Saturday the Fourteenth is Jason day

The wacky stuff that is alleged to happen on Friday the thirteenth finally arrived. Friday itself was quite boring but Saturday...

The first thing I did was to set out to do some welding to make a security screen for the lower back window. Thus, I got out my extension cord and found both the plug and the connector had disintegrated. The plug and connector were from Lowes (hiss, spit) and purchased new about 6 months ago. The cord had been used two or three times then put carefully in a closet on the bus and nothing put on top. In the intervening time, one plug had cracked and both plugs had broken away from the screw threads holding the two parts together. What a diabolical disaster. I can't believe Lowes (hiss, spit) had the cheek to charge for that garbage.

Working around the cable issue, I got my welding gear together and started welding with my latest rods. That didn't go at all well! The rods with no hesitation burned right through the steel.

Looking with dismay at the holes, I took my welding helmet off whereupon it immediately fell apart. Clearly Friday the Thirteenth was a late arrival! I gave up for a while.

After a rest, I carried on with plan B. That involved riveting metal strips onto the security patch. As the welding had torn up the edge of the steel sheet, I had to move the security sheet nearer to the center of the sheet of steel i had cut from an old fridge some weeks ago.
  

Having trimmed the steel and riveted the steel strips on the edge, i painted the passenger compartment side of the panel with anti-rust paint then with white appliance epoxy. At that, it was time to pack it in for the day.

Tomorrow I want to try to complete the installation, including installing it. As tomorrow has been declared by milady to be a shopping day, I'll have the opportunity to buy some needed supplies.

I need to get some plugs to cover the faucet holes on my handbasin since there won't be a faucet. I also want to get some white paint. 

Inside the bus, the temperature was 108 farenheit. That was pretty hot! As many busses in SC have white rooves, I think I will paint the roof of mine white. That will reflect some heat at least.

TThe next stage will be to add extraction fans. I have a usable solar panel that I can glue to the roof. Today I had it connected  to a CPU fan. It worked pretty well though I probably need to add a capacitor to collect low current in order to give the fan a starting boost.

I'm not initially going to have a battery or a generator nor a fresh water tank. Those can be added at any time as can a modified swamp cooler.

It's colder than a witches tit today!

It has been below freezing for several days in a row. It's highly likely that I won't be doing any welding tomorrow. Today was just plain miserable most of the day. It was made even more miserable by a stomach thing that fortunately cleared up by 4pm.

Thus, at 4pm I headed out to Walmart, being slightly surprised that my car battery actually started the car. It didn't want to but it did start. So, while the mechanics at Walmart changed my battery (which was free), I went shoppng and got 4 more blinds and 4 mounts for my blinds. The cheapest blind at walmart was $3.95 but these were $4.95 roller blinds. For the other windows - in the shower - I suppose I could use the $3.95 blinds but I haven't given that much thought. I'm thinking more in terms of how to attach shower curtains to the ceiling.

Looking around Walmart, I saw some very interesting things but my mission today was explicit - blinds and battery. If I don't stick to my list then it's likely that I'll spend too much. Income is not unlimited and the last paycheck I was given has to have special consideration as it was printed incorrectly. Apparently it'll be OK with the issuing bank because they know of the error. My bank might be another matter entirely though!

Of interest were another D cell lantern for $20 - mine works very well though with just one, lighting is limited to a small area. For the potential battery I looked at the EverStart Lawn and Garden battery for $20. It was interesting but did not state its capacity at all. Given that all I would need to power would be fans and phone/tablet chargers I really don't need much power. I could probably get away with a 20ah standard battery and use only 2-3 ah out of it. Indeed, I could probably - if the USB connectors would handle voltages that low - use a 6v battery. That could even be a DIY battery made of NiMh AA cells. Now that would be definitely worthwhile. I have a pile of NiMh AA cells that I don't use.

As it's perishing cold right now, I was looking at alternate heat sources for my bus and chanced upon a Coleman gas heater. The one of immediate interest seems hard to obtain. It's called the Coleman SportCat but nobody seems to stock it. It takes a different size of gas cartridge and offers 14 hours of continuous heat per cartridge. That's definitely doable.

I'm not too keen on having multiple standards of gas cartridge or indeed multiple standards of anything but sometimes it is necessitated by cost and availability. Apollo 13 discovered to their cost why different standards are a very bad idea when their spaceship had a mishap. It turned out that the lunar lander air filters had a different fitting from the command module filters. Thus they had to rig up a solution in order to make the wrong filters work in the command module just to survive.

Clearly I need to add some more fire extinguishers but that was always the plan anyway. I did wonder whether I should build a bay under the bus to hold a couple of 20lb gas cylinders. Plumbing for gas needn't be expensive or hard and is very possible. The gas cooktop could be installed above where the fridge or cooler will be situated. Indeed, I looked at coolers today and saw one that would do that was $22.

