October 6th
2003
I had a terrible day today. I didn't get hardly anything
done. I wanted to get the wiring in place in the back of the bus
so that we could put up the paneling in the bedroom. For whatever
reason, I was so overwhelmed by the wiring that it took me the entire
day just to get 3 plugs and 2 switches wired up. To add to the
frustration of not getting much done and running into a bunch of
problems with the location I had chosen for some of the system
components, my laptop has started acting up again. Last time I
started having these problems, I had to ship it back to SONY and
re-install everything again. The hard drive is making terrible
noise and has completely locked up (stopped spinning all together) twice
now in the past 2 days. It's so frustrating - I don't have the
cash to buy another computer as a back up and I can't afford to send
this one out for repairs... That has not made my day any easier.
Most of the problems that I am running into are due to a lack of
supplies and not enough money to buy them as I need them. I keep
switching tasks to take advantage of the supplies that I do have and
then find that I am missing something that I need... That has been
very frustrating, but I have promised Becky that I will keep to our
budget and not dig into our living expenses... It's hard to slow
down with everything so close to coming together finally.
The wiring of the bus is taking way longer than I had thought.
It's not that it is hard to do, it's more of a matter of wanting to do
it right, but not spend a fortune on things that are not really all that
necessary... Where do you draw the line between safety and
cost.
In a perfect world, I would run all of the wiring through armor cable
and everything would be great, but one look at the cost of all of the
connectors and junction boxes and I knew right away that I couldn't
afford to do the whole bus that way.
Everything that I have torn apart from the trailer is wired with
standard solid core house wiring with nothing to protect it at
all. I read on the internet (and have been warned by several
people off line) that stranded wire is the correct thing to use due to
the vibration and movement of the bus... So I spent 3 times the
money to get 12 gage stranded wire to run all of my 110 outlets and
lights with...
Everything seems to be designed for the standard (solid core) house
wiring. The insulated wire hangers that I bought do not hold the
wire snug do not. The wire protector/crimp that I am used to using
to keep the wire secure does not close enough to hold the 3 strands of
12 gage wire in place. It's designed for standard house
wiring. It's a pain in the neck and driving me nuts trying to
compromise between what I have seen in every single trailer and RV so
far and what I am supposed to do... It's so
confusing. If I didn't have access to the internet and hadn't read
all about using stranded wire, I would have just worked with "Romex"
and been done with the whole job already without any of the problems I
am running into.
At any rate, I am very frustrated and it is costing me so much more
than I budgeted for to do all of the 110V wiring...
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At this point I have the back of the bus wiring roughed in...
I tossed and turned about whether I should protect the wiring
inside the walls somehow. In residential wiring the wire
has to be protected if it is less than 1 1/2 inches from the
edge of the framing. Since I am using 2"x2"
lumber for the framing ALL of the wire is less than that
measurement from the paneling.
I decided that since I have never seen any RV or trailer yet
with armored cable or anything, I have decided that I am not
going to waste my time and money trying to make the walls idiot
proof...
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At the point where I had finished roughing in the other side of
the bedroom I was done for the day.
Too much to think about and not enough answers. I have
several books on wiring, but none of them cover the kind of
construction and the resulting space restriction that I am
ending up dealing with.
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Here's the one of the reasons that keep me from just giving up
and following the route of so many others that get to this point
and get rid of a partially converted bus.
I will not give up. I am going to finish this project
even if I have to redo everything at some point in the near
future. It's important for me to keep going. If I
get discouraged, I need to remember why I am doing this and make
it fun again!
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The last issue that has come up is that the electrical cord that came
from the trailer is set up with a standard 30 amp plug. Our current
location does not have any plugs even remotely resembling the one we
have to plug in... This is going to be an issue for us when we
travel... Not everyone that we will be visiting will have anything
other than a standard 115V 14 amp outlet for us to use. This is
adding to my confusion on what approach will work best for us in the
most situations... |
