Tag Archives: French drain (Phil Jarrell)

2015/11/16 (M) Tiling the Cockpit, #3

Linda planned to go to the bakery today but decided yesterday to stay home and help me instead. Based on the 10-day forecast this looks like our last decent weather day to work on the bus and we wanted/needed to make the most of it.

We had breakfast at 8 AM (granola with blueberries and a banana) and had a cup of Stash China Black tea. I had a text message from Kristine Gullen regarding getting together with her and Jim on Saturday and replied in the affirmative. We finished our tea by 8:30 and got to work.

I really wanted to finish tiling the cockpit of the bus, or at least as much of it as we could. That meant cutting and fitting tiles for the stair treads and risers and the two side walls of the entry steps, gluing them in place, and then grouting all of them. We needed to mount the table if possible and I also needed to build a new step for the platform. That was a lot to get done in one day and even before we started I doubted that we would get it all done.

When we opened the bus we were surprised to find that the tiles on the walls of the platform had slipped all the way down to the floor tiles. Obviously I should not have removed the spacers right after installing the tiles and should have to left them in place for any horizontal grout spaces on vertical surfaces. Oh well, not much to do about it now.

Keith called to see if he should come and mulch the leaves one last time. The weather the last few days had been very nice, unseasonably warm and dry. Today was also a beautiful day but the forecast going forward was for much cooler and wetter conditions, so this was an ideal day for our last lawn mowing of the 2015 season.

We measured and cut the tiles for the face of the platform and out to the door. At that point I evaluated what I needed to do to complete the job. Basically, I needed to cut all of the tiles for the entry steps and walls and then install them from the bottom up. Every piece of tile was going to be smaller than a full 16″x 16″ tile and custom cut so even though the square footage was not that much there would be more pieces than usual and it was obviously going to take quite a bit of time to get all of the pieces ready to install. I thought we could be ready for adhesive in two hours but Linda figured it would be at least three. It also meant working with the door open which would make it difficult to keep the interior as warm as we needed.

Phil showed up with his excavator and a dozen bales of straw. I knew the excavator was for a different job as he did not have anything left to do at our place that required it. He was here to finish covering the topsoil and grass seed with the straw. We took a break to go talk to him and confirmed that he was done with the driveway and French drain projects except for the straw. He staged the bales where he needed them but said he had to leave to dig a perk test hole at 1:30 PM and would be back mid-afternoon to finish spreading the straw around.

Linda suggested that we go ahead a grout all of the tile we had already installed. I was more emotionally invested in completing the tile work than Linda but had to agree that this was the prudent thing to do. Until the tile was grouted we could not reinstall the accelerator, the steering column shroud, the seat bases, and the seats, so grouting the tile was clearly a critical path item and that is what we did. It was after noon by the time we finished so we took a break for lunch. Phil had taken off by this time to go dig the test pit.

Lunch was grilled vegan Italian sausage on a bun with mustard and relish and black grapes on the side. Keith finished up mowing the yard while we were enjoying a cup of Rooibos tea. We paid him and chatted about next year. I gave him our approximate timeframe for returning home from Florida and asked him to go ahead and start mowing next spring whether or not we were here. We have had Keith take care of our lawn since we bought our house in the country and he has been very good about doing that when we are away and allowing us to catch up with him when we get back.

By the time we got back to work on the bus it was after 1 PM and I had to concede that we were done working on the tile until next spring except for cleaning them, which had to wait until tomorrow as the grout has to cure for 24 hours before final cleaning. With that decision made we considered what else needed to be done and in what order.

The first order of business was painting the two front seat bases black. We spread out painter’s plastic on the driveway and taped it down. We set the bases there and then masked off the top portion with the swivel bearings and mounting bolt. We wire brushed the bases to remove rust and then went over them with a sanding sponge. I used a cleaner/degreaser and water to clean them and then gave them a coat of black rubberized undercoating paint.

The next order of business was getting all of the tools and materials that we no longer needed out of the bus to give us room to work on other things. On Saturday I re-installed the bump out on the walnut cover for the passenger side HVAC duct. The duct needed to have two 4″ holes drilled in it to match the holes in the metal duct, so that was the next task. I measured very carefully and transferred the measurements to the face of the cover with equal care. Even so, I was off slightly and had to use the sheet metal nibbler to enlarge the bottom of each hole. At least I had a relatively straightforward way to fix this problem; I am not always so lucky.

With the holes enlarged we put the cover in place. The 4″ round plastic registers fit through the wood into the duct but not all the way due to two tabs. I trimmed the tabs off using the Porter-Cable oscillating saw and trimmed a little bit off of one of the outer mounting flanges to make it fit flush. I drilled holes through the two mounting holes on each register using the #5-6 self-centering drill bit and secured them with #6-5/8″ SR screws. We then removed the two temporary black plastic registers from the front of the built in sofa. I trimmed the tabs off of two new brown ones and installed them using the same procedure as the first two.

In the grand scheme of things getting the cover in place and the four registers installed was a small task but it needed to be done and stood in the way of other things. The cover has been stored on top of the two front seats, which have been lying on their backs on the kitchen floor of the bus for weeks. We plan to re-install the seats late tomorrow afternoon.

Two more small, but critical, tasks were securing the pull-out pantry and the refrigerator. I have assumed for quite a while that we would secure the pantry for travel with some form of sliding latch but had not thought about it in any detail. We also needed to secure the refrigerator but I had not thought about this in any detail either. As we pondered the pantry latch it slowly became obvious that we did not have enough wood for a strike plate to receive a pin and we did not have two unobstructed surfaces that were in the same plane, which would be required for the kind of latch I had been thinking about.

As for the refrigerator, one of our bus nut friends secured their unit by running mounting bolts (machine screws) through the floor of the cabinet above the fridge and threading them into the unused tapped holes provided for the upper door hinge (if it was reversed) . After looking at it for a while we realized that we could attach a section of small angle to the inside of the right alcove wall with the other side just against the face of the fridge case but not over so far as to interfere with the door gasket. My measurements indicated that a 1/2″x3/4″ angle would be just right. It looked to me like two 12″ pieces, one by the freezer door and one by the bottom of the fresh food compartment door, would be more than adequate to keep the refrigerator from rolling out as it cannot shift sideways or twist due to the aluminum angle on the left/hinge side at the floor.