In mind today were the schoolbus flashers. The plan is eventally to intergrate them into the turn signal and braking light systems. The existing reversing horn needs to be tested and connected to a switch on the control console. That way I can switch it on when reversing and off when not which would also give the option of having it sound when necessary and not when it's not or not when it's dark and would unnecessarily cause noise. There's a lot of systems work that could be done.

The aim right now is to get the blinds and shower curtains up. That will get the bus pretty much ready inside. I would like to have the battery/cable compartment refitted but this is not essential right now. I think with the blinds and curtains in place, I will be able to reregister the bus as a motorhome. I will want to put a couple of extractor fans - one over the cooking area and one in the bedroom but those can wait a little while.

If it's a nice day tomorrow (which it should be) the plan is to install the blinds and possibly get started on replacing the battery/cable compartment. The compartment will take a while. I need to experiment welding very thin sheet steel because the aperture under the bus created by the hillbillies is way too big for the new breaker box compartment. The new battery compartment will be quite small as it doesn't now have to carry a battery big enough to power the cooking systems.

It's always a toss-up which way to head with design and one person's error could be another person's salvation. I don't like gas - never have and probably never will. On the other hand the cost of a battery setup capable of powering a microwave would need a battery capacity costing $500 while my electrical system will cost maybe $50. A small battery such as the one planned could be charged from a smaller solar panel. Indeed, solar in this instance would work. This is even cheaper than the generator system I had planned earlier.

The only issue I am likely to have with tomorrow's welding is that the bus is probably beyond the reach of just a single one of my two 20A cables. One cable has Nema 5-20 connectors at each end but the other has a Nema 6-30 on one end which won't connect to anything other than the planned connector on the bus. The solution there will be to start the bus engine for the first time in 3 months or so!

I can honestly say that I am looking very much forward to getting the bus completed and ready for action. I want to see if I can get it ready and reregistered in time for the Battle of Aiken so I can take it for the whole Battle of Aiken weekend.

Things that don't work.

Sitting in the bus today, I reflected on things that haven't worked out. Not because of the waste of time and money but because things that haven't worked out have been minimal.
1. My cheap 10-24 bolts that broke under very light pressure.
2. My plan for barrels as water tanks. They're just not available!
3. My multimeter. I bought a multimeter in around 2006 and tried it today. It's totally dead. I tried changing the battery and the internal fuse but it is dead, refusing to move the needle even after twiddling all the adjustments. Yet another gizmo designed not to last very long and another reason not to buy expensive gizmos.

4. Rustoleum paint. This doesn't stick to anything.
5. Silicone sealant. This works well but doesn't stick to PVC. By the time I realised that, I'd already laid my PVC floors. Had I known this before, I'd have used latex sealant instead as that does stick to PVC. That would have meant I would not have needed a shower base. As for the roof, the silicone sealant works but doesn't lie flat. That could be a problem if a tree branch rubbed the raised seal off.
6. Latex paint. This looks good and adheres well. It's just not that rugged.
7. Interior. Were I doing this again, I'd probably do it very differently. I did it the way I have because I was aiming at an all electric installation. I think I'd put less woodwork inside and I'd put a pot bellied stove to compensate in colder weather. I've designed my installation as more of a home for extended periods. I'd probably have been better keeping it more like a weekend camper.
8. It looks like some of my NiCad batteries haven't survived. I tried charging them today.

9. My microwave. Sure it didn't cost much but it should have lasted longer than a mere 2 years. I used it daily from November of 2011 to April of 2015. By mid 2013 the paint was bubbling and peeling. I wouldn't use that microwave now. It's just in too poor condition.

10. Electromagnets - I'd just make my own rather than fiddling about waiting for them to come from China.

As far as I've gone, I'm happy. I need to thin out my stuff - I have too many clothes so I need to get shot of stuff that no longer fits. I might need to thin down on books to - perhaps go for ebooks instead? I've also got a pile of broken mobile phones, old chargers and general electronic wiring garbage - the kind you build up on all the time. I probably need to cut down in crockery too. I have a set of cheap mainstays China that cost me a princely $10.

Since my microwave has clearly died, I'm wondering whether I should go for something like a small gas burner and put an extraction fan in. That would increase water usage as I'd have to do more washing of saucepans but would decrease the need for electricity. That would put me squarely into boondocking territory. Having viewed the prices though, a replacement microwave seems better as well as safer.

Going forward the plan is - given a dry weekend - to redo all the bolts in my underbody compartment. This weekend was a loss because of the rain. There are a lot of dry weekend tasks to be completed, if ever there is another dry weekend. There seems to be somewhat of a plot against me these days as every weekend is wet. I blame the French! Only the French can be underhanded enough to inflict me with wet weekends.

