When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!

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!

What was I thinking?

That I might actually achieve something today? The first thing I did was to head to the bus to find the tool needed to change the disk on my angle grinder. That was easy enough. I think after hunting through six big, fully loaded cardboard boxes I'd had enough but fortunately it was right in the bottom of the sixth box. Tidying up the other day had the unfortunate effect of concealing the things I need to find!

Having changed the disk - a task of mere seconds as opposed to the hour or so trying to find the tool - I decided to cut some steel for the back door. Just the other end of the property lies a abandoned trailer with an abandoned fridge lying in the yard. That fridge looked to be a very suitable donor!

For some reason, there was an electric cable lying along the length of the yard. Thus, angle grinder in hand I went to the fridge, expectantly. Well, that's where it all went to pot! There was no power to the cable. Undaunted and beginning to swelter from the oppressive spring heat, I traced the cable back and found it wasn't attached to the main cable. I attached it then tried again. Still no power. I unattached the cable and tried the grinder on the main cable. Nothing. I traced the main cable back to its origin which happened to be a pile of leaves. That was odd and there was no visible socket anywhere nearby. I have seen that cable in use though.

Undaunted and no longer in the mood to mess about, I went to the shed and pulled out m'lady's Harbor Freight 800w generator. It was a struggle but I carried it down to the fridge. Reading the instructions it was a case of putting the power switch into the on position, setting the choke and pulling the cord. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled some more. Now I know why the electrical cable has been in use. The generator just would not start!

Frustrated and exhausted, I put the generator back in the shed. Sure - it had fuel and I'd followed the instructions. There definitely was compression. It just wouldn't bloody well start. At that point I decided enough had gone wrong to merit not attempting any further work. It was the kind of day when nothing would work out and in my experience, it's better to miss a day than to make mistakes that cost yet more time and or money to fix.

My mind flitted to conversion discussions I'd read when I was a member of those silly bus conversion forums. One fool wanted to change the dual wheels at the back to single wheels just in order to cut down on tyres. The fact that the vehicle had been designed to use dual wheels did not enter into the silly person's head. Another individual wanted to change over to a different type of tyre. Instead of using the standard 10R22.5 he wanted to use something weird. The point is this is a bus. It will always be a bus no matter how it is retitled. The parts will cost exactly what bus parts cost. Yes the tyres are expensive. This is what you get when you buy a bus and people don't understand that. Honestly though, I suspect the vast majority of forum users that claim to have a bus actually do not. I recall one person swearing blind they lived in an old school bus but looking at their photos, they lived in a bus body that had been dismounted off the chassis. It was immobile and thus not a bus any more.

Having thought about things overnight, I have decided to go with the original plan for the drums in having them mounted crosswise. Instead of having a pair of drums under the shower, I decided to go with a single drum on each side. The steel chain I bought will hold 450lbs and since there will be 3 chains holding each barrel, that's 1,350lbs of holding power. I don't think a 125lb tank is going to go aywhere or that any one chain will break. I will still take precautions though!

By 3pm the sky was still very overcast and grey. The humidity was off the charts and work outside was just unpleasant. It was time to come inside and abandon the day in the hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

I would have put the microwave on the ground since it doesn't now look safe to use and put a few bullets though it, taken a picture and joked about the microwave being "shot" but what with the weather, I just didn't feel like it. My humble appologies - I'll do better next time!

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!

Yesterday's anniversary

A year ago, yesterday, I bought my bus. What a wild ride it has been so far!

That's what she looked like last year.

My word, how much has changed!

My original plan was to have the bus livable for January as Aerotek, the agency had promised me work in Charlotte in a medical office starting in January. Needless to say like all agency promises, it was hot air. I've learned from that and from other interactions over the past decade that agencies are just a bunch of liars and even written, cosigned contracts that have been witnessed and notarized are utterly worthless.

Needless to say, January has slipped a little. I've been promising myself that it'll be ready soon for so long that I've stopped making goals. It'll be ready when its ready.

The current hold ups are....
1. Electrical compartment.
2. Water tanks.
3. Miscellaneous items.
4. Reregistration of the bus as a motor home.

I'm quietly confident that some time in the next 12 months it will be ready.

The electrical compartment needs to be able to carry 120lbs of battery and be able to withstand the shock of sudden braking and bad roads. The water tanks don't yet exist. I know what I want as water tanks but am putting off getting them yet because of the ludicrous cost of shipping and because I might get them cheaper locally.

After all that is done, I could add batteries, solar panels etc but the basics have to be water with a manual pump and tanks. Electricity can be piped in from the outside or a portable gas cooker used temporarily.

I realise I could have done all of this a lot cheaper and faster but I've been trying to make the bus more of a restful, homelike place rather than something that reminds me how hard my life has become.

Hunting for Scotch Mist

There are lots of euphemisms for what I'm trying to do now. Attempting to plait fog and attempting to knit a rice pudding are but two. I'm trying to do the impossible - find something real and worthwhile using the internet!

