to use a charge controller already connected at the front of the bus to keep the bus batteries fresh when the bus is parked up. 

Eventually I’ll add a circuit to power a shower but that’s on the back burner until I’ve completed all the projects currently on the go. There are so many of them!

Shopping was a neccesity

Yes, today was Harbor Freight day. I went to get a replacement step bit for my drill. Sadly they come in packs of two so I now have a duplicate and redundant step bit. I’d blunted the previous one trying to cut through thick steel. This one will not be used for such an arduous task!

Of course, before I went out I had to inflate my car tire which had mysteriously dropped from 35.5psi to 23psi. Pulling out my pump I set it going and stopped a couple of times to check the pressure. On the last stop the pressure had reached 29psi whereupon the switch on the pump disintegrated. That’s not the first electric pump to fail on me. The first I remember went crunch after half inflating a flat tire and wouldn’t work any further. It just seems those things are just not built to do the job for which they are sold.

Thus at Harbor Freight I picked up another tire pump. It’s supposed to reach 150PSI but honestly, good luck to anybody that thinks they’ll get more than 40psi out of it before it goes bang and pieces of pump go flying about the yard. It doesn’t matter what the price is or what brand is on them. They’re all made by Comrade Phock Yew in the People’s Republic of China as are most of the things on eBay, Amazon and in the stores.

Anyway I purchased my step drill which was my main reason for going to Harbor Freight together with my new tire pump (which on my return I used to pump my front tire to 35psi) and a couple of things for other people. Now, while I was out I also went to a store I know called EmbroidMe. I know the manager and he’d done some good work for me in the past. Sadly the store had moved for the umpteenth time and I had to Google it to find it. They’re now on one of the main drags so business must be good. I never managed to order the top I wanted because he’d taken it upon himself to have Saturday off - the rotter! All I wanted was a top in black with white lettering that says (front and back) “Area 51 - Crash Survivor”. I feel people around me are so odd that I must be on some alien planet.

Anyway, inside the bus I found that for some unknown reason my phone is now refusing to take correctly focused images. Maybe I’ll have to do a factory reset. I’d allowed several apps to have several goes at updating and the thing is now slightly slower than a snail swimming through treacle. It happens with these Android things but who can really afford an iPhone now they’re such stupid prices? I stop when I’m asked to pay more than $50 for a phone that I know isn’t going to last more than 2 years. I’ve been taken on that ride before. I had a Nexus 4 that I paid $250 for and 3 years later it just died. I’m never being taken on that ride when all the darned thing is, is a phone. The internet on it is nice but hardly essential. I can get my internet in many other ways.

The first thing that came to my attention was the two solar garden lights. They were utterly useless light producers and clearly some kind of inscrutable Chinese joke. The glass off them was rather good however. Removing the glass and spraying them with frosting spray I drilled a hole in the base of each that fitted nicely over the base of my light holders. It was then I realized that I could just pop them in place and didn’t have to spend time fastening them. That was quite a relief.

Well that was the square garden light and it looks pretty darned good if I do say so myself. Curses on Google for making the camera suffer from its bloatware updates. Making the glass fit was a simple matter of trimming the top off and drilling a hole in the base the same diameter as the lamp base. That was where my step drill came in very handy.

The other (cheaper) garden light didn’t look as spectacular and looks even worse since the camera decided to adjust the white balance all on its own. The previous and very expensive garden light cost me $2 while this one cost $1. Neither is really worth more than about 20 cents but I suppose the Dollar Store needs to pay its minimum wage staff.

Having done that, the next thing I did was to crawl under the desk in the bedroom. I’ve spent quite a while on my hands and knees under things during this bus project. So, I stripped the ends of the cables under the desk. That was two twin cables. Once I’d done that, it took a while but I put spade connectors on the cables. The next thing was to touch a wire from each connector to the body to see if the red light came on, on my fuse block. I’m very pleased and relieved to report that it all worked and that there are no obvious problems with the wiring.

