That was bloody exhausting.

After today's exertions, I am absolutely exhausted. Heaven knows why but I find welding very tiring. I suppose that could be because it wasn't particularly warm today but it was very dry. I didn't complete everything I would have liked to have done but I got closer to completing a lot of things.

The first task was to climb up on the bus roof to reseal one of the seams. That took a complete cylinder of silicone sealant. Ideally I'd have used something other than silicone but since I've used silicone everywhere else and it seems to be working, I've stuck with silicone. This motorhome will only ever be a 20 year old vehicle. It will never get younger so imperfections aren't that important.

After that, I thought about my plumbing. I decided that for the moment I'll plumb for a bucket under the bus. It should be straightforward to add underbody tanks. The plumbing didn't go quite as planned as it was the last thing done today. Needless to say, I cut the tubing too short after having previously cut it too long. It's currently an inch too short after being an inch too long. Having said that, this is what it looks like.

The long horizontal is an inch too short. It would be usable with a small block placed between it and the attaching point. The jubilee clip I bought to attach it turned out to be way too small. I'll have to buy a couple of bigger clips. Now the attachment point was the first thing I made this morning. Basically, it's two steel brackets welded together. 

Welding was where I made great progress today. I started using 6011 rods rather than 6013 and started getting an arc every time rather than having to fight to get an arc. Most things needed a second pass to get the weld to look good but I burned through fewer sticks and had better welds. I ended up making four tube mounts. Two are to hold the downpipe and two more to hold horizontal pipes when I get the tanks installed.

This was part way through my welding progress. Welding small stuff was way easier than I thought it would be. It was important to keep moving the rod though as I did burn the edge of one of the brackets away a little in one place. 

This is how the mounts looked when completed. After welding them and clearing the slag off the welds, I sprayed them with cold zinc plating. Now that's quite expensive but if it stops rust then it's worthwhile. One is already installed but the second isn't yet as the battery in the electric drill expired before I finished drilling the second hole.

Another task completed was to weld the two parts of the roller shutter top that I'd previously cut into two pieces. I welded with 6011 rods both at the top and the bottom of the join. I did several runs with the welding rods in order to make the welds look good. In between runs, I wire brushed the slag off the welds.

After brushing the slag off, I sprayed with my zinc spray. I would have liked to have cut the construction to fit the battery/cable box but I didn't have time. After I'd worked on the plumbing, it was just too dark. The sun had escaped from me again. I'm just hoping it appears again tomorrow!

I have concerns over whether my underbody work will be too much for the skeleton. I might complete what I'm building for the underneath and then ask my mechanic for advice and maybe get him to weld the underbody stuff. I really don't want stuff dropping off as I'm driving!

Progressing again

Now that work has put up the shutters for the next two weeks, I can apply myself fully to working on the bus. Yesterday though I made a slight detour on my way to work to Walmart as my new tablet has arrived. Honestly, only one word sums this budget tablet up - fantastic! Sure, it won't let me run a couple of the apps I used to but it's thus far way faster than my Nexus 7, cost just about half the price and came with a keyboard case. The color even matches the galley in my bus.
  
Unlike my Nexus, it takes a SD card which means I won't lose locally saved files unlike my Nexus. It charges from the same micro USB charging port which I consider to be a great step backwards. Pin power connecters are far more robust. 

Speaking of my Nexus, when out shopping at 2am yesterday I noticed a company called "Digital Doc" in my local Walmart. Sadly it was closed but today I visited it. Given that such computer, tablet and phone repair places spring up quickly, flourish for a while then vanish suddenly - usually with a sack load of other people's equipment - I figured I'd best use it as quickly as possible before it vanishes. 

Arriving at the desk this morning, I asked about reflashing my Nexus and was told by the minimum wage yokel working there that they didn't do this. Now that's really strange since their website indicates that they do. Given then I had to stand in front of her and attract her attention from her mobile phone in order to talk to her and how after telling me the business didn't actually do what they claim to do and since she then failed to answer me with a suggestion as to an alternative business (or to acknowledge the question at all) I followed my golden rule. If somebody in the company with a geekish business is useless then they all are, and allowed my feet to give them a vote of confidence by allowing my feet to carry me out of their store. I don't see a long future for that outfit!

Returning to the bus, I had another go at welding. I'm not highly satisfied with what I did but then the weather was so cold I really didn't want to stay out welding. In fact, I didn't really want to start! I definitely need to get the compressor out and try to clean up the bits I need to weld with soda blasts. Now that I've worked on the blasting head, it might work better. For a bit of fun I welded two pieces of scrap steel together. M`lady's sister's daughter's boyfriend has threatened to test some of my welds to destruction so I figured I could safely let him loose on that!

