Worthless lighting

I'm pretty sure by now you've read about my comments on LED lighting many times over. I'm just not very impressed by any of it. It's low powered, dim and short lived. I gather some have better experiences but mine is that incandescent is brighter and lasts longer. Anyway, I do have some LED lanterns and they're pretty bright to look at but the light they shed is worthless. Even combined it's pretty poor. So, the other day I noticed something called a Broadbeam LED lantern. It looked like an interesting technological development but I was not impressed at all by the light level. In my opinion anything less than the equivalent of a 100W bulb is fumbling around in the dark. Here's a nice table of lumens versus watts that I pinched off another website.

Lumens to watts table

Lumens	Incandescent light bulb (watts)	Fluorescent  / LED (watts)
375 lm	25 W	6.23 W
600 lm	40 W	10 W
900 lm	60 W	15 W
1125 lm	75 W	18.75 W
1500 lm	100 W	25 W
2250 lm	150 W	37.5 W
3000 lm	200 W	50 W

Notice how it's only at 1500 lumens that the light produced is acceptable. Now think back on those terrible LED contraptions sold in the stores that proudly claim to be 150 lumens. People only buy the trash because it looks cute and they don't have a clue what lumens are. Worse still, the manufacturer might grade their contraptions in Lux or Candela.

I couldn't find any useful Lux or Candela conversion tables. I found plenty rather daunting looking mathematical formulae designed to do the conversions though. It looks on the surface that 1 Lux is 10 Lumens. 1 Candela is the power emitted by a single candle flame and one Candela is 4 lumens so a minimum acceptable LED lighting contraption would have to be no less than.

• 1500 lumens
• 100W incandescent
• 25W fluorescent 
• 150 Lux
• 375 Candela

That's quite a lot to remember! The acid test though is could you comfortably sit and read a book or magazine by the light of your LED contraption? While dim lighting might be acceptable for grabbing clothes and putting them on or for using the bathroom, showering, cooking etc there are plenty occasions when it's not acceptable. Two examples might be reading a novel and putting on make-up. 

In practical terms, I find the current lot of LED lanterns in what I call the affordable range of $10 to $15 to be pretty poor. I have several. I made the mistake of buying a $30 lantern thinking it would be better. It's certainly easier on the eyes as the LED is shielded but the handle snapped off fairly quickly. While it's possible to buy more expensive lanterns, my experience indicates price is not an indication of quality. It makes me laugh to hear people saying they go to some expensive place to buy

their stuff because everything in Walmart is made in China. I bet they don't realise the stuff they pay 100% more for in Nordstrom is most likely also made in China. It doesn't take much to change a made in label. To do it honestly, all that needs be done is to remove one screw and replace it. Hey presto! The item is now assembled in America and can carry a Made in America label.

Yesterday I didn't blog. What I did was to switch out the bad 10AH battery for one of my 7AH batteries. After initially throwing a fault on my charge controller, it settled down and was running for 7 minutes or so between charges.  That just doesn't seem like very long to be honest. Still, it was good to have the ventilation running again. I also spent an hour or so building a mount for one of my smaller CPU fans in order to mount it on the wall as a circulation fan. I'd intended to mount it in the bedroom but the mount was too wide for the beam I'd intended to secure it to. Thus I need to seek out more of my aluminum scrap to make an extender and to build a mount for the second CPU circulation fan. I took no photos yesterday, hence no blog entry.

The first thing I got on with today was looking at my charge controller. It seems the eBay battery (could be a battery from Radio Shacks going out of business sale) is again flagging a fault. As the charge level had reached the trigger voltage but had not triggered, I lowered the trigger to 12.8v. I have a feeling I have a few rather regrettable batteries. I decided I was going to burn through the regrettable batteries before I use my Harbor Freight battery. That shouldn't take many days!  I could have a faulty controller though I doubt it since it does seem to work or I could have a faulty wire under the bus though since it is carefully covered in cable shroud I'd doubt that. Given that all my other wiring installed in the same sprout at the same time works, I'd doubt the wiring as a problem. That leads inevitably to the conclusion it must be the battery. Anyway I switched over to my other 7AH battery to see what that does.