About then I’d pretty much had enough for the day. Pumping those tyres took a very long time. Those electric pumps are so darned slow. The next stage will be to drill holes in the aluminum box I received a few days ago. I’d almost decided to use the plastic box I’d already go and had drilled holes in it ready to use but since my USB connectors are Chinese, I think I prefer a metal box since it’s more likely to contain a fire and to dissipate heat build up.

I connected my bedroom light to a spare battery and put one of my new light shades over the thing. The light emitted was usable - very usable but disappointing. What could be wrong? Well, I’d put one of my 1.2 watt bulbs in instead of my 2.5w. That was the answer. Switching bulbs produced plenty light. I found the small bulb was very usable and I could read using it but light drop off toward the end of the bedroom was quite noticeable. I compare that with those useless LED lanterns. I’ll have to rip the guts light of those things and put an 8 AA battery pack and a 12v LED  light in place. That’ll make them much more usable.

Who knows what progress will happen tomorrow. Stay tuned, children...

It’s alive! Power now flows through its veins.

Today was rather a strange day. Work was very pleasant and quite straightforward with no incidents at all other than after taking the children from the elementary school to their homes, I went to the high school and had no riders. That meant I could head straight back to the bus yard and go home. Very nice.

During my between shifts break I came and worked on the bus a little, continuing to put connectors in place toward getting everything wired up to the new battery. I didn’t do much more than attach a couple of connectors during my break. I spent quite a while researching a second fuse box, hunting eBay for one before finding I’d ordered the previous one off Amazon.

A few days ago, having had the thought of a second fuse box I’d looked in the car parts stores and while I hadn’t found the right kind of breaker box I had found the connectors I needed to complete my project. Believe me, when you’re doing a bus conversion you will need an absolute ton of male and female insulated spade connectors in all sizes plus a few ring and fork connectors of each size.

After work which ended earlier than normal due to an unusual complete lack of highschool bus riders, I did get more done. In fact I almost completed the 12v work at the front of the bus. Discounting that I want to install a digital unlocker for the front door, I connected and tidied every wire in the cockpit section aside from those going to the solar arrays.

The single (twin) black wire poking up on the right from the bundle is the solar wire that passes from front to rear. That will be connected to the front solar array and to the portable solar array. The small wire drooping down will be connected also to the solar arrays and that goes to a voltmeter so if I wish I can press a button and see what the solar voltage is.

This blurry photo that I didn’t realise my phone had screwed up on focusing shows my completed wiring. Theres a bit of a bundle of connectors to the right of the fan but it’s not too intrusive. Both switches on my switch panel work. One turns the fan on and one turned the light on. Even the USB charging box that my lantern sits on is powered. The only thing on that lacking power is the voltmeter that will give me the voltage on my solar arrays.

At the back of the bus, the requisite fuses are installed. The light currently has a 2.5W bulb in it which produces ample illumination. In fact, that produces several times the light of my brightest LED lantern while my lantern claims to have a greater number of lumens. You’ve heard me say that I consider manufacturers that quote lumens as speaking with a forked tongue.

I’ve used several 1A fuses. I can’t see a bulb of less than 12W needing more than a 1A fuse so the bulb has a 1A fuse. The fan is probably 150mw which won’t again need more than a 1A fuse. The charging array claims to have two USB 1 sockets and two USB 2 sockets. That’s a grand total of 6.6A at 5.5v. I’m playing safe and putting a 10A fuse. Now half my fuse box has working fuses running working outlets.

The bulbs I put into my bulb holders were all purchased from Walmart. The 1W bulb is not very bright but is much brighter than my LED lanterns. The 2W bulb lights up the whole room very nicely.  In fact the 1W is very effective in the bathroom while the 2W works very well in both the bedroom and in the galley. The bulb on the top that looks funky is one of my 4.5W bulbs from China. To say it sucks is putting it mildly. The light is harsh and glaring while the bulb is not as bright or rather as well illuminating as my 2W bulbs. The Walmart “Great Value” bulbs were made in China but they work while the eBay thing doesn’t.

