Absa-bloody-lutely exhausted

This has been a standard week for work - driving school busses from the bus yard to the school via children's homes and the reverse. Well, it all sounds standard until you deal with no aide on a bus that absolutely needs an aide and where an aide is a legal requirement. What do you do when there's no aide? The children still have to get to school! It makes the driver's life harder to the point almost of distracted driving. It has been this way for a couple of weeks since my aide has been driving other people's busses while they have been off sick. Needless to say, that leaves me just absolutely exhausted. Exhausted to the point I just want a dark corner with my tablet and a bottle of cheap vodka, from where I would probably post regrettable comments online.

After Eric left, I noted that the toilet despite having two days of poo in it did not smell. That cat lit sure does the trick! Anyway, as said before I was absolutely shattered after long days of driving, many with no midday nap. You try driving from 5:30AM to 4:50PM without having a nap between shifts if you think that's wimpy! Then try it with a 35 foot, 16 ton bus in heavy and unpredictable traffic where people can and do ignore stop signs, flashing lights and can't see a great big yellow bus on the road. More than that, try it with a bus load of hyperactive, sometimes violent children with behavioral disorders. Then try it on roads that are collapsing due to underground subsidence. So, I was exhausted most days.

The bag of poo that I jettisoned out through the side door was still where it was when I threw it out during the week. Hence, today I got a shovel and buried it. I chose an anthill as the best place to dig because the ants had already loosened the soil underneath. Then having buried the aforementioned bag of poo, I covered the lot over with the leaves that had been there before I started.

I have to say that it looks almost as though there never has been any digging there. That's pretty good in my opinion as I can clearly disguise burial sites without much difficulty. I wonder whether it would be as easy to disguise the burial sites of the bodies of unpopular figures such as Saddam Hussein etc? Oh well, since no government never took me on as a hit man on one of their assassination squads, I guess I'll never know.

Inside the bus was a pleasant 75 a few minutes ago though this has now climbed to 77. I expect my extraction fan will kick in sooner rather than later. I sit here looking at all the stuff I want to do and not feeling like doing anything. I am literally exhausted.

I need to get down to welding a holder for my 35AH Harbor Freight battery. Researching online, I found a nice PDF of bolt strengths. My preferred bolt for fastening things under the bus is a 5/16 though I have reservations as to how strong the C section steel girders are. It seems they should hold 270LBS each at the thread root. I'm not worried about sheer strength which is pretty impressive for that size of bolt - something like 4000 - 8000 pounds.

My battery weighs about 20LBs so supported in a welded cage suspended from two lengths of angle iron, both bolted using four bolts each end, each bolt will be supporting just about one pound of battery weight plus a portion of the battery holder weight. I'm going to say that it all should work out nicely. I see what the bus mechanic from work said when he saw my waste barrel attachements as he asked how many tons of lead I wished to put in them.

Eric is somebody that has done a lot of his own welding in the past. He used to run a taxicab company and left me with the advice that the only thing that separates amateur welding from professional welding is that professionals clean their welds using an angle grinder. That would probably have two advantages. The first is that it reduces the surface area, eliminating nooks and crannies where water can accumulate and cause rust and the second is just that it looks more professional. From a personal point of view, I don't give a rat's arse what my welds look like as long as they work.

Another bit of advice Eric gave was again based on his taxi company. In an effort to maximize profits, he experimented with tyres buying new off brand tyres, new premium brand tyres, remold tyres and used premium brand tyres. The best value for money was in used premium brand tyres. Now that's something I had considered. I have four remolds at the back and two undated premium brand on the front. I'm concerned about the lack of a date on my front Dunlop tyres. I'm not a fan of remolds having seen remolds fall apart.

As can be seen, this remold has fallen apart. Worse - it happened while the user was driving, last year. I've seen all kinds of horrible things happen with remolds which is why - no matter how little I earn - I refuse to touch remolds. They're for the truly desperate. For my daily vehicle, I use premium brand tyres and it shows - I've had the same tyres now for 50,000 miles and there's still plenty tread.

So, what needs doing on the bus?

