Successes and defeats

Today I found a chunk of aluminum that happened to be the right size to make a one-piece block under the bracket on the one side of the microwave. Thus I drilled a hole and cut it to shape with my angle grinder. Interestingly my Walmart $18 angle grinder seems to cut faster than my $15 Harbor Freight angle grinder. The end result was that in a very short time I had my microwave fully secured. It’s now held down by four brackets screwed to the microwave that are in turn bolted through the countertop. That’s not going anywhere!

The next step was to mount the switch for the solar power supply. That was relatively piainless as was adding a fuse. I just used an in-line automotive fuse holder. That, was simple enough. I still have work to do at the front. I have two spare wires coming from underneath that will probably get connected to the spare charge controller. I’ll put an input from the inside to the charge controller with probably a panel inside the window. The cables below will be connected via crocodile clips to the driving battery in order to keep it fresh.

The wires on the bottom right are part of the door lock control and the plan is to tidy them away into the space underneath the switch console.

I got on and found out which wires to solder where and got a Hopkins two pin connector soldered onto the wires from my solar panels. Then having tested the panel using my solar monitor I got on with putting the other end of the Hopkins connector into the cigarette lighter plugs. Or rather, I didn’t. It turned out to be extremely fiddly and I really wasn’t feeling like very fiddly work today. It was 99F inside the bus with the ventilation off. Thus I looked around and found a cigarette lighter plug with a Hopkins adaptor ready attached. I knew I had one.

I’m probably not going to bother with this fiddly work. Micro soldering has never been my thing. There have been a few things that have turned out to be over fiddly that I’ve quietly junked. These cigarette lighter plugs are going to be another.

The other day I found some Hopkins to cigarette lighter assembleys and ordered one. That’ll arrive in due course. Meanwhile I remember I had a scrolling LED sign that got broken. I cut the cigarette lighter plug and cable off it thinking it might one day be useful. Free hot dinner to anybody that can find it for me though! I suspect it’s somewhere in the galley but I’m not sure where.

Anyway, I got the first solar panel connected and installed. Now the bus is running off 65W of solar panels with the 30W panel better placed to catch the sun.

I have a second panel and connected a Hopkins connector to that also. As can be seen, I propped both panels against the side of the bus. Being $30 panels, I can do this without worrying too much if somebody pinches them. They’re also just the right size to fit inside the windshield. I’ll have to build some kind of mount in order to put them in the windshield but that’s a simple matter of buying aluminum angle, cutting and riveting.

 Not being able at the moment to plug the panel into the bus power supply, I put my watt meter on it and proved it is definitely producing power. I don’t think much of that watt meter - it’s cheap junk but it does work. What I’d have preferred was a simpler device that didn’t consume solar power but ran off a couple of AA batteries.

It was pretty hot today. Inside the bus came in at 100F. Normally if it was 100F outside I’d have been baked out of the bus. One year it got up to 145F inside. Since I put that Rustoleum elastometric roof paint on though, that 67% reflectivity and insulation has cut the internal heat down to the heat of outside the bus. I wonder whether if I’d bought something with 85% reflectivity whether it would have been cooler in the bus than outside.

Even the official outside temperature matched the inside of the bus. This roof paint is the bees knees. It really seems to be working which is quite amazing for what is essentially a tin can.

I went to install my battery meter today and found that the voltmeter I have in place has been soldered in. I have a tendency to do that when I don’t have right-angle spade connectors. As fixing that will require soldering inside the bus, I resolved to wait for a cooler day for that.

How far off completion am I? Hard to say. I know I need to get a couple of cigarette lighter sockets. A double for the house battery side of things and a single for the driving battery side of things. I need to start tidying wiring. There are two or three places that need a little work. Other than that I’d say the bus is probably complete until the results of the first test run.

Using the ventilation and a single 30W solar panel it was noticeable how quickly the battery refilled and how long it would go. I also noticed that immediately the fans came on, though it was still 100F inside, it felt cooler. I’m onto something here!