Doing the maths, a 2W bulb will burn up 0.1666AH. In 24 hours that’s about 4AH of power. My solar arrays will produce 35 watts between them so assuming they produce half of that for 8 hours of daylight then I’ve got 11.6666AH incoming. I could have two of the 2W bulbs and one of the 1W bulbs lit 24 hours a day. That’s not bad at all! As the battery is 35AH then I’ve got two days of light available with zero sun at all.

The next thing on the agenda is to put together my USB charger box for the bedroom and the light/fan switch assembly. I have a couple of boxes available but the one I would prefer to use needs holes cut in it for the voltmeter etc and my step-saw is blunt and needs replacement. My fault - I drilled thick steel with it and blunted it. Maybe that means tomorrow is Harbor Freight day?

Once those electrics are installed, I’ll install my water inlet and then fit the flapper valves into my ventilation system. Then I’ll look at installing a second fuse box with a cable run to the bathroom and galley giving me a USB charger box, fan and light on the other side of the galley or in fact, the opposite corner. I’ll put a 12V socket (bought one the other day) by the shower so I can run a 12V shower unit. While I’m at it, I’ll put a second light cable just in case. I think what I have is adequate though. I’ll also put a light at the other end of the bedroom purely in order to illuminate the closet area better. That already makes for 6 connections to a fuse box. Perhaps the control for the front would be better installed instead of a probably unnecessary second bathroom light.

After that, I’m sure I’ll think of other things to add but for the moment that all seems like being pretty good for a motorhome.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

Today I had a shorter day than normal which gave me time to work on the bus a little. Last time I found one of my wires didn’t work so that meant replacing the wire. In fact as it was one of those figure 8 twin wires it was a case of replacing both.

As far as my wiring goes, there’s nothing standard. Some of my 12v earth wires are black and others are white. Really and truly I should have planned the electrical stuff but it’s a system that grew organically. Needless to say, it is all set now to wire into the main battery. There’s a little tidying up left to do and to connect the fan but otherwise, the front electrics are completed.

That’s how the front electrics look with the power off. You can see the bit that still needs tidying on the right.

That’s how the front electrics look with the power on. Not bad at all and that Walmart 2 watt bulb lights up the entire galley very well. I did briefly try my Chinese LEDs but with them facing the wall the 4.5 watt bulbs produce less light than the 1.2 watt bulbs. With the LEDs facing outwards they were dazzling and unpleasant to view and the light was harsh. I’ll put a lampshade over this one anyway.

 Moving to the bedroom I installed the new lighting bracket. The bulb holder is simply glued into place using Liquid Nails. The bulbs don’t produce much heat and are quite light. Thus there’s little to fear from gluing things together. I’ve got a socket driver holding it down while the glue cures.

Meanwhile, on a trip to Walmart I saw a very useful 8 gallon water container that has built in wheels. Very nice but 8 gallons is still going to be 64 pounds. That’s way to heavy to lift comfortably. The ideal would be some kind of lightweight folding two wheeled hand truck to carry my existing 6 gallon Jerry cans. Of course they’re available all over eBay and Amazon. I’m not old and decrepit enough to merit buying one yet though. Another few days like today at work and it might be different though.

The odd weekend

This weekend was supposed to be the weekend I got all of my 12v system up and running. Instead it was a weekend punctuated by delays and frustrations. Almost all of the stuff I’d ordered had arrived, including one tiny little box that I thought I’d ordered from California but which eventually arrived having come from Singapore.

Yesterday I set to and spray painted my boxes finding that the spray paint wasn’t really working well. It seems that it was too cold for the paint to work properly. Thus some stuff has oodles of paint that has yet to harden. Clearly I don’t need to be painting anything below 65 Fahrenheit. Pretty much the same with glues and other such chemical processes.

The smallest box, the one that came from Singapore was too small for its intended purpose so instead it became a switch box. I was going to put the wires into the box through holes but remembered I have some nifty little banana terminals. Yes - that’s what they’re called and they’re certainly not yellow nor made of a particularly delicious fruit.

