Today I have to report that my $55 RCA tablet purchased from Walmart at Christmas has ceased to charge properly. The likely culpret seems to be the flimsy little USB charging connection. Needless to say, this should not have failed with just 3 months usage. On the occasion I get it to start charging, I quietly walk away while it is charging and return to find it has not charged but rather discharged. I seem to have to hold it in order for it to charge. This is very irksome as I use this for updating my blog in the absence of a real computer.
I fully intended to buy all the plumbing parts needed in order to plumb in my shower waste water tank. I had to abandon the trip to Lowes (hiss, spit) because a whole series of really rather tiresome people kept approaching to talk to me. It seems that I am attracting timewasting people whose only pride is in their verbal diarrhea quite a bit at the moment. After the third or fourth person that broke my concentration, I gave up and headed to Tractor Supply for the bits that I needed.
At Tractor supply I grabbed a cart intending to leave with potting soil and 4 baby chicks for m'lady but the potting soil was outside and it was raining hard. Believe it or not but Tractor Supply didn't know whether their chicks were male or female. It seems ludicrous that a company should not know what they are selling! The metal links and cable grips I needed were available but had to be hand carried despite the cart as they kept falling through the mesh of the cart. Having paid for the bits I headed across the road to Walmart but there, my card didn't seem to work. Paying for the two faucets and the cooler I'd spotted via alternate methods, I found my bank card had expired yet I had not had a replacement. All that entailed a long phonecall to the bank and a mad dash across town to an open branch. By then it was getting pretty late and m'lady was calling.
The upshot is that on the next dry day I will be able to install the barrel for the handbasin. I will not be able to do any of the plumbing but I will be a lot closer to having working plumbing. The next stage will be to reinstall the bathroom handbasin. This time I will have to fabricate mounts in order to fasten it down properly. That might involve some welding but I doubt it. It's handy to be able to weld.
Lowes wanted $8.95 for faucets yet what I got from Walmart for $1.95 will do for my waste tanks. All I need to do is to put garden hose connectors on my plumbing and it'll work just fine since there's absolutely no pressure involved. Things are looking up!
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2016
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The Final Solution or when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!
Today was a mission day for m'lady but since I was out (even though I had to go on a second trip). I had ideas about attaching the would be water tanks under the bus body and plumbing them in but decided against chains as they would put too much stress on small areas of a thin-walled plastic drum. I looked at nylon straps but didn't get them immediately which as it turned out was rather a good thing. Looking at plumbing fittings, I couldn't find anything in Lowes (hiss, spit) that remotely fitted. There were adaptors that were alleged to fit but which didn't really. They were an incredibly sloppy fit which was no good whatsoever. I did manage to get an section that will join my long pipe after I cut it and which will serve to lengthen it. Cutting accurately will be somewhat irksome, of course.
My next stop was Walmart where I spent the majority of my time. There I picked up a roller blind that looked interesting. I'll have to see if I can cut it down with my angle grinder. It only needs to be 26 inches wide. It's currently 37 inches which is too narrow for two windows and too wide for a single window. I'll also shorten it since it'll be way too long. If the experiment is a success then I can work on putting two together for the other windows. That could be an interesting experiment.
While in Walmart I picked up a bowl and a jug which should be excellent for the bathroom/kitchen. Waste water can simply be dumped into a bucket underneath the bathroom vanity. In a similar vein, since I cannot currently find an adaptor to feed the waste water tanks from my waste pipe that actually fits anything, for the moment the plumbing will revert to my original idea which was to have the pipe going down to the bottom of the bus skirt with a stopper that can be removed prior to use.
Thinking about the electrical system, I noticed something very interesting. It was a rechargeable USB cellphone charger. Connected via a charge controller to a solar panel that could totally eliminate any need for a house battery for the bus. That makes me think more about redoing the battery compartment I've been building to make it smaller and lighter. As it is, it won't accommodate a full-sized battery thus it's way over built. Instead, I could do something a lot lighter and less complicated, replace the huge door the hillbillies put in with a smaller door and simply rivet aluminum sheet over the rest of the aperture. Basically, make it into purely a breaker box compartment. I might also include in that bay, a space to charge USB batteries. I don't want anything that flammible inside the bus despite having now got a gas cooker. At least a gas cooker I can attend while it's working but a solar charged battery I cannot.
