Progresso on el busso, not progresso on el soupo

Today not being a workday, it was time to get some work done on the bus. The forecast was for rain, rain and more rain with the chance of yet more rain. It didn't arrive which proves my point when I say weather forecaster speak with forked tongue.

I fed the cables that I'd attached last week, through the floor (only one of these cable bundles is new) and caulked around the edge of the hole pretty thoroughly. I don't need any critters coming up through my cable holes. I had enough of that with rats in the house coming through the dryer vent hole which is why the dryer vent hole now has an old car number plate screwed down over it. I finally caught the last rat this week, took it outside and dispatched it.

On the side of the bus I installed the second of my Anderson two pin recepticles. This can now receive energy from solar panels placed on the ground. I figured that if I'm parked in the shade then I can put a couple of solar panels on the ground in the sun. That gives me the best of both worlds! As can be seen - the cables are hanging down.

I attached the wires from the Anderson inlet to the cable from inside the bus. That part is now fully functional though there is nothing connected as yet to the cables on the inside bar a half-wave rectifier. The plan is to put a switch on the power from the rectifier and a fuse then to have power from the panels going either to the extraction fans or to the general bus power supply. The aim is to keep the fans running in sunny weather which will keep the inside of the bus cool.

The underbus cabling for the solar input is completed. The other line to the water pump in the bathroom is not yet completed. That was where I ran into a snag. The black Harbor Freight cordless drill has run out of power. I believe that the battery while it still turns the drill fast enough, does not have as much power as it used to. I really need to buy a new battery. I'm not sure how long it has lasted but it has lasted reasonably well. The corded Harbor Freight drill does work but the cord is uncomfortable to lie on and is not all that convenient.

So, at the moment I am on stop with some cabling left to be attached to the underside of the bus. I probably have about ten to fifteen feet of cabling to attach, heading toward the handbasin. I'll have to drill an entry hole but that's no problem.

I would love to have done more today but I get quite exhausted quite quickly. I put this down today to three factors. The first is work really wears me out since I started doing 52 hours a week. The second is the heat - it really is getting warm outside. The third is my Dickies overalls that I wore today as they're poly-cotton. They don't breathe as well as pure cotton so they are a bit too warm to wear in a warm, humid climate.

Part of what I'll be doing with the fans is putting a voltage controller on the fans. If the input voltage is below 12v then the fans will be turned off. It will be the same if powered by bus battery power or by solar power. That way the motors are protected from burn out. The problem is if a low enough voltage is applied, the coils will heat up but the motor won't turn and won't therefore produce enough air cooling for the coils.

Thus I purchased a plain (used) box on eBay. It was clearly some kind of modem box originally. I cut a hole in it for my voltage controller switch as it's supposed to be panel mounted. There are a few holes where LEDs would presumably have been mounted that I can just fill with rivets. There's a switch hole where I will put a switch.

There are quite a few projects underway at the moment. There's the roof vent that'll be done sometime soon. The underbus electrics are still underway for the wire to the water pump. The fan in the shower is on hold until I receive a CPU fan from China. The turn signal switch will be replaced soon too. I ordered one a few days ago. That's going to be $117 plus probably $14 postage. I have no idea when it will arrive. I ordered it from Mike Lamb of Midwest Transit Equipment of Illinois. Very helpful fellow and I can thoroughly recommend him.

Another thing I'll do is complete my plan for putting a solar maintainer on my starting batteries. Just about all the bits are there - I just have to complete some underbody wiring. Yet another idea hit me a few days ago - to put a high power cable from the main junction between the batteries toward the battery compartment.

The bus driving battery compartment is big enough to install three type 31 batteries. Two is all that is required to start the bus. In fact it might even start using a single battery. I've got a switch on the circuit right now that's just lying in a plastic tray. I might build a little box to hold that switch that's about the same length and height as a type 31 battery. Then I could mount the switch properly and not bother with the plastic tray. While I'm at it, if I built that box to hold another U1 sized battery then I could wire that into the circuit and have a total of 105ah. That would mean in turn that I don't need to run the fans off solar all the time. The two 35ah batteries don't produce enough power to run the motors without dropping the voltage. In time I suppose the three could be replaced by a single type 31 deep cycle in the battery compartment.

Meanwhile I'm heading into the last 3 weeks of the school year. After this I will be quite happy not to drive a work school bus again for quite a while. My day starts with a 4AM alarm. Then about 4:30 I roll out of bed then leave the house at 5AM. At 5:20AM I arrive at work and at 5:30AM I'm sailing out of the front gates at the wheel of a 30' special needs schoolbus. At 8:15AM I'm back in the bus yard. At that point I could go home but rather than put 20 miles on my car, drive for 40 minutes total and spend just an hour and three quarters at home, I take a nap in my car. Then at 10:30 I'm off again in the work bus. I'm back by 1:15 which gives me half an hour for lunch so it's whatever can of food is in the car. Then at 1:45 I'm back on the road again, returning at 5pm. By the time I have returned to the bus yard I have completed about 200 miles of route driving. By the end of the week I am utterly exhausted.

Now you can appreciate why during term time very little actually gets done on the bus. In fact I'm lucky most weeks to do anything as I don't really recover until Sunday. As there's a lot of bacteria under the bus and mold, I can only go under there on Saturdays as it takes 24 hours for the bacteria and mold to have its usual effect on my digestive tract. Better to have that on a Sunday than when I'm driving a bus. Perhaps I should bottle the sand on the ground here and sell it as a laxative?