Linda was up at 5:45 AM. Hey, it’s just a number. I mean, who needs daylight? She quietly got dressed and slipped out of the house to drive to the bakery. This is how it’s going to be on days when she has to be physically present at the facility. Unless I am away working on the bus. In that case she probably does not worry about being quiet.
I got up around 7 AM and had a nice breakfast of homemade granola, orange/grapefruit juice, and coffee and then spent some time catching up on blogs that I follow. Keith showed up around 9:30 AM to cut the grass. Butch had called last night to ask Linda a question and asked that I call him when I had a chance. Our company did not leave until after 9 PM last night, which was great, but too late to call Butch back so I called him this morning around 10:30 AM.
Butch had used a stop leak additive product to try to plug a leak in his Aqua-Hot main coolant loop but it did not work. The Aqua-Hot is a Webasto-based diesel-fired hydronic heating system. Rather than repair the Aqua-Hot, or replace it with another one, he decided to order an Oasis Combi unit from International Thermal Research. The Combi has a lower BTU rating than the Aqua-Hot but is smaller, simpler, and uses stainless steel for some of the components. It should be more than adequate for their bus, which is very well insulated, and give them years of trouble free service.
Butch and Fonda’s Aqua-Hot is a very similar model to ours and I will probably buy it from them as a source of spare parts. His burner is fully functional, which ours is not at the moment, and the short term fix for our unit may be to just swap the burners. I can then repair the defective burner at my leisure and have it available to swap back should the replacement ever develop a problem.
As a result of our conversation I decided that I will take our bus to their place tomorrow, leaving around noon and arriving between 4:30 and 5:00 PM. In preparation for that trip I needed to gather up and organize parts, materials, and documentation for my initial set of projects. I also needed to do laundry and select clothes for the trip. I may also need to do some grocery shopping this evening unless Linda already has food in the house that I can take. Tuesday morning I will have to load clothes and toiletries, hook up the car, check and adjust tire pressures, load computers and other last minute items, and get the bus ready for travel.
My main focus for Wed, Thu, and Fri will be the Aqua-Hot (no burn and leaky exhaust). If we have time I would also like to finish installing the Zena 24 VDC power generating system and get it operational. I will return on Friday afternoon/evening in the car as Butch and Fonda have plans for the weekend and I still have lots of things to take care of back at the house.
Keith finished up with the lawn a little before noon. He will be back at least two more times, once in mid-October and again towards the end of the month. Whether he cuts the grass in November or calls it quits for the season will depend on the weather between now and then. His basic grass mowing season is April 1 through October 31 and he has his business insured for that range of dates, but he said he would come back in November if needed. The grass should be dormant by then, but there may be a few leaves that still need to be mulched. There could also be a foot of snow on the ground, so it will all depend on the conditions prevailing at the time. During the mowing season he spends the work week living at their trailer/cabin at Haas Lake RV Park, which maybe 20 miles from our house, but by November 1 he is looking to move himself and his equipment back home to Milan for the winter. Milan is at least 60 miles from our house, maybe a bit farther.
I spent a little time at my desk and decided to re-install WordPress 4.0 on the SLAARC, FMCA Freethinker, and FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches websites. I re-installed it a couple of days ago on this (our personal) website, but I have not tried creating or editing image galleries since then so I do not know if the broken drag-n-drop feature has magically been repaired or not. I suspect not, but Linda says I’m a pessimist.
I had a quick bite of lunch and then read a few more blog entries while I waited upstairs for Brandon from Bratcher Electric to show up and convert the whole house generator from propane to natural gas and do the annual maintenance and multi-point inspection. He arrived at 2:15 PM and was here for about an hour. I had him show me how to disable the generator as it has to be turned off anytime I want to shut off the power coming into the main distribution panel in the basement. He did not have the correct length of flexible gas line and will come back on Friday to do the LP to NG conversion. Besides disconnecting the propane and connecting the natural gas the conversion involves attaching two wires to a pair of corresponding terminals on the gas valve inside the unit and changing a setting in the controller.
While Brandon was working on the generator I started gathering things from the garage that I needed for tomorrow and loading them in the car and the bus. We already have quite a few things staged to take to the Surplus and Salvage Rally next week, but I will take those things with me when I return to Butch and Fonda’s early next week.
Linda called at 4:35 PM to let me know she was on the way home. I drained the water out of the fresh water tank on the bus as it had been sitting in there since June. (Yuck.) The fresh water hoses needed to be cleaned before I used them so I filled their storage tub half full of softened water and added some bleach. I coiled them up, hooked the ends together, let them soak for a while, and then wiped them off with clean paper shop towels. Much better looking, and probably and lot more sanitary.
Linda got home at 5:30 PM, a very quick trip for that time of day. Butch had called just as she was getting home to let me know that he had spoken to someone who has two RV spots in Quartzite we can rent for a very reasonable price this winter. Linda and I need to discuss it, and would like a few more details, but that probably makes more sense than trying to boondock our first time out there, especially as we do not yet have solar panel on the roof of our coach.
Linda made a nice green salad and heated up some of the lasagna from yesterday. Italian bread with garlic “butter” and a glass of the 2009 Egri Merlot completed the meal. We talked about our respective days, reminiscent of when we both worked outside the home.
After dinner I finished cleaning the fresh water hoses, filled the fresh water tank, and then drained and stored the hoses. While I did that Linda gathered food items, bedding, and towels and put them aboard the bus. It will still take me a few hours to get ready to leave tomorrow, but I should not be rushed getting everything done.
Linda heated up some of the apple/pear crisp for dessert after which we sat on the sofa and looked at highway maps on her iPad. The map app on the iPad said the trip from our house to Quartzite, Arizona was about 2,100 miles and would take “1 day, 9 hours.” That’s non-stop, of course; i.e., 24 + 9 = 33 driving hours. That time works out to just under 64 MPH. I typically drive the bus at 60 to 63 MPH on Interstate highways, but we do all of our trip planning based on 50 MPH. That usually works out well at taking into account for fuel stops, rest stops, and non-Interstate roads. This means our travel time will be more like 42 hours. Our preference is to only travel 200 to 300 miles per day, or 4 to 6 hours a day, so the actual number of travel days will be between 10 and 7. We like to spend more than one night at each stop, depending on what there is to see and do in the area, so the number of days it will take us to get to Quartzite will 2 to 3 times the number of driving days. A lot of the details of our trip will be last minute decisions based on weather, but our “plan” is to leave December 1st and arrive in Quartzite by December 21st, more or less.