• I need to complete the wiring that runs from the front to the back, underneath the bus - including adding in a section where one wire is too short. 
• There's a wire that needs to go from the bedroom to the back of the bus.
• The battery controls all need to lead to the back of the bus as I decided that's where I was going to put everything.
• The battery cage needs to be built and mounted under the bus. Then I need to run wires from that to the control box at the back of the bus.
• I'd like to add a water inlet so that I can have fresh water going into the handbasin. That would involve finding the faucet I removed from the handbasin when I said I was just going to use a jug of water only. I'm not sure where that faucet has vanished to.
• I have a timer unit and a fuse box I want to put on the solar system together with installing a second fan and possibly changing the exhaust vent covers from the current mushroom vents to a louvered flap vent.
• I'd like to install an instant water heater. That involves a little plumbing and some wiring from my 120v distribution panel.
• I have a code lock for my front door lock - I just need to install it and to add a button on the inside that allows me to close the door lock from the inside, without a key.
• Although my toilet works just fine, I want eventually to put in a flush toilet. Thinking about it, if I can use an old stainless steel beer keg (that involves welding stainless steel and buying a respirator) then that shouldn't be too costly.

In terms of doing stuff today, I'm rather disappointed that I really don't feel like doing anything much. I'd love to dive straight in but I'm just exhausted from the week just past. Normally when I felt like this in the past, I'd just go to Harbor Freight or someplace else for supplies but I have enough supplies to finish the electrical work on the 12V side and don't want to go overboard. I've tended to skip from one project to another throughout the process and it has worked. I want to complete one project at a time now since so few projects remain.

Tested and found passable

A few days ago a message appeared on my phone. It was my old buddy Eric. He'd been wandering the icy wastelands of the far North in the strange land they call Canada. Yes, that's right - the land of the Labbatts swilling Mountie. Those same Mounties that so famously sang the chorus to Monty Python's Lumberjack Song.

I never wanted to do this job in the first place!

I... I wanted to be...

A lumberjack!

(piano vamp)

Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of

British Columbia! With my best girl by my side!

The Larch!

The Pine!

The Giant Redwood tree!

The Sequoia!

The Little Whopping Rule Tree!

We'd sing! Sing! Sing!

Oh, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay,

I sleep all night and I work all day.

Chorus: He's a lumberjack, and he's okay,

He sleeps all night and he works all day.

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch,

I go to the lava-try.

On Wednesdays I go shoppin'

And have buttered scones for tea.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch,

He goes to the lava-try.

On Wednesdays 'e goes shoppin'

And has buttered scones for tea.

Chorus

I cut down trees, I skip and jump,

I like to press wild flowers.

I put on women's clothing,

And hang around in bars.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps,

He likes to press wild flowers.

He puts on women's clothing

And hangs around.... In bars???????

Chorus

I chop down trees, I wear high heels,

Suspenders and a bra.

I wish I'd been a girlie

Just like my dear papa.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he wears high heels

Suspenders?? And a.... A Bra????

(spoken, raggedly) What's this? Wants to be a "girlie"? Oh, My!

And I thought you were so rugged! Poofter!

Chorus

All: He's a lumberjack, and he's okaaaaaaayyy..... (Bong)

Sound Cue: The Liberty Bell March, by John Phillip Sousa.

So,with a couple of days notice I was able to hide incriminating evidence and bury the bodies that had been so carefully stored on my bus.  The water came from a 6 gallon jerry can and Eric would be happy with that, I figured, as that's largely how his house in the South of France worked. The toilet was based on one of Eric's toilets that he'd shown on his house-building blog.

With that, Eric rolled up at 4pm on Saturday and was introduced to the bus. I have to say I didn't think my first guest would have been a man. I thought it would be a woman. With that being said, he was there and had light, a bed, water, a shower and a toilet.

The verdict on the bed was that it was very comfortable and just the right height.  No mention was made of the toilet nor handbasin save for that he was used to that kind of thing. He did ask to spend a second night which indicated things weren't that bad nor did he request to be pointed to the nearest Motel 6.

The toilet was clearly acceptable and worked, judging from the fact it was used. I'd opted for a bucket with a plastic liner and cat lit in a bucket beside the toilet. After he'd been using the toilet for number one and two for two days and nights and the temperatures being quite warm, I have to report that the place still smelled fresh. Clearly the cat lit works.

