The new plan

Today I went onto the bus and fixed some warped hardboard which had warped due to the water ingress from the leaking roof last month. The door between the cockpit and the galley needed adjustment too. That had been badly warped but now it works correctly.

Thinking about the battery carrier problem, I realised I might have been overreacting. Thus, today I went ahead and got some more tools from Harbor Freight. I'd been in need of a better rivet gun and of some deep sockets so I picked those up. A welder was not on my list this time.

The rivets should have a sheer strength of 900lbs which means plain rivets should work. I'll have to see if the bolt holes are too big. If they are then I'll use 1/4x20 bolts instead. Otherwise, I'll try rivets.

Meanwhile, I'm looking into two other things. The first is super capacitors and the second is thermo electric generators. In order to power a microwave for 20 minutes, I'd need 1200w at 110v. Given the losses from an inverter of around 15%, the power supply at 12v would have to provide 12,650W. Given that my favourite battery would provide 500CCA, I'd need a bank of at least 14 in order not to overload any of the batteries. That would cost at least $1,000, weigh at least 700lbs and take way more space than there is space available.

Super capacitors can provide a lot of power quickly. They're not as energy dense as batteries but the idea is that if they could provide a 20 minute burst of power, they could be backed by just one lead acid battery. The task now is to find a super capacitor setup that can provide sufficient power.

As far as thermoelectric power generation is concerned, I have a feeling that like most non gasoline powered generators, its going to be expensive or worthless in terms of power generated. The two methods under current investigation are Stirling generators and Peltier generators. Stirling generators use magnets and coils together with a closed air system. Peltier generators use heat difference to generate power.

Saloon doors!

This morning I put off doing saloon doors because I didn't know how to build them. Thus I started by putting on some window tint. Needless to say, the roll of tint ran out after the first pane. There was enough left over to do one of the two small bathroom windows.

After procrastinating and looking up ready made saloon doors online, I noted that most seemed to be 42 inches long. As it so happened, I had a section of hardboard left over that measures approximately 10 inches by 44. The plan was to use that as a panel set into one door.

Perversity being what it is, looking at my supplies, I didn't have enough 2x2 to make a complete box frame. I did have some 1x2 though. Thus the saloon door became a physical thing. Now, I don't have the time nor willingness to make fancy tops and bottoms for my saloon doors so my initial design is pretty basic.

There were three problems with this. First, the 1x2 was bowed. Second, the cross members were a little long and third, one door is mounted 1/4 of an inch too high.

The long cross members were shortened with the circular saw being used to shave off 1/8 inch off each cross member for both doors. It'll make the insert a strange size but that cannot be helped. The mismatch in height totally escaped me until later.

The bowed 1x2 was resolved by putting an extra cross member in. Having done that, the doors swing freely. Looking at them and my supply of hardboard, it looks as though another pair of cross members lower down might be a good idea. My leftover hardboard is a series of odd shapes and sizes. To hold the hardboard into the frame, quarter round will be employed. I had sufficient, given that my entire doors would be made of 2x2 however since the design has had to adapt to my available offcuts now I might need more but I'll try to work within what I have.

My goal is, working within the wood I have, to build saloon doors. I don't see any value in buying a big sheet of hardboard to use a small piece.

After getting that far, I needed to consider the matter before proceeding further. Thus I grabbed my two big film offcuts and applied it to the bathroom windows. The first piece (pictured) wasn't very satisfactory. One side tore and one corner just won't stick down. I'll redo it when my next shipment of tint film arrives.

Tomorrow I'll probably complete my saloon doors and maybe put up the closet chain. After that, its a case of screwing down countertops and painting the saloon doors, the rest of the toilet unit and that should be most things done inside the bus.

I was going to put vinyl floor tiles down on the countertops. My new idea is to Velcro vinyl tablecloths onto the countertops. Same idea but cheaper to switch out or replace.