Sealing or rather resealing the roof seams and repainting will all have to be done in due course. I'd love to have done more over the summer but what with heat exhaustion, it was rather hard. It'd be nice to be able to work under cover but building even the cheapest cover over my bus would be prohibitively expensive.

This weekend, nothing much was achieved bar a redesign of the plumbing necessitated by availability of supplies. With luck, next weekend will be better.

I'll have to do something about onboard humidity. 78% is high. Maybe I should get a Peltier dehumidifier and try to run it from a solar panel? If that works, it bodes well for a Peltier fridge.

Thrashed by the heat

The day started with my having little inclination for carpentry so I set to and installed film over two window panes. This went well as I seem to have mastered the art of doing it. I kept the offcuts thinking that I might try putting two pieces together on one of the shower windows.

The next thing was to rework two of the three drawers I did yesterday. They didn't slide easily. Now they do. I did intend to install 4 drawers on the other side but I was short of a 16 inch drawer slide. Still, 3 drawers were installed. They all need sides backs, fronts, handles and latches (it IS a motorhome). One doesn't slide easily yet but with a little work tomorrow, it should.

I did notice that some of my drawers done today aren't quite level. I'll have to see if they're off enough to merit working on them. I suspect they're passable though I do like to try to get things right whenever possible.

Not feeling like working more on the drawers having noticed an error, I looked at where I need to put the final cupboard door. I have a policy of doing something different if I make an error. Working on correcting errors when tired makes them worse.

It was 97 in the bus today and if been out for too long. Looking at where the cupboard door needs to go, I needed an extra vertical beam to mount the hinges. Well, I cut the beam and slipped it into place. Then I realised that to mount the hinges I should have drilled holes and inserted the hinges first. Struggling against the tight fit, I realised I was getting a headache and finding it hard to breathe. I'd been out too long and the heat was thrashing me again.

I headed inside to the cool oif air conditioning and gulped down large quantities of water. This South Carolina heat really slows down progress. If I'd been working on this in Britain, I'd have been done months ago. That's how bad the heat is!

Not coming out of the closet!

Rather, I'm building a closet. Today was another one of those blisteringly hot days when the temperature inside my bus rose well over 100F. It was the kind of day that had me wondering where the ice age scientists had been prophesying about 20 years ago had disappeared to. To say the soles of my shoes almost melted is an understatement.

Yesterday I installed the uprights and noted one seemed to have a bend. Placing a straight edge on it, proved it was indeed banana shaped. No matter - its not needed as a straight beam. Typical low quality lumber!

In brief spurts I cut and installed two cross members and then cut and installed a sheet of OSB as the lower part of the front wall of the closet. I had to work 20 minutes then head indoors to cool off. The weather is vicious at the moment - too vicious to be able to stay out longer.

Having cut the OSB and installed it, I now have two big bonuses. The first is I now have enough space in the bathroom to work and the second is that I'm that much closer to finishing the closet. All it needs now is for a top piece to be cut and installed and for a door to be constructed. Painting can be done later.

So, aside from drawers in the kitchen and a desk in the bedroom, all I have left to do is the bathroom. That's quite a relief! Actually, the bathroom should be quick to build. At least, I hope it will!

The Easter Bunny went postal!

The day dawned as most days do. The sun scrambled over the horizon and Sleepyheads like me slithered out of bed, colliding with the floor or reality - whichever came first.

Being somewhat lucky to have most of the summer free, I'm making the most of it to work on my bus. Today, the aim was to paint the dinette\kitchenette. Thus, I started painting. After very little time, sweat was pouring in my eyes and dripping onto the floor.

The paint dyes weren't particularly well mixed into the paint and the tin being as full as it was, stirring was not quick nor easy. The paint went on well enough with very few drips.

Despite looking streaky, the paint dried uniformly. There are areas that need a second coat but that'll have to wait for another day.

Having painted, I started work on building the front closet. For the first time, I used rivets inside the bus, securing one vertical in place. Normally I would just use self drilling screws but this column has to support the handrail. Thus its extra decure because some people might need to use that handrail!

Another thing I did was to cut wood for the drawer runners. After that, I was too exhausted with the heat to do more. This is despite taking breaks. The summer heat is more of a killer than the Confederate flag!

July is here. Holy Hell!

I can't believe it's July already! My first date for completion of the bus was January 1st but that's been slipping ever since. I swore it'd be done by July 1st but it now looks like being August sometime.

