Ouch Problems

My back is still hurting from when I twisted it the other day. Ignoring that, yesterday I went shopping to get myself some connectors for my solar system. The wiring on the solar connectors is red and black. The wiring on the connectors from the car parts store is white and red. The really crazy thing though I only discovered today - the red is not the same on both connectors. Thus red goes to white and black goes to red. Very confusing to be honest. The wire gauge seems a little light too. I’d have expected heavier.

Now I discovered that having spent a while with a gas soldering iron yesterday soldering connectors to my volts, watts, amps meter. I connected to my test solar panel and nothing happened. Switching the wires around and it worked.

That was not a major issue. I decided to try charging a 7AH SLA battery that I bought in Radio Shack’s closing sale. I’d glued a cigarette lighter adaptor and USB adaptor to it so I figured it would work just fine charging it from the solar panel while checking my cigarette lighter voltmeter. Well, that was the plan.

The first place I put the panel it was in shade and didn’t charge so I put it on the hood of the bus. Then I decided it could slip off so I picked up the battery having disconnected the solar panel. Somehow I lost my grip on the heavy battery and it fell to the ground. It must have landed on the voltmeter as that was smashed. The top came off the battery. The battery looks OK but I wouldn’t trust it now. The only good thing - the USB/cigarette lighter part looks undamaged though I did glue it to the top of the battery which popped off.

After I’d glued it, I realised that had been a silly move. Looking at what was lost however, though there was probably more money than I realise, all that stuff was redundant. The voltmeter was not great at telling me the bus driving battery voltage (which is why it was purchased). The SLA battery had been superseded by a subsequent battery and the 12v adaptors are of a style I just don’t use Net loss some money that had been spent anyway but nothing vital. The solar panel also landed on the ground but was light enough not to have suffered.

Yesterday I changed the charge controller again to a simpler variety. It’s still PWM not MPPT - not that the difference adds to a hill of beans - but works better. Now instead of solar and battery voltages showing up as the same voltage I get a read out of both.

The battery voltage there was 13.5 while the solar voltage was 13.8. Now that the battery has charged some, I’ve noticed that everything seems to be behaving better than before. The fault must have been that fancy charge controller. Not the one that went bananas but the subsequent one too.

I’ve been thinking about making money from my new knowledge and expertise on school bus conversion and solar/wind power. I’m probaby going to a bus meet sometime this autumn, all things being equal, and will probably put some displays together. At the very least it will help new people understand how to do things. At best it will maybe get me some trade teaching others how to do everything. Whether any money comes my way remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, I disconnected the timer I put on my fans. That was really interesting because even with the fans in the off position, there seemed to be voltage passing through them. Not enough to move the fan but enough to make the fan go thump each time the wire was touched. Now that is a current loss and that looks likely to be the timer as the culprit. Both fans do it so the common factor there is the timer. That is the problem with an over-clever timer. If it ran off a 9v battery that needed to be replaced every 6 months things would be fine. as it is, it has an internal battery and recharges off the 12v power supply. That’s just adding to the problems. I just don’t get why these electronics people keep forgetting Keep It Simple, Stupid! Something simple that works is far more appreciated than something that does everything and is a pain in the neck to use.

My fan timer is a pain in the neck because I have to set the fan times using a digital display and button poking. Who’s got time for that kind of namby pamby nonsense. Give me a dial with setting I can put and a duration. Done. Run it off PP3 and done! Clearly I need to raise my solar input to cover such wastage. I’m already most of the way toward that goal. I only need to plug a solar panel in in the cockpit, placed in the bus window. That will provide ample power.

Out of interest I compared the old 5 inch CPU fans to my current fans. My current fans have no problem blowing my vent covers open. The CPU fans didn’t have the power. That was an interesting experiment. Speaking of which, my plan for the laundry is to have a 5” CPU fan blowing on the laundry. That will get it drier a lot faster.

Finally, that old battery - the one that got dropped. As it’s now untrustworthy I thought I’d put a bolt across the terminals and retreat to a safe distance to see what happened. Sadly, I had nowhere safe to do that. The other alternative would have been shooting it but it seems I’ve been asked to quit shooting things up at the back of the property.

Ouch a bad back!