About this time Phil returned in a red pickup truck. He finished distributing the straw and loaded three unused bales into the back of his truck. He pulled up in the main drive and we invited him into the bus to see what we had been working on all summer. It is always a pleasure working with Phil. If/when we build a barn we will have him do all of the site prep and finish grading. He will figure out the final cost for the driveway extension and French drain and send us an invoice.

Linda prepared an easy but tasty dinner consisting of a nice green salad, mixed frozen vegetables (corn, peas, and carrots) suitably reheated, and mac-n-cheese that was both dairy-free and gluten-free. After dinner we went to Lowe’s and The Home Depot. At Lowe’s we bought a 1/16″ thick 1/2″x 3/4″ aluminum angle and three 8 foot lengths of brass colored nose edging but did not find a latch that we liked. At The Home Depot we bought some screws for securing the handle on the front of the pull-out pantry and a solid brass door stop to keep the pantry in place. The door stop folds up when not in use and should work to keep the pantry closed while traveling.

Although the new Panera on the southwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Latson Road was finally open for business we stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea on the northeast corner of that intersection. Jeff was there and took our order for eight pounds of coffee beans. We got two pounds each of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, regular and decaffeinated, the Seattle Blend (regular), and the Sweet Dreams blend (decaffeinated). They will roast the beans and then let them outgas for a few days before vacuum sealing them in half-pound portions. This allows us to take them with us in the bus and keep them very fresh until we are ready to use them and to change what we are drinking more often.

We got home just after 8 PM and took our iPads downstairs to use while we watched our Monday evening CBS TV programs. We caught the weather forecast and then headed to bed. It looks like we will have two more days with unseasonably high temperatures near 60 degrees F but with intermittent rain and then a serious cooling trend with highs this weekend barely above freezing. Our time for working on the bus and being in Michigan is definitely running out.

2015/11/11 (W) Two for One

Leave a reply

We had late morning dentist/hygiene appointments today so Linda did not get up early to go to the bakery and we slept in and got up at 8:30 AM. We showered and dressed and finally had granola for breakfast at 9:15. She made this batch of granola yesterday and it was very yummy.

Since the mice have recently been defeating our simple live traps I cleaned our more complicated one yesterday and set it up last night with a broken open peanut butter pretzel for bait. When I checked the trap this morning it had two brown field mice inside. They were anxious to get out and I was glad to oblige. I set them free in the southwest part of our property on the other side of the road. The last I saw of them they were headed south into dense cover and away from the house.

Our appointments were at 11 AM in Dearborn. Linda left at 9:45 and I followed about five minutes later. We took separate cars since she had to go to the bakery following her appointment. Before I left I checked on the state of charge of the house batteries in the bus. There were at 95% SOC. I turned the charger off last night to let the battery bank drain down a little. I turned off the Broan cube heater and the three toe-kick heaters and then shutoff the AC power coming into the coach. I checked that the inverter was working, which it was, and left for my appointment.

We both had good checkups but Linda will need a crown in the spring. A tooth with an old filling had weakened and needs to be capped. The dental assistants/hygienists have started taking blood pressure readings as part of modern dentistry’s role in monitoring and promoting overall health. I don’t know how accurate the wrist cuff machines are but my blood pressure was 121/59 and Linda’s was 128/67, which are excellent readings if they are even close to being correct.

On the way home I stopped at the new Menard’s on Wixom Road just north of I-96. I was looking for 1/2×2″ fine thread carriage bolts but all they had were coarse thread in longer lengths. As long as I was there I picked up a 6-pack of work socks and two more of the good live traps like the one we already have.

Back at the house I called Terry at A-1 Upholstery to confirm that our spacer cushion for the bus sofa was ready and that she would be there Friday morning. Her response was affirmative on both counts. I then called Josh to verify that he would be at his shop on Friday morning and he said he would. I need to stop there on the way to A-1 Upholstery and return two swivel seat ring bearings.

The new gravel driveway extension and RV parking pad. Phil, on the left side of the driveway by the nearer utility pole, rakes out the topsoil he placed along both sides of the driveway.

Philip Jarrell from Precision Grading was here working on the driveway extension when I got home. After my phone calls I changed into my work clothes and went out to chat with him for a few minutes. Phil had brought another load of screened topsoil and was using his track loader to place it along the sides of the driveway extension and at the west end of the property where the French drain begins. He rough graded it with the track loader and then raked it out by hand and spread grass seed. He will bring straw bales with him on a subsequent trip to cover the soil/seed but he wanted to get the seed down before he left as we have rain and wind forecast starting late this evening and through tomorrow into Friday.

I finally got to work in the bus at 2 PM. My objective was to get the SurePly underlayment installed on the passenger seat platform floor. I lightly sanded the floor patch compound I spread around last night and vacuumed up the particles. I then mounted the head of each of the new carriage bolts to a thick plastic washer using 3M Heavy Duty (double-sided) Mounting Tape. I slid the heads into the two mounting channels with the washers under them so the washers held the bolts up off of the bottom of the channel and forced the square collars up in the open slot of the channel where they could not turn when a nut was tightened on them. This was a critical step because once the underlayment and tile are down I will not be able to get to the heads of these bolts.

With the bolts in position I got the piece of SurePly from the garage. I was starting to slip it into position when I remembered that I installed an angle bracket yesterday but had not cut out a small piece of the underlayment to fit around it. So I took the piece back to the garage, cut out the necessary space, and took it back to the coach. I am starting to wonder how many hours I would have saved by having a proper shop set up right outside the front door of the bus.

[ Photo 2 of 2 – HR – The SurePly underlayment on the co-pilot/navigator platform floor showing how it fits under the outside wall panel and over the four mounting bolts for the seat. ]

The SurePly underlayment on the co-pilot/navigator platform floor showing how it fits under the outside wall panel and over the four mounting bolts for the seat.

The underlayment slipped under the switch panel by the outside wall and dropped over the four mounting bolts just like I planned it, so taking most of yesterday to carefully cut and drill the piece paid off in the end. That felt good, especially in comparison to how yesterday felt.

The weather today was lovely, reaching a high of 58 degrees F with sunny skies and I am sure that added to by general sense of well-being. Our part of Michigan is under a high wind warning starting this evening, however, with maximum gusts of 55 to 60 MPH possible. It’s a good thing we have a whole house generator because those kinds of winds cause power outages.

