Follow Our Progress
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October 7th
2003
Wow, a week into October already!
Time seems to be just flying by. I feel the pressure to get
this bus rolling, but our cash flow has slowed considerably. Our
bus budget has dropped to $200 per week max.
My laptop is on the way out. It's got a whole set of new noises
coming from it now... To be honest, I'd love to throw this darn
thing in a lake. It's been nothing but trouble from the day we
bought it (and this is the 3rd replacement that I have had). I
would not recommend a SONY VAIO to anyone. This is my 4th
one... I have an old (10 year +) HP that the light for the screen
died on last week - that is the very first problem I have had with that
laptop... Ah, the good old days when they actually had to build
something that worked...
Update - I think I may have found part of the problem with my
laptop. The primary partition was more fragmented than I think I
have ever seen before. I'm on my 2nd pass at defragmenting my
drive since my virus software keeps preventing a large portion of the
drive from being available. I will run it again tonight with the
virus software shut down and hopefully that will reduce the problem to
the minimum. The drive noise is still there, but it seems to be
less frequently "chattering" and locking up. We'll see
what happens...
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Becky suggested that I start from the main panel and work each
circuit starting from there... So, the first thing I did
was pull all of the old wiring from the panel we took from the
trailer.
It took me a minute to figure out how the trailer was wired
up. The box was a mess...
I re-wired the main plug and re-arranged the neutral and
ground bars to make better use of the extremely small space.
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I managed to get some circuit testing done by wiring up the end
of one of my circuits to a 3 prong plug adaptor. It worked
well and all of the wiring in the back of the bus checked out
perfectly.
The panel from the trailer came with two 20 amp breakers and
one 15 amp (GFCI) breaker. That divides the bus into 3
main sections as far as wiring goes.
One 20 amp circuit will be servicing the back bedroom and
laundry/storage area up to the back wall of the bathroom.
I will add a separate circuit for a washer and drier if we end
up adding that in.
The second 20 amp circuit will be servicing the area from the
front of the bus and kitchen area excluding the wall that is
shared with the bathroom. We may run a separate line to
the kitchen if we decide to get a larger microwave later.
The 15 amp GFCI circuit will service the kitchen wall that is
shared with the bathroom and include the lights and plugs in
between the other two circuits.
That should put all of the plugs near any water source on a
GFCI circuit and give us plenty of power on the other two for
the limited number of plug in appliances that we will have.
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I hooked up the circuit I had built in the back bedroom area to
one of the 20 amp breakers.
The main panel will actually be located below the floor in
the same location that it is now, so I left myself a loop of
wire so that when I move the box under the bus there will be
enough wire to reach it.
All that was left to do was find a plug adaptor. My
friend Tedd's house does not have a 30 amp plug in for the RV
style plugs, so I will have to either make an adaptor myself or
find something at the RV supply store to make it work...
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So, things are beginning to look up. I still have to find
a better way to secure the cable to the studs, but the wiring is
there and safe to use.
We'll be protecting the cable in the places where we drilled
holes through the studs with metal plates made for that purpose.
Becky and I put the cover plates on to reduce the chance of
one of the kids getting into the wiring. We'll
obviously have to pull the plates, plugs and switches when we
put the panel sheeting in place. Once the walls are sheeted,
most of the wiring will be inaccessible. The rest will be
covered by the bed frames and final sheeting in the very back of
the bus.
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I think that about sums up the days work. It's pouring down
rain outside, so there's not much else that can get done with the
supplies we have left. I expect to have some more money tomorrow,
then we'll be able to do a bit more on the wiring... |