For weeks I've been looking for plastic 15 gallon barrels in order to use them for waste water from my bus. Let's just say that it's harder to find those than it is to find The Holy Grail.

Craigslist has plastic barrels of 55 gallon etc but precious few of 15 gallon. When I do find them they're either an outrageous $20 and 100+ miles away or they're brand new, 200+ miles away and $40.

It doesn't matter what was originally in the barrels since they're just for waste water. The closest I've seen was on somebody else's property. It's a derelict house with barrels outside. Sadly though, as somebody owns them, I can't just liberate them. If they were just out at the curbside awaiting collection by the garbage truck then I'd have no qualms. These are behind a ramshackle fence though.

I'm pretty desperate for barrels but they just don't seem to be available despite being advertised all over the internet. It's just so frustrating. Just two 15 gallon barrels would be ample for waste water. The best I found was $20 per barrel but shipping from Florida was $15 per barrel for a total of $70 which is utterly ridiculous!

For comparison, a brand new 37 gallon water tank is $200. Lowe's 3 inch pipe is $12 for 10 feet and 10 feet will carry 3.6 gallons. Thus $120 of tube would carry 36 gallons. A used stainless steel beer barrel would cost $22 and would hold 15.5 gallons. I did see a stainless barrel but it was riddled with bullet holes.

As I said, its frustrating because I see all the bargains advertised but they're just not available. Its like the drowning man clutching for the straw. Salvation is there - just out of reach!

Sadly, today was a do nothing day. By the time I got home, the daylight had gone and the rain was pouring down. Not a good time to work underneath my bus.

It's 14 inches!

Thinking more about water tanks, it makes sense to use purpose built fresh water tanks as opposed to repurposed tanks. The bigger they are, the more costly they are - whoever said building an RV is cheap?

I measured before but had forgotten why I wanted smaller tanks. Others use the big 55 gallon tanks but after having measured the depth of the skirt as being 14 inches between the bottom of the body ribs and the bottom of the skirt, it became obvious that if I want things not to be vulgarly on display them they cannot be deeper than 14 inches. There's just no reason why anybody should look at my bus and see it not as a bus.

There are 15 gallon drums available at $40 each new. If they're more than $10 secondhand, they're not worth having. Looking on eBay at RV water tanks, they're not that expensive. A 40 gallon grey tank is $130 + $43 shipping. I'd need 3 blue drums of 15 gallons each to match that. That sounds very possible and the lower the price, the better they are.

Out of curiosity I paused at an RV store and priced white water tanks. Some of the prices were a little eye watering.

Online, via eBay, the prices are a lot lower but shipping is the killer, adding a lot to the cost. Thus, I had a look at a scrapyard at secondhand beer barrels. They're stainless steel but the good ones go like greased lightning. Those that they had, had bullet holes in them (it IS America and Americans put bullet holes in everything given half a chance). While the holes could easily be plugged, the problem is the lead fragments inside the barrel plus contaminants that had crept in through the holes.

The next thing I looked at was coolers, bearing in mind the idea that coolers could hold warm water too. I took measurements and thought while I was doing so of using plastic storage boxes for water. The lids could be sealed with inlet and outlet put through the lid. Clearly they'd need support from the bottom, sides and ends to stop them collapsing but that's a possibility.

RV water tanks are neat but as they're rectangular and have no visible method of attachment could be interesting to mount. In an emergency, a plastic tote sitting inside the vehicle with rope and wooden slats tied to it could be used.

Following that, I had a look for plastic 15 gallon barrels for waste water. I found a sign with some samples but could not locate the place selling them. Whichever way I went looked the wrong way so I gave up on it.

Fortunately the weekend is not a dead loss. I did get another fire extinguisher and some velcro to hold up some shower curtains over the bathroom windows. Predictably I forgot to get the shower curtain. I'll have to have another go at getting the barrels. They're only for waste water so it's not important what was in them as long as it wasn't something like pure sodium!

The first thing done inside the bus today was to install a new fire extinguisher. This means I have three, two installed by myself. This one being a little larger went into the bedroom.

The next thing was to install the cutlery tray in the cutlery drawer. The tray was wider than the drawer so the edges had to be cut off the tray. In the end, it fitted nicely.

In order to install the shower base, it appears I need a 1.5" hole saw for the outflow. As I don't have one, that means a trip to Lowe's. It also means having to go underneath the bus to locate a good spot to put a 1.5" hole.

A suggestion was made that if the water tank was generated from 3" PVC piping, that could be an economic solution. On the whole, it does look interesting. Indeed tubing would be easy to bundle and hold together with steel straps and easy to sling under the bus. To carry 50 gallons at 0.36 gallons per foot, it'd take 138 feet of piping but in 5 foot lengths, that'd be 27 lengths. Laid with reducing numbers of pipes 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 would get the job done. The cost though works out at $12 per 10 foot section or 14 x $12 which works out at $170 which is pretty expensive!