Emptying the toilet was interesting. I'd not expected the bag to be quite so heavy. I'll have to give consideration to emptying more frequently. I'd sited the toilet by the emergency exit with the thought I could unload the toilet via the emergency exit door rather than carrying containers full of nastiness through the kitchen. That worked well though simply tossing the bag out onto the ground probably isn't the best solution. Likewise, burying the bag isn't probably the best solution either.

I'm giving more thought to a 15 gallon barrel solution with some kind of big faucet that I can open in order to pour the content into a 5 gallon barrel that I can carry to a dump site or perhaps attach to a waste pipe and just plumb in temporarily. That could work with a flush toilet and providing I don't pee in the handbasin nor the shower, both of those could be water sources for the toilet.

The mystery be solved

It's hard to see amidst the spaghetti jumble of wiring but the mystery is solved. I'd made a small error in my interpretation of the wiring diagram. Now, when the correct code is entered, the buzzer sounds for 5 or 6 seconds. My next task will be to time my door unlocker. I believe it takes about 5 seconds to open. If not then I might just have to enter the code twice to open the door. Not a major problem!

It turned out that I had to connect the purple wire to the negative, the blue wire to the black wire of my buzzer and the red wire to the positive. Now that's all sorted out, I can get the rest of my door lock working. There is an alarm setting whereby an alarm can be set to sound if the wrong code is entered. I have no specific use for that piezo buzzer so I might assign that as my alarm. It's certainly loud enough!

Why I'd made the elementary mistake before was simply from tiredness. I get so many interesting issues on the special needs schoolbus I drive for work that no day is standard and no journey is routine. I get exhausted by the end of the day. Today, for example, I'm home and so tired I'm literally walking into things. But at least my door unlocker keypad is closer to being installed.

Siting the keypad is an interesting issue. If I put a keypad hatch then somebody nefarious might open it to see what's under the hatch. I could mount it inside the fuel hatch but as I'm going to put a lock on that, it wouldn't be smart. I thought of mounting it underneath but I might be parked on soft mud and might need access when I'm in my Sunday best. I'll find somewhere.

Mysteries of locks

A few days ago, the electronic door keypad I ordered, arrived. Thus I set to today to make the thing work. Programming it was straightforward enough and I could get the light to turn green from red.

 First the light was red..

Then the light was green...

As you can see, I connected the keypad to a 12v battery. I connected a 12v buzzer (bottom right) and tried to make the buzzer buzz. It didn't so maybe I'll have to rethink my reading of the instructions, the salient point of which is here.

It looks as though I should connect the blue wire to the buzzer and the buzzers other wire to the negative. I did that and nothing happened. That has me just a little flummoxed.

86F and lying on hot tarmac

Today I started the bus and took it out to add wiring underneath. I'm happy to say that it drove well though as I'm not used to it, I was a trifle close to the center line. I suspect the driver's seat is more central than on my usual bus.

The bad - my alternator belt squeaked a little and my GPS speedometer does not seem to work too well any more. There was a hot smell under the hood - not sure what that was but the engine temperature was good. The whole bus needs the attention of a decent mechanic for a clean and grease anyway. My CB didn't seem to want to turn on. That isn't a huge problem though. The rev counter kicked in only on the return journey. A couple of piles of boxes tipped over and one contained a wine glass that now has a broken stem.

The good - on the occasion my GPS speedometer worked, it agreed with my speedometer. The bus drove well. The fact my speedo worked proves the addon speed sensor under the bus is utterly redundant and can be removed.

It was hotter than I thought and the heat gave me a headache. I'd parked near a filling station on a dead end road in order to roll my creeper under the bus. In use I found the creeper to be fairly mixed. It helped a little but not as much as I'd hoped. I spent quite a few sessions lying on the hot tarmac. I could put one cable connector on then I had to sit in the shade to cool down.

By the time I quit for the day, I'd attached the cables from the cockpit to the back of the bus. One pair of wires was too short as I suspected but it won't be a problem to extend them. The cable clamps were a little loose so I put an extra cable sleeve on my wires. That made it all work. I need more cable sleeve and more wires. I need to add more cable clamps but that's a job for another day.