The next order of business was to look at my LED lantern. This was made by GE and claims 350 lumens. Which planet GE was on when they recorded the lumens is unknown though I'm pretty sure it wasn't Planet Earth and that in whatever parallel universe it was, the laws of physics must have been very different. It's the most pleasant of my lanterns to use as the light source is properly shielded. For some unknown reason the switch has three settings: Dim, is that faintly glowing thing my lantern and off. They could and should have missed out on the intermediate brightness setting as it's utterly worthless. I think it's there to conserve battery power but honestly I can conserve battery power far better by putting the batteries in my pocket. I can only assume the ultra dim setting is some GE engineer having a laugh at the customers expense.

Anyway, the handle broke off my GE lantern within a couple of months of buying it. That really irked me because I threw $30 at that thing. Today I used a spare brass loop from when I installed bolts on my drawers and bolted it to the top of the lantern. Next I put a leftover mini carabiner through the loop to hang my lantern from a ceiling loop. That worked brilliantly. I am definitely a genius!

Following that, I looked at my circulation fan idea. The basic idea is fine. Where I decided to make a change was that instead of mounting it to the beams, mounting it to the ceiling makes more sense. The wires can run down the beams and be connected at the top with spade connectors. Eventually I'll wire those to my charge controller though this might not be until winter. There's a lot going to be done in winter.

As I've already said, I'm getting ready to retitle the bus as a motorhome. I took the photos a few days ago and sent them to Walmart for printing. I saw absolutely no point whatsoever in paying more than the minimum so I ordered in store pickup a week from now. That brought 20 prints down to $2 and change after tax. It's already going to cost $15 in retitling fees!

Today marks a change in my blogging habits. A few days ago while shopping, I spied a Bluetooth keyboard that was both Android and iOS compatible. Now that's what I call useful. It means I am now no longer subject to the vagaries of Apple or Google spelling correction. Let's face it, spelling corrector are horrible. It takes far longer to proof read after a spelling corrector has messed everything up than to write the article in the first place. I can honestly say that I am loving using a real keyboard once more.

Online, I'd found a 10 inch window screen that looked useful. The only place that was listed as having it was Bed Bath and Beyond. I have a soft spot for Bed Bath and Beyond even though it is expensive and the stench from the chemical "scents" brings on a migraine. Anyway, they turned out not to have it unless I ordered - which I could have done from home. Thus I called in at Home Depot and they didn't have one either. Finally I called in at Lowes (hiss, spit) where I found it and not only did I find it there but it was half the price Bed Bath and Beyond wanted. Now that's not really much of a surprise. A lot of those stores can be expensive. Five dollars seeming about right, I bought one and it works well. It'll stop most mosquitoes from flying in but there's enough of a gap around the top and bottom for ants to crawl in. Needless to say I have to wedge the window to ensure as tight. Seal as possible. It is, after all, a school bus!

While I was out I also found some door alarms that I thought would go splendidly on the back and side doors. My bus is old enough that it does not have door alarms nor a student alarm. Back then if a student opened the door and fell out, it was his own darned fault. These days, if a student gets up, opens the door and falls out, it's apparently, somehow, the driver's fault. That rule comes from the same planet GE on which measures lumens.

Not feeling particularly like leaping around to find my remaining aluminum strip which is quite likely in an abandoned trailer being used as storage, I worked on my sole circulation fan. Attaching it to a cross beam on my wall was easy. There, it'll circulate air. How far it'll circulate air, I don't know. I'll only be able to tell that if I employ a smoke machine and the last time I looked at smoke machines, they were very expensive and there didn't seem to be any economical canned alternative.