Hunting around I found most of my switches from the Radio Shack sale are SPDT with a Center off. That’s no good for something that has to be switched on or off. It’s nifty for replacing three position wiper switches or something like that though. In the end I did find two usable switches. Neither was quite what I wanted. I’d have liked everything to have had the same black toggle switches as my center off switches but alas this was not to be. Not that it really matters anyway.

I put off soldering the switches in the box because my soldering iron is such a beast to work with. In the end I decided to try a different soldering iron and it worked a treat. The switches were soldered to the banana terminals. Later the switch box was screwed to the wall after a false start after which I had to redrill the mounting holes. Then the lid was popped into place. That box has a very nifty pop-on lid that requires no screws. I’ll have to see how it stands up to use. That is, of course, one reason I used banana terminals. I shouldn’t need at any point to go inside the box.

The box has two switches - one to replace the knife-switch that has operated my small ventilation fan and one to operate my brand new light assembley (the one I swore never to install). It all almost got wired to the battery too. I’d drilled a hole in the partition and passed cable in conduit all the way from the switch to the cable entrance from under the bus. Putting the cables in conduit was the usual rewarding and interesting pain in the backside.

Four boxes had arrived over the past few days. Two I painted purple to kinda match the galley and two I painted pink to kinda match the bedroom. The one I’d intended for the bedroom is probably a little too small. I’ll probably have to rethink that one. Maybe use the other box instead. Compounding that of course is my lack of the correct kind of switch.

Originally the plan had been to install two switches in the space at the bottom. That, I feel, is a little ambitious. Thus I’ll probably abandon work on that box and concentrate on my preferred die-cast metal box. Thats a lot bigger and gives me the option to install more switches. Thus I could with one box have USB charging, a voltmeter, a button to press to see the voltage, a switch to power the charger plus a switch for the light and another for the bedroom fan. That, to me, seems a far better idea.

The bathroom light cannot be wired until the bedroom wiring is done. The bathroom wiring will pass through the partition from the bedroom in order to simplify everything. I do have a few other 12v wiring ideas in mind too.

The bathroom could do with a 12V socket in which I could plug a 12V shower unit. That would be way better than my D cell powered shower unit. Aside from the D cell unit is falling apart, it means buying D cells. Rechargeable D cells are an option but my experience of solar battery chargers is pretty miserable, It takes a week and more to charge a paid or AA calls in Harbor Freight’s AA charger.

Since putting a power socket in the bathroom would need an extra fuse box then the next addition would be a second bedroom light, above the foot of the bed. That would be incredibly easy to wire in. Similarly the yet to be installed keypad unlocker could run off that fuse box. There’s already a suitable power cable running the length of the bus that could be used for it.

I had hoped to do a lot more this weekend. By the time I had got really into my wiring for the lighting and the fan in the galley, the daylight was fading. I’d hoped to have the light wired enough that I could see to finish but alas it was not to be. I have a ton of small projects that need completing - the kind of one morning job that’s going to take several weekends.

A few days ago my bridge rectifier arrived. I should have bought several to be honest. These convert AC to DC and have some very nice screw terminals that could be used with spade connectors or preferably ring connectors. Just connecting these to any solar input would be me DC of the right polarity without having to know what the polarity of the panels were. This is very, very useful for external plugin panels. Indeed, it’s so useful I might just get more at some point. It’s way over-engineered for my needs being cable of handling 60A at 1200V or something like that. I only need it for at most 2-3 amps at 12v.

As of now, my old solar setup at the front and the old batteries I used for the past year or so are now unplugged. I’ll slowly migrate everything at the front to the new battery. One task not to be undertaken immediately is to connect the font and rear solar panels and to wire one of the voltmeters in the galley to the solar output. That way, I can tell in the galley, the battery voltage and the solar voltage.

In the bedroom my aim is to keep emitted light as low as possible so the battery voltmeter will be off unless a button is pressed. That way I can leave a phone charging overnight while camping without the light from the voltmeter bathing the room in a bright red or blue glow.

Quick setting glue fail!

