Apparently holding steady

Today after a day of not much sunshine, the battery was reading 57% and 12.3v on the Renogy wotsit while my normal voltmeter read 12.2v. Whichever it is, having had clearly several days of 100 combined watts with 20W pointed directly at the sun, it can be safely assumed that the lead-acid batteries are stuffed. One is Harbor Freight and the other is Duracell so neither of them are particularly prestigious brands. By the way in Russian, "Dura" means fool. So "Duracell" or "fool cell" is pretty appropriate. Duracell has never been a particularly worthy brand. In fact the dollar store batteries work better than the Duracell AAs as an example.

57% capacity after just over a year or two years when the batteries have never been run flat and have been kept with constant solar input is really quite unimpressive. In fact it would rather suggest that Duracell and whoever makes the Harbor Freight Thunderbolt Solar battery might be well advised to start making breakfast cereals instead of batteries - something that perhaps they might actually be good at.

So, today I got on with the crush and run. I would have liked to lay more than I did but actually ran out of the stuff. Perhaps I should have ordered 20 tons! I'd measured the bus and the space and a website calculated I needed 3.5 tons. The trucking company suggested 10 tons and they were bang on the money. I had enough left over for other areas and then found even more areas that would benefit.

One thing I did was to make a space to park my car - I'd have liked to put more down so the pickup truck could stand on crush and run since the whole yard is knee deep in nails. 

Where the pile was, there's probably a small mound but it would be hard to flatten that mound without digging the crush and run too thin. At one point I did go too deep and saw the grass which was turning yellow. I'll have to deal with the vegetation that has surfaced through the crush and run. Plenty has.

It was suggested that I used weedkiller but honestly I don't want to because of the critters and pets that might get harmed. Somebody suggested a DIY weedkiller that was mainly vinegar based. It was vinegar, epsom salts and  washing-up liquid mixed. That's cheap but needs a spray applicator and I don't have one. In the end I decided the best way would be the cheap polyurethene sheeting, cover the area and wait two weeks. That will see all the vegetation dead from no sunlight.

As can be seen, I had space to put some crush and run that might be wide enough for my car - if parked carefully. There wasn't enough for the other side nor for all the other areas I'd like to hit. I will probably have to order more. I'll do that in a couple of weeks - after the weeds have been banished and then my vehicles moved so they stand on the new parking area.

It has been an exhausting few days. The crush and run appeared late afternoon on Wednesday and took til late afternoon Sunday to lay. That's with me using 5,000 year old technology in the form of a shovel. I did look at other alternatives but they were just too costly. I'm pretty sure I needed the exercise anyway.

OMG 85% but then what happened?

This afternoon I went to the bus to check the voltages and I could see a very impressive 12.9v and 85% capacity on the battery. It was another really good, sunny day. That looked very promising.

Meanwhile, having not slept too well and having only just about recovered from the dehydration of the day before I didn't start work until well into the afternoon. By then, of course the area in which I was working was shaded by trees. That was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Using a shovel, a repaired rake and my wonky wheelbarrow (yes, the tyre is flat and it leans to one side) I started work. Just look at that equipment. Millennials would throw their hands up in horror - not a switch, a dial or an LCD display anywhere. Fully manual and proven technology. Shovels have been around since the Bronze Age. Wheelbarrows since 200AD and rakes since 1874.  The most modern technology there is a rake invented 150 years ago.

Within a few hours I'd created really quite a good little parking area or rather got a lot further with my parking area. Now I have made a great big howler. I did not put tarp down first and I did not weedwhack the weeds so now they're springing through my crush and run. I'll put a tarp down over it all in a few days. I have to go to Lowes or somewhere to buy a tarp or black groundsheet or something. The alternative is pesticide and I don't want to release chemical toxins into the environment.

By the time I called it a day, I had very little left of my pile of crush and run. That 10 ton pile has now got down to probably about a ton. That I shall use tomorrow to patch areas that are thin, to tidy up the closest edge and to extend in another direction for parking a car. It looks like I might need another 3-5 tons at this stage.

So, back to the batteries. In the evening when I checked, they were hovering around 57% and the Renogy thingy was claiming 12.3v while the other meter was claiming 12.2. Near enough as to make no difference. I'm holding off on new batteries until the RJ45 dongle comes in from China. Then, assuming that works as it should, I should know definitively what is going on as it'll read the settings on the Renogy thing that don't appear on the screen.

Seriously, how half-assed is it for Renogy to flog a Chinese charge controller that collects information but won't let you read it until you buy another gizmo? The Renogy branded gizmo is at least $45. The one that I'm getting from the Chinese virus lab is exactly the same but less than half the price at $18 including $6 shipping. I wasn't about to blow $45 on a gizmo for the Renogy when as my readers already know, I'm unimpressed by anything Renogy pedals.

I did get a pile of 18650 batteries to put together to make a big battery to replace my probably failing lead acid batteries. Then I found the Renogy thingy wasn't ready to accept a 14.8v battery. That puts me back into looking for another battery but all is not lost. I still have use for the batteries. It's a different use and that will have to wait for drone project B or C.

Having got a few things from Aliexpress and found them to be a bit cheaper and better than stuff on eBay, I'll probably turn to Aliexpress for my lithium battery. BangGood was another recommended alternative. Amazon is right off my list and the Walmart site seems just to be a clone of Amazone - same as Newegg is,

Onward and upward. Tomorrow, all being well, I should knock out the rest of that pile of crush and run.

woohoo 80%

My two 10W panels and bright sun brought the battery to a reported 80% but after darkness fell, it was at 57%. This is positively gripping! The voltage before dark was 12.5 and after dark 12.3 on the Renogy thingummy but 12.2 on my desktop meter. Make of that what you will.