While installing my fan, I found that the plumbers glue I'd bought will secure the wires very nicely in lace against the wall. All I have to do is to wipe the glue down the side that needs to be glued, hold it in place and it'll just stay there. That's very welcome. Indeed I had a test wire running to that fan for a few minutes and I could definitely feel air moving in the galley. It was more gentle the further I got from the fan but it was moving and that is going to make an absolutely massive difference.

Again, while I was out, I found in one of the dollar stores, a pair of door alarms for a dollar. I'd already mentioned those and I tried them. They're quite unmistakable! Right now I have a problem because in order to work properly the sensor and the magnet need to be close to each other. The way my doors are constructed, I need to put some kind of step to build one up to the level of the other. That's doable. I just have to think about what I'm going to use - maybe some of the cut off rubber from when I installed my front mud flap since the rubber is still lying on the ground where I left it some months ago.

I noticed a problem with my latest charge controller. It seems to want to keep using the battery until it gets down to 11.3v. I cannot raise that figure any higher. I can go as low as 9v but 11.3 seems to be the maximum. It looks like that will kill a battery dead. My old charge controller keeps on indicating faults with batteries. I am beginning to get a bit concerned about that. This is one reason I'm not connecting my brand new battery yet. I purposely bought universal battery chargers that will charge LIon as well as lead-acid but I'm beginning to wonder whether I should instead have gone for several lead-acid chargers instead. I have one that arrived with the mount broken off but I'm thinking that perhaps I should invest in more and just replace my fancy universal charge controllers.

I tweaked the settings on my charge controller for the fan to cut in at 13v and cut out at 11.9v. It charges remarkably quickly up to 13v and the fan runs for less than a minute before cutting out. Im thus wondering whether it is indeed a faulty charge controller. It wasn't expensive but it is annoying! I don't think I paid more than $10 each for my controllers.

We're back to the yes, it was made in China - but then so is everything else issue again. I'm wishing heartily that I could put extra cabling in underneath the bus right now but what with the insects that's impossible unless I pony up, buy a rechargeable drill and drive to the top of a mountain where it'll be cold enough to send all the critters into early hibernation and do the work there. Sadly, South Carolina is flat. At 8mpg I really don't feel like driving too far - even at $2.30 a gallon.

I suppose the solution is going to be something like heading to Harbor Freight and ponying up $25 for one of their smaller charge controllers. Having looked at their website, their $80 charge controller looks identical to my $10 controller. It's probably the same thing just rebadged! If I'd known this solar stuff was going to be such a nightmare, I'd have just left it with two CPU fans powered directly by solar panels and not had such an interesting time running wires under the bus nor such a headache with flaky charge controllers and flaky batteries. Maybe after a year, my one charge controller is just worn out?

Cue the Heavenly Chorus

Today I took my long awaited trip to Harbor Freight. What bliss - surrounded by all the boy toys ones heart could desire! I went on a mission however. I needed a big battery. While I was there I bought a step bit to replace the one I broke a few weeks ago.

I'd been trying my eBay battery and found that it just didn't seem to work too well. It went to 12.9v then powered my 2.5A fan for 10 seconds before dropping to 11.9v. That means that the 10ah battery drops to 40% capacity in 10 seconds. Using 6ah should have taken a 2.5A fan something around  2 hours not 10 seconds.

I didn't install my battery today. I did, however, put it on one of my charge controllers to find it was at 12.9v and was full. I tried it in my 50 cal ammunition box. It fits and I can close the lid. The terminals are close to the lid but don't touch. I can easily glue plastic to the lid to ward off accidental contact. There's enough space in the box to install a voltage meter and a pair of contacts. There's no need for a USB connector on the house battery though.

Thinking about retitling, I moved the bus today. Aside from the brakes sticking initially, it moved and started easily. I'll have to drive with the brakes lightly applied in order to clean the rust off them. While the bus was moved, I took some exterior photos as required for the retitling process.

The rear facing camera needs attention. The LEDs are a little dazzling. That can be cured with black tape or black paint. Having said that, drivers should keep way back anyway. I need one of those bumper stickers that says "If you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you".