A few days ago, I twisted awkwardly and hurt my back. That’s put a stopper on most things. Today for example though I’m way better I could not bend down to put my socks on!

So, yesterday I sat quietly in the bus writing a articles. I had my tablet and phone connected to my USB charger. My ventilation fan would cut in and out as required. Then suddenly it didn’t cut in. An hour later when it should have cut in again, all the lights went out.

Working through the problems it looked like it could be either the battery or the charge controller that had failed. The battery should not have failed as the battery was new last year. I’d say I bought it in June and installed it in November but I could be wrong. With my bad back, I can’t get under the bus to look either!

Today I got to my system and found that I’d riveted the old charge controller to the wall. That was not very convenient and I must spank my bottom for doing that! I was very naughty. I was so glad to have a switch on the battery supply. That made removing everything that much safer and easier. While I was in the vicinity I also put in a switch on the solar power so that I can switch the solar off as well as the battery. Never know when that might come in handy.

The solar charge controller is the one I’d been using for a very long time. Looking at it, I can see exactly why I should have had problems. It was a 10A charge controller and I was using far more than 10A. I was possibly using up to 20A. I replaced it with a 30A.

As can be clearly seen, I had a 10A charge controller. I’m not surprised it was unhappy with more than 10A going through it.

So, the charge controller was replaced with a similar controller but this time, rather than using rivets the controller is attached using 6-32 rivnuts and 6-32 bolts. That way I can switch it out if I have to. Top left you can also see my solar panel switch.

Having replaced all that, things are still not hunky dory. Currently the charge does not seem to be getting that high and seems to be dropping very rapidly. I disconnected one circuit that leads to the extraction fans just in case that was the problem but though it was live, that wasnt the issue. I went through all the fuses to see if anything else was live and it wasn’t. That led me to suspect in turn that the new charge controller might not be that good.

Looking around (not very hard) I found another charge controller. This time a 20A controller. Putting that in place was the matter of a very few minutes being able just to unscrew the other and screw the new one in place then switching the solar and power back on.

Although it was a new controller, the battery voltage didn’t seem to improve massively leading me to suspect that the old controller might have drained the battery despite the parameters having been very carefully set. It could well also be that lightning hit the bus at some point. I did find that I had a lot of blown fuses one time when nothing had been used. That was after a storm. There have been a few storms lately.

I’m going to let the thing charge for most of tomorrow morning. Probably 6 hours of sunshine should get at least 7ah into the battery. Measuring the voltage is a bit hit and miss to be honest. I’ve never seen a voltage less than 12.9 on my built-in meters before today. I’m hoping that if it was a lightning strike, it didn’t take out any solar panels.

Ventilation experiments

Yesterday I triedan experiment with my ventilation fans. I reversed them. Within a few minutes, cool air had flooded into the back of the bus together with choking amounts of pollen. That wasn’t so good! Having said that, it did prove that the mosquito mesh is too small and too restrictive. I have a flat mesh over a plastig grill on the end of the ventilation duct. Beyond that are my mushroom domes.

Experiments earlier in the year proved that the mushroom domes and the mosquito mesh were reducing airflow by about 40%. It uses more energy for the fans to push air through a constricted duct than to pull it out of a constricted duct.

Since in one of my earlier experiments I found that removing the plastic grill and replacing it with just a mesh increased airflow from 1400 FPS to 1500 FPS, I was determined to find a way to increase it further. Clearly as the wire of the mesh takes up space and therefore a percentage of the air, it was important to have something that wasn’t flat. Something convex or concave as the mosquito mesh.

I tried, to make a dome covered in mosquito mesh but it was not a success because mosquito mesh is flat, not convex. That put me on hold for a while. I’d found that the louvered vents had their own issues with not closing fully every time.

The louvered vents claim to be paintable. I’ve tried oil paint, latex paint and now paint that claims to be good for plastic. Nothing thus far seems to be adhering all that well. Despite that I’m plugging on with my mission to improve ventilation.

One though I had was to put the louvered vents up and a stainless steel sieve over them. Indeed, I bought a sieve but then when I was in Walmart I also saw sink strainers. The mesh is slightly bigger but not that much bigger. The wonderful thing about them is that they’re concave. Their concavity more than makes up for the obstruction to airflow posed by the wires.