I really didn't do much today - I way overdid it yesterday and I'm no spring chicken. I felt every ache today. I was out too long in the heat, doing too much. I was dizzy for the first half of today so I probably got way dehydrated and probably a touch of heat exhaustion.

Today I dug out the rake and raked my piles of crush and run, making a coherant looking driveway. I'd estimate it'll take another day or two days to finish up the crush and run. I still have a massive pile right in the middle of my driveway. The majority will probably be used between the right of the driveway and the telegraph pole on the right, stretching in a triangle to the right, out of the picture.

I have no way of compacting the driveway yet. That's something I've not really worked out. I'm hoping that the rain forecast for next week will do my compacting for me. Out of curiosity I looked up how much it would cost to hire a bobcat to do the work I'm doing with my $40 wheelbarrow and borrowed shovel. It seems that per day excluding fuel it would be something like $300.  At that price I could hire a couple of Mexicans, pay then $20 an hour and get the whole thing done perfectly in about 3 hours! Since I've already forked out $381 on my crush and run, I think I'll keep the rest of my money and do it myself.

Thinking about money, I understand the last of the first round of Covid unemployment and extra $600 a week payments will be ending next week. I never received any of that because I have a steady job. I'm wondering what will happen when those people stop having the steady payments they've had for 3 months because they will be used to them and likely used to spending all that money. It'll be a real hard shock! I'd have been saving that money, myself.

Meanwhile, my very generic bluetooth connector for my Renogy whatsit is apparently on its way from Chnia. Aliexpress tracking indicates it went straight from the warehouse to Chinese customs the same day. The tracking indicates that it's arrived in the USA but also that it's awaiting customs clearance in China so who knows what's happening there. When that arrives, it should (assuming it works as advertised) answer a lot of questions. If not, there's always the replacement battery (which I think is what it's going to end up being).

In other news, I remain highly entertained by the clueless clots offering expert advice online. One of the prize statements today was the flexible solar panels are no good because they all catch fire. If that was true, nobody would make them because they'd be afraid of being sued. Another piece of nonsense came from another prize clot. Apparently a Renogy charge controller will blow up a battery but then the clot announced he used the same Renogy controller as me. Two lots of clueless clots in a day. I wish I could record them giving this bad advice on a video. It'd probably be salable as a comedy video.

52% yet full sun and 100W on 70AH

I had two 10W panels in full sun all day. That should have gathered at least 8 hours of full sun so assuming only 10W was coming from those two panels, that's 80W or 6 2/3 amp hours or possibly even 13 1/3rd amp hours. Add in the other 80W of panels and that's a potential 66 2/3amp hours.

I did order the bluetooth dongle for my charge controller. Maybe that will help to work out exactly what is going on. I do suspect the batteries are worthless. On the other hand since the 30A charge controller throws a fit if I dare to ask 4A of it then it could be that this Renogy Chinese junk is not up to much.

Yesterday at close of play I'd put some piles of crush and run out. Today I spent the whole day working in short bursts in order to deal with the heat.

By the end of the day, the bus parking lot looked like that. There's still a lot of crush and run left. I'd say I probably used 2/3rd of the pile so far. I need to fill in some of the bigger gaps and then add more to the left side. I did locate a rake but it's very well buried in the shed so it'll be a case of taking things out in order to get at it. That's a task in itself.

Once the bus parking is sorted out I'll have to lay some more in order to park my car.  Oh for a mechanical way of doing this. It's hard work. I have blisters, aches and aggravated an old wrist injury that had already been aggravated fairly recently. In fact it was so bad I was losing feeling in my hand.

As far as flattening that crush and run is concerned, all I can do is to rake it. Whether I use real rake or just bolt a piece of angle iron to a length of 2x3 really depends on how I feel tomorrow about digging in the shed. OK. Foregone conclusion - I'll be looking for bolts tomorrow! I won't be able to roll the crush and run but fear not. The weekend and next week are forecast for torrential downpours. The weather will be my roller.

In other news, a roll of conspicuity tape arrived. It's supposed to be orange and is in fact orange which is confusing because all the other conspicuity tape manufacturers call yellow tape, orange and barely yellow white tape, yellow. OK. It makes no sense and I'm as confused as everybody else.

Meanwhile, as many of my regular readers will know, my phone service of choice has been Straight Talk for the past 5 years. I liked it because I got unlimited data when I wanted the unlimited package and could use my phone as a hotspot. Now it appears the unlimited data option has vanished and use of my phone as a hotspot has been blocked. Now that is NOT user friendly. I'm quite disappointed by this as the phone hotspot has been invaluable at times. It makes a bit of a mockery of the advertising for 5 and 25 gigabytes of data on the phone when it's a phone. Who on earth uses more than a few megabytes of data on a phone in a month? If others are like me, my phone is in my pocket 99% of the time, either waiting for calls or making calls. Very occasionally I might look up using GPS or hunt for an address or contact details but that's it.

Occasionally I'd be out in the boonies and would want to send an email. Now it seems that's just impossible. Great work Walmart/Straight Talk/Tracfone - whoever made that stupid decision. It's now a phone service I cannot recommend. They would do that, of course, within 8 months of my buying a new phone that only runs on their network! Talk about welshing on the customer!

Well, the plan for tomorrow is to level all the crush and run then if there's any left over, I'll lay more to the right of what I've laid over the past few days.