The outside, I'm sure you'll agree, looks pretty anonymous and pretty good. The inside is good too. I definitely need to complete installing my new battery. As far as the two 7ah batteries purchased via eBay go, I'm not convinced I should even attempt to use them. I'd bought them because they could be used to recharge a phone or tablet. I'm thinking more now toward a different solution though I've not yet got an idea solid enough to mention; I'm still mulling over different options.

The other day I looked idly at small manual pumps online. I'd thought of having a manual pump drawing fresh water out of a 5 gallon can under the sink. Then I realized I'd be paying $25 for a pump when I could easily pour water from the 5 gallon can into a jug fir use be worry less about contamination.

While I was out, the thought of a water inlet cane to mind. Again, I decided it's not really worth my while at the moment. That might change at some point in the future. It's tempting though right now beyond the scope of what I'm prepared to do.

My lighting inside the bus is pretty sad. I have LED lanterns giving off some quite pathetic amounts of light. Sure, it's enough light to see large objects but anything more is a case of fumbling in the gloom. Looking at the lanterns available, those that claim to be ultra bright are usually the most pathetically dim things I've encountered. In my research I came to the conclusion that lanterns that don't offer a minimum of 1000 lumens are a total waste of time. Those that cost more than $15 represent wasted money. I've got 5 lanterns each of which claims to be bright but which fail miserably to produce enough light to do anything worthwhile.

On my journies today I saw a new kind of LED lantern that had a broad glowing stripe. It looked interesting but as soon as I saw the description of "brightest ever" my eyes glazed over. I've heard that old wives tale so many times it's not even funny. I probably won't change any of my led lights until they fail - which at the rate they fail, won't be long. It's worth finding out more about them but I feel very much that though I had my first LED light in 2009 that LED is still in its infancy. I'm not prepared to be the diaper that tries them out though!

Finally I get to the bus.

Today I finally got into my bus. A few purchases had arrived, namely some terminal connectors (of which I was desperately short), my thermal switches (set at 25C or around 77F), my USB charging connectors and some glass fuses.

I already had all the photos I need of the bus bar three. One is of the drivers side, one of the shower and one of the toilet handbasin area. I suppose I really need to do a new one of the front and back since I now have a second camera on the back and a solar panel on the front.

That's what the bathroom looks like. There's a handbasin and I subscribe to the Old West method of bathrooms. There's a jug and bowl, a lantern and a mirror. The toilet is also visible as is my thermometer on the wall. I decided not to bother with a flush toilet nor an underbody water tank.

While I was inside, I set up a connection allowing me to charge my ventilation battery from both front and back. I sat and watched while my oldest solar controller (at the back) told me the battery was at 12.9V and that there was a problem with something. I disconnected the fan but the warning remained displayed. The charge controller at the front reckoned the battery was 12.8v. Though I was there for half an hour, the battery voltage never reached 13v but kept flickering ominously between 12.6 and 12.8 through 12.7. I have a feeling I might have bought somebody's dead battery on eBay as a new battery. That's $20 lost that I won't see again! I'm just hoping somebody can suggest a miracle fix on my sealed lead acid battery but I fear that the only fix will be to turn it in when I buy a bigger battery to offset the core charge.

There wasn't much point in trying the glass fuses in my fuse holders. It seems the fuse holders are somewhat larger in diameter than the existing holes in my switch panel. The only way around that would be to install them in the end of the panel though that could be challenging. I'll stick with the inline fusing I've got right now. The advantage there is I can use standard automotive fuses.

For the curious, that's my shower. There's no permanently attached shower head. I can do a bucket bath with a washcloth in there or use a battery operated comping shower from the same bucket of hot water. I told you I'd taken pages from the Old West or more specifically an hotel room shown in High Noon. 

So, looks like mail ordering SLA batteries is not a good thing to do. I'm not sure of the origin of my twin 7AH SLA batteries but given they don't seem despite having been charged to be reading close to 13.8V (try 12.7v and 12.8v) I'm going to suspect those are also junk that I've bought. If it was in Radio Shack then my consolation is I probably didn't pay much. If it was elsewhere then shame on the. For selling returned or faulty batteries.