Meanwhile, I realised that if I'm at an RV park, I can just plumb straight in for white and grey water with no need for tanks. Despite all that, I plugged on with the shower base mount. One end is now completed. The other I'll complete tomorrow.

As I did that, my eye alighted on the cooler I bought a few weeks ago. It's only 3 gallon but could hold enough hot water for a good all over wash.

I looked at the old fridge that was in the original motorhome conversion and would have plugged it in in order to test it. I didn't though as it was in a tricky place to access.

Having got this far, I've been thinking about some way of keeping my plates, dishes etc from rattling against each other in the drawers. I'm low on wooden dowels so I'll probably have to get some. The idea is to build a dish rack into the drawers. Perhaps one might be available to buy which would simplify things a lot!

Still under the weather

For ages I've been looking for drawer locks. They're horribly expensive but these look like good candidates.

I did have a go at asking Lowe's since buying from Lowe's would cut out the postage element. Of that postage free $4, $2 will be packaging and postage. Thus the real cost is $2 and he's probably only paying 50c per bolt to the wholesaler! Indeed, if it comes from China, it coulkd be even less.

Thus far I've been unable to find a mate for my non-nema inlet socket. I have, however been looking at alternatives. I found some nema 5-15 inlets on eBay. A pair of those would equal 30A. It would also allow me to use a straightforward household electrical cord.

There are twist lock plugs and sockets for 30A available but I'm not sure they are such a great idea. I heard an argument that if somebody trips over an unlocked cord, the cord pops out and that is undesirable. I look at it the other way - if it pops out then it reduces their chance of getting contributory injuries and it reduces the chance of socket damage. On the whole I prefer the unlocked socket.

A pair of these look ideal. They take standard 15A female plugs as would be found on a standard 15A extension cord. This means a standard cord could be used - the kind of cord than can be bought anywhere! Use two plus a 30A Y adaptor and there's perfection!

Indeed, something like this but vastly cheaper. I'm all in favor of using commonly available parts. Commonly available and lower value cables are less likely to be stolen. The ideal would be no cable but since the money for a $3,000 solar panel and battery system does not exist, it'll have to be a cable. The alternative is a $300-$500 generator.

The problem with finding a generator is that eBay and Amazon don't want to sell generators. If they did, they'd fix their search engines. If I type "electric start generator" then everything except electric start generators turns up. Recoil start, pull start - everything except electric start. The idea is simple - push a button, the generator starts and I get 1500w of power - enough to run the microwave or electric kettle. Push a button after cooking is done and the generator stops. How simple is that? Such generators do exist but Amazon and eBay can't sell them to me because I can't find them via their broken search engines and I'm not going to waste time and bandwidth ploughing through 32,000,000 irrelevant listings under "generator" when it'll be found under something unexpected like "porcupines".

The whole idea of how generators work is faintly ludicrous. They're about as Heath Robinson as its possible to become without collapsing into a fit of giggles. It's translating the pumping motion of a piston via a cam shaft into a circular motion to spin an electric motor to generate power. If the generator was also a piston, none of this spinny nonsense would occur and the whole thing would be lighter, smaller, cheaper and vastly more efficient. Indeed a few weeks ago I recall reading that one of the car manufacturers had created such a generator for a concept car. If the generator ever gets produced then sign me up!

Before work, I visited Lowe's and came out with more 10-24 screw eyes - 6 to be precise and a single 2 inch S hook. I wanted to try just one s hook rather than buy a bunch and find they were the wrong size.

After work and after dinner, I got to work and put up 4 rivnuts. I cut down 4 screw hooks from 2" of thread to 1". Then I dipped the threads in silicone sealant and screwed them into the rivnuts. I will put up a further two, when I know where I want them. That is as yet undecided though.

By now you're probably wondering what it's all in aid of. The answer is simple. As I'm not bothering too much with lighting and extra circuitry, I need somewhere to hang my hurricane lamp and here we are!

I put one above the dinette, one above the kitchenette, one above the hand basin and one between the bed and bedroom table. I suspect I'll put one opposite the bed to illuminate the wardrobe and one in close proximity to the shower though as I have yet to decide precisely where the shower is going to stand, that'll have to wait some.

Tomorrow I need to get more S hooks. No point in getting more than 5 as I only have or had six 10-24 rivnuts left after doing the closet chain.

There's becoming ever less that needs doing. Next I have to work on the plumbing. I'll probably try to do it with two 15 gallon tanks, one for white and one for grey. 15 gallons doesn't sound like a whole lot but reading around I don't think I'll need more. I can always add more later though.

A nice side project for a rainy day would be blinds for the windows. That's not important right now though. The outside could do with more grey paint on the roof and inside the front two wheel arches. I think I'll also paint over the NSA 2011 logo. I think I want my grey bus to be as anonymous as possible. Aside from that, the stencilling is a bit raggedy.