100W and not much change

Today I raised the horizontal panels to 20W. At the end of the day despite the battery having shown 67% earlier, the battery was on 57%. The end of day voltage was 12.2v. I really don't seem to be getting that voltage up much. With a drain as high as 0.05A that would represent a 0.6W drain or over 24 hours, 14.4 watt hours. Given a single 10W panel ideally angled, that 14.4 wh drain could reasonably be expected to be overcome in a couple of hours of ideal sun and maybe a few hours of poor sun. As I'm using a total of 100W and still not achieving any gain over what's in the batteries on a daily basis, I'm forced to assume once again that the batteries are stuffed.

Earlier in the day, one of my friends came by. She'd been looking to get into a new hobby so I'd suggested welding. Thus she was interested and now has my old Harbor Freight 70A AC arc welder. That was a pretty darned good welder to be honest but my new DC stick welder beats it hollow. I'm not so struck by the AC wire welder but that might grow on me eventually though I fear it will be more like a monstrous carbuncle. I gave her the welder as a gift. She's happy and I'm happy.

With a crash and a grinding noise, my 10 tons of crush and run arrived. A pleasant, helpful and friendly driver came and dropped his load exactly where needed and avoided the power lines nicely.

Without mechanical means, it will likely take me a week or more to lay all that where it needs to be so I started pretty well straight away, using an old fashioned wheelbarrow and something called a shovel. I'm pretty sure no Millennial will ever have encountered thousands of years old technology like that. Looking it up, we've been using shovels for 5,000 years and wheelbarrows since Chuk Liang of the Chinese Imperial army invented them in AD200. Of course before then we'd have been using a box supported from two poles with somebody at each end carrying it all.

The easiest way of spreading the massive pile would seem to be to put five shovels full into the wheelbarrow (which by now was creaking badly under the weight) and then make little piles very close to each other that can be later spread and merged with a rake. The ideal layer thickness is apparently two inches.

Having put the 32 barrow loads or 160 shovels full of crush and run into place, my back was telling me it was going to be very unhappy tomorrow. It will be very interesting to see how things go tomorrow. I'd imagine that it's going to take a lot more barrow loads than I'd estimated. As this is my first ever venture like this, I hope I'm going to get it right. I'm also hoping I have enough crush and run. This little pile worked out at $381.81. If I'd bought it as the 40lb bags that the DIY places sell then I'd have spent probably $1,500. At $5 for a 40lb bag, it soon adds up to silly money!

When all the barrow loads have been dumped, the piles can be raked so that they merge. Before that, it might be a good idea to hit the grass with some kind of grass killer.

90W today

This morning I checked the power level of the battery having left a 10W panel plugged in and left horizontal. Last night I checked and it was 66% having been up to 72%. This afternoon I checked and it was still on 66% and the battery power used is still 0.03A. Charge coming in when I looked in the late afternoon was 0.66A. This should all be gaining some traction and the battery should be climbing but it doesn't seem to be doing too much. Removing the 15W panel seems to have taken away more than I'd thought.

Today, two things happened. The first was I took the sheet of steel to a place not far away to get the bend put in. That worked really well as can be seen - the panel is now lying flat and conforming to the bend in the back door. That means I can now trim the bottom of the panel to fit the door properly.  Interestingly, the door handle and the hinge look like they're the exact same level. I checked the level with a ruler and found the hinge is a shade lower. That's no biggie. I can line it all up with the door open and see where I need to do work. Once that's all figured out I can drill the bottom line of rivet holes, trim the steel and then paint it all.

The shop where I went was one of those delightful Southern back-country places on a long, winding road. Most of the people working there were older and didn't believe in masks. The comment was made that I had fallen for the mask thing which I responded that as I live with somebody who is immunocompromised I didn't want to take any chances. That received a nod of approval. The old guy doing the steel bending commented on the shallow bend and did his best and got it a bit out but fixed it.

Going to pay was interesting. There was a sign up "minimum $45" but they charged $25. I was asked if I wanted an invoice. At that I realised they were asking if I wanted to record the purchase. After a brief look, I found $25 in notes and gave it to the elderly lady in the office and told here. There - cash. Now the taxman doesn't have to know. She grinned happily at that one. I think I have these Southern places pegged about right. The guy was curious what I wanted it for so I showed a photo of the bus conversion which made him happy.

The other thing was my 2 inch wide conspicuity tape arrived. I've put two pieces on where there wasn't any. I'm waiting now to see how long it remains in place. It's twice as wide as the original tape but that's not a bad thing. It didn't seem to be that sticky but I understand that the glue on those gets stronger as time progresses.

Meanwhile, I ordered my hardcore (crush and run). That arrives tomorrow afternoon. That was $425 approximately. They won't actually bill until it arrives because it could be over or under. It'll be 10 tons approximately. That'll take me a few days to shovel into place. I'll likely just let the rain tamp it down. I could do with a mechanical tamper to tamp it all down but I don't have one. I'm not even sure where to hire one. I'm pretty sure shoveling 10 tons of hardcore (crush and run) will take me a week at least, given the summer temperatures.

120W again

I put the solar panels out - the 40W panels and got 5AH out of them through the day. By the close of play, the battery had risen to 72% but then dropped back to 57%. Meanwhile the load has flickered between 0.00A and 0.05A staying normally around 0.02 and 0.03. That's just totally mysterious because the sole thing running is the door lock controller.

