Bang - ouch - grunt - bang - ouch!

That was pretty much how my day went. I spent most of the day underneath the bus, fitting the back on the power inlet. Now I'm using a Nema 5-30 when the recommended connector is the Nema 6-30. Neither has any particular advantage. Both will carry 30A at 120v. It just so happens that I managed to get 6-30 and 5-30 inlets by mistake. The 5-30 connectors were available but the 6-30 were not so I ended up with the solution I have. It's non-standard because the connectors are designed for two live wires as opposed to live and neutral but it works when one is wired live and the other, neutral.

Fighting with 50A cable in the confined space under the bus is not to be recommended. I bumped my head countless times. In the end and after a lot of time, some of which was wasted by having to fetch tools I had not envisaged needing, I managed to put everything together. The cable was too thick to allow me to install a rubber gromet around it. Well, that's not quite true - the cable was so thick and difficult to manover, I didn't manage to install the rubber gromet. I might return to that tomorrow or I might just squirt some silicone sealant in the gaps.
 
I would like to have some sort of guard around the wire but I'm not sure it's going to be that easy to install. Having said that, I can`t imagine anything is going to hit it, where it is.

Today I made use of the old battery compartment I built. I simply tack welded a brace on one side to make it less flexible then tack welded a top on. Now it's a handy support for my redundant 15 gallon barrel. That's going to be used to collect kitchen grease at m'lady's home.
  
At least it's going to have some use. I'm finding that nothing that came with the bus that was attached by the hillbillies was worth keeping. I spent two months working with various attempts at building compartments before I finally decided it wasn't worth the bother.

After welding the compartment remnants together to form something useful, I turned to the gas cylinder. Cutting it open surprised me. The steel was thicker than I'd thought at about 16 gauge and it was rusty inside. Looking at the thickness of the steel, I wasn't surprised that the bullet didn't penetrate both skins. It did prove that the people that hide behind car doors during a gunfight have a point. 9mm will go through the first leaf then the second will stop the bullet. I was quite surprised about that!

As can be seen, the bottom of the cylinder has indentations. This makes the bottom unsuitable for use as a handbasin. The top is similarly unsuitable as it has not just a valve but a pressure release plate. That's all fixable but it's just too much messing about. Better to look elsewhere for my handbasin.

The bullet was surprising. During its entry, it remained complete but seems to have lost its copper jacket at some point. The copper and lead are two entirely separate entities which probably accounts for the double dent on the non-penetrated side. At a guess, I'd say it shed the jacket as it came in through the entry hole.

As you can see, the jacket and the lead core are now separate! I didn't think this would happen.

In terms of what was done today - I put the power inlet into the bus. The main breaker is not yet installed but might be tomorrow. My 20A cables are 30 feet and 20 feet long. The 30 foot long length is just a shade too short to reach the bus. I could move the power socket and really should but I'll leave it where it is. I'll probably get a 40 foot 30A cable and make that up, maybe tomorrow. Tonight it's just too late to go and buy any cabling. 

After dinner, I took my LED lantern and went back to the bus. I didn't leave it plugged in as I have as yet not installed the main breaker box. I'll get to that tomorrow. Instead, I hung my LED lantern up in the bathroom and put up 10 rivnuts with screw eyes. Those will take S hooks and I will hang my shower curtains from them. 

It might be worthwhile to put a further rivnut and screw eye from which to hang the LED lantern. Very handy for showering in the dark! 

Not mentioned so far today, two more of my self-stick blinds have fallen down. Clearly the glue isn't up to much. I need to get some roller blinds to replace them. I might actually put off getting the 30A cable a while. It's not strictly necessary just yet. The main breaker box is far more important!

If I speed on with a trip to the store tomorrow, there's no reason why I can't clean the bus, install the blinds, install the shower curtain and take photos for the retitling process. The shower curtain will take mere minutes to install. The blinds won't take that much longer. Cleaning isn't going to take a huge amount of time either! There's only 210 square feet of bus!

One of "those" days *sigh*

Today was a day when nothing went quite right. I woke with a headache which is never a good portent of things to come. After a leisurely breakfast of yet more Xmas dinner leftovers, I went outside and noticed the sky was overcast. Clearly no welding today because the instructions on the welder say do not use in rain and rain was forecast.

The steel I cut yesterday has bright orange rust spots on the freshly cut edges. That's not welcome but not unexpected. I didn't treat the edges as they'll have to be welded anyway. The rest of the steel is fairly rusty so I'll have to sugar blast the whole lot to clear the rust. Then I'll have to paint it with rust killing paint then scrape the areas to be welded and weld it all together then put yet more anti-rust paint and then a topcoat. I did, however, remeasure what I'd cut and aside from probably having to trim corners to fit around bolt heads, it's pretty much the right size.

Next I looked at the schoolbus flashers. I need  to switch the amber and red around so the ambers are on the outside. That was something I could do relatively easily so I hopped up on the hood and started undoing screws for it was a simple matter of switching the lenses around. Wouldn't you just know it! One of the screws refused to budge and the cross head became a cone. I'll probably have to drill it out now. At that point I said that given the way I was feeling, it wasn't sensible to proceed and packed up for the day.