Looking at the hillbilly cable compartment, it seems I have indeed correctly measured the size of the box I'm building. The next step after completing the welding will be to install the new compartment. Unlike the hillbilly compartment, my compartment will have a floor that will allow drainage. Indeed, I might even use a steel mesh rather than a solid floor.

I have various ideas about the battery power setup. Initially, since my power budget is minimal, I'll probably just have a small battery. All it has to operate is fans, lights and chargers. In fact, my 5A solar panel could end up mounted on the roof to charge the battery. That might provide 2.5A for 5 hours a day or about 15AH so the battery could be really small.

The goal at the moment is to get the bus ready to be examined in the reregistration process. 

C'est la vie!

Today I pulled out the grit blaster and attempted to use it on the flaked paintwork. First in went sugar. I pulled the trigger and had nothing bar air. Putting my hand over the filler cap, there was suction. Figuring the sugar might be too thick, I replaced it with baking soda. Again, suction and a good blast of air but no soda. In the end I put it away and got the electric drill with a wire brush attachment. Probably an hour later, I had all the loose paint off. Oddly enough, the soda blasting hadn't been terribly effective the previous time.

As far a returning the grit blaster is concerned, it'd take an hour of driving in each direction plus nearly 3 gallons of gasoline. It's just not cost efficient. That is, of course, without mentioning I'd have to pass over the rickety Lake Murray dam.

So, having scraped the affected paint off, I cleaned away the debris and set to work painting. I had thought of using the sprayer but I was done in an hour using just a paintbrush. I'd have been done earlier if I'd not messed about getting the air compressor set up only to have to put it away again. That Harbor Freight cheap stuff is very hit and miss. Mostly its OK but sometimes you get a real dog.

I scraped the ends of the two leaky seams on the roof and sprayed rust killer. Later I applied silicone caulk. In theory, that should be the end of the unexpected repairs. It's becoming very clear that I have to start working on the front door unlocking gizmo. Climbing in and out through emergency exits with the aid of a stepladder is definitely for the birds!

I'm sure you'll admit that looks better. Despite having scraped the loose paint very thoroughly, I'm sure I've missed enough to need to do more work later.

For a long time, construction debris has been a source of friction. Today I took steps to remove debris. This will take a while; weeks in fact.

I didn't get to do anything that I wanted to do this weekend as it was all repairs. One thing I did do was to paint over my NSA2011 signs. I figured they might be a hindrance to getting it reregistered as a motorhome. Some nut at the DMV might consider it to be an impersonation of a government vehicle. I can always redo it later though I'm more in favor of anonymity, these days.

The roof never saw a lick of paint. I figure I'll get to that, maybe next week. It really needs a second coat but I want to wait for the silicone caulk to harden first. With luck, there'll be heavy rain tomorrow that should test my weather proofing.

China wins again!

I've had major issues with US based suppliers of Nema L6-30 FI connectors. They just don't seem to want to sell the product they advertise. Twice I've had my order cancelled by some joker that says I cancelled yet I did not. Then I found a local supplier that wanted $50 for a $15 part. Others wanted $80 for a $15 part. So, the upshot was I went back to eBay and ordered the part from a Chinese supplier. I expect it will be delivered next week. I just don't get why this is such a problem for US suppliers. It's not as though customer service is a challenging skill. Equally US suppliers seem mathematically challenged. Surely its better to sell 100 of an item at $1 profit per item than to sell 1 at $40 profit?

It rained very heavily overnight. Thus when I checked the inside of the bus, I was pleased to note that water ingress where the ingress had been bad was down to a few drops. The bedroom was down too but there was still a small puddle.

Not so welcome was what had happened to my paintwork. It looks like somebody has thrown acid over the paint. I'm pretty sure they haven't but the hood will have to be redone. There's paint peeling off the rub rails too though curiously only in tiny patches and only on the tops. The roof of the bus is unaffected. It can't be the baking soda because that was all over the roof and the roof is unaffected. It's just the hood (where there was no baking soda) and selected areas on one side of the bus. Notably, under a tree but the tree is only by some affected areas.


If it was a problem with my painting Rustoleum over cellulose then surely the paint would have bubbled universally yet it has not. I'll have to load my sprayer with sugar, sugar blast the affected paint (which peels away in big flakes) then repaint with Rustoleum. Perhaps I'll spray this time.