There's a photo of my bus on its first journey in quite a while. It was so bright I couldn't see the screen hence a finger crept into the image. I'm glad to be able to show the bus in different surroundings. Maybe next weekend I can finish the wiring. It was nice to be able to work without insect issues. The temperature was a little too much though. Having said that, if I go to the same place next week, I'll be less dumb and will park the other way around so that I can work in the shade and not in the hot sun.

180 CFM, maybe?

Today I noticed my electronic keypad looked like it was out for delivery. The eBay tracking said "On it's way to destination" so I though it would arrive today. It did not - I actually met the postman at the bottom of the driveway and did receive a package and a nice letter The letter was just my bus insurance, keeping me road legal. The package was my anemometer.

I measured the wind speed at the mouth of my newest bilge blower at 1200 feet a minute. I measured the air blowing out of one of my vents at the back of the bus at 360 feet a minute. That means I'm getting a little over half the air volume out of the back of the bus that the fans advertise. That might be due to the mushroom duct covers or it could be the mesh screen at the duct cover end is glued over a plastic drain cover which loses probably 1/3rd of the clear surface area due to a thick, plastic grate.

There are two possible resolutions to the air-speed problem with the back vents. One is to clear away the plastic blockage and replace it with a strongly fastened mosquito mesh. The other is to simply do away with a filter at the back and rely solely upon the front filter combined with frequent blasts of air from the blower. It might also be a good idea to replace the mushroom vents with flapper vents though I'm afraid a strong wind might just snap the louvres.

Realizing my planned external solar input (could even be wind input) needed a bracket made so that the power plug could hang downward, I started to drill some of my steel bracket. The first pilot hole went through readily enough with my new rechargeable drill. Enlarging the hole went well until I got close to the required size. Then cutting got incredibly slow with my being able to do a couple of seconds work between half an hour of letting the work and the tool cool down. That was pretty slow.

In the meantime I started on making a hole in the floor for my thick bundle of cables. That started well but then I hit a snag in that the first cable passes very close under where I have started my hole. That means I'll have to complete enlarging the hole from underneath the bus. I have a lot of things to move inside the bus to put securely before I move the bus though.

Part of my problem with not getting much done is that I'm off for just two days a week, most weeks and I run a schedule that is just plain exhausting. I am normally up at 04:00 in the morning, at work by 05:30 and out on the road in a bus by 05:45. At 08:45 I'm usually back at work having completed my morning run. That is, unless I have an extra hour to do. By 13:30 I'm back in my bus at work and on the road, returning to the office at 16:50 approximately. Then on two days a week I have a further run from 17:40 until 20:30. Add to that unscheduled meetings and driving my car to and from between work and where I live which is half an hour each way. No wonder I'm exhausted - that's between 6.25 and 9.75 hours work driving a day plus 2 hours of my own driving. That's up to 12 hours driving per day and it's exhausting - not physically but mentally. Add to that, the temperature on the work bus can be over 100F and I have no water at all with me for that entire time. I get dehydrated. It's nothing for me to drink a liter of water in the car on the way home and to suffer frequent issues because of dehydration.

The reason I want to have the solar input cable out of sight is so that nobody messes with it. That's pretty much the same for everything on the bus. I've hidden just about everything out of sight. Sure - if you look you'll see a waste barrel if you look at the rear wheel arch. I'm hoping that rapidly gets covered with road debris and mud, thus becoming unrecognizable. Otherwise, I'd just drill a hole in the bus skirt and put the connector through that.

In the end after seeming to get nowhere for a very long time, I finally managed to get the hole large enough for the cigarette lighter socket to fit. The next stage will be attaching the gizmo to the skirt. For some obscure reason, the skirt where I want to attach the socket is screwed on rather than riveted. I'll do the same with my mount, just in case. When its installed, I'll slop some silicone goop over the connections after everything is correctly connected. To be safe, I'll probably add some kind of safety feature so that if something is plugged in with reversed polarity, a fuse blows.

I must admit to being disappointed with the amount of work completed today but on the other hand, much of what I need to do involves going underneath. That, of course, is not my favorite thing to do.