Another thing I did was to get some truly independent kitchenware. There was a gas cooker with auto ignition for $18 that contained a small gas cylinder. That was well worthwhile. It was a single burner but it'll do to demonstrate independent cooking ability.
The refrigeration will be non existent other than a cooler. I grew up without a fridge, freezer, car, telephone or television. I'm well used to what many would be considered privation. There will be no television, of course. I do have a small pocket radio, my tablet and my phone (which can act as a wifi hotspot). I'm thinking a lot can be achieved with small solar panels.
Today or rather last night, it rained heavily. Walking inside the bus today I noticed or rather didn't notice any moisture. That means that my seam sealing was a success. I just hope the rest of my work will be as successful.
I had a look to see if I could find a 12v fan. That could be combined with a solar panel to keep the body cool during summer, extracting the hot air and blowing it out under the bus.
Returning to the underbody compartment, I've considered a smaller, lighter compartment many times before. Certainly a smaller, lighter compartment would be that much easier to attach with that much less risk attached if it fell off. Definitely food for thought. By using the compartment as it is does rather trap me into the hillbillies bad ideas.
One thought is how to charge camera batteries. I've had the same camera for ten years so all the chargers etc are off the market by now. As it has a unique lithium battery, it's hard to find the correct charger. I'm wondering whether it would even be possible to find a charger that would work off solar these days. Phone batteries would be easy to charge off solar. Interesting thing to think about. Of course, I could consider donating my old camera and buying a newer (secondhand) model.
The plan for tomorrow is to complete the plumbing and to look severely at the hillbilly cable compartment. I had a nasty thought that the compartment I've built might be too long to fit the space. I'm coming more to the conclusion that less is more.
My next stop was Walmart where I spent the majority of my time. There I picked up a roller blind that looked interesting. I'll have to see if I can cut it down with my angle grinder. It only needs to be 26 inches wide. It's currently 37 inches which is too narrow for two windows and too wide for a single window. I'll also shorten it since it'll be way too long. If the experiment is a success then I can work on putting two together for the other windows. That could be an interesting experiment.
While in Walmart I picked up a bowl and a jug which should be excellent for the bathroom/kitchen. Waste water can simply be dumped into a bucket underneath the bathroom vanity. In a similar vein, since I cannot currently find an adaptor to feed the waste water tanks from my waste pipe that actually fits anything, for the moment the plumbing will revert to my original idea which was to have the pipe going down to the bottom of the bus skirt with a stopper that can be removed prior to use.
Thinking about the electrical system, I noticed something very interesting. It was a rechargeable USB cellphone charger. Connected via a charge controller to a solar panel that could totally eliminate any need for a house battery for the bus. That makes me think more about redoing the battery compartment I've been building to make it smaller and lighter. As it is, it won't accommodate a full-sized battery thus it's way over built. Instead, I could do something a lot lighter and less complicated, replace the huge door the hillbillies put in with a smaller door and simply rivet aluminum sheet over the rest of the aperture. Basically, make it into purely a breaker box compartment. I might also include in that bay, a space to charge USB batteries. I don't want anything that flammible inside the bus despite having now got a gas cooker. At least a gas cooker I can attend while it's working but a solar charged battery I cannot.
Another thing I did was to get some truly independent kitchenware. There was a gas cooker with auto ignition for $18 that contained a small gas cylinder. That was well worthwhile. It was a single burner but it'll do to demonstrate independent cooking ability.
The refrigeration will be non existent other than a cooler. I grew up without a fridge, freezer, car, telephone or television. I'm well used to what many would be considered privation. There will be no television, of course. I do have a small pocket radio, my tablet and my phone (which can act as a wifi hotspot). I'm thinking a lot can be achieved with small solar panels.
Today or rather last night, it rained heavily. Walking inside the bus today I noticed or rather didn't notice any moisture. That means that my seam sealing was a success. I just hope the rest of my work will be as successful.
I had a look to see if I could find a 12v fan. That could be combined with a solar panel to keep the body cool during summer, extracting the hot air and blowing it out under the bus.