Looking at the figures over the last few days I'm thinking that the 15W panel that was vandalized that I had to take down possibly provided more power than I had thought. It's definitely time to experiment with putting a 10W flexible panel on the roof even if only as a temporary thing.

One of the things that might well be worth putting on is a charge diverter that will allow me to charge the house batteries from the alternator when the engine is on. In fact rather than putting solar panels and charge controllers that might well have been the more sensible and economic thing to do. Having said that, my bus spends the vast majority of its life, stationary.

So, as an experiment, tonight I shall put out a single 10W panel so it'll get the sun from before I get outside until dark. I'm thinking that might well make a huge difference.

Tomorrow I want to see about getting the crush and run, getting my steel panel bent, washing the bus and installing the roof vent. How much of that I actually get done is anybody's guess!

Crush n Run driveway

At the moment I'm looking into hard standing for the bus in the form of a crush n run parking place. According to the internet I'd need 3 tons of crush and run for a 40 foot by 10 foot by 2 inch layer. According to a local trucking company I'd need 10 tons.

Taking the lower guide of about 3 tons or almost 6,000lbs then dividing that into the 40lb bags one can get from garden centers, that would take 150 bags at $5 each or $750. A local trucking company suggested 10 tons and wanted $425. That seems way better value. The upside is it all gets delivered and there's plenty to spread around. The downside is that it's all the work in one go to spread it about. Without a shadow of a doubt, double the quantity at half the price seems to be the way to go.

Meanwhile, I drilled three sides of the plate that goes over the back window. Thus far nobody has responded to me about bending it. It might therefore be a case of my having to build a bender and bending it myself.  I didn't drill the third side as the drill holes would weaken the metal and might make it more difficult to bend. The upper line at the bottom is where the bend needs to be. The lower line is roughly where the holes need to be drilled.

Walking around the bus, he mold seems to be growing well. The sooner I can get the bus out from under the trees and into a clearing with hard standing the better. One of the things I'll have to do is to find some kind of mold remover in one of the car parts stores. This is something they have to resolve frequently I'd imagine.

The mold seems to be everywhere. I did ask on one of the online groups but had so many silly answers that I had to discount all the answers. That's the problem with online group things - just because somebody has heard of the words mold and bus they consider themselves to be experts.

In other news, today was bright and sunny. I put the two 20W solar panels out in the sunshine and managed to get the battery up to 52%. Then it dropped to 47% so I put a watt meter between the panels and the bus. In the time it was there, the bus received nearly 3AH of power. The charge controller told me the battery was on 47% and 12.1v.

About 45 minutes after I'd disconnected the extra 40W of panels, the sun having retired for the day, the charge controller was telling me the battery was on 42% and various voltmeters read 21.1v. Clearly something is not rosy with the system. I'm leaning toward it being the batteries.

Tomorrow should be another good day. I'll try putting the 30W and the 20W panels out in the sunshine and see what happens. Surely 100W or nearly 10A in the sunshine should put a wallop into those batteries. In fact 3 hours at full sun should put 30AH in or nearly 50% of the capacity. I do have very much the feeling that those lead acid batteries are just bad batteries.

In terms of cost, I paid $55 for the one battery maybe 2 years ago. The other I paid $100 for last year. As both are deep cycle they should have lasted a lot longer than this! Replacing the paid at full price would be something like $180. There's zero point in that though. My charge controller will handle lithium batteries. The local Batteries Plus Bulbs seems to be advertising for $249 a 30AH lithium battery. As it seems to have 650 CCA, it should be able to cope with my extraction fans with no problem. So, unless the lead acid batteries keep limping along then it looks like I'll be after a CYL10056 Hyper Sport 30L-BS Lithium Powersport Battery. Honestly the only reason I have two batteries is because one just wasn't enough to run my twin fans. Two was barely enough and now seems to be insufficient. Thus it's probably time for lithium even though I'll have to make an insert for the battery holder to take it. That's no problem. I can weld a frame together and pack it into the existing frame with Bondo.

Thinking about the forthcoming school year, I'm probably going to have to take my bus along if I'm doing midday runs so I'll have somewhere with a bathroom and a place to sleep as well as a place to cook and eat. The breakroom that was so luxurious last year is pretty much out of bounds now that Covid is around.

So, things to do... Get the hardcore and get it laid. Get the steel bent and install the sheet over the back window. Get a new battery and install it.

120W of power

Today was a mixture of very heavy rain, thunder, lightning and sunshine. As it was so changeable I didn't do an awful lot. I did put two SAE connectors onto my 20W solar panels. Those I then sat outside on the ground, in the sunshine. 

The battery was probably fairly low earlier in the day. When I first saw it, it was at thirty something percent. With the panels in place it climbed to 47% which looked really promising. The drain was something like the normal 0.02A and that is just the door lock controller staying alive. I used no other power whatsoever in the bus today.

Just before I put the exterior panels away for the night I noticed that the battery had fallen to 39%. That's a remarkable drop for about 4 hours with such a low drain. Tomorrow I shall turn the power from the charge controller off. Maybe I should put in a disconnect switch to make sure it really goes off? I have been unimpressed by the SLA batteries I've been using. The amperage output is not high and the longevity is questionable.

I'd say that since the batteries are now regularly giving me 11.9v instead of 12v to 13v they're probably toast. One is a Duracell that I bought in April of 2019 and the other is a Harbor Freight Thunderbird or whatever that I bought about a year earlier. So, both batteries are less than 3 years old and have never really performed spectacularly. Their capacity is absolutely fine. I have no problem with 70AH or even 35AH.