Thinking on the outlets, I did buy some aluminum disks of 3” diameter to go into my 3” piping, together with a hinge so that airflow would blow the disk out of the way and gravity would bring it back. Sadly it seems that the 3” disks bought on ebay are actually undersized while the tubes are slightly oversized. That made that idea a fail as there’s no way to prevent critters entering past the disk.

The solution (on the inside of the bus) is to put a 3inch to 4 inch converter on my exhaust fans then the sink strainer on that. It’s all glued with some stuff called “Liquid Nails” so I’ll have to see how good that is and how long it all stays together. This is the belt and braces approach as on the outside I will have my louvered vents.

Putting the louvered vents on could be challenging since I cut the plates that the tubing comes through to be hexagonal. I’ll have to cut some plexiglass to fit to square it all, insert some rivnuts into the bus so the vents can be mounted then hope and pray that the paint stays on them. The vents should stop backdraft, water ingress and bugs getting in. If they get past the louvered vents then when they reach the sink strainer, that’ll stop them. Those in the system will just get blown out. I will just have to see how it works.

In other news, I have some elastometric paint. That’s going to get painted on the roof after I give the roof a quick wash with my industrial cleaner. On the tin, it claims to reflect 67% of the heat and sunlight. I’m very dubious hence I bought just one tin. That should be enough for most of the roof. The ordinary white paint I put up there worked phenomenally well. I doubt this will work that much better but it’s worth trying.

The dog ate my homework!

The dog ate my homework and that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. No posts for several weeks - utterly shameful! There is, however, a good excuse. Sadly it’s not as fun as having a job as a food taster for the US President nor being sent out to test all the various holiday packages around the world.

The reality is that over the last few months I’d been helping a friend out with her mother who was in the final stage of her life. Anyway, after being the first to discover she’d had second thoughts about planet Earth and had decided to move on to better things, there was a frantic rush. The trailer people were living in had certain issues and everybody needed to move out. Two other trailers were available, both in pretty sad states of repair.

In the past weeks I’ve been fixing floors, fixing plumbing but mostly building a disabled ramp for my friend. Then there was the Hughesnet satellite internet nightmare. I’ll be honest I’m not good with ladders but my friend had a letter from Hughesnet stating that if her deceased mother was unable to climb onto the roof to retrieve the box at the end of the arm on the dish to return it to them by post then they’d send their boys around to retrieve It themselves and would charge her $300. Really and truly had that been a letter addressed to me, the response would have been along the lines of... She’s dead - send the bill to the cemetary. Or more likely “get knotted and by the way I’m charging rent for every day that thing remains on my property”. As it is, my friend cannot get on the roof being registered disabled. She can barely walk from the bedroom to the bathroom!

Thus, up on the roof I was and a jolly good thing too. The satellite installers had not waterproofed their screws and so everything pulled out easily, the lack of waterproofing having caused water seepage that had rotted the wood. Needless to say as it’s not safe to climb down a ladder with a huge satellite dish on my back, I tossed the thing with much joy onto the ground where it got thoroughly bent. It got even more bent when I threw it on the trash pile.

Over the past few weeks I have managed to do a few things though. Today I set to in the bus and installed a light in the back closet above the emergency exit. I’d needed a light for a year and more. It was almost simple though I did attach the switch using rivnuts.

I loved the fact I didn’t really have to do any wiring. The wire from the light was perfectly long enough to reach into the switch. The other wire was perfectly long enough to reach the fuse box.

I put a lock on the battery door. I’d looked at all the funky locking door paddles and in the end decided rather than to spend $30+ replacing the paddle lock, I’d just put an ordinary Ace lock on the door. It worked really well. I did the same with the fuel door. Now I know what people are saying “Ace locks aren’t very secure” and this is true. The fact is though that I’d rather somebody picked the damned lock than broke the door to get to whatever they’re after. It’s much more expensive to replace the door or fix it than anything else. My good friend Glendoria had her home broken into. The stuff they stole was nothing much to bother about. The mess they created was horrible. The major problem was fixing the door after they broke it down.

That’s the lock on the battery door. As the Ace lock needs a hole with flats on two sides, I had to buy a shim to attach to the door (hence the two rivets). I could drill the hole just fine but don’t have a way of easily making a not round hole.

