Finally, running water!

I have a very nice week off work at the moment. Those that don't know, I drive for a school district and start work at 05:30, leaving work at 17:00. During that time I'm actually working 05:30-08:15, 10:30-13:15 and 13:50-17:00. Over that time, I drive around 190 miles. It's hit or miss whether I have sufficient fuel to complete the morning run sometimes.

So, I've worked on running water today and a little on another side project. The other side project is to install a fan in the shower. That will allow me to put clothes on a folding drying rack in the shower and have a five inch CPU fan blowing air onto it. When I lived in a crummy little hovel in Lexington, South Carolina, not far from the jail (yes, a really nice neighborhood), I found a fan blowing on my clothes on a drying rack really worked and it was way cheaper than using a dryer.

One of the things I did when I installed the wiring on the shower side of the bus was to install an extra wire. I never used it but now I can. That'll power my fan. I had thought of putting in a 12v socket to use to charge my MacBook but since my MacBook bit the dust, that's not going to happen. Anyway, I replaced the $1,200 MacBook with a $150 Windows laptop that I reformatted and installed Linux. Honestly, Windows is such garbage!

I ordered a solar-powered fan which arrived yesterday. It works and works well. It's plastic and secures via just three screws. That's nice but not in my opinion durable enough to put on top of my bus. While I'm on that subject, the people that had the bus before me caulked around the vent. I'm betting they caulked the drain holes since I get water coming in through the vent. I'll have to look more thoroughly at it at a future point.

Today I was thinking of going under the bus to complete my battery wiring. That didn't happen. Instead I found myself completing the running water project and starting the fan project. Now the running water project was held up for a long time because I was thinking too conventionally about copper piping made into a fixed faucet.

The first thing that arrived was the 12v diaphragm pump that came from China. That came with a length of PVC hose. Then I realised I had to put a strainer on the input side or something might clog my nice pump. That had me foxed as I was looking for a "filter". When I punched "strainer" into the search engine, up came a lot of expensive strainers. Eventually I eneded up in Lowes (hiss, spit) where I could find no strainers despite them being listed on the website. Eventually I found something for a pesticide sprayer - it was a filter on a length of hose. Now I had the pump, two lengths of hose and a filter.

I was still thinking about copper tubing but forgot to look at it in the shop. Then I thought about brackets and remembered I'd bought a pile of brackets that I'd never used. Looking at the V in the brackets I realised that would be the ideal location to lie a hose. Thus I tested that idea and finding it worked, put up the test version in my previous blog entry.

A bit of trimming and the bracket was about right. The next thing was painting. As I didn't want to run to the store to buy one tin of paint, I hunted around and found I had a part used tin of lime green acrylic latex paint. It was horribly slow to dry so rather than spraying and getting the whole job done in a few hours, it took a couple of days. Even though I hurried it up by putting the painted bracket on the dashboard in my car where the hot sun would bake it dry, it was still slow. The wonderful thing though is that the paint matched the Valspar Lime Passion of my bathroom.

While I was out a few days ago, I popped into the car parts store and found this neat little button labelled as a horn button. Now it activates my water pump. That's the water pump at the top. That is, of course, before I completed my wiring. Actually the wiring still isn't completed as the pump hasn't really got a permanent power supply set up yet. I can run it off 8 AA cells when needed or I'll wire it to the spare position on my fuse box with luck before I go back to work.

 

That's what the final solution looks like. If you notice I got the hole through the countertop and the batton underneath slightly out of line. Given that I couldn't see what I was doing and could only guess vaguely where I was supposed to be drilling, I got that pretty good. Pressing the power button, sufficient water clearly flows. The intake hose is currently dipped into a jug of water but can easily be dipped into a jerry can. There's even the possibility later of putting a 15 gallon water barrel underneath the bus. That's not what I'd call likely though.

The top of the DIY faucet is a piece of Perspex/Plexiglas glued down. Those with long memories will remember I took two plastic windows out of the bus and replaced them with aluminum panels. I kept the plastic windows. That's right - nothing ever gets thrown out unless it's really, truly unusable. So, 5 years on and I get to use more of the plastic. Actually it has come in for a couple of little projects - some of which have gone onto the bus and some of which have ended up either not going on or coming off after a trial.

When I was out the other day I bought another strip of aluminum. I've cut, drilled and bent it to shape. All that it needs now is for the paint to dry. Then I'll probably have to touch up the paint. The idea with this one is I'll screw it to the ceiling together with the mounted fan but I'll use self-drilling screws since there's no real weight or vibration involved with my CPU fan. I'm sure I've got some leftover aluminum strip somewhere but at $3.99 for a 3 foot length, it's not going to break the bank.

Getting underneath is something I'm definitely putting off. The leaves are too close to the side of the bus I'll need to work under. That means I'll probably have to move the bus away from the leaves. Why so worried about leaves I hear you ask. The answer is simple - baby cottonmouth snakes love leaves and are more deadly than the older snakes by virtue of the fact they don't regulate their venom output when they bite. It's all or nothing.

When I installed the button on the front of the cabinet, I installed it in such a position that I can press it with my knee. I can even press it with my knee while seated on the toilet if I so wish, thus giving me the ability to moisten a wet wipe or rinse my hands before answering the phone.

As far as the fan is concerned, I need to run a cable up the wall, put the fan up and install a switch. I found my spare switch today and my spare CPU fan as well as some spare wire. I even located my free wire so now I can install my fan very shortly after the paint dries.

After the fan, I'd better move the bus to a leaf and ant free area before completing the battery wiring and installing the second battery. Following that I'll probably run the cables for a rear solar input and the handbasin pump wire. No point now in running extra wires as I have only 8 positions on each fuse box and this will be my 16th circuit. While I was out I did get extra cable wrap. Only Harbor Freight sells the 1/4" wrap and that's all I need for a single cable. I have plenty small cable anchors too. I probably don't need to run off to buy more. \

Once that lot is done I want to switch the solar input on the side of the bus from a cigarette lighter socket to an Anderson socket. I tried to separate some of my MC4 connectors the other day and they wouldn't separate. That tells me I was right in going for Anderson. The other thing will be to put a connector in the battery compartment so that I can charge the driving batteries from a single panel in the front window. That'll stop them from going dead. I already have a charge controller installed in the cockpit with just this idea in mind.

Not much left to complete but as I'm still pretty exhausted from 3 months of 12-13 hour work days I'm not rushing. This does not mean I'm lazy! I know my body limits.