I decided to screw the underlayment to the bus floor rather than use staples. Again, I did not want to get the big air-compressor and staple gun out, but I also wanted to use the screws to pull the underlayment down tight to the bus sub-floor. I was about 50% done when I saw that Phil was putting his track loader back on the trailer. I thought he was packing up to leave so I went out to talk to him briefly. I went back to the bus and got another 25% of the piece screwed down before I ran out of screws. I was using primarily 1″ #6-SR self-drilling screws with some 1-1/4″ of the same kind. Once again my work was halted short of completion by the lack of some small part.

Phil was finished and on his way at 4:15 PM and by 4:30 I was headed to Lowe’s. Linda texted me that she was leaving the bakery and I had a nice QSO with Tom (K8TAF) while running my errand. Lowe’s only had one pack of the 1″ screws, quantity 100, but I thought that might be enough to get me through tomorrow. I also bought a pack of 100 1-1/4″ screws.

For dinner Linda cooked a couple of yams, heated up a couple of vegan sausages with sautéed onions and red peppers, and steamed some fresh green beans. Yum, yum, yum. After dinner we sat in the living room for a while using our iPads. At 8 PM we watched a few nature and science programs on PBS. Jarel called to confirm when I was coming down to Logansport, Indiana and said that Friday would work. Linda is headed back to the bakery in the morning so she went right to sleep after we were done watching TV.

2015/10/20 (T) Pop-X Pickle

Leave a reply

It’s a good thing there are still five weeks until we depart for Florida; there are a lot of unfinished items that need to be taken care of on the bus and around the house/property before we go.

When Phil is here my attention tends to be on what he is doing. He really knows his stuff, and is an excellent contractor to work with, but since he is not working from drawn plans there are inevitably questions and discussions about just exactly what it is I want and whether that is the best idea or even doable.

Phil had ordered a load of sandy soil for delivery first thing this morning and the “train” (double trailer) showed up not long after he did. The sandy soil he wanted was not available so he got clean sand instead. The train driver of the backed it over our third culvert and into the part of our yard were Phil wanted the material dumped. That took a lot of skill and was impressive to watch. I took a few photographs but video was really required to capture what was happening. The Sony SLT-a99v does video in several different modes but I am just beginning to learn how to use it as a still camera and did not want to mess around with shooting video. Besides, I am not a videographer; it’s a completely different way of thinking than being a still photographer.

Phil digs the trench for the electrical conduit from the SW corner of the garage to the far side of the driveway extension where he also dug a hole for the post that will support the RV outlet box.

With the material on site Phil was at the point where he needed to dig the trench for the RV electrical feed. That meant I had to quickly make some final decisions. I had an 8 foot 4″x4″ treated post and the PVC conduit pieces I needed to go from the post under the driveway to the other side but not enough to go all the way to the garage. If I only put conduit under the driveway I could cap it, let Phil bury it, and then dig it up later and finish trenching from there to the garage. I would not do that by hand, however, so it would mean having Phil come back next year just to dig this little trench. Although I could have him dig the foundation hole for the ham radio tower at the same time that still did not make any sense to me. Among other considerations I would have to fill the trench in by hand after I ran the cable.

Another option was to still use conduit just under the driveway but go ahead and run direct burial cable like we did two years ago for the pull-through driveway in front of the house. I would need three (120VAC) or four (240/120VAC) large wires (or equivalent service entrance cable, each at least 80 feet long to get from the outlet box location in the post to the riser pipe on the garage and through the wall into a circuit breaker box. Not only would I have to get the wire, which would be expensive, I did not have the outdoor outlet box or other parts I needed, so it would take me quite a while to go buy everything. I also did not know exactly where/how I would feed the circuit. (I had some ideas about that but they depended on just what the electricians do tomorrow.)

The most expeditious, and least expensive, option was to get more conduit and additional fittings and run the conduit all the way from the post to the southwest corner of the garage. I left at 9:30 AM for Lowe’s as Phil started digging the trench and the hole for the post.

At Lowe’s I picked up five more 10′ pieces of 2″ PVC conduit, a 45 degree elbow, another 90 degree elbow, a right angle entry box, and a bag of 2″ conduit clamps. By the time I got back to the house Phil had the post set in place and most of the trench dug. I got all of the conduit pieces laid out on the ground and got the PVC cement, a hack saw, and the rope and weight.

Since Phil could not do anything else on the driveway until the conduit was installed he helped me install it (or vice-versa). We joined 10′ sections to both ends of one of the 90 degree elbows and then dropped the weighted rope through it. We then set the elbow and one of the straight sections in the trench with the elbow at the base of the post and the other straight section going straight up the post where I secured it with two clamps. We proceeded to drop the weighted rope through additional straight sections of conduit, applied PVC cement to the ends, and put them together. The conduit had to be inserted about 3″ into the mating piece and twisted as it went in. I was glad Phil was there to help with this as I did not have the grip strength to do it by myself. (I don’t have a lot of physical limitations but the arthritis in the base of my thumbs makes itself known in specific situations.)

When we got near the southwest corner of the garage we measured and cut a section of straight pipe to get us to a turn in the trench. Because of a decorative grass plant the trench could not go directly to the desired location on the west side of the garage and had to go between the grass plant and a nearby small evergreen bush and then turned towards the garage. We installed a 45 degree elbow to get around the corner and it ended up in the center of the trench. When I said Phil knew what he was doing I meant it. We again measured carefully and cut a short section of straight pipe to get us to a 90 degree elbow that would turn up and bring the conduit out of the trench and up the side of the garage. I measured and cut the vertical riser section and we cemented it into the elbow. We now had a complete run with conduit coming out of the trench vertically on both ends.

Phil back fills the trench for the electrical conduit from the corner of the garage to the RV electrical post.

While Phil used his excavator to scoop and push dirt back into the trench and tamp it down I closed off both ends of the conduit. At the garage end I removed the gasketed cover from the entry box, cut a short piece of 2″ conduit, and put it in the fitting hole on the back side. Next I brought the weighted rope up through the bottom fitting hole of the box and used Gorilla tape to secure it inside the short back pipe. I put a cap on the other end of the short back pipe and then put the entry box on top of the riser sideway. I coiled up the extra rope, taped it inside the box, and put the gasketed cover back on. I did not cement any of these connections. When permanently installed the gasketed cover will point away from the wall and the hole in the back will have a longer piece of paper 2″ conduit cemented in and going through a hole into the wall of the garage.