Returning to the underbody compartment, I've considered a smaller, lighter compartment many times before. Certainly a smaller, lighter compartment would be that much easier to attach with that much less risk attached if it fell off. Definitely food for thought. By using the compartment as it is does rather trap me into the hillbillies bad ideas.
One thought is how to charge camera batteries. I've had the same camera for ten years so all the chargers etc are off the market by now. As it has a unique lithium battery, it's hard to find the correct charger. I'm wondering whether it would even be possible to find a charger that would work off solar these days. Phone batteries would be easy to charge off solar. Interesting thing to think about. Of course, I could consider donating my old camera and buying a newer (secondhand) model.
The plan for tomorrow is to complete the plumbing and to look severely at the hillbilly cable compartment. I had a nasty thought that the compartment I've built might be too long to fit the space. I'm coming more to the conclusion that less is more.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Getting into her drawers!
Drawers came to mind today as did painting. I reasoned that to paint, I'd better clean the dinette. Then I reasoned that it would be better if the drawer was completed and in place ready to paint.
It was pretty hot but with the internal door propped open as well as the front and side doors, it was bearable. I put a fan up to blow hit air out of the bus but it didn't improve matters much.
Putting the drawer together wasn't actually that hard. Oh, I can complain and bitch about it and it took until I ran out of wood to put it together but it was all pretty simple. The key was cut accuracy. Everything had to be pretty accurate.
I started days ago by ensuring that all the supports that would be involved with drawers were perfectly symmetrical. Today it was just a case of installing the runner bars and making sure they were horizontal, both at the same height and that they were parallel. So, 3 dimensions of orientation at each end.
Once that had been achieved it was a case of adding the drawer runners, one of which rather usefully captures the slider so that it can only be removed at the end of its run. That helped with measuring the width needed for the wood. Cutting the wood was easy enough.
I only miscut one piece - a mistake I've made before. I simply misread the tape measure which is not that hard when reading the numbers upside down. I cut the wood too short. Sadly I was unable to finish the drawer because the next piece of wood as supplied by Home Depot had been consumed by termites. Now you know why I try to make sure all my wood is pre-treated. The termite problem must have occurred at Home Depot or before. Wood in this condition should never be sold!
After stopping work for supper, I raced down to Lowes to replace the two drill bits that had broken, to get a catch foir the cockpit door and to get some more OSB and 1x4. The 1x4 is excellent for making drawers. As with the 2x4, its wet and I laid it across a stepladder to dry overnight. Speaking of the 2x4, its definitely drying. One piece of the four is still pretty heavy and might need a lot more drying. The rest is probably now usable.
Of course now its dark so nothing can be achieved until the sun reappears. Its getting quite exciting looking at progress...
It was pretty hot but with the internal door propped open as well as the front and side doors, it was bearable. I put a fan up to blow hit air out of the bus but it didn't improve matters much.
Putting the drawer together wasn't actually that hard. Oh, I can complain and bitch about it and it took until I ran out of wood to put it together but it was all pretty simple. The key was cut accuracy. Everything had to be pretty accurate.
I started days ago by ensuring that all the supports that would be involved with drawers were perfectly symmetrical. Today it was just a case of installing the runner bars and making sure they were horizontal, both at the same height and that they were parallel. So, 3 dimensions of orientation at each end.
Once that had been achieved it was a case of adding the drawer runners, one of which rather usefully captures the slider so that it can only be removed at the end of its run. That helped with measuring the width needed for the wood. Cutting the wood was easy enough.
I only miscut one piece - a mistake I've made before. I simply misread the tape measure which is not that hard when reading the numbers upside down. I cut the wood too short. Sadly I was unable to finish the drawer because the next piece of wood as supplied by Home Depot had been consumed by termites. Now you know why I try to make sure all my wood is pre-treated. The termite problem must have occurred at Home Depot or before. Wood in this condition should never be sold!
After stopping work for supper, I raced down to Lowes to replace the two drill bits that had broken, to get a catch foir the cockpit door and to get some more OSB and 1x4. The 1x4 is excellent for making drawers. As with the 2x4, its wet and I laid it across a stepladder to dry overnight. Speaking of the 2x4, its definitely drying. One piece of the four is still pretty heavy and might need a lot more drying. The rest is probably now usable.
Of course now its dark so nothing can be achieved until the sun reappears. Its getting quite exciting looking at progress...
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