Putzing day

Today started with a lovely bright sunny day. The kind of day that would be great in summer. I really wasn’t feeling it though. Having gone from a fantastic job on Thursday morning that I couldn’t wait to wake up to go and do, to a dreadful job that I really hated every minute of by Thursday afternoon, that got so bad on Friday that I had no option other than simply to resign, I was feeling somewhat melancholy.

I had a list of small tasks to accomplish on the bus. In fact I went to the bus for some solitude with my, myself and my melancholia. The first task took several hours and all it involved was putting a breaker switch into the power supply from the battery to the solar controller.

I did get it installed though and it works well. It’s a two way knife-switch that’ll handle up to 60A or three times sad much as my charge controller. I had to take down my solid state relay but that was OK, it wasn’t currently in use.

Throughout the day I’ve been waiting for the glue to set on my piping. I should probably have used regular glue rather than soft-set and regular connections rather than screw joints. My thinking had been that it would be easier just to unscrew something. The fact is though that there’s so little plumbing involved that replacing sections would cost next to nothing in time, effort or expense.

One of my battles has been to make a ring that will glue to the piping below the bus floor to serve as a clamp to clamp it to the floor. The piping connectors seemed ideal. Cutting one laterally in two though it transpired that they taper toward the middle. Not very helpful to be honest. My solution was a longtitudional cut. That should allow sufficient expansion to clamp the tube nicely. This was untested.

By the end of the day I’d started a hole for the piping to go down through the floor. The drill battery went flat and I really didn’t feel like using the power drill. It’s one of those days when I just want quiet and solitude. I suspect it’ll be like this for a few days to be honest. Resigning from a job that suddenly turned bad is probably somewhat akin to other traumatic life events. There was little other option though and no sign that anything would improve from that point.

That is daylight - I almost got through the floor. Another go tomorrow and I probably will get there. Then it’ll be a case of putting the pipe through and sealing like crazy. That’ll almost see the freshwater input done. I’ll have to add a little bracket to hang the water gun though. There will be no faucets used on the bus - they’re way too costly!

A few days ago I found an insurer willing to insure school bus conversions. I told them I have no intention of retitling the bus as a motorhome. They were fine with that. Now the reason for that is that with the title left alone, if the insurance ceases then I can go back to straight collision only commercial bus insurance. They wanted to know the conversion cost so I’m going to have to find all my receipts and tally them up. My guess is $3000 - $5000.

Throughout the day I have been building my mushroom air inlet vent. I’m not 100% sure I’ll be using it though. It seems to me that with the flapper valves I have, in place and some louvered vents replacing my mushroom vents I should be close to insect proof. With the ventilation system active, any insects that get in should be blown out.

There, you can see the mushroom vent. The mosquito mesh needs extra glueing. There are two pipe clamp clips I made and a foot from the hillbilly bed that I’m planning to retake. That will be riveted to the side of the bus with a cigarette lighter socket attached. That will form my external solar input.

And here’s proof I’m not up to scratch. I swept the stairs. Cleaning is something I only do when I’m really under the weather. Normally those steps are knee deep in sand. I need to sweep a lot of sand out of the bus and do a lot of cleaning with my purple industrial cleaner. 

I could rabbit on about all the other worries, frustrations, annoyances and problems in my life - of which there are many - but you really don’t want to read all that. Most of you probably don’t really want to read the blog - you just want the free candy that pops up out of certain computer keyboards after you finish reading!