If every light in my bus was on then I'd be burning 10W. If every circulation fan was on I'd be burning less than 1W. I have no idea how much my USB chargers use. My shower pump and water pump are used so rarely they're not worth factoring in. Same for the door lock since 99.9% of the time that is run from AA batteries that I replace a few times a year. The door lock controller burns 24W maximum. If all those were on all the time I'd be using 35W or about 3A. In 24 hours that's 72AH. The fact is though that I don't use that amount of power. I have one or maybe two lights on, maximum and one circulation fan. Occasionally I'll have my extraction fans running but that'll be when I have a good amount of sunlight - enough for it to be hot inside the bus. In such occasions I have my solar panels outside, in the perfect place for the sunlight.

The battery I'm considering is about $200 or around the price of a pair of 35AH batteries. It's lithium and holds 20AH of power. That's enough for 120 hours of light from a single bulb or 60 from two. In short it seems to be about the perfect capacity for my low needs. Indeed I can always add a second if one is not enough. They're way smaller than my existing batteries which means I'd probably better make a housing that fits inside my normal battery hangers. Doing that, I can insulate it so it won't be affected by extremes of heat and cold. It'll also be enclosed so if it goes into a lithium thermal runaway then the bus will be protected from it. I see little worth in replacing my two lead-acid batteries since their performance from day 1 has been miserable.

In other news, I need to move my bus from where it's parked to another site on the property. This means I'll have to put down some crush and run (hardcore). Thus I've made an inquiry about the cost of crush and run. At the same time I inquired about getting my steel bent, having rechecked my measurements several times and agreeing each time that the angle is about 8 degrees.

Before I move the bus I need to do all the roof based operations as I'll be parked under a power line. I'll also have to replace the two backup cameras as I'll be reversing into position. I'll have to do a lot in a short time! That's the two cameras, the roof solar panel, washing the roof (and the bus), the roof vent and repaint some of the roof.

Thinking about the unused windows, I measured them the other day and any panel put in would have to have a slight gap at the bottom. That's no problem. It would probably annoy a purist though. I'm not a purist. I'm a cheapist. The windows are 28 inches wide including the separating section. I'd need to cover two separate windows on one side and 5 together on the other. The height of the baffle would have to be 24 7/8 inches. The width would have to be 28 for the single windows and 130 inches on the 5 together. The only issue is one of the smaller baffles and the big baffle would need a step folded into it. It all just makes it harder for somebody to break in. Since the bus will now be visible from the road, that's important, given the area it's parked in.

A day of little things

Some things were very little. Very little indeed. It was largely a case today of hunt the tool to do a job, find a different missing tool and use it for the job that I'd wanted to do for a while, putting the current job to one side.

One of the missing tools was my Harbor Freight magnetic angle measurer. I put this on the back door of the bus to measure the angle I'll have to put on the bottom inch and a half to two inches of the sheet of steel that goes over the back window. As the vertical measured 90 degrees and the angled area measures 82 degrees it seems the bend is just 8 degrees. A bend like that isn't too difficult. A few blows with a hammer should see a good approximation of that bend!

The temperature inside the bus, according to the thermometer built into my charge controller is about 34C so pretty warm. Looking at the charge controller, it informed me that the battery was on 28% charge. That seems way below the point at which it should have cut off so I'm assuming that it means 28% of the usable 50% portion of the battery charge so in other words, 78%. 

I put out the old 15W panel and plugged it in then found an SAE splitter I'd made a few years ago then I pulled out some 10W panels. One needed a new connector so I put that on and then I needed another SAE splitter so I put another SAE splitter together. There were a further two panels that I could have used but they both lacked connectors. Of course, I looked at putting connectors on the two panels as they were both 20W panels. That was when I found the cable strain relief clamp was designed for a ludicrously big cable. Those things are for 2A cables at the most. They don't need massively thick cables! I'll have to wrap the cables in electrical tape or something.

Meanwhile I have some more SAE connectors on the way from China. I really doubt that I'm ever going to receive them though as the tracking data looks very fake....

Buylogic tracking #BLGEU1100617267YQ

• Jun 20, 2020
• 2:07pm

• The item has been received in the destination post office

• Jun 18, 2020
• 2:25pm

• The consignment has arrived in the country of destination

• Jun 17, 2020
• 1:59pm

• The item is on transport to the country of destination

• Jun 15, 2020
• 1:56pm

• Order departure

If that shipment made its way from somewhere in China to the USA in 3 days, I'm related to a monkey! It is now July 8th and still no sign of that shipment. I will be able only to declare it fraud on September 8th by which time the scoundrels will have absconded with the money. I have absolutely no doubt this is fraud.

The vast majority of the stuff I order via eBay arrives with no problem. I can say the same for Aliexpress and Alibaba. I also have another thing allegedly coming from China via eBay that I don't believe will ever arrive.

YANWEN tracking #S00000139074970

• May 16, 2020
• 8:07am

• Last mile=> Destination country post, number 9070343882806

• May 15, 2020
• 6:53pm

• Data received

• May 15, 2020
• 6:45pm

• Received by the dispatch center

• May 14, 2020
• 11:58pm

• Process completed in Yanwen Facility

I have never ever heard of Yanwen before and the destination post number is clearly fake. USPS would not recognize it. This has allegedly got until July 23rd to turn up. What annoys me is that my money is held hostage until the 24th when I can file non delivery. If the thing hasn't turned up in 3 weeks, it's never going to show. That's my experience of eBay shipping from anywhere.