The lock on the fuel door was much simpler. That already had the right not round hole. I just slipped my lock in, tightened it all and it was done. Now my batteries and fuel are slightly more secure. I am thing though of putting a kill switch under the skirt, passed through the battery compartment wall so that I can flip it without having to unlock the door.

Today there was a forecast for a tornado, thunderstorm (with damaging winds) and a wind advisory. I’m glad to say that only the thunderstorm rain arrived. At least it will wash some of the pollen off the bus. Despite having taken lots of antihystemines I’ve been coughing, spluttering and have had it’s runny eyes for the past few days.

That pollen is pretty awful. In the yard here (4 acres) there’s a chicken coop and the water though changed regularly is green with pollen.

While I was in Walmart one day I found some elastometric white paint. I’ll wash the roof with my purple industrial cleaner and roll white elastometric paint on top and see what effect it has. One can is not supposed to be enough but I’ll see how far it goes before spending money on more.

My louvered vents that I bought have all proven to be pretty sad. They work reasonably well and claim to be paintable but thus far no paint has ended up staying on them. I tried both oil and acrylic paints. The acrylic scratches right off and the oil bubbles and peels off. I think the person that sold them wasn’t entirely honest. Thus, on with the next idea which is to use a hinge and a 3 inch diameter aluminum flapper. That I can put together on the ground and then install when I get up to the bus roof again.

The digital code lock still needs to be installed but it will be soon. Other than that, nothing to report other than I’ve been looking for better work than driving school busses.

I was feeling grotty!

Today started in a fairly lackluster way with my being slow to move. Then during the day I was plagued by an upset stomach. Thinking critically about it, I’d bet that was down to yesterday. I spent most of yesterday helping to replace a badly rotted floor in an unused trailer. I bet that I was breathing in mold, mildew and other nasties.

In the picture you can see mold on the wall and the floor that’s rotted. In fact there was more rotted floor going right across the trailer. Needless to say, it was an all day job!

So, today I took it fairly easy. Yesterday my replacement USB charger arrived but as I had no more of the cute Radio Shack square red push-button switches I opted to use a paddle switch for the voltmeter. That meant I was short of a switch for something else. As the accessory socket with USB charger insert had no light on it and since I had an illuminated switch, it made sense just to have the illuminated switch working the cigarette-lighter USB socket combination. I opted not to use the duel voltage USB socket that I’d bought. Well, perhaps not this time. There might be a future use for it.

Today my extra 1A fuses arrived so I spent quite a few minutes working through my fuse boxes, replacing overlarge fuses with 1A. I need some 4A fuses but I don’t currently have any. I’m not sure they make them so 5A has to suffice.

I spent quite a while working on the inside of my box. I totally lacked right-angled connectors so at one point I just had to pull out the soldering iron. Needless to say I got interrupted twice by the call of the throne.

Once that was completed I had to install it which is where I suddenly had to rush off to the car parts store because I had run out of - of all things - blue male connectors (like the one on the red lead at the bottom of the photo). Infuriatingly I needed just two for this project. I’ll need more for the digital code lock for the front door though so now I’m good.

While I was at the auto-parts store I asked about a cam lock for the fuel door and a locking paddle latch for the battery door. They didn’t have anything but one of their displays looked old enough to be priced in Confederate money.  Their suggestion was to try an RV parts store. That might be highly priced but it’s worth a shot.

Assuming I add no further circuits inside the bus, the projects remaining are:
1. Door code lock
2. Battery door lock
3. Fuel door lock
4. Tidying wiring for the keyed door lock and the solar input.

I had a think about the air vents and have another potential solution. That involves using a gravity flapper and a hood. I think to be honest I’m probably going to have to pull my vent tubing out and redo the vents. That was why I returned the vinyl plank I’d bought and didn’t proceed further than trying things. I had a feeling I was going to have to redo it fairly extensively.

I’m rather glad I’ve got a light over the desk in the front of the bus. It means when I clear construction debris and materials, I’ll be able to move my swivel chair to the galley and sit there to blog or whatever. Speaking of the galley however, I realised there’s another task or rather two. The first is to make some method of holding the microwave down and the other to put a bar in front of the fridge so that it doesn’t slip out of its hidy hole.