If you've been following my progress via Facebook then you'll notice my Facebook profile has vanished. I had nothing to do with that disappearing act. I had a note that popped up last week asking if I am human. I confirmed that I was. Yesterday I was denied access to my Facebook account unless I send Facebook a copy of my drivers license, social security card etc. Basically, all the stuff an identity thief or a marketer would love to have. Needless to say, I declined their request and it seems Facebook has retaliated by closing my account.

Do I open another account under a new name, say Sponge Blob or Captain Underpanties? Do I just say f* it and f* Facebook and carry on without Facebook? I asked friends if they followed my bus progress via Facebook - which was all I ever published on Facebook and most did not. I had a few Facebook friends that were so much into auto posting of jokes, recipes etc that I just had to stop following their posts. I think Facebook is more of a nice idea than something of any practical value.

Between blog postings, you can also follow and sometimes interact with me via Twitter.

Today I spent the first part of the day cleaning the kitchen/dinette area ready for painting. I also put some 1\2 inch dowel into the 1\2 inch hole I drilled in the door to the cockpit. That hole was intended for a lock but the lock was too thick. The easiest way to enlarge the hole was either to order a larger twist drill or put dowel in and redrill with a cheaper flat drill. Needless to say, this is the option I chose and as soon as the glue has dried I'll be doing that!

One of the pieces of 2x4 that I'd put in the front closet has a nasty twisting warp on one end. It will have to become cross members. Fortunately I did buy an extra piece of 2x4 yesterday. It needs to dry so its lying flat in the bedroom while I complete the dinette/kitchenette.

As you can see, I've started painting the dinette. I used a roller so I covered most of it fairly quickly. Even so, I developed a raging headache from the heat. I had to complete the first coat in 3 separate trips to the bus, coming into the house to cool down every 30 minutes.
There are corners and places that could not be reached with the roller. The drawer slide mount proved to be the problem I thought it would be hence my decision to paint the kitchenette before I install drawers.

The ceiling got a coat of paint from one side of the bus to the other. In fact, I had to stop when I ran out of Glidden Primer & Sealer. I used 3/4 of a gallon! The next stage will be to put white topcoat on the dinette. Then I will fill in the gaps where the primer didn't work, using a brush. Fortunately, I have another gallon of white primer as well so in theory I should be able to complete painting the kitchenette and dinette.

Sadly, I could not paint the kitchenette today as the counter is in use. When the dinette has topcoat, I'll transfer things from the kitchenette to stand on newspaper on top of the dinette. There are several areas in the dinette that would benefit from some latex caulk. I'll have to get on with that!

The summer in South Carolina is pure Hell for working outside. It's meant for lying on the sofa while eating bon bons! I'm sure that's what God intended anyway! Either that or this really is Hell and we've been really wicked in a past existence.

Painting the dinette is really a sign of progress! In April, the dinette didn't exist. After completing the kitchenette which could take a while what with all the drawers I'll need to build, I'll do the bathroom. The front closet will take next to no time.

Finally today I dragged the other fridge door toward the bus where with the gentle persuasion of my angle grinder and a crowbar, it gave up enough steel to complete filling in the other half of a missing window.

I had to give up for the day after this because the heat had me thoroughly exhausted. I just about made it into the house!

Today's accomplishments look impressive

I started out with the idea of converting a space in the bathroom into a wash stand. Well, that was the theory. I got as far as putting insulation under the seat rail and OSB on the face of the seat rail. That was only after I did other things...

The first thing was to look at the wood I left out last night. It was lighter and drier but not right yet. I left it out all day, turning it every few hours. By the end of the day it was definitely feeling drier. Its not there yet though. As its going to be exceptionally hot for the next 3 days, I'll leave it out. If its not dry after 3 days of 110f (43.3c) then it never will be!

Before I knocked off for the night, I test mounted two wooden bars upon which I will mount drawer runners in my dinette. That went well enough so maybe tomorrow I'll be building a drawer.

Most of the day though was spent turning the 2x2 that I sanded clear of mold yesterday into a door. Sadly I had a casualty - my last 1/16 drill bit committed suicide. I'll soldier on with my 1/8 drill for the moment.

The door actually put up very little resistance. It went together beautifully though I ran out of T brackets and had to use L brackets instead. There's a little spring on the door that causes it to open due to the 2x2 being warped. Clearly the ball latch won't do. I'll have to install something stronger.

And there it is - the completed door, of which I am rather proud. I sat on my dinette and admired my handiwork for quite a while. The list of things needing to be done is ever reducing.

And tomorrow? I'm not sure what I'll do. I could work on the bedroom sub partition that I started today, I could work on the bathroom wash stand, I could work on a drawer, I could paint the outside where I missed painting or I could work on filling the 21 remaining holes in the outside of the body that are currently just taped over. You'll just have to wait to read the next exciting installment of the bus blog.