Unless I'm proven otherwise, I'm going to say anything shipped "BuyLogic" or "YanWen" is going to be fraud. If I knew it wasn't coming UPS, DHL, FedEx or USPS then I wouldn't have ordered it!

So, as I said, a day of doing little things. I finally put the panel back on the back door that had been on the inside forever. It's a little floppy being fridge steel so I'll likely have to add some more rivets. I closed the access panel at the front of the bus into the cable bay. I'll have to go in there again at some point to adjust some wiring. I also located and disposed of another piece of fridge steel.

Outside the bus it was wet and dreary but the panels at the last check had raised the battery to 41%. That was more respectable but nowhere near the 100% that it should be. By the time I'd disconnected the extra panels and stowed them away, the battery had dropped to 39% and 11.9v. Not very encouraging!

Looking at the documentation for my junky charge controller I noticed that I can change the values. On the one hand they say it will only handle 12.8v LIFEP04 batteries but on the other they say but you can change the voltages. That sounds more promising as my 18650 cells are 3.7v each for a total of 14.8v when fully charged. I'm not very impressed with what Renogy has been telling me on their website and on their documentation. It all seems so uninformative and wrong that Renogy has to be a Chinese company if not based in Beijing, at least run by the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.

It was quite interesting seeing the solar panels all laid out generating power today. I had 65w of panels sitting in the drizzle generating power plus another 20 mounted on the bus and 60W standing in the windshield. That's a total of 145W and then there're the 55W of panels that I haven't been using.

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking of putting the 10W panels to use elsewhere. The flexible one would probably work on the roof. I'll look into that after I've put the top panel on the back door, while I work on replacing the faulty upper and lower reversing cameras.

Today I noticed green mold growing on the outside of the bus. I'm going to have to give the thing a good anti-fungal wash - probably about the same time that I wash the roof prior to putting more elastometric paint on and put the new flexible solar panel up there.

The final thing I did today was to mark the steel for the back door. Instead of a three quarter inch gape from the edges I had to leave an inch because of the way the door is built. It won't make too much difference given the rivet diameter. The only tricky thing will be bending the steel in the right place. I'll drill the holes before putting it in place to mark where the bend should be. 8 degrees of bend really isn't that much and I could just put extra caulk under the gap if need be. As it would be a 1/4 gap, it's probably better to try bending though. The bend does not have to be perfect - just close enough though I'll try to get it right.

As the connectors are unlikely to come I did order some 12v pin connectors a while back. They're good but not perfect. They're in use right now. I ordered some SAE sockets on the basis that I can always add extra SAE sockets in various places. While I was at it, I ordered a couple of spare voltmeters since one of mine has died. My fault as I left it connected to the USB charger that I used for my temporary security camera. I'll have to rewire that box. Maybe replace the button for the solar power voltage with a different kind of switch. I liked the button but perhaps a toggle switch would work better.

The next job is the panel for the upper back door. In no particular order, the jobs that are probably going to get done are...
1. Back door upper panel
2. Back door inner upper panel - this will probably be insulation plastic foamboard.
3. The roof vent
4. Wash the green slime off the bus as it's likely harmful
5. Repaint the roof where needed with elastomatric paint.
6. Replace upper and lower rear cameras.
7. Wire the solar connector for charging the driving batteries
8. Redo the windscreen wiper pivot mount so the wiper is actually level.
9. internal wiring adjustments
10. Put an 18650 battery pack together to try. My twenty 18650s will probably give me somewhere in the region of (at a claimed 3400mah per cell) 10-17AH. That would be acceptable if it was true capacity.
11. Install my flexible 10W solar panel on the roof, connected via a port built into the upper camera mount.

Maybe I should have built an ark?

It was bright sunshine when I started work then suddenly in the matter of seemingly seconds, the sky darkened, thunder rolled and down came a torrential downpour that had me scrambling to put tools away, close doors etc and hide the air compressor under the bus where it wouldn't get rained on.

I went to the back of the bus to check for water ingress from my new sheets of steel and found none. That was very encouraging. That now meant I could add more caulk to the inside of the bus where the steel sheet meets the window frame and seal up inside.

The compressor was pulled out as the old sheet of fridge steel would be reused although the steel bars used to space it away from the window in order to accommodate the bulge of the rubber gasket were removed. The steel was then riveted to the inside of the door, or rather a start was made just before the downpour.

As soon as the downpour happened it became a mad rush to get everything out of the way. Tools got shoved in the back of my car and the compressor got shoved under the bus. I still got absolutely drenched. A little later when the rain eased I went back out, locked the back door of the bus and put the compressor in the shed.

On YouTube there was a very interesting video in which somebody used a 10W solar panel and a small battery to run a 12v tyre pump. The battery was small enough that it probably wouldn't have powered the compressor at all well. As a demonstration of a concept, it was fascinating. I'm pretty sure that I could do something like that with my existing 12v system though definitely need to upgrade the batteries. I really don't know what's going on but the lead acid batteries seem to be pretty worthless. It doesn't seem to matter how much is spent on them. Pretty much the same can be said about charge controllers.

One of the things I did today was to remove the old windows from the bus. I put them beside the shed. There's no need to put them inside as they simply won't degrade. While I was at it, I asked myself the question as to why I was even keeping the old fridge steel. I spent a lot of time and effort obtaining it and probably a not insignificant amount of money painting it against rust. The fact is that I now have a decent quantity of 14 gauge steel.

That thin fridge steel is just about as floppy as a viagra dependent and just about as worthless. I tossed it in the back of the pickup and will simply take it down the dump on my next visit.