Looking at the busses at work, I noticed they all have locking covers over the fuel tank. That seeming like a good idea, I mentioned that on one of those God-foresaken bus conversion groups online. Of course, the answer came back to buy a new fuel hatch door with a built-in lock. Idly, I looked those up and they were all very small. They were also very expensive. Thus I measured the lock on my fuel door and found it to be close enough to 3/4 of an inch. It also had a non-locking cam closure. Looking on eBay, I saw several in various different sizes. None in the size I want though so I'm thinking my next best stop will probably be the local hardware store. Cam locks are not exactly uncommon and in fact, most fuel doors have cam locks. According to eBay prices they range from about $5 upwards. That's way better than $20 for a new door!

Honestly, those bus conversion forums are all totally nuts. They are chattering on one at the moment about how much it costs to repaint a bus. Figures were quoted in the thousands. Most people with any sense use a roller and a pot or two of paint from the hardware store. Mine cost probably $200 to paint  - not $10,000 as some quoted. As a defense against such a ludicrous suggestion somebody said they managed to get into a campground where only new motorhomes were allowed. My question is - if somebody is prepared to reject my good money by refusing to let me camp on their land - why should I even care? It's their business and money that they loose. I just mosey on and find somewhere cheaper or free. Besides, how are they going to know the age of your vehicle unless you're dumb enough to tell them? It's possible to disguise the age anyway - all it needs is (if you're that desperate) to put a sticker in some prominent place claiming some fictitious manufacture date. No business has a right to inspect your vehicle or enter your vehicle and even a policeman cannot unless invited or in possession of a search warrant. That includes lifting the hood. I'll go further - the bus groups are full of nonsense. One has to be very suspect of anything said there. I wouldn't mind betting most posters don't even know anybody with a bus.

Just as I thought I'd got the bracket to fit just right, it refused to allow the socket I wanted to mount through the hole. It worked just find for my test socket but for the one I wanted to use, no way. That's frustrating and means more work tomorrow.

Hurricane Irma

Today was supposed to have been a work day but due to Hurricane Irma, that got cancelled. I can't quite figure that one out because all we have is some wind and rain. Tomorrow is supposed to be a work day and I can't figure that one out either because tomorrow is supposed to be the really bad day or the start of a few really bad days.

Needless to say, I had high hopes of working on the bus today. I'd hoped to have a day dry enough to get underneath to install one or both of the cables I made up over the weekend. I also hoped that I'd be able to get underneath to measure the ribs in order to work out whether I can simply bolt a battery cage for my Harbor Freight lead-acid battery into place. If I can do that then I have the option of welding or bolting the cage together.

Sitting in the bus today, I look at the stuff needing to be done. The vast majority needs a good sunny day. Though I have LED lantern lighting in here, it's really not bright enough to do any meaningful work. I can blog but that's about the limit of what's achievable.

At the risk of being a bit repetative and boring, I've got the solar electrics to complete. I need to work a bit on the ventilation and also work on the plumbing with possibly an instant water heater going into the mix.

Today I have been reading all kinds of entertaining nonsense on the online bus groups. On one group they were saying Pex tubing absolutely cannot be connected using "dime store" jubilee clips. That's sheer nonsense as I've always connected my hoses with jubilee clips. Another prize piece of nonsense was somebody saying that air filters expire after 2-3 years and they cited a manufacturer's website claiming so. Well, of course they'd day that - they'll say anything in order to sell more filters. It seems that these online groups are filled with people that cannot think independently and are not willing to question anything they're told. As somebody that thinks outside the box, I find this failure of other people to be somewhat annoying. This is probably why I like to do things on my own so much.

I managed to lock myself out of the bus today. That had me thinking of ways to get in. I had to resort to a key I'd left elsewhere in the end. Had that not been available, I'd have been a bit stuck. Looking around at keypad switches I was baffled about how to make a simple pulse provide constant power to then somebody suggested a latching relay. That would do it! I'll work on that after I've completed my underbus solar wiring. Given the rain today, my preferred site for such a unit which would be underneath the bus doesn't seem that practical. I suspect a better location would be under the hood.

Lots left to do.