I looked at my old red LED sign that had been broken in my car. The actual sign still worked but the mounting was broken. As I need a car cigarette lighter plug, I cut the cable off and tossed the sign in the trash. It was sad to see the sign go but it had paid for itself and I'd had a couple of years use out of it. I used to put that sign in the back window of my car and rent it out on fiverr.com as advertising space. People would pay $5 to fiverr to advertise their product for a week and I'd get $4 of that in my Fiverr account. After a very, very long time I amassed enough to deposit in my bank account and by the time they had charged me a fee to deposit into Paypal and Paypal had charged a fee to deposit in my bank account the money was even less and I figured given the time and the chargers on charges on charges, it wasn't worthwhile. So, yes - to the people who ask - I did make money from Fiverr but in the end it works out at about $2.50 per hour so it's really not worth the effort.

I checked out my solar panel and connected it to an electro magnet which then failed to pick up anything despite the panel voltage being around 16.7 volts. I'm really not that impressed with this solar stuff, to be honest. It all sounds phenomenal - I mean - who doesn't like the sound of free electricity? The reality is somwhat less than satisfactory. As an experiment a few years ago, I connected a powered off mobile phone to a panel and left it on a windowsill, facing the sun, for a week. At the end of that week, I powered up the phone and while there certainly was power there was only enough for about 15 minutes usage. I'm going to plug on with solar but I'm not going to be fool enough to believe that it's going to be majorly worthwhile. It might - if I covered the roof with panels - charge my phone every day but I doubt that it'll do anything more than that. Indeed,  as I said before - the amount of money spent on solar panels to charge batteries would pay for a generator and a whole load of gasoline which would charge the batteries in a fraction of the time, day or night.

My solar panel - for those who're interested is allegedly 12v at 5A. I have yet to see it do anything bar make a tiny light bulb glow very dimly when exposed to direct sunlight. My idea had been to connect the panel via my ciagrette-lighter socket in the cab to the battery to allow it to keep my battery topped up. I fear that the LED on the cigarette lighter socket might use more power than the panel can supply in a day!

The electro magnet I started the other day still needs to be completed. I'll have another go at that another day. I'm not feeling that glowing positive feeling at the moment what with the cloudy weather and the absence of success. This wonderful two weeks off for Christmas has turned largely into two weeks confined to the house due to the weather. Still, I have another week left - there's a huge oppotunity there for the weather to change its mind and give me glorious sunshine and dry days.

Out of curiosity I put the meter on the lighter socket and got 12.3 volts. Clearly something amiss there. The voltage should be higher - something in the region of 13.8v given that the batteries were charged a week ago. There could be some form of resistor or zener diode in the lighter socket, limiting the voltage to 12.3v. It's good to know! I suspected putting a solar panel on as a battery mainatiner wasn't going to be simple. Nothing ever is which is why though I was all in favor of an all electric bus I'm beginning to veer towards as little onboard electrics as possible. Indeed, I might even rethink this battery compartment and possibly just have a compartment for the main breaker box. That'll be a load lighter and smaller. It also means I can rivet most of that silly hillbilly cable compartment door shut and just use part of it as an access panel to my breaker box.

Thinking more about batteries, I discovered a source for C size NiMh cells. There seem to be people putting them together in blocks of 10 to produce 12v batteries with 10,000mah (or 10Ah). There seems to be something called a DC-DC converter which takes whatever voltage and outputs at a constant voltage. Thus, as the power in a battery declines its voltage will drop. The DC-DC converter maintains the voltage at a constant level, presumably at the cost of amperage. That answers my questions about how supercaps can be used. As their power level drops, so too does their voltage.

Given the low amount of power I need, given that I'm really only charging my phone, my $50 tablet and a $20 mifi pad, I'm really wondering what kind of power storage to use. Realistically, I probably don't even need a battery compartment for that amount of battery power! Still, I'll plug on because I might want to expand later.

50lbs lighter, 20 years younger!

That's what I need to be! Contorting myself to fit into the space under my countertop is hardly fun nor easy then to hold and work with tools while doing so adds further to the challenge!

As somebody recommended a strain relief clasp to secure the 55A cable against movement, that meant a trip to Lowe's, during which I filled up with gasoline at an almost unheard of $1.79! Not 4 years ago I was seeing $4.15 a gallon.

In Lowe's, the plan was to get a strain relief clasp for the big cable, one for the small cable and something for the main breaker under the bus. Added to the list was 5 feet of flexible 30A cable in order to put a pigtail connector.

Of course, I met a helpful fellow in Lowe's who was so eager to please that in the course of discussion of his proposed solution to which I listened intently, I got confused about what I was getting. Thus I came away without one of the waterproof cable connectors that I wanted.

Oddly enough, not having the connector didn't affect matters much. I didn't get half the things done that I wanted to. Working under the countertop is an awkward process that's hot and laborious as well as extremely uncomfortable.