When its dry, I'll head back to the roof and will attend to the questionable seam. Clearly I missed something. I might just as well work on the other seams while I'm up there - adding more silicone.

The rain came down heavily again, putting paid to the motion of more work outside or under the bus. Indeed, even going out to the bus was too much of a challenge. The rain was that heavy!

Turkey day!

No. It's too early for Thanksgiving but not too early for online turkeys. They say things come in threes and I have two so far.

In my work toward completing the bus, I ordered a Nema 6-30P inlet off some twit on eBay. Needless to say, a couple of days after I ordered, I suddenly had a bizarre note to the effect my paid order was cancelled at my request. No such request had been made. I wouldn't mind betting they advertised something they didn't possess!

In my work toward a solar system, my plan is to use rechargeable D cells for my lighting etc, I hunted around online for information. Drawing pretty much a blank, I put a question on a solar power group. Let's just say nobody ever read my question and I won't be back.

Yesterday for $15 I saw a simplistic solar charger in Harbor Freight. It was basically a solar panel and a diode plus an expensive plastic box. Somehow I doubt it'd live up to its claims. I remember trying to charge a cellphone off a larger solar panel. It took a full week to get enough charge for a 15 minute conversation.

The third turkey arrived today. This is why I'm building my motorhome, of course. The positions available in South Carolina don't put food on the table for they all pay 3rd world wages with 3rd world employment conditions. Indeed, South Carolina is a 3rd world country in the middle of the richest country on earth! I'd applied for an admin position on one of the jobs websites. I had an email back...
I got your resume from a job you applied for on Monster.com.  I just wanted to follow up with you to see what you are looking for in your job hunt and to see if I could assist you in your career search.  Please contact me if you are available to come in and meet with me about how I can help you in your search.
That was a bit suspicious. Clearly the position I'd applied for was the same level of fakery as that mysterious Nigerian prince that wants to give me millions of dollars. I played along...
I'm looking for admin/office/clerical, preferably as a manager but I'll take lower positions if it means a job with a future, real wages and full time hours.

I presume the position I applied for was clickbait rather than a real job?
The fellow responded, denying that the position was clickbait while at the same time, proving that it was...
Our job posting usually cover more than one position since they have similar requirements.  Currently we have 12 administrative assistant positions that all have similar requirements, so instead of posting 12 separate opening, we can cover more ground with 5 or 6 postings.  That being said, they are all real jobs.  Please let me know if you would like to come in and meet with me so I could assist you in your hunt.
 
I look forward to hearing from you.
There's all this emphasis on coming into their office for no clearly visible reason. I'm wondering if it's like the college that asked me to interview then appeared to ask for a bribe. I don't do bribes. Maybe that's why I have such problems finding work? Maybe I'm just too honest? Well, I'd rather be honest than compromise my principals! So, I responded...
I'm happy for you to assist. I remain to be convinced that spending time and money on coming to see you will achieve anything that cannot be achieved via email or telephone.

You have seen my resume. I went a little over the top by putting full job duties instead of the main ones but as you can see, I've been doing admin/clerical/office all my life. With 12 vacancies, I would welcome your putting me forward for them.
Needless to say, since I clearly wasn't going to be a cornucopia for the guy, showering him in chocolates, champagne, roses (or God knows what else), I never heard back from him. And agencies wonder why I block their phone numbers!

Meanwhile, an email arrived from my dad suggesting I put a deadline on finding a decent job in the US. Then simply sell everything at the deadline and just write off the US and go back to an equally uncertain future in Britain.

Today I worked more on the roof seams. They all need work. Truthfully, they all need to be sandblasted, painted and caulked professionally. All I can do is to treat the worst and hope for the best. It's going to rain tomorrow so that's all I have time to do.

It was just a case of caulking where I'd sprayed with anti rust etc. Oddly enough, I'd just done that when the sky began to darken. Clearly I finished the caulking just in time, even though rain is not forecast until tomorrow.

When I worked on the roof a few months ago, I painstakingly climbed up and down a ladder. This time, it seems easier to climb up the ladder then on the way down to slide onto the hood then climb down from the hood. In theory I could do that in reverse using a pair of folding step stools. That would take so little room I could make a pair of step stools part of normal equipment.

A small thing done as well was to fasten the CB radio aerial cable into place using silicone caulk. I taped it with aluminum tape while the silicone sets. I must admit it looks tidier. One day I might even get around to replacing the drivers fan!