This bus has come a long way since my first panicked look at the newly emptied interior. I remember looking at that and wondering what I’d let myself in for. Meanwhile in my conversation with the fellow in the car parts store, I found that his dad had converted several busses over the years and that 3 years was about how long it normally took single-handed. Maybe I should have used both hands? No - scrub that - this is a family oriented blog!

Oops. Out of essentials!

The first thing I wanted to do today was to install my digital door code lock. I picked out a site for it that looked ideal in fact a couple of sites but then found that the 8-32 bolts I was going to use were unusable due to the size of the bolt head. I needed countersunk screw type heads not hexagon heads. That was, I assure you, quite a disappointment.

Putting the door code lock to one side I looked again at my purple box. By adjusting the cigarette lighter USB charger portion I was able to slip a switch in beside and have some room to spare. That was excellent. It was not the kind of switch I desired so I hunted in my parts box. I didn’t find the switch I was after but I did find one that was suitable. As the USB charger has no LED on it, I opted for an illuminated switch - just to draw attention to the USB charger being on. It all looked quite fetching. More so after I attached my lamp fixture to the top of the box in order to make it an all-in one unit.

Looking around for cable wrap, I found I just didn’t have enough. I’d had ample a few days ago but that was before doing a shed load of wiring. Clearly as I needed cable wrap, 8-32 bolts, 8-32 stop nuts and some earth wire (white), it was time to go to the store. There were things I should have bought but didn’t such as a right-angled female spade connectors and so on as they’d not made it to my list. They didn’t even make it to my list when I had to return to the store a few hours later for floorboards for a trailer that’s being repaired.

So, having got the bits I needed, I attached the box to the wall, putting cable wrap through. Now the cable wrap was 3/8 whereas what I needed was really 1/4 but beggars can’t be choosers. Besides I’d have had to drive to Harbor Freight for the right cable wrap when Lowes (hiss, spit) was less than a quarter of the distance.

That was about as far as today allowed given that other things are happening around me that are pretty disconcerting. The two red wires are positive and the two white wires are negative. The negative will just go to the bus body. The two positive will go to the USB charger and the light but as one cable is 14 gauge and one is 16 gauge a bit further back, the 14 gauge will go to the USB charger and the 16 gauge will go to the light. Speaking of lights, I should have bought more LED bulbs.

I’ve still got the connections to make inside the box - plenty connectors to crimp into place and plenty connections to make on the back of the unit. I might have to resort to soldering some connections without having any right angle connectors.

The wiring went from the box through the wall and down the inside of the shower wall to the cabling already installed. It’s not yet completed but with a little effort tomorrow, it can be. If I get to it tomorrow I might even manage to mount my code lock keypad. That would be truly wonderful!

And finally, for all my non-USA based readers, here are two photos from the outside of a Lowes store. Just so that you know what they look like.

It’s a great big builder supplies store that has everything from palates of wood and concrete blocks to tools and garden supplies. Typically - as with most US stores - it takes up the same space as Wembley stadium. It can take 10 minutes to walk from one side to the other of the store.

Let’s see where we are with things still needing to be done...
1. Complete wiring for my purple box.
2. Install front door unlocker codepad.
3. Install lock on fuel door.
4. Install lock on battery door.
5. Replace bad breaker in console.

That’s about it. There are a couple of bits of wiring to tidy but they hardly merit having individual tasks assigned to them. The battery door and fuel door look like being tasks that’ll take a while.

Water and electricity - what a mix!

Today was a broken up day with several service people calling for different reasons. Clearly not a good day to go to the school district to drop off an application! Thus I went to work on the bus during periods between callers (sometimes two callers simultaneously).

The first thing done was to connect the 12v socket to the 12v supply. That just needed a foot or so of cable. Not having any 12 gauge left I made it work with 10 gauge as I had a foot or so of 10 gauge left over. That was followed by deciding to use a 3A fuse in the fuse box. That seemed to power the shower pump pretty well when I tried it.

That shower pump came from Amazon where it’s listed as an Automobile Shower Set. I have to say it pumps very well and unlike my D cell powered shower, needs no priming. There is a leak where the hose goes into the plastic piece that screws into the handset but there’s nothing I can do about that and honestly, it’s very minor. The part that screwed together leaked like crazy until I applied some plumbers sealant to it.