Yesterday, work called to inform me that there was no school for the first two hours of the day so I set my alarm for 6am instead of 4am. At 6am I checked my phone as it had just gone ping. My codriver had messaged me that there was no school at all due to snow. Checking the website, it seemed that school had been cancelled abound 20 minutes earlier. I could have continued sleeping!

Later, as light snow briefly fell and melted instantly on the warm ground, I went to the bus to start to do some work. The cold was not conducive to doing much work and even the little heater fan didn’t put out much heat. I used to use that heater fan when I lived in the slums of Lexington town, South Carolina. It would warm the only usable room in the hovel I was renting fairly swiftly. The bus is another matter. At 210 square feet, it’s way bigger than the 80 square foot broom closet I used to live in. Still, after a while the place does warm up nicely.

The first thing done was to hunt to find my glue. I’d looked everywhere yesterday and could not find it. It turned out to be exactly where I’d thought it was, covered by about the only piece of paper I had not moved when hunting for it! Swiftly thus the bulb mount from yesterday was glued to the bracket. The glue used was described as “Liquid Nails, quick setting”. I can tell you this for nothing. By the time I left the bus it had not set. It was still as goopy as it was when put in place. I just hope it does set and doesn’t leave me with a mess to clean up. Glues have a tendency just to make a sticky mess and not actually set.

Having done that, the next stage was to work out how to install my switches and chargers etc for the bedroom. I decided simplicity is best. Originally I was going to control the fan, the light and the charger from a bank of switches installed on one project box. I’d bought some project boxes from eBay but they were rather smaller than needed. Looking through things, hunting for my glue, earlier, I found a suitable project box however. It already had a switch installed from a previous project but that was quickly removed.

So, having put the panels that hold the voltmeter and USB charger sockets in place, there clearly wasn’t room for more than a single switch. The screws have gone missing but I’m pretty sure I can find suitable screws in my collection of screws. Realizing that since the glue hadn’t set, the chance of paint setting today was slim to none, I sprayed the box pink to match the bedroom. It clearly will need several coats as the black of the box shows through too well. Maybe I should have bought acrylic paint in pink instead?

The box for the galley is more flexibly sized. It’s possible since there is no need to install chargers and voltmeters to install just two switches and control the fan and the lighting from one box. In anticipation I gave the box a spray with purple paint.

Neither of my two paints are a perfect match. They’re the closest color that was in Walmart. To get an exact match I’d have to spend $20+ and buy a gallon of that color in the hardware store. Given that I needed Lime Passion, Cosmic Pink and Opulent Purple, that would have come to some $60+ whereas my 3 cans of spray paint were just $12 for the 3. If I was sure acrylic paint would stick then I could probably have paid less and got more of the 50c acrylic and brought the cost down to $1.50.

Having sprayed the first coat onto each box and having attempted to glue the one bulb holder into place, I gave up on today as being non conducive to bus work. There are a lot of little projects to do right now. They’re all little and they’ll all take time. As far as I know, there are no further major projects.

Reading around with people’s experiences of insurance, at the moment it’s looking that liability only and not bothering to retitle might be the way to go. It seems from what I read online - which might or might not be on a par with the famous statements “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and “I smoked but didn’t inhale”. So many people seem to be having trouble. Indeed Progressive (the insurance agency that doesn’t actually seem to know what it’s doing) now says on its website that it does not insure bus conversions. This seems to be a theme with insurance companies. Tellingly, I asked a bus conversion company what insurance group they recommended and received no answer. This is a topic that needs more investigation and more work.

Out of darknes comes light!

Yesterday I didn’t have too much time to do anything what with things going on here. I did get to do some more painting on my brackets. Today was a different matter however. During my break from work and not being as tired as normal, I headed out to the bus and put up two of my three lamp brackets.

The stage after putting the brackets on was to glue the bulb holders to the brackets. That was where the best laid plans of mice and men came crumbling down. The glue had gone on holiday. Despite a hunt it was impossible to locate the glue. I did however find surplus wiring. I’ve clearly bought more than I need which gives me the opportunity to add an extra set of wiring. I’d thought of putting wiring in over the desk section of the galley and wiring a 12v pump into the shower so I don’t have to rely upon D batteries to run the shower.

