Out of interest I bought a different extraction fan. I wanted to see if I could use something with lower power consumption and when I saw one that used 12v and half an amp, I leapt at it. It looks like my existing fans but uses a lot less power.
The confusing thing was that the air speed was not mentioned but air pressure instead. All the other fans I've had mention speed. That should, perhaps have been my alert that this wasn't quite the bargain it seemed.
Looking inside the fan housing it contained a mere CPU fan. That was quite a disappointment but it was e (scam) bay and for every few bargains one does get taken by a scammer now and again. It turned out that the fan had virtually no oomph and was unlikely to produce the 139 Pascals claimed. It certainly would not lift the flaps on my exhaust vents. It might work well with my stainless steel marine vent in combination with a small solar panel but I'm not going to try that at the moment.
One of my plans is to repaint the bus. The existing paint was slapped down over the old yellow paint and is coming off in places. There were two or three plans for this. The first was to jetwash the paint off where it was loose. To that end I bought a jetwasher from Home Depot.
Well, the jetwasher got to my house in my car and then sat in the bus for a few days. So, yesterday I set to and tried to wash the loose paint. Well, that was the plan. After connecting the hoses, the pressure washing gun and the power I turned the water on full and let it run through the washer. Then I turned the power on and the water spray jumped a little. Checking the connections, there was a mysterious chunk of plastic shoved in the inlet port. With needle-nose pliers that was removed. The pressure washer re-primed and restarted. Again, no water pressure. At that point I remembered all the other Ryobi products I'd used that had sucked. I had to make a long journey to Home Depot to return it and the crazy thing is I'd already paid $20 more for this over the Harbor Freight version because I didn't want to drive the extra miles!
On the way back I stopped off in Walmart to see about a cheap little sander. I figured something with 400 - 600 grit should remove the grey paint and roughen the underlying yellow so that I could paint it. No dice - this particular Walmart is playing games. It seems there's a trick toward the end of the year that stores employ - keeping the shelves empty in order to make their end of year figures look great. Great for Walmart game players but not so great for customers. In fact this game is infuriating for customers.
It was the same story at the air tools stand. Almost empty. In fact most of the shelves were empty. There surely can't have been a rush on air tools and cheaper sanders because the local community around this particular store is composed almost entirely of homeless meth heads!
Not feeling like spraying stripper on the whole bus (though this is most likely my best option) I got out the blasting media I saw and bought on impulse in Tractor Supply.
Pouring it into a 5 gallon bucket bought just for this occasion, the bag 2/3rds filled the bucket. Thus I grabbed my sand blasting gun and the compressor. I have to say the result was very disappointing. The compressor is decent enough as is the gun. The media was so fine that it had a very negligible effect. All it did was to clean off loose flakes and make quite a mess with green coal dust powder lying thickly on everything.
A few days ago I used a different variety (from the kind bought earlier) on one of my aluminium window replacement panels. That really worked and really removed the paint.
I sprayed the bare aluminium with primer and a lighter coat of paint after. It looked pretty decent. For comparison I put a quick, light spray over the grey paint and I can certainly see where the paint needs sanding now!
I am very tempted to wash the bus with soap and water then wipe down with mineral spirits before painting over everything with the new color then going back to sanding and spraying where the paint falls off. It means more constant maintenance but at this stage in the game, I really can't say I much care. I will sand down more thoroughly where I want to put my self-adhesive safety reflectors though as I don't want them to come off on their own.
Had I known what an irritation the paint was going to be, I'd have bought a white bus and left it white. I can appreciate why people leave their busses yellow.
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