After that I commenced work on the battery/cable compartment by cutting some of the steel bedframes that were in the bus. The aperture seems to be 24 inches wide so I'm cutting the frame to 29 inches to working space.

The plan is to make the compartment capable of holding a marine deep cycle battery in addition to the breaker box. Dependent upon the size of the battery, I might make space for two.

In other news, I'd ordered a Nema 6-30P inlet from Amazon since the jerk on eBay decided to cancel my order. It must be the same jerk under a different name. He cancelled the order again, claiming again that I cancelled yet I know I did not. Well, perhaps that was for the best because I've had a different idea on how to achieve my goal. I'm rather more in favor of using a standard 5-15 pair of inlets with the 30A cable ending in a Y junction. That would have the effect that I could use a standard household cable to plug into one inlet or a 30a cable to plug into a splitter. As I'm aiming for low power usage, the 5-15 has much merit!

The marine battery specifications are decent enough for low power usage. By that I'm thinking charging D cells, AA cells, phones etc and possibly also using a small electric element for boiling water in a cup etc. It's 105AH, 44lbs and measures 11x10x7. That means I could have two in the compartment in an L formation or even two in there side by side.

I continued cutting the long members for the compartment until I had four the same length. The offcuts are between 18 and 19 inches long. They will be trimmed to 14 inches. That will allow a battery to be seated end on. Looking at the official battery compartment, there is a roof over it. That, presumably, is designed as a fire guard should the battery catch fire. It looks a good idea and since steel is plentiful I'll probably implement something similar.

I am definitely on the home stretch!

The roof

Yesterday I hunted in vain for a tool to use with the compressor to blast the silicone sealant out of the affected seams on the bus. The plan was to use sugar as the blasting compound principally because its more available and cheaper than alternatives.

Proceeding gingerly along the roads, there was little to no sign of flood damage. Indeed, I had to make a detour to see any. Clearly although the flooding has been tragic, the areas I normally visit have been spared. One would not know this, given the constant media coverage. Indeed, I even saw some articulated trucks on the road. Clearly the fears of road instability have been greatly over stated. Indeed this is probably why so many people are ignoring roadblocks.

Visiting store after store, the story was the same at each one. They had grit blasting tools listed but none ever carried in the store despite what the company website claimed. The one place that would have them was Harbor Freight but as visiting them would involve crossing the somewhat suspect Lake Murray dam, I passed on the chance. Instead I shall investigate to see if small areas can be repaired and shall put tape over the affected seams. Maybe after the floods and danger diminish, I can visit Harbor Freight.

The alternative to Harbor Freight is either Northern Tool and a trip across the dam or heating the silicone and scraping it out manually. Had I started that yesterday rather than wasting fuel and hours driving, I could have been done. That would have been today's plan had I not had another fever. It seems I have some kind of rolling virus. I gather others complain of the same virus and how it lasts about a month. That must have been shy yesterday's shopping was do tiring and lackluster.

Today I purchased from eBay a battery powered shower head. The basic plan is to heat water, dump it into my cooler then use that water to shower with. Unlike other shower heads, this one is powered by 4 D cells.

The advantage there is that unlike the rechargeable shower heads with built in batteries, the batteries can be changed. Unlike the 12v plugin shower heads, it runs off a power supply with more possibilities. By that I mean that if I don't have freshly charged D cells, I can use alkaline D cells. Coincidentally, my LED lantern also uses D cells.

That all has me thinking about solar panels to charge AA and D cells. For simple small cell charging, the solar panel need not be gigantic nor expensive. Indeed, 4 D cells might be all that's needed to power my forthcoming front door unlocking system.

Looking at the solar panels available is pretty mind boggling! The whole thing seems vastly complicated. All I want to do is to put a small solar panel on the roof, connect it to a battery charger inside the bus and be done. It's not simple though. As ever, it seems that what I want to do is unusual and not catered toward.

A short term fix for my plumbing came to me this morning. Yesterday while in Walmart I noticed 5 gallon gas cans. My thought is to collect waste water under the bus in a bucket then decant to a 5 gallon gas can for subsequent disposal. For potable water, a few off the shelf camp water containers would work.

Needless to say, these are all inexpensive things that can easily be upgraded at a later stage. Even the cable compartment, rickety as it is, can be upgraded at a later stage. Consideration has to be therefore given to completing the shower plumbing and the interior soft furnishings.

Despite feeling pretty rough, I managed to put a few minutes in, painting the galley floor. It could probably stand more work to attain perfection but it's pretty good. The next thing will be to put a movable vinyl floor covering such as those that protect carpets from mauling by the wheels of swivel chairs.