So the new plan isn't Plan 9 From Outer Space. The new plan is to fork out for a real deep cycle battery and pray that works. That sounds like a trip to (cue the Heavenly Chorus) Harbor Freight. There is a cheaper alternative though. I could use a $20 lawnmower battery from Walmart. Set to 20% discharge only, that should last a good long time. Lithium or supercaps would be the ideal thing but for cost and the fact lithium batteries are incendiary bombs on a par with military munitions.

This leaves me wondering about my portable USB charging ideas. It might be best to try solar charging lithium power banks, housed securely in an ammunition box. Or maybe just forget about charging USB devices and concentrate on living rather than playing with electronic toys.

While we are on the subject of electronic toys, let me tell you about my cell phone. I dumped my smart phone when it gave out on me after just 3 years, for the last 6 months I have used solely a flip phone. In that time, I have received ten calls totaling just under 20 minutes. This month out of my allotted 300 minutes/texts I have used just one single minute and the month is almost over, How much importance do you think I place on electronics? More than that, would you agree that electronics represent a huge expense for something that just doesn't seem to last very long?

Sometimes I wonder with the ventilation whether I might have been better off having a clip on coiled black painted smoke stack that with just the heat of the sun drew air out of the bus. I know I chose correctly in having jerry cans for water and a bucket for a toilet. Sometimes all this newfangled electronic and electrical stuff is too much trouble.

Look what Santa just brought me!

I've spent the entire of my weekend off and taken today off too. I'm still sick with a bronchial cough, sinus etc. It has been pretty awful with ears popping and all sorts not to mention disorientation too. On Sunday I decided was going to take myself to the quack the following morning. This morning though I was feeling a lot better though still with a temperature. I decided to rest today and just go to work tomorrow.

Lamenting not being well enough to work on the bus, I'd been thinking on my decision to buy a $60 battery and of my thought to install built in ventilation fans. I'll probably hold off on those for the moment as I have two as yet untested 7AH SLA batteries. Put in parallel they should be quite good at 14AH. As my 5AH will reportedly render up to 60A output, there's little reason to believe that my two 7AH batteries either individually or combined will not produce enough to run my 2.5A fan when that's all that'll be running.

My plan originally was to use an ammunition box to house a battery that could be ported around and used to charge USB devices wherever. Then I decided to have a second ammunition box containing the ventilation batteries - which was supposed to be the 10AH battery but the twin 7AH will be fine. My plans are a bit messed up at the moment. The 10AH was supposed to be the fan, the 5AH the door lock and the twin 7AH my portable power supply.

I have a feeling I was far better off before I started messing about with the complicated fancy junk. When my fans were directly solar powered they worked pretty well most of the time. I seem to have added several unnecessary levels of complication to achieve minimal increases. Still, it is what it is and I'll make it work without spending money on extra junk.

I'm going to leave the 10AH battery where it is, powering that fan. I can't understand why it's messing about so much though. It seems to be very random about the length of time over which it will run between charges. I very much suspect that lead acid batteries are just not that reliable for this kind of application. I'd been thinking of using NiMh or LIon when I designed the system. SLA was just a quick fix.

Now Santa brought me two 12v USB chargers. I can build these into the big ammunition box combined with the twin voltmeter that arrived a few days ago to make my portable electronics charger. Much better to do that than to have to put extra wiring under the bus even though I'm all prepared to put extra wiring down there.

It has been questioned as to why I want my SLA batteries in a steel ammunition box. The answer is simple... if they leak, the box will contain the leak. If they catch fire, the box will contain the fire and smother it as its air tight. I can also grab the handle in a gloved hand and chuck it out the door if need be.