Of course when it came to the actual handbasin that’s where things went belly up. Water leaked from the tailpipe. I sorted that out by removing the P trap and tightening the nut on the tailpipe. That worked pretty well but as I forgot to tighten the P trap properly, my feet got wet again. So, having tightened the P trap properly there was a very slight drip left.

Where the clear Pex hose connects to the PVC I’ve used a garden hose pipe swivel. That seems to leak. I’ll have to replace the connector. Maybe I’ll just get a 1 inch threaded to threaded connector and glue the daylight out of it. That should sort out the drip.

After that my attention turned to the lighting. I had one light switch remaining and my only assembled light bracket with G4 bulb mount had been painted purple for use in the galley. Thus I got another bracket and sprayed it pink to match the bedroom. After that had dried it was a case of mounting it and putting the switch in place. I wish my electrics looked more elegant but they work and they’re safely done. As I’m now totally out of 1A fuses I had to use a 2A fuse. Actually I should buy a ton more 1A fuses and some 2A and 3A fuses.

The light works quite well though there’s no room to put a light shade on it. On the other hand, that light just illuminates the closet and clothing rack area so looking pretty and being kind on the eyes isn’t so important. My desk lights are more important for that as I like to sit and work at my desks.

Because I thought of a light to go in the back closet I ordered some more G4 bulb mounts. I had to order from China because the price for 10 from China was the same as the price of 1 supplied in the USA. Given that that one came from City of Industry California, it’s a fair bet that it’s just arrived on the boat from The People’s Republic or as I call it The Profiteer’s Republic.

Lifting the hood of the bus I found at least one potential site for my digital door unlocker. I’m not keen to drill through the firewall but I suppose if needs must then I will. There are already plenty holes for cables and pipes that have been capped with plastic caps. That’s probably going to be my very next task.

On order are two more switches. One for the back closet light and one for the light over the desk in the galley. I’ve put the USB charging thingy on the back burner for now. I need a different project box. Buying boxes at random seems not to work very well. It’s so hard on eBay to select the right box when half of them are measured in millimeters and the other half in inches. If Radio Shack was still open, I could probably have found exactly what I needed even though I’d have had to mortgage the country to buy it.

While the switches are on their way and there being nothing much else to do on the list I’ll have a go at the digital code unlocker for the front door. I can probably fit the unit just below the engine air filter. Whether I can get in there with the drill is another matter entirely! I’ll have to run the power cable all the way behind the console too. That’ll be just so much fun!

While I was in the bus, I used the new shower pump to spray water on my hands and used the bar of soap in the bathroom of the bus to wash my hands. It was so nice to be able to do that! I think moving away from D cells to a 12v battery was a good idea though I still don’t like to be so reliant upon a single battery.

The last thing I did was to make a fused connector preparatory to connecting my solar input to my bridge rectifier. That just takes a single fuse. I’ll have to work out which fuse to use dependent upon the solar panel in use externally. As I don’t have one, there’s no current need to put a fuse. It’s easy to know which fuse though - divide the wattage of the panel by 12 and that gives me the fuse size so a 100W panel would need just over 8A so a 10A fuse. A 60W panel would need a 5A fuse and so on.

I still haven’t contacted Carolina International but thinking about it, since this bus is a Carpenter and Carpenter made the bodywork, it’s unlikely Carolina International would have anything to do with the battery or fuel doors. I’ll just have to go to Grainger with my measurements. Of course I could always fit any latch and just cut the hole bigger or weld shims to the existing hole to make it smaller. I have no idea how to remove the lock from the battery door though. That is a total mystery!

Speaking of mysteries - where did the daylight go? I look outside the bus and it’s dark. Somebody stole my daylight! I blame the French - they’ll steal anything. They’d steal air if they could work out how to put it in a bottle!

There you go - a view out of the window. See that Frenchman stealing the daylight - just beside the first pine tree? It’s the one in the dark suit with the dark gloves and dark balaclava - not the girl in fishnets with the miniskirt who’s out hunting possums with her 12 gauge.

Don’t believe me that I’m inside my bs/motorhome? Here’s another photo. I actually love sitting in here. It’s tobacco-free, quiet and peaceful. Most of all - I built it all. I’m actually rather proud of having done absolutely everything on this bus all by my little old self. This is something that not many people would have the patience nor the willingness to learn new skills to do.