At the post I used a Rigid brand pipe cutter, designed specifically for cutting large plastic pipe and conduit, to cut off the vertical riser at a convenient height above the top of the post. I threaded the rope through a 3/8″ hole in the center of a 4″ disc of 3/4″ plywood and tied a big knot in it. I modified the 2″ cap by drilling three adjacent holes lengthwise from the bottom up and cutting out material with a hacksaw to make a slot. With the rope hanging over the edge of the conduit I lined up the slot in the cap with the rope and put the cap over the end of the conduit.

Since I decided to not have Phil build the area leading up to the planned barn location I wanted to pull all of the unneeded yellow plastic stakes out of the yard and put them away. Re-staking the layout, however, is a time-consuming task so I put 10″ metal (iron) spikes at the locations of the front corners of the barn and the center point for the curved transition into the driveway. I drove them flush with the soil so Keith would not hit them with his mower but we can find them later with a metal detector.

With the conduit installed and the trench filled and tamped, Phil filled started building the “curbs” for the driveway. He had excavated parts of the driveway path and filled in other areas to create a base for the construction fabric and road gravel that was eight inches below the finish grade. The construction fabric is 12’6″ wide and Phil likes to wrap it up on the sides about 8″ so when he staked out the driveway to be 11′ 2″ wide. Phil used the sand to build up the areas along both sides of the driveway so that it looked like he had cut the driveway out, but that is not, in fact, what he had done.

My main bus project today was cleaning up the kitchen and living room, which mostly involved moving tools back to the garage. It is a confined workspace and tends to get cluttered over time as we fetch tools for this and that. I also wanted to be able to see the desk and its Corian countertop.

Two of the three sets of cushions in place on the new built-in custom walnut sofa/storage base.

I called Butch in Quartzsite, AZ regarding the distributor tester. He suggested that I send him an e-mail requesting Bill’s e-mail address and he would send it in his reply. We then discussed the refrigerator and he suggested that I set the freezer to a colder setting, leave the fresh compartment setting as is, and monitor it for a while to see if it changes. I did that and reset the min/max memory for both compartments.

Phil is not done with the French drain yet and spent part of the afternoon working on that instead of the driveway. He made lots of trips back and forth with the front loader to take the topsoil he had removed to create the driveway, spread it out along on top of the pea gravel that fills the drain trench, and grade it off to blend with the undisturbed yard along either side of the drain. Before he is all done with these two separate, but inter-related projects, he will have to bring in several truckloads of topsoil. It will be used to fill low spots, especially at the west end of the property, and to cover everything that has been disturbed. All of the topsoil will be finish graded to blend into the existing contours of the property and then seeded with grass seed.

The view from the living room looking towards the hallway. The new built-in custom walnut desk has its Corian countertop in place and the new refrigerator is in place next to the built-in custom pull-out pantry.

I did not want to get involved in any complex or time-consuming projects so I hung out on the west half of our yard where Phil was working and took lots of pictures with the new camera. Actually, I had been doing that all day trying to document the work as it progressed. When I wasn’t taking photos I gathered up broken branches and larger deadfall and carried or dragged it to the brush pile on the west side of the line of large fir trees that separate the east and west halves of our five acres.

Linda called around 3:30 and asked me to see if her wallet was on her desk. She thought she had it with her but could not find it. She finally located it in her car where it had been since falling out of her case this morning. She was on her way home by 3:50 PM.

I had a final chat with Phil, who won’t be back until Saturday, and then closed up the bus and the garage. We were headed to Ann Arbor this evening and I needed to get cleaned up and put on nicer, more appropriate clothes for our evening out. I used to wear Oxford shirts and nicer pants every day for work, and sometimes a sport coat and tie or even a suit. These days it’s mostly polo shirts and blue jeans or sometimes REI ripstop nylon convertible cargo pants. And this summer it has mostly been my work jeans and work shirts.

We left around 5:15 PM and were parked in Ann Arbor before 6 PM. We agreed to meet Kate at the Lab Cafe which was just around the corner from the Thompson Street parking garage. (This garage is behind the former Border’s book store #1 which also housed the company’s corporate headquarters. Our daughter started with Border’s as a cashier at this store and within four years was a regional manager for their PaperChase product line before the company imploded and went bankrupt.)

Kate was sending Linda text message updates on her travel status and ETA so we ordered a couple of decaf coffees to go. At $3.75 each they were pricier than we are used to paying for coffee but they were “hand-crafted” and the coffee was very good. It took the barista at least 10 minutes to make our cups, grinding the beans just before brewing and then slowly pouring hot water through individual filter holders after pre-wetting the filters. In the time it took to make our coffee I would have been on my second cup at Panera.

Linda (front) and Kate (behind) take in the interior of one of the Pop-X art exhibit sheds.

The music was too loud and really awful, a bad combination in our opinion, so we sat outside in spite of the occasional attempt to rain. When Kate showed up we walked the short distance to Liberty Park to see the Pop-X Art Exhibit. Organized by the Ann Arbor Art Center, all of the art was displayed in “sheds” designed by an architect, one artist per shed. The sheds were approximately 10 feet square with steep pitched roofs. The roofs, and the two sides they pitched down to, were covered in clear wavy plastic panels to let in a lot of natural light. The back end was solid and the front had a pair of sliding “barn style” doors hung from tracks. There was a solid floor that was elevated relative to ground level and provision for electrical power. They were designed to be sold as potting sheds after the exhibit was removed at the end of the week. Although the light was fading I was still able to get some decent shots with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera. It has much greater light sensitivity than the Sony alpha 100 it is replacing as my primary camera and this was my first opportunity to take advantage of that since getting it.

Our main reason for coming to Ann Arbor was to have dinner with Kate but Pop-X was a nice bonus. Ann Arbor has a LOT of dining options; hundreds I would guess just in the very walkable downtown area. We decided to try the Grizzly Peak Brewing Company after Linda confirmed that they had some things on the menu we could eat. It was a bit of a walk but the rain held off and it was an otherwise pleasant evening.