As far as LIon or NiMh batteries go, I'd be able to use either since my chargers are all programmable.  My door lock is currently operated by 8 NiMh rechargeable batteries that I charge in a domestic charger every few months. When they're too depleted to run the door lock, I'll measure the voltage and take that as my base for an NiMh system. At about a dollar each and about 2AH per cell, a 2AH 12v stick would be $8-$10. A 20AH setup would be $80-$100. The big bonus is it'd all fit well in an ammunition box.

There are things I could do underneath the bus but I'm trying to minimize that. Though I've been under there plenty times, I just don't like going there. At the moment with wasps and critters, it's inavdisible for the next few months anyway.

Aside from getting the ventilation and USB power set up, the bus has reached the point where any work done is a fix, a touch up or an upgrade. My goal now has to be retitling the bus as soon as possible.

Weird eBay

I've not posted anything bus related recently due to coming down with some bug or other. What with that and working ten hours a day, four days a week, I've just not had the time nor the health. 

Today I realized a remote security camera powered by excess solar power would be a good thing to mount in the bus. A brief hunt on eBay located a suitable candidate for just $10.27. Sadly I missed the part where it said it was coming from bloody China. Had I known that, I'd have gone for a different seller. It takes the Chinese delivery mule far too long to swim across the Pacific with my stuff.

Nothing got done today. As I said, I'm trying to recuperate from whatever ailment I have, without going to the doctor. Just because I have health insurance does not mean I can afford the copay nor the drugs.

Anyway, a while later I had an email from eBay. It was to inform me that the item I had purchased had been deleted. It was really quite confusing to be honest....

The listing you're interested in is no longer available

Hello schoolbushome,
We're writing to let you know that we've removed an item you recently won:
327860627327 - Wireless 720P Pan Tilt Network Security CCTV IP Camera Night Vision WiFi ONVIF


Since you've already paid for the item, you don't need to do anything else. If your item hasn't arrived yet, it should arrive soon. If it doesn't, then you'll want to open a case in our Resolution Center. You can learn how to do this, plus find timelines for opening cases, at:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/item-not-received.html

We wish you all the best on eBay and hope your future experiences are pleasant and successful. If you have questions, please click "Help & Contact" at the top of most eBay pages.

eBay still has lots of other great deals. Go to http://www.ebay.com to shop. We hope to see you soon.
Thanks,

eBay 

 That just looked pretty darned weird. I went to my eBay purchases and things got weirder still.

It appears the eBay user no longer has an account now. So, it looks like I've bought an item that eBay has deleted at the same time as they deleted the seller. Then eBay wants me to wait until September before they'll refund me for the money I just lost. I honestly cannot see somebody whose account has been deleted going to their account to find who to send stuff to. There's no comeback on them for just taking the money and running. It just seems eBay is being less than honest.

The mystery deepens

Returning from a rough day at work when I spent most of the day feeling ill, I found that the postman had delivered my new wiper switch and the wires I had ordered. Feeling like the living dead, I went to the bus and tested my wiper wiring with a spare battery. Interestingly, the wiper motor functioned. I pulled the old switch out and replaced it with the new switch - or so I thought!

Dashing outside, I turned the bus batteries on and dashed back to the drivers seat to find the switch didn't make anything happen. I moved the common wire further along the row of live contacts behind the switchboard. The wiper sprung into life. It seems one pair of contacts behind the panel is dead. Heaven knows why. 

Eagerly I fastened the new switch into place whereupon to my astonishment it disintegrated in my hands. It was then I realized I'd been trying to put the old switch back in place. I told you I'd had a rough day! Anyway, switching them back, I copied the wiring connections from the other switch and everything worked as it should with high, low and park.

Having done that, I went to my charge controller to look at the readings for my $20 eBay 10AH SLA battery. It read 12.7v. The little warning triangle was showing, indicating something is amiss. Having seen the results from the 5AH battery which have been excellent (I bought that in Radio Shack) and the questionable results from my generic (but costly) eBay battery, I'm inclined toward not buying more batteries on eBay. Like as not, it was a used battery sold as new. 