Looking at water heating, rather than an instant heater, it makes more sense to have a 2.5 gallon water tank. Those are actually a fraction cheaper too. Using that and with a faucet and hose, I can fill a cooler with warm water for a shower and then use the 12v pump to run the shower. That all seems much more promising.

That’s the newly mounted bracket with the light just held in place. It looks pretty good. I’m not yet as far as installing lamp shade and the bathroom doesn’t really need a shade anyway. It’s not somewhere that anybody really wants to stay for longer than necessary. The light is just there for illumination while doing the necessary rather than somewhere to sit and relax.

Even in daylight, the light is pretty bright. I’ll mount a switch below the light with the wires going through to a box on the other side of the partition. I’ll probably mount that box in a few days. Right now it’s still in the post and due to arrive any day now.

And thus ended my 5 hour lunch break. I did put my freshly dried white foamboard in place, black side outermost. I’ll have to see if it makes a positive difference. In any case $1 on black acrylic paint isn’t going to break the bank. It’s way cheaper than spending $2.75 or more per panel for 6 panels.

Later, after returning from work, I’ll have to try again to hunt out my tube of glue. Heaven knows where that has got to. In fact there are several tubes and possibly duplicates. They’ve all gone on holiday to the Seychelles at the moment for all I know. I hope they bring me back something better than a damn tee-shirt though. I’ll be mighty mad if they don’t!

The electrics work!

For about the last ten days or so it had been bitterly cold. So cold that working on the bus wasn’t really going to be much fun. Sure, I could have turned on my little electric fan heater but I try to use as little electricity as possible.

While things were frozen, some of my purchases arrived - and some did not. Generally it seems that stuff ordered from India, Thailand and Bangladesh seems never to arrive with my having to file for a refund with eBay. So, as normal some of my money is being held hostage until I get my refund and my final purchases. At this stage, the lack of a Radio Shack, ludicrously expensive as they were, is a hindrance.

The first thing done was to bury the contents of my onboard latrine since it had been used. The toilet was not smelling at all despite my having left it for a week and more. That proves my dry toilet system works. Heck, even if it has to be bagged and put in a sealed container after every use, it’s still decent value and very usable.

I can see that a very useful addition to the onboard toolkit will be a shovel for just this purpose. It’ll be way cheaper to bury the poo bag than to do anything else with it. I have to say poo disposal is more of a headache than anything else.

The plan today was to wire up the lighting (that I wasn’t ever going to install). My LED bulbs from China finally arrived and to be blunt they’re disappointing. In Walmart I got two other kinds of LED bulb. Some at 1.5W and some at 2.5W. The bulbs from China are 4.5W. In terms of brightness, there’s not as much difference between the bulbs. The big difference is in power consumption. Comparing the 130 lumen 1.5W bulb to my very expensive 350 lumen GE LED lantern (which should have been 3 times brighter), the bulb was far brighter than the LED lantern, lending more support to my theory that measuring LED brightness is not a good way of comparing LEDs. Lumens is how bright an LED is while lux is how much light is shone on a square meter of surface. It’s better to grade LEDs in candela. That measures against a known value - a single candle.

I have some spare L brackets so I decided to recycle them as lamp holders. The plan was to paint them then screw them to the wall. The bulb holders purchased some while ago that arrived recently would be simply glued to the bracket and the cabling installed. As it wasn’t that warm, the paint took forever to dry. While the paint was drying I got on with another project.

For a while I’ve thought that putting black foamboard in the window in cold weather would make the bus warmer. Thus browsing in Walmart a few days ago, it transpired that black foamboard was $2.75 a sheet as opposed to the white already in the bus that was just 88c. Clearly coloring one side of the foamboard looked better value and indeed it was. One 50c container of black acrylic paint covered just over two foamboards, painting just one side. That allows the same foamboard to be flipped for hot or cold weather.