Linda had a dark Porter with definite chocolate tones and I had a hard cider with distinct cinnamon/vanilla tones. It was also supposed to have roasted pecan notes but I did not detect that. Kate had a red beer that was not hoppy and thought I might have liked it. I had a sip of Linda’s Porter and it was very agreeable. We both had small couscous and greens dinner salads, which were very nice, and both had wild mushroom burgers, which were excellent. Linda said her chips were also very good and my French fries were tasty and generously portioned. Kate had a burger and all of our meals came with pickles. Kate does not care for pickles, which I knew, and does not care for vinegar in general, which I did not know, so Linda and I split her pickle rather than have it go to waste. The waiter was very attentive and a good sport when I asked for a gallon of ketchup for my fries. He brought two very full bottles for the table and a bottle of Frank’s hot sauce. We tipped him accordingly.

At 9:30 PM we started a slow stroll back to the parking garage and chatted a while longer by our cars, which coincidentally were parked very close together. It was 10:40 PM by the time we got home. I fed the cats and we went straight to bed. I was up later than I wanted to be trying to outline this post but I had not had much opportunity to work on it throughout the day.

2015/10/17 (S) First Snow

Leave a reply

Last night we removed the dining table from the back of my car and put it on the bed in the bus. We then removed the two rear seats and put them in the garage. We wanted the back of the Honda Element empty when we got up this morning as we do not usually have time to spare in the morning before driving to South Lyon for breakfast with the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.

It’s always good to see our fellow hams and today was no exception. We arrived just before 8 AM and stayed for over an hour. We left around 9:15 and drove to Chuck’s shop in Novi to get the box with the two remaining lower windshields for our bus. Chuck was already there and helped us load the box into the car. The box was sized to hold five windshields but only had two in it so it was light enough for us to move by hand. I knew it would fit in my car as we had measured it on a previous visit and I had checked the dimensions against the car. We set one end on the tailgate, lifted the other end, and slid it in. We chatted for a while, and looked at a project Chuck is working in for new front window shades, before heading home.

Phil was not at our house when we got home but he had obviously been there. All of the concrete, and many of the rocks and boulders, were gone from the driveway extension area so I presumed he had loaded them in his truck and hauled them away.

The Converted Coach Owners (CCO) Halloween Rally was going on this weekend and today was the main day for activities. We had intended/hoped to go to the rally but the progress on our bus remodeling has slowed over the last couple of weeks for various reasons, all legitimate, and it was not in a condition to travel or be used. It’s not that things are not getting done; they are, just not as fast as we would like or need them to. Among other things I have not yet secured the refrigerator and pantry. We thought about driving over in the car but it was over two hours one way and we needed to spend what time we had available working on the bus and could not justify being gone. Thanksgiving does not look/feel that far away anymore. It also seemed ill-advised to be gone while Phil is here digging up the yard.

My main bus focus for today was completing the installation of the built-in sofa. We had already set the plywood seat board on a blanket on the bus kitchen floor so I had access to the inside of the base/storage box. I did not need Linda’s assistance for a while so she worked on her counted cross-stitch project. Before starting on the sofa, however, I took care of a few other minor things.

First I replaced the alkaline batteries in the TempMinder thermometers with Lithium ones. I then reset the minimum and maximum temperatures for the two remote sensors. Sensor #1 monitors the freezer and sensor #2 monitors the fresh food compartment of the bus refrigerator. The directions for the TempMinder suggest using Lithium batteries if the remote sensors will be in cold environments.

Next I got a piece of scrap SurePly underlayment to see how it would fit in the rabbited wood trim on the lower outside wall of the hallway. I inserted it fully into a corner and marked the edges with a pencil. It is approximately 3/16″ thick and fit nicely without being too tight. With a layer of veneer it should be just right. When I removed it the depth of the rabbits appeared to be 5/16″ to 3/8″. I think the underlayment will make a nice base for hardwood veneer. I will cut the panels 1/2″ wider (22-1/2″) and 1/2″ longer (28″) than the 22″ X 27-1/2″ dimensions of the framed opening and allow them to “float” just like a frame and panel door.

My last mini-task was locating the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood we removed from the old refrigerator and measuring it to see if we had pieces big enough to panel the damaged area on the wall by the co-pilot seat. I was pleased to find that the remaining pieces are large enough for this application.

By now it was 12:30 PM and my phone reminded me that we had an RVillage Ambassadors webinar/meeting at 1 PM. Linda heated up some Amy’s Vegetable Bean Soup and made hot lentil loaf sandwiches with ketchup. Yum. We got our first snow flurries of the 2015-16 winter season during lunch and they continued off and on through the afternoon. We moved to Michigan in May 1976. It snowed on October 15th that year and we had snow on the ground every day until early April 1977. While that has not held up over the years as a “typical” southeast Michigan winter it was very different from what we grew up with in Missouri and formed our first and most lasting impression of our adopted state.

I retrieved the link for the Go To Meeting from the RVillage website and put it in my web browser. 1 PM came and went with no meeting. The meeting notice said “Saturday, October 17 at 10 AM PST” but they had clarified that was actually 10 AM PDT, which is 1 PM EDT. We decided that perhaps they really meant PST, which would be 2 PM our time. We tried again an hour later, but no meeting ever commenced.

When I finally got to work in the bus on the sofa I removed six screws, three each from two angle brackets, and pulled the entire base assembly out from the wall, giving me complete access to the HVAC duct and wiring chase. Much of the final installation of the sofa involved this duct.

Powered and manual sheet metal nibblers with the opening Bruce just cut in the OTR HVAC duct and the piece of sheet metal that was removed.

The ends of the plywood seat rest on two boxes with open ends that also serve as plenums for air from the OTR HVAC system ducts. I needed to cut out rectangular openings in the vertical face of the duct to allow air into the back end of these boxes. I used a 1/2″ drill to create starter holes at the corners of the openings and then used a manual sheet metal nibbler and a drill-powered reciprocating nibbler, both of which I borrowed from Chuck a few weeks ago, to cut out the sheet metal. The two tools work differently but they both worked well and I was glad I had both of them for this task. The powered nibbler created a lot of small metal debris so I vacuumed the whole work area very thoroughly when I was done nibbling.