There are pits and dents in the plywood of the floor. These are due to the plywood the hillbillies laid being of low quality. Still, those sections were in good enough condition not to have to redo which is why they were left. This is probably why they tiled their floor with such disastrous consequences.

Idly I considered visiting the roof. There is an area that needs more grey paint but the paint can is in the middle of the galley workbench which cannot be accessed due to wet paint! Grabbing the ladder, I leaned it against the bus more in hope than anticipation.

As tomorrow is also a non work day, due to the recent floods, I can leave roof stuff until tomorrow. I'll probably just tape the seams with aluminum tape if I can't clearly see any possible leak sites. At least then, it'll all be done. I did look online at a Harbor Freight grit blasting attachment. Online its $17.99 plus $6.99 shipping. Instore it'll likely be the same but a quick calculation showed that gas getting to and from the store was likely to be $4.30 plus a couple of hours time. I think the wear and tear on my car is more than the $2.69 saving. That is, of course, if I opt to clean out the seams instead of taping and painting.

That's what I was going to do. What I really ended up doing was to head to the roof anyway. It took one trip and a look to see the problem. What has happened is rust has lifted the silicone sealant and allowed water underneath.

The three affected seams aren't too bad. It puts paid to my idea of using a wire brush though. I need to get under the seam more than I can with a brush. This looks like it will have to be a grit blaster and the sooner the better! I'll have to hit Harbor Freight tomorrow. For the moment the seams are duct taped against unexpected rain. It looks like I need a lot of rust killing paint and probably some real baking soda since I don't need to blast out silicone. Oddly enough the hard to remove silicone came off easily with a razor blade. I'm glad I caught it before it became too bad. I have no idea what the other seams are really like though they seem OK. The good news is that where I applied rust killer before, without removing any rust, there was very little live rust.

Bus leaks

Well, it seems the bus leaks could well be due to poorly applied silicone sealant. I had to patch somebody else's sorry excuse for silicone sealing. There are two ways forward:
1. The best method which involves drilling out the roof rivets and replacing the rubber seals.
2. Removing the bad silicone seals and replacing them.

Option one would need probably two or more clones of me, all working 24x7 for a week. I'd also need a big garage in which to work on a 35 foot long, 10 foot high vehicle and that had enough clearance for me! That's just not feasible. Then there's the little matter of finding rivets big enough and a riveter that could handle them.

So, option two. Removing silicone is a difficult task. It can be done manually using a razor blade and a wire brush. This is not easy however. A better method is to use a soda blaster. Soda is relatively inexpensive and the blaster would fit on an available compressor. Having done that, its a case of painting and resealing, both of which are relatively quick jobs. As an emergency measure, duct tape could be used. There is a tarred aluminum tape available but that's a British thing that might not be available in the USA.

Looking around, soda blasters go for horrible prices but soda blaster guns seem to be between $18 and $35. There's no particular reason why other powders cannot be used. I have in mind, flour, sugar and ground coffee. As long as everything is bone dry, there is no reason on earth why sugar could not be used. Painting and sealing would have to be done quickly or the first moisture would generate a sticky mess.

I gather respirators and face masks are highly recommended for any kind of blasting operations. I did have a full face mask once but I think I left it behind at a former residence.

For the moment, until I can get a dry enough day to go on the roof, I'm just trying to aim the drips into a less harmful place. Today I noticed a third drip area inside the bus. Clearly I have several seams to blast, paint and caulk.

I didn't do anything inside the bus today. There's really not much left to do. I decided my curtains will have magnets to hold them to the bus. That'll save messing about putting up curtain rails etc. I did want to tidy up but with wet countertops that's not really practical.

Had I been smart then I'd have put duct tape over the leaky seams a few days ago. Mind I've not been well so perhaps prancing around on a bus roof would not have been a good idea.

I did sweep some of the floor then noticed the remains of a can of white paint so I upended it and spread it around the floor. There really wasn't much.

Now that's oil based paint so in theory it should be much more durable than the latex paint I have used to date. The plan is to put the same kind of black vinyl floor covering on top of it in the areas I'll be walking on that I have on the bedroom floor. In reality the black vinyl runner was only a temporary thing but it seems semi permanent.

In other news, more of my electrical system arrived today. Two Nema 5-30 connectors. I'm waiting on the weather to abate before I can do more. Currently the road outside, such as it is, is deep in mud and quite possibly impassible. It's thus not even possible to venture to the store!

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