Expecting the paint to attack the foamboard I was careful to paint just one board. As it dried fairly swiftly without obvious damage, I followed up by painting another one and a half before the paint ran out. Clearly I need to spend another massive 50c on more black acrylic paint.

The front windows look pretty good with black board set up inside. The white looks pretty bland but on the other hand effect is what’s needed not looks. The black dried swiftly and seemed to be impervious to water.

Moving on from painting, the paint having run out, it was time to seal the two cable inlets I’d installed. That really didn’t take very long. It was fortuitous that I’d bought more silicone sealant when in Dollar General a few days ago. The silicone seal tube in the caulking gun was dried solid. The new silicone seal did the job brilliantly so now everything is well sealed - from above and below.

Having sealed everything it was time to connect the cables to the charge controller inside the bus then to head under the bus to connect the cables to the battery. That was the job of minutes and was followed by puzzlement. The display on the charge controller was blank. Pulling out a digital multimeter from Walmart proved even more puzzling as the display showed random values, changing seemingly at random while not being connected to anything. In the end my Harbor Freight multimeter came up trumps. It seems that somehow the battery had been installed back to front. Thus, switching the cables going into the charge controller solved the problem. Red is negative and black is positive. It was just way easier than pulling the battery and turning it around. The display came on showing the battery voltage at 13.1v.

These are the mounting brackets. One is purple - it’s not an exact match to the opulent purple galley but it’s close. One is pink - again, not at exact match to the cosmic pink bedroom and the third would be lime passion but for the fact I just plain forgot to get green paint. When those are dry (and the grey one painted green) I’ll glue my bulb mounts to them and install them on the bus walls. The internal wiring is going to be pretty straightforward and my three colors of wire will make installation a snap.

I bought some LED garden lights from the dollar store some days ago. Those have very nice, very small tops that look as if they would make ideal lampshades. Nobody seems to make lampshades small enough for G4 bulbs but then nobody really expects anybody to use a G4 bulb for anything other than a night light.

The rectangular $2 top looks more usable but both look potentially useful as lampshades. In combination with the frosting spray they should be really quite excellent. It’s doubtful whether they’d stand up to a halogen lamp but at this point I think I’m committed to LEDs, sadly.

All the LEDs I bought have been graded as “warm”. I compared them to my LED lanterns anfd the LED lanterns now look like a very unpleasant blue. Indeed they now remind me of one of the CS Lewis stories in which the characters were in an underworld illuminated by a cold blue light. Blue is, as I’ve said on many occasions, not conducive to a good night’s sleep. Thus for a home, it has to be a warm looking light.

One thing I’d like to do is to install more 12v lines but the fuse box isn’t big enough. I could do with probably another 5 lines. Needless to say when I planned what I have, I consistently underplanned despite trying to overplan. I’ll try to complete things as they are. I can always expand and improve later. For the moment the plan is to complete the lighting then to wire in the fans. The box for my bedroom USB charging panel hasn’t arrived yet.

Two switches arrived a few days ago. Those will work for two of my lights. They were intended for connection to my battery power and the solar power so that it could be shut off with two switches. Unfortunately they were not really suitable for the heavy gauge cable from my battery. That will have to be a different kind of switch. Thus, I’ve ordered two more boxes but aluminum this time. They will be used as housings for switches controlling the output of the solar and battery.

Having hunted for all-in-one surface-mounting switches, it seems that they’re just too hard to find. Those that I found are good but were more expensive than just buying a box and mounting an ordinary switch on it. I have a ton of ordinary switches having purchased a load of stuff from Radio Shack’s going-out-of-business sale. So, still stuff on the way before I can complete the electrics. Fortunately most should arrive by the end of January.

I’ll get as much done as I can this weekend with the electrics though I might end up putting them off to do during my 4 hour lunch-breaks from driving school busses for a living. It might be an idea instead since I can easily attach cables one at a time and circuits one at a time, to install the water inlet if the weather is reasonably warm. That needs me to get under the bus and that’s a weekend job as it’s a messy job. This weekend is a 3 day weekend since there’s some kind of USA holiday going on, on Monday. I’m always a bit baffled by USA holidays, not being originally from the USA.