The right (forward) end of the duct also had an extra hole in it where I did not need or want one. I removed an old sheet metal patch plate and cut a new one to cover the area I needed to close off. I ended up having to pre-drill holes as I spun the heads off two of my cheap sheet metal screws. I had a heck of a time getting the shafts out, but I got it done. This was just one more example of why seemingly simple projects always take longer than they should.

Phil returned while I was working on the sofa and continued trenching in the French drain. I stopped to chat with him briefly and Linda came out to let me know she was headed to the grocery store. I then got back to my own tasks and let Phil get back to his.

The left support/plenum box with the circular register hole cut in the face plate.

The open fronts of the two plenum boxes are attached to the inside of the vertical front support, which is 3/4″ walnut veneered plywood. To get the air out of the boxes and into the coach my design called for brown plastic 4″ round louvered diffusers. They are considered “four inch” because the two inch long cylindrical pipe on the back will just fit through a 4″ diameter circular hole. (A 4″ flexible duct, like dryer duct, will also just fit over the pipe.) The visible part of the diffuser is actually 5-1/2″ in diameter.

The inside width of the plenum boxes is 4-1/4″ by design. I needed to center a 4″ hole within that space so I had to locate the center point for my 4″ hole saw very accurately side-to-side. I also wanted the hole centered vertically. Using my small square I marked the vertical midpoint on the edge of the front plywood at each end. I then measured in 2-13/16″ from the midpoint mark and used my spring-loaded center punch to mark the center of the hole. [The 2-13/16″ dimension came from half the inside width, or 2-1/8″, plus the thickness of the plywood used to make the plenums, or 11/16″.]

A close up view of the nylon mesh screen material used to cover the opening in the HVAC duct to keep critters that might get into the duct from getting into the support/plenum box.

I stood the boxes on their back ends so the front board was horizontal. I straddled the front board with my legs to hold it and drilled starter holes with a #6 countersink bit. I then drilled the 4″ holes with a 4″ hole saw using my 1/2″ Craftsman corded drill, being careful to have the pilot bit in the starter holes and drill perpendicular to the face of the plywood. I have had this drill for 37 years. It is very powerful and has several ways it can be gripped quite securely. It is large, heavy, and lacks the convenience of a cordless drill but when I need to use a bit with a 1/2″ shaft and/or need the torque, this is still the drill for the job. The hole saw created some sawdust so I vacuumed the whole area thoroughly when I was done drilling.

I was just finishing this work when Linda got back from the grocery store. She put the groceries away and came out to see if I needed any assistance. I already had the roll of plastic screen in the bus and she got the Gorilla Tape from the garage. I cut pieces of the screen large enough to cover the two rectangular openings in the HVAC duct and used lengths of Gorilla Tape to secure them. We then slid the base/storage assembly back into position, pushed it tight to the HVAC duct, and reattached it to the wood wire chase on top of the duct. The two support boxes and the return air box have foam weather stripping on the back edges to seal against the duct.

We picked the plywood seat up off of the kitchen floor and set it back in place but did not secure it. We left it out several inches from its original position and got a seat and back cushion from the bedroom. We experimented with different spacings and finally agreed that we need to have the seat out 4-3/4″ farther than originally designed. The current hinge board is 11/16″ plywood, 2-3/4″ wide by just under 78″ long. This board is screwed to the top of the wiring chase and to one side of the 72″ piano hinge. I will replace it with a piece that is 7-1/2″ wide by the same length. I will also have to provide some additional support for the seat side of the piano hinge as in the original design had both sides of the hinge resting on top of the wiring chase on top of the HVAC duct.

The Tulip Tree behind our house in its full fall glory. This is the first photo to be posted in this blog taken with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera.

That was the end of the interior bus work for today. By the time we were done Phil had driven his front-loader onto his flat-bed trailer and secured it so it appeared he was wrapping up for the day. I chatted with him about the project for 30 minutes before he left. Earlier in the afternoon I had found my site plan drawings for the bus barn and agreed to stake out the driveway tomorrow so we could review it first thing Monday morning.

Linda had invited Meghan and Chris for brunch tomorrow but it was not a good weekend for them as the Michigan vs Michigan State football game was taking place in Ann Arbor. Chris manages the Pizza House restaurant, and being away on football Saturday is not an option. They will come next Sunday (31st) instead.

For dinner Linda made a nice salad of mixed greens with dried cranberries, sliced almonds, and diced onions dressed with raspberry vinaigrette. The main course was pan-fried polenta with vegan puttanesca sauce. It held its heat to the last bite and was very satisfying on a cold evening. I opened a bottle of Cupcake Black Forest red wine. We have had it before and, although drier than I prefer, it went well with the meal.

After dinner I got my flashlight and checked the bus for axle/hub seal leaks by looking under the bus from the opposite side to see the inside of the wheels. I did not see anything to suggest a problem on any of the six positions and will text that information to Joe tomorrow for planning purposes as he would require a second day to work on the seals if that was needed.

We spent the last couple of hours of the day in the living room, with the fireplace turned on, reading, writing, and playing games while enjoying some red grapes for dessert. Linda got a text from her sister-in-law, Mary, with a photo of her and Ron “standing on ‘the’ corner in Winslow, Arizona.” Ron has been retired for many years but Mary only recently retired and they are on their first extended camping trip in their A-liner trailer and their first trip to the southwest U.S.

We went to bed around 10 PM. Linda fell asleep quickly while I divided my attention between cooking shows on the Detroit PBS Create channel, a concert by Eric Clapton on PBS, and working on this post.

2015/10/16 (F) Desk Installation

Leave a reply

We were up at 8 AM, fed the cats, made coffee, and had breakfast. Phil showed up around 8:30 AM, unloaded his front loader, dropped his flatbed trailer, and left in his dump truck. I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee while iPading until 10:15 AM.

Our first task today was to cut up several large limbs that I pulled out of the woods last evening to get them out of Phil’s way. I cut them up with the chain saw and then we stacked them on the disposal pile for Phil to haul away.

Phil returned at 10:30 and moved his Caterpillar 305C excavator into the woods across the street by the culvert. I went down to chat with him briefly to make sure I understood what he was going to work on. There were a lot of small trees (3″ diameter), saplings, and bushes scattered around the site. Some of them had been dead for years and some had just been knocked over by Phil. I decided to work in that area with my chain saw cutting everything up into five foot lengths so Phil could use his front loader to get them into his dump truck. I worked at this until 11:30 AM and then turned my attention to the bus. Linda worked on her needlepoint while I cut wood.