By the time I knocked off for the day, I'd put two strain relief clasps into the breaker box, put the main cable through the strain relief clasp, found a bolt and kinda-sorta tightened the earth cables to the case. They could be tighter but getting in there to do it is all but impossible. Earth wiring isn't that important what with most appliances being unearthed anyway but I'd like to get it right!

Two socket boxes were secured in place and one socket was wired. Stapling the wires to the woodwork was a challenge as I lay under the countertop. I didn't complete the run of the wire because I couldn't find my hacksaw to cut the wire. My LED lantern throws out a good light but it's no good for hunting for things in the dark.

On Wednesday my 30A socket should arrive. Rather than cutting a hole in the side of the bus to accommodate it, the new plan is to locate it underneath the bus where it'll be protected from rain. This also allows me to mount it to the floor of the forthcoming new battery/cable compartment.

I had hoped to have the electrics completed this weekend but with the challenges, its taking longer. I'll probably have that done by next weekend. Aside from a strain relief grommet, there shouldn't be anything else needed.

Closet chain - check!

Today before work the temperature was a bearable 88 Fahrenheit according to the app I have on my tablet. Thus, it was possible to erect more of the closet chain. The procedure is simple... Drill a small hole where the next screw eye is needed, insert a rivnut then put silicone sealant on the screw eye thread, screw it in, hang an s hook from the screw eye then hang the chain from the s hook. Of course it wasn't that simple. The threaded portion of the screw eyes were too long at 2 inches so a few minutes were spent cutting them down with the angle grinder. The right size drill bit isn't in the toolbox so a smaller hole was drilled and the holes individually enlarged with a reamer.

Having installed more eyes and hooks than before, it appears there's enough space at one end for more screw eyes. As there are three more remaining on the table, it makes sense to use them, which I will after work. That being the case, the closet rail could well be completed today. That leaves the shower base mount, plumbing and electrical. This weekend might see the whole lot completed (but probably won't). I'm a bit of a perfectionist even though many things aren't perfect.

Regarding electrical, the plan was to put a socket on the side of the bus. Then somebody pointed out that the pins on the plug would be exposed and live. That's not particularly desirable so I started hunting for a male socket. Wow! Ripoff! Male plugs can be had for $8 approximately. Female sockets for the same price. Male sockets are $80 - yes, ten times the cost. I'm currently hunting for solutions. Those could include a small hatch with cables that can be pulled out that have inline male plugs.

In order to drive costs down and versatility up, I'll have two inputs for electricity, both rated at 30A. 50A cable just seems impossibly expensive! Mind, for the amount of power I'm likely to use, a 20A supply should be adequate. Plans for the electrical system will be unveiled when its completed.

Meanwhile, the weather app is rather amusing. There I am, working on my bus is 88F that the app says feels like 92F and it suggests I wear this! Somehow, I don't think that'll be happening!

The weather part of the app is actually pretty good, however.

At the moment, the plan is still for a manual pump to pump water from underbody holding tanks. Had I realised what an annoyance it was going to be to put sufficient electrical power to run a microwave into the buys would be, I'd probably have used gas instead.

After work a trip to Lowe's happened. Let's just say it took several of Lowe's staff to pick me up off the floor and administer several doses if smelling salts after I saw some of their prices! Looking for cheaper ways around the $80 ripoff, I found all my potential alternatives were coming in at even higher prices!

Thinking around the situation, I'm going to trim my electrical system to just 3 sockets. One side of the breaker box is going to be individual 15A breakers going to sockets with the other side containing just one breaker going to the other side as a master breaker. That breaker is going to be 30A. Although I'd have liked higher amperage, I really can't see paying out the nose for all these electrics. Especially when the maximum I can envision using is going to be around 20 amps.

On eBay I saw a 30A male socket going for $15. That's doable. It probably means I'm going to have to fiddle around with my socket box but again, that's doable. I am getting very much a feeling that I screwed up when I bought my breaker box and RV outlet box. If I cut back further and used just two sockets then one could be the fridge while the other could be something else.

However I look at it, the main problem seems to be the breaker box with no master breaker position. I bought a waterproof box when I thought I would mount it under the bus. The next major problem is the electrical connector. There are so many to choose from and a vast number of prices!

This whole thing gives me such headaches! Wiring safety is not an issue - its all straightforward and a case of not putting more amps through a cable than it was designed to take. That's what breakers are for! In the end, for $19.02 I ordered from eBay a 30A twist lock socket. It has features I'm not keen on - namely the twist lock. I'd rather it popped out if somebody got their foot caught in it! I'm also not keen on the close proximity of screws that go through the plug to the pins on the plug. I'll figure it out though even if I end up using a load of epoxy putty!

Lastly, I completed my closet chain. The angle grinder gave an absolutely spectacular shower of sparks as I trimmed the last two screw eyes to length. The usual performance of drilling then reaming continued. All this was done after the sun had set. I absolutely love my LED lantern.

The end result was this and I can now consider the bedroom complete save for blinds.