The toilet works

Well, I think we already knew my toilet did work when Eric stayed in my bus for a couple of days. Anyway, today I got the chance to use the bus toilet. It was not through choice through. As those of you familiar with my situation will know, I share a double-wide trailer with four other adults and their four dogs. Last night the temperature dropped inside the bus to 16F. It was probably a degree or two lower outside. Hence, of course since the water supply to the trailer comes via ununsulated plastic pipes, the pipes froze and there was no water for washing, for cooking, for drinking or for flushing the toilet.

I’m pretty well supplied in my bus for water with about 20 gallons of the stuff in jerry cans. Some of it made its way into the house for washing and drinking but clearly there wasn’t enough for flushing toilets. Thus when the need came, I resolved to use the bus toilet. That was a performance and a half though. I had to:

1. Put a toilet liner in the toilet (A Walmart Price First Tall kitchen bag). 
2. Put cat-lit in the bag to absorb moisture.
3. Put a roll of toilet paper in the bus.
4. Heat water to wash my hands after the deed was done.

Well I got as far as point 4 which is where it all began to go belly up. I couldn’t find the bowl that I was going to put in the sink to wash my hands in nor could I find my kettle. In the end I did find the bowl and I borrowed a kettle. Then I pulled out my gas cooker expectantly and lit the gas. I had a tiny little flame which rapidly went out. Shaking the gas bottle ascertained that the butane had frozen. I had to stand the butane can in front of a fan heater (I couldn’t find my electric kettle either) to thaw the butane.

Eventually the butane was thawed and I heated the water, poured the hot into the bowl with some cold. I’d poured some cold from one of my jerry cans into the jug earlier. Now the water in my jerry can was pretty much frozen but not entirely so I was good.

The toilet having been used satisfactorily, I tipped some cat-lit on top of things and closed the lid, turning my attention to my bar of soap and the hot water. So, washing my hands went well until it came time to empty the bowl. That’s when I found that the water in the P-Trap ot U-Bend had frozen so I had a sinkful of used water. I simply ignored that and rinsed my hands.

Having now used the toilet myself I will say this...

• The gas cooker does make the place smell and does add a lot of humidity to the air.
• The frozen bend had not occurred to me but next time I can simply tip the waste water outside.
• There is no smell from my toilet (No - my $hit does not stink).
• Frozen butane is annoying.

Needles to say I was sitting working on something else, quietly in the bus when suddenly (half an hour or so later) I heard a noise from the bathroom. The water trap had thawed itself and the sink had emptied. Looking outside I could see the sink had correctly emptied itself onto the ground. I do have waste water collection tanks but with the drain cocks open, the waste goes straight to the ground. I try to leave the cocks open as much as possible. So I sit back down inside the bus and the back door alarm sounded. I have no idea what’s going on there! I fixed that and carried on.

Having done that, I set to with the electrics at the back of the bus and finished wiring everything to the fuse box. I have no idea at this point whether anything works or does not work as I have not had the opportunity to test anything. Wiring from the entry point of the wires to the appliances will be something for another day - possibly tomorrow. I know I need to buy yet more wire.

The fuse box side of the wiring is pretty tidy. The other side needs work (which it will soon receive). Only time will tell whether I can keep using my solid-state relay or not. I suspect not but I’m not counting my chickens yet. I’ve not yet tested the vehicle electrics to see if I’ve inadvertently put a screw through the cables. I’ll do that at another point.

My fan heater works pretty well and has raised the temperature to a cosy 55F. Outside it’s barely 34F.  I did get a problem with my thermometer. It has worked well ever since I bought it in 2011/2012ish. Today as I moved it, it switched itself off and lost the historical data. Opening the back I found the battery terminal was a bright green color and the battery had corroded itself. I had no idea! The battery turned out to be Duracell and was dated March 2014. Given that Duracell is the only battery brand I know to ooze, I’m not surprised. I’m surprised the battery lasted as long as it did. Anyway, it’s now been replaced with an Energiser battery. Those tend to be better quality.