My next step will be to complete riveting the steel inside the door then to finish sealing inside the other window replacements and to rework my old wooden baffles before putting them back in place.

While I was there, I looked at the curve in the back door. I think if I mark exactly where the bend is and wedge the steel sheet between two of my many lengths of steel, I can tap the exposed short length with a hammer all the way across its width to curve it. Then it should fit the door precisely. I'll have to do the drilling first, however. Once it is drilled, I'll stand it on the hinge and door handle surround to drill the top locating holes. After that I'll cut the steel so there's a gap above the hinge and the door handle surround. Then it'll be a case of painting and installing.

Having done the top panel of the back door, the next step will be to replace the roof vent. I still have to replace both back-up cameras and put a power lead for a roof mounted solar panel.  While I'm at that, I also need to replace a non-functional clearance light.

Woohoo. 2/3rds of my steel sheet is in place

My next piece of steel will be the one that goes over the last remaining door window. While I was working today I thought of my plan to replace the upper window on the door. Then I realised I don't need to remove the window - I can just leave it there since it doesn't protrude unlike the two I replaced today. That set me thinking. I have leftover steel from the first time around when we discovered I can't measure and include a big enough margin. That steel could be trimmed down to cover the outside of the unused windows on the bus.

Getting the side window out was easy enough. There's a central spline that pushes two lips on the window rubber apart in order to hold the glass in place. Many people just smash the glass but I prefer to do things neatly and without shards of broken glass. Once I'd peeled the spline out, I lifted the edge of the rubber and held it open by working a drywall screw between the rubber and the steel. Then I worked along with more drywall screws and gently pushed on one corner of the glass, pushing rubber and glass inside. Once one corner was in, the other corner went in too and it was then just a case of lifting it out of the frame from inside.

And that's exactly what it looks like on the inside - nothing special. Having done that it was a case of holding the steel in place with one hand while perched precariously on a step ladder. Then, with the other hand, drilling one rivet hole, using the holes in the steel as a template. Having done that, it was a case of pushing a rivet into the hole, lifting the other side of the steel and holding it then drilling another hole.

Having drilled the two holes and suspended the panel in place, it was possible to draw around it with a sharpie then after removing the panel, I laid a few silicone caulk beads all the way around . 

The next stage was to rivet the panel using the original rivet holes, sandwiching the silicone caulk between the bus body and the panel. Then it was a case of working all the way around with the drill and the riveter.

I don't remember when I started but think it must have been somewhere about 1pm. By about 3pm I'd got the left hand panel riveted into place. Even though I have an air riveter, it still takes plenty time - especially when the riveter needs to be dismantled and cleared about every 4 rivets.

Once the first panel was in place, I painted the bottom panel and the new panel so it's all the same color as the bus. I have yet to put my internal baffle over the new steel. I want to wait for a good rainy day to see if there are any leaks that need attention first.

By about 7pm I'd done the panel the other side of the door and found the trick with the air riveter is to point it straight up and if the rivet mandrel is loose then pull it out by hand. If it's not then work the trigger a couple of times and hope it falls out the back. Otherwise it's a case of dismantling the riveter again to clear it. Interestingly, doing that leads to far fewer mandrels left sticking out of rivets that then need the attention of my angle grinder.

I'm pretty happy with the way the back of the bus looks now. It certainly doesn't look like easy prey for a bandit. Thinking about the side windows, a simple sheet of flat steel would do. I can trim the surplus steel from the mistake purchase. I had been thinking of putting bars over all the side windows but doing this, I have fewer windows that need bars. That's a bonus!

The next step will likely be to measure the windows for the spare steel sheet. I'll probably cut some foam board as a template just to see how it looks. Meanwhile, aside from the panel over the top window of the back door, there's the roof vent to replace.

I have to say that after spending most of the day in 90+F and high humidity, going up and down a stepladder, I'm plain tuckered. Tomorrow will be a day I'll take really easy!

Veni, vidi, et circumlinisti stibio

For those that don't understand Latin... "Vini, Vidi, Vici" means "I cam, I saw, I conquered". This is a derivation of that: "I came, I saw, I painted". 

Today was painting day. I got the two panels out that I'd drilled and part-primed. I'd used the ends of two spray cans of primer. Thus I pulled out my tin of primer and slipped some paint thinner in since it was beginning to look a bit thick. Then I got to work. The first sheet had been primed around the edges with the spray can before the spray can expired.

The second sheet had no primer at all and had to be primed on both sides. That took a little while. I didn't start painting the topcoat on either sheet until both had been primed, purely because I use throwaway paint brushes and by the time the paint is dry I'd have to start a new brush. Might as well do both panels at the same time with one brush per side.

So I primed both sides of one panel and the unprimed part of the other panel. In order that the paint cured rather than just drying I had to move the panels, to the shade to let them cure properly. 93F was pretty hot and the sun just bakes the oils out of the paint before it sets properly otherwise.

While I was in a gap between painting sessions I was visited by a dragonfly. This one looks awfully like one that was in the house the other day. I caught it using a tupperware style box and lid then released it outside. It seems to like to hang around me now.

Finally I got both sides of the panels done with topcoat. As with the primer I'd added paint thinner. The final color will be grey but to protect it while I'm working with it, black will do just fine. I have a limited quantity of grey paint and several pots of black that I might as well use. It really doesn't matter what the color of the paint on the inside is since it'll be covered by a wooden baffle anyway.