I cannot recall the source of my two 7ah batteries that don't seem from furst glance to be very good. I couldn't find them in my eBay history. I doubt they were Radio Shack because they're not branded as such. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think I bought batteries that had already gone bad or didn't survive the journey home.

That all levaves me with a nasty taste in my mouth; rather akin to the current British situation where people voted for Brexit believing the stories they'd been told who then found out that Brexit would give its instigators unlimited wealth and power while returning the rest of the country to a level of poverty not seen since the Black Death.

So, where to now? I'm rather inclined toward getting a timer controller to give the fan brief bursts of 10 minutes running every hour during daytime with a thermostat so it doesn't come on in cold weather unless specially initiated. I'm also inclined toward picking up Harbor Freights 35AH battery even if it doesn't really fit my steel ammunition box. 

The wire arrived for the bits of wiring I want to do. Now I can start wiring up my CPU fan air circulation system. As for the door lock, there's no immediate plan to wire that into my battery. That's a more long term plan. 

Latest developments also mean a change of plan. I'd been going to put individual USB sockets and voltmeters for each battery in my battery array. Now those I've ordered are no longer suitable. That's about $25 down the drain so thank heavens I ordered cheap stuff from China. 

If I hadn't had so many wrong turns to investigate, I'd have completed my bus project a year ago. Still, I'm not one to follow the crowd. As they say... somebody that follows the crowd goes no further than the crowd. Somebody that follows their own path will find themselves in places nobody else has seen. 

My weekend task, having fixed the wiper will be solely to sort out the 12v house battery system. It will have input from both solar panels plus input from a potential external power supply. After that it's a case of continuing the tidying with a potential excursion to working on a wind turbine using the cheap and rather suspect Chinese generator I bought.

I'll say right now I think that generator is worthless junk. Still, it's worth a try. If I can put a six inch bar across the spindle then I can attach rotor arms and blades which are easy to fabricate. I have a feeling fir the low normal winds nothing I add will make it generate much power. That feeling is why I've not bothered so far and still might not.

Dawn of the Dead

Feeling like death, I looked at the clock at 4am and texted the boss to say I wasn't coming in. I'm hoping to be well enough tomorrow. I hate missing work because I hate missing out on the opportunity of getting money. That left me with time to work gently on the bus.

After a lot of hunting around online to find relevant and useful information regarding my gel cell batteries, I drew a complete blank. Then in sheer exasperation I tried those god awful forums. Again, lots of people telling me to buy a new or bigger battery but no realistic or useful information. This is one of the things that makes me question whether people on forums walk their talk or just parrot others. If somebody walked their talk then I'm sure they would have suggested what I took as my eventual solution.

Looking at the charge controller, it has several settings of which three are noteworthy

1. Load on voltage which is the voltage at which the controller commences powering a device.
2. Load off voltage which is the voltage at which the controller cuts off the power.
3. Panel off voltage which is the voltage at which the controller ceases charging the battery.

There are some less noteworthy settings such as some kind of timer that does something that the instructions do not adequately explain and a battery type setting that again the instructions do not explain. Of minor interest there's a built in thermometer but it doesn't seem linked to anything.

I'd read online on some allegedly expert website that the minimum charge level should be 11.9V. I'd already discovered my battery retains a maximum of 13V. Under those conditions I was getting 7 minutes out of my fan. Today, abandoning the online "expertise" for the nonsense it seems to be, I dropped the cut off voltage to 11.1V. By the time the fan had run for 20 minutes I concluded the air had been changed twice over in my motorhome. By that time, the voltage read 11.7V so I adjusted the cutoff point to 11.7V.  That works and wasn't that cheaper than doing what the people on forums said? It reminds me very much of what I saw written on the University of Wales college toilet door: "there's more information on a freshly squeezed turd than in this library". I'd replace library with internet, of course. 

Going back to my original calculations, my 10AH battery should provide 5AH of usable power. That means my fan should run for two hours.  That's more than adequate! Now I'll have to see how long it takes to recharge the battery. 