Before getting started on construction tasks I took two pieces of filter material and set them on the wire shelf in the freezer compartment of the new refrigerator, one on top of the other. I then set the two remote thermometer sensors on the filter material. Butch had suggested the other night that I set the sensor on a sponge to get it off of the floor of the freezer compartment as it was likely responding to the automatic defroster heat strips when they come on. I figured the filter material would work just as well and that placing the sensors on the shelf would definitely get them away from the floor.

Linda brought out a bag of ice from the house fridge and put it in the bus freezer. She also filled several 1/2 gallon juice and milk cartons with water, put the caps on, and put them in the fresh food compartment. The purpose of all of this was to add thermal mass to the compartments to cause the refrigerator to run less often and reduce large swings in temperature.

Inside the bus our first sub-project was installing the desk, which included putting the front passenger side HVAC duct cover in place even though it is not finished. It took us quite a while to get everything positioned just right. With Linda holding things in position I screwed the right pedestal to the wall, adjusted the position of the base and screwed the pedestal to the base. We then repeated that process for the left pedestal and base.

Linda removes the backing from the double-sided tape on the back side of the air grate in the center connector/cover for the desk.

At this point we had several things to do with, and under, the center connector/cover so I removed it and took it into the garage/shop. We cut a piece of the decorative brass colored metal grate and secured it to the back of the air opening with small screws every few inches. Next we cut a piece of black plastic mesh to fit over the grate. We then cut pieces of 3M Extreme Mounting Tape (double-sided) and attached them to the back side of the grate in between the screws. Linda peeled off the protective layer and we carefully placed the plastic mesh. Using one of the scrap pieces of the protective layer I rolled the plastic into the take with our wallpaper seam roller. Finally, we had a piece of filter material already cut to cover this air intake opening so we set that on top of the mesh, pressed it down to take advantage of the tape, and then secured it with Gorilla Tape on all four edges, rolling it with the seam roller to get good bonding.

A detailed view of one of the homebrewed tongue and groove alignment assemblies made from flat mending plates.

Back in the coach I had to tie in the outlet strip to the 120VAC power feed. I shut off the breaker for this circuit and checked with my tester to make sure it was not live. The hot and neutral wires were accessible but the ground wires were back under the left pedestal where they were not easy to reach and manipulate. It took a while, certainly longer than it should have, but I got the three ground wires tied together with a grounding clamp. I connected the hot and neutral wires (three each) relatively easily using wire nuts. I turned the circuit breaker back on and checked that the outlet strip had power between the correct terminals and did have power between any other terminal pairs.

I went to the garage to get a four foot long piece of 1″X1″ aluminum angle that I bought weeks ago to use as a support bracket for the upper rear edge of the center connector/cover. I was going to cut off a 26″ long piece and then drill countersunk holes but I noticed a piece of 1/2″X1/2″ light gage angle that was about 26″ long and already had holes in it. It was long enough to span the space between the pedestals and go under each one about an inch. That was sufficient to position it correctly so Linda held it there while I secured it to the wall with four round (pan) head screws. I then put the center connector/cover back in place.

Phil has cleared all of the organic debris from the area where the driveway extension and RV pad will be located.

Phil starts trenching and placing the plastic drain tile tubing for the French drain.

Phil had long since left in his truck to dump all of the wood debris. We had a light lunch of Amy’s Lentil Vegetable soup and fresh organic grapes. While we were eating a group of three deer came to our back yard and eventually ended up eating apples that had fallen from our tree onto the ground. These same deer, along with two others, were here yesterday at twilight and were very frisky. We saw them later in our neighbor’s yard across the street.

Another view of Phil’s smaller excavator with the 12” bucket being used to trench the French drain in the southwest portion of our property.

Phil returned around 3 PM and started working on the French drain. He replaced the 30″ wide toothed bucket with the 12″ one and started at the high end if the culvert on this side of the road.

The grand finale was the installation of the Corian desktop, which has been sitting on a blanket in the middle of the living area floor since Tuesday. I drilled countersunk holes through the four corner plates in each desk pedestal from underneath. I then inserted 1-1/4″ #8 self-drilling outdoor wood screws into each hole, again from underneath, until they just protruded above the corner blocks and then backed them off until the tips were just below the surface. We set the desktop across the pedestals and pushed it as tight to the back and right end wall as we could. Linda put her weight on it and I ran the screws home, pulling the top tight to the pedestals. We reinstalled the four drawers in the right pedestal, finally getting them off the floor in the hallway where they have been since Tuesday. We stepped back to admire the desk and agreed it was a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. Linda also marveled, once again, at how much space she now has to work in the kitchen.

A wider shot showing the excavator and drain tile. The laser level is at the left edge of the frame. The main arm of the excavator (with the bucket attached) has a laser sensor on it that tells Phil exactly where the lower edge of the bucket is relative to the laser level.

The “denouement” was mounting the outlet strip and adding felt pads to the two fake drawer fronts on the left pedestal and then adjusting the magnetic catches. I originally had the outlet strip (temporarily) mounted to the wall between the two pedestals with two screws a few inches below the cord notch in the center of the back edge of the desktop. Rather than put it back there I decided to mount it on the underside of the desktop just in front of the cord notch.

The underside location will work just as well as the wall mount location for regular 2- and 3-prong plugs but probably not as well for small AC adapters. The added pluses of this location, however, are: 1) it will not interfere with cords coming through the notch, 2) it will be up out of the way of the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) that will sit on the shelf at the top of the center connector/cover, and 3) if liquids are accidentally spilled and run over through the notch they will not run into the outlet strip. Besides, devices with an AC adapter will probably be plugged into the UPS so this was a better overall approach.

Our next task was to adjust the sofa seat until it was deep enough to be comfortable. We slide the plywood seat out a couple of inches and then got the seat and back cushions (three each) from the house where they have been stored since September 21st. We put the cushions in place and sat down. We pulled the cushions out and pulled the seat board out until it was five inches farther out than originally designed and put the cushions back in.

The front edge of the seat cushions were out farther than I liked but we both agreed the sofa was now comfortable to sit on. The distance from the bottom front edge of the back cushions to the front edge of the seat cushions was originally only 16 inches and that turned out to just be too short. With the seat board moved out it will now be 21 inches.