And so the big install day will likely be tomorrow. I prepped one window ready for installation. The other I didn't as I want to see what kind of problems I encounter on the first window. Aside from that, prepping is fairly quick and easy. If I get to this early enough then I can likely get both sheets installed and the silicone caulk will be dry before Monday's rain.

While I'm working tomorrow I need to paint the remains of the caulk on the lower window replacement on the door. That caulk takes 3 days to dry. Today it was slightly sticky. I'm hoping by tomorrow evening it'll be dry enough to paint. The paint needs about half an hour to dry in these temperatures. I can trim the silicone caulk at some later stage and put the 3 day caulk on if need be. I'm hoping I can get the silicone caulk on so there are no gaps on the edges.

Windows 2 and 3

T'was another hot and sultry day 'neath the palmetto trees. The mangos and coconuts did not fall for there they didn't grow. Mosquitoes sucked the living blood out of any unfortunate enough to be within range and the redneck gunshots did ring out across the humid air, tainted only by the scent of a far distant meth lab.

Well, that's a pretty realistic impression of where I am working on my bus. I'm in the countryside and the very countryside that the Covid rioters threatened to attack but didn't seem to bother when they found that country boys have nothing better to do than to sit all day, 30 feet up in a tree with a rifle, waiting for something to come along that they can shoot.

After I'd riveted on the new panel, the caulk hadn't reached all the edges and where it did, it remained curiously soft. I went out and bought more caulk but paintable caulk a few days later - after I'd taped the edges against rain and sprayed the panel to match the bus.

It transpires that the caulk under the panel takes 14 days to cure while the caulk that I put around the edges and in the centers of the rivets takes 3 days to cure. Fortunately I'm in the midst of a dry few days. Had I known about the 14 days then I'd have used silicone caulk as I have everywhere else. This is why I bought silicone caulk as well as the paintable caulk. So I have another 48 hours approximately for the outer rim of caulk to cure, after which I can spray paint it too.

My batteries were quite low so today I put my three 10W solar panels out to gather some sun. Gather it, they did because by the end of the day I'd added apparently another 47 watt hours to my battery from just those panels.

When I took the 15W panel from above the windscreen, I seem to have lost more than I'd bargained for. That ties in nicely with a potentially hare-brained scheme. I like hair-brained schemes! Some while ago I purchased a 30W flexible solar panel for something ridiculous like $30 from eBay. It arrived with no labeling on it whatsoever. The most wattage I got from it on a cloudless day was 11 watts. I'm going to say it's likely a 10W panel.

Being a flexible panel, it's also light. The power port is perversely on the back of the panel where the flexibility value is totally lost. To be flexible it must be able to conform to the shape of whatever it's attached to. With a big block on the back, that's not happening. Having said that, with some closed cell bedroll foam underneath to pad it up a little on the edges, it could be usable stuck to a flat or slightly curved surface.

The idea is to do just that - to put some closed cell foam under the edges, attached with double-sided foam adhesive tape. That stuff is all weather! Then to attach it with more tape to the roof of the bus right at the back and put some white flex seal tape covering the non-photo voltaic edges of the panel, the foam padding and some of the roof. That way the panel will be as secure as these fancy adhesives can make it. If it blows off, it's small and light so it won't cause damage. The wiring can go in through the same hole that the backup camera uses but be cheap and easily disconnectable bullet connectors.  That's a project for when I work on the bus roof though.

With all my goings to and from the bus I have been using the door lock quite a bit. Suddenly it stopped working. After using one of my other 3 methods of getting in, it turned out that the AA NiMh batteries powering the door lock had run out. I slipped some alkalines in there for the moment and will recharge the NiMh at a later stage. The alkalines should be good for a couple of months. 

I got on with drilling the holes for the steel for the windows on each side of the door. As they were the same size I'd intended to drill a couple of holes then use aluminium rivets to fasten them together. As per normal, my hand riveter was jammed by a broken mandel. The tools to fix that were probably there - I just couldn't be bothered to look. Instead I grabbed 4 number 10 bolts and bolted the panels together to hold them while I drilled all the other holes. I didn't count the holes but I'd estimate there were 45-50 per panel. Doing the panels held together meant both were drilled for the price of one.

The next thing was having separated the sheets, they were wiped down with paint thinner and a paper towel. That got all the muck off them - grease and marks from the steel place and my black sharpie lines. 

The last thing done today was to spray primer onto the panels. Really only one panel was coated and on one side only. I'd bought some universal primer and found all it does is tear up other paint it touches so I wanted to use it up. It coated one panel on one side. The other side I'll have to paint with my usual primer and both sides of the other panel. Then I can get on with painting the panels black, both sides. Once they're in place on the bus I can paint them grey.

A few days ago I ordered some replacement reflective strip. According to the tracking number, it's almost here. I have a couple of other things on the way from China but somehow I think the tracking is bogus as one was supposed to have been received by the Post Office in May and another in June but neither has made its way to my door yet. I do wish eBay would just kick the scammers like that off their platform.

I'll have to remove the reflective strips where the panels will go. That's just time consuming but not a hard job. The new strips will replace the old, when the new panels are in place.

The panel for the back door will be the challenge. I'll have to measure the angle of the bend in the door and mark where it bends. Then I have all the fun of bending the steel.

I should imagine that if I get decent weather this weekend, the painting will be completed. Monday, if it's fine, I'll put the first panel in place and Tuesday likely the second. That's not cast iron though. As this is real life, anything can and probably will happen. Nothing is certain in this world - aside from the inexorable spread of Covid-19 due to the selfishness and arrogance of the majority of the population who coincidentally make up every reason under the sun not to wear a mask.