When my fan was running, I noticed the temperature inside the bus rose from 84F to 86F. Curious, I took the thermometer outside and found that indeed, it was 86F outside. I'll have to see if this also works on hot days. Maintaining the same temperature inside as outside is the Holy Grail for non air conditioned motorhomes. 

One of the things I've been trying is my small battery powered desk fan. It works surprisingly well.

I've already decided to mount permanently two CPU fans. One will be in the bedroom, above the desk and the other in the galley above the cooking area. They will involve some underbus wiring but not too much. They're non essential anyway. The essential is to get the extraction fan doing its job.

Thinking ahead, I ordered some thermal switches that will switch ventilation and fans on and off automatically. The cut on point is 25 degrees centigrade which works out at 77F. Below that there's little need for much ventilation other than the occasional purge of stale air.

Since Radio Shack went out of business, I've had to buy most of my bits from eBay. I don't like the fact I can't just walk into a store and buy the stuff I need. I don't like also that half the time I have to wait for delivery from that backwards walking pack mule driven by an illiterate Albanian peasant. 

The next stage now that I've conquered the fan issue is to continue dealing with the construction mess and to sort out my personal stuff. I'll also want to build my twin battery pack that'll keep my electronics charged. I'm pretty much there with my 12v electrics in the bus.

I still need to fix my right wiper. I know the motor and pivot work. My suspicion is the switch so I've ordered a new switch. If it's it the switch then I'll likely just have to rewire the motor. That's not a huge task, to be honest.

Having played with the battery and charge controller off and on all day while sitting between times at my desk in the bus, I'm now mystified. The battery readings on my charge controller seem to go up and down faster than a whore's drawers. This means that I could get 30 minutes out of my fan or just 5. It all seems so random!

In terms of temperature, it was still 90F inside the bus when it was 86F outside at the end of today's investigations. I'm not much closer to keeping the bus cool. I know my fan does suck out a lot of air. The air is getting out of the vents too. I'm wondering what the solution is.

I know there's a 4 inch blower rated at 270cfm and that if I put one on each side then I could vacate all the air from the bus in just two minutes. As they're 10amps each, that's a huge current draw that's way beyond my current cabling. For that I'd have to mount the battery closer to the fans. That's not to say it's not doable. In fact it is very tempting. I'd probably need to change my exhaust vents from mushroom vents to flap vents and do away with the screening on the outside, relying upon internal screening and bugs that enter just getting stopped by the internal screen and blown out the back.

A system with a 20A draw would definitely need the planned next component of my solar system which is a plugin extra source. My plan is to use my four solar controllers on a shared solar input. All of the solar power is shared. An external wind or solar supply could supplement onboard solar.

The four controllers would be used for.

• Controlling the blower fan at the back and charging its battery.
• Keeping the door lock battery topped up.
• Keeping two internal fans going.
• Keeping a portable power pack charged that's intended for charging phone, tablet, MiFi etc.

Some people would do all that from a single, large, battery. I prefer small batteries that are independent of each other. That means that the failure of any part of the system will not affect the whole system. Even the solar panels and external input will be individually fused and individually diode protected. Such a system allows more flexibility with changes, additions and improvements. Smaller batteries reduce the need for large solar arrays. When one battery is empty, the service stops until the battery is full. That means I won't necessarily lose door control when the ventilation stops or be unable to charge electronics when the internal fans stop. Sharing solar power rather than having independent panels means when things that aren't used much such as USB charging or the door lock have full batteries, the output can go towards ventilation. When the sun is stronger at one end of the bus than the other, all units can take advantage.

All I can do for internal ventilation right now is to install the fans and some of the wiring. The rest will have to wait. As far as the battery mystery goes, I'm baffled. I bought my 10ah battery new from a seller with a perfect reputation on eBay. My controller worked perfectly well with my CPU fans and 5ah battery. It could just be a duff battery. I have two 7ah batteries. I charged them both as much as I could. One stayed at 13v and the other at 12.9v. My 5ah has no problem maintaining 14.5v. Bizarre!