In order for the sofa to work correctly, both as a sofa and as a bed, we will need a cushion that is 5″ wide by 6″ high, by ~76″ long to fill in the space behind the seat cushions and below the back cushions. The height and foam makeup will be such that it is level with the tops of the seat cushions and have the same firmness and feel. Would that I had designed the sofa for this depth to begin with and had the seat cushions made accordingly, but we were trying to open up the living room by not having the sofa protrude into the aisle any more than absolutely necessary.

Next up was reinstalling the wood trim in hallway. We have an interesting plan for the lower half of the hallway but in case we do not get it finished before we leave for the winter we wanted the trim off the bed and back on the wall.

The lower outside hallway wall. There were originally three framed panels of vertical strip mirrors here. We will replace them with wood panels, probably in a lighter color to contrast with the walnut trim.

This trim originally framed three panels of vertical strip mirrors. We were able to remove the mirrors as they were glued to wallpaper. In the process we discovered that the left and right panels were the same width but the center panel was wider. The trim consisted of six pieces of wood; a long upper and lower horizontal piece and four vertical pieces. The six pieces were screwed to the lower half of the outer wall but not attached to each other. The left and right vertical pieces were tight to adjacent woodwork, but the two intermediate pieces were free to be repositioned.

We reattached the upper horizontal piece first making sure the mounting screws went back in the same holes. Next we pushed the lower horizontal piece into place but did not screw it to the wall. We then attached the left and right verticals. The horizontal distance between the inside edges of the left and right verticals was 75 inches. The two intermediate verticals were each 4-1/2″ wide so the distance between verticals needed to be 22″ (75 minus 9 = 66 divided by 3 = 22). We carefully positioned and secured the two intermediate verticals to achieve this spacing.

The trim boards all have rabbited edges on the back side. I need to measure them carefully, but they are ~3/16″ deep by 3/8″ wide. Our current plan is to use 3/16″ underlayment or other 3/16″ high quality plywood to make three panels that will fit within these rabbits with a little room to spare. The panels will either have a hardwood face or we will cover them with a hardwood veneer of a wood that contrasts with the walnut trim. We can get the veneer from Rockler once we decide what we want.

Linda spread out several towels on the new desktop and we moved tools and supplies from the A-V cabinet, behind the driver’s seat, to the new desk. I then removed the Corian top of the A-V cabinet and put in on the bed. We still have a small amount of wallpaper to install in the front of the living room and into the cockpit on the driver side, but it will not be easy to do.

These areas, such as the one behind the A-V cabinet, are small with limited access so most of my sanders cannot be used. The only one that might work is the Porter-Cable oscillating tool but I did not get it out today. I got some sanding sponges instead and tried those on the wall under the passenger side window trim next to the co-pilot seat. When I sanded a dark area about 6″ long by 3″ wide the wood in the center crumbled and I ended up with a hole 3″ long by an inch and a half wide. I could see one of the stainless steel structural members through the hole. Given what was obviously water damage I was glad we bought a bus with welded stainless steel as the main structural material.

Based on what I could see, the walls in the bus appear to be 1/2″ plywood although I did not measure the thickness. This area had obviously gotten very wet over a long period of time and some of the wood has rotted. It is the only spot we have discovered that is this damaged and we immediately realized that we will not be able to wallpaper this area. We will probably panel over it, similar to what we plan to do with the veneered panels in the hallway, but today was not the day to figure that out.

It was going on 5 PM and we decided we were done for the day. I turned off all of the electric heaters, turned on the Aqua-Hot, turned on all three thermostats, and set the temperature to 20 degrees C. The refrigerator was also indicating much colder freezer temperatures than it had been before I moved/isolated the remote sensors so I reset the freezer and fresh food controls to their “normal” center positions. Tomorrow we will replace the alkaline batteries with the Lithium batteries we bought specifically for the TempMinder thermometer system, reset the min/max data, and monitor it for a few days.

I walked down to see what Phil was doing. He was making good progress with the French drain but did not have enough of the plastic drain tile to finish it today. He plans to work tomorrow and will have the additional tile he needs to finish the drain. I left him to his work and took photos of the fall colors in our yard as I worked my way back to the house.

I spent an hour at my computer dealing with e-mail and transferring photos from the Sony a100 to my laptop. Linda called me to dinner at 7 PM. It was a simple meal of vegan Coney dogs with mustard, onion, and beans served open-faced on a whole wheat hotdog bun. As a side dish Linda steamed Opo squash. It was the first time either of us had this particular squash. It was very mild with a hint of cucumber. It is available all over the world and widely consumed as it is relatively inexpensive. It was OK, but I thought it might work better as an ingredient rather than a stand-alone side dish.

I exchanged a couple of text messages with Chuck and confirmed that we would be at his shop tomorrow after breakfast to retrieve our two bus windshields. The rest of the evening was spent in the living room by the fireplace reading and writing on our iPads before turning in and watching episodes of Rick Steeves’ Europe and Joseph Rezendo’s Travelscope on Detroit PBS (WTVS).

2015/10/03 (S) Wallpaper Stumps

Leave a reply

Last night we discussed not going to breakfast this morning and that was sufficient to give us permission to sleep in. We got up at 7:30 AM, too late to make it to South Lyon by 8, so I made coffee while Linda cooked oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits.

There was a hawk on the ground just behind our house. It took flight but stayed in the area dancing with a crow. In spite of seeing it repeatedly–on the ground, perched in a tree, and in flight–we could not identify it other than to be fairly certain it was not a red-tailed hawk. Red-tailed hawks are the most commonly seen raptor around here but they are very distinctive due to their red tails.

I checked the bus and the temperature was 54 degrees F, too cool for wallpapering. I had left two electric heaters on last night but obviously did not set the thermostats high enough. The refrigerator freezer compartment was 24 degrees, which is way too high, and has me concerned that something has broken, perhaps as a result of driving on our very bad roads. I settled in to enjoy my coffee (as best I could) and await the arrival of Philip Jarrell from Precision Grading.

Phil showed up at 8:35 AM. The fact that he was probably starting work on our French drain and driveway extension project this morning was the main reason we decided not to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast. I left Phil alone long enough to get his equipment unloaded and then went out to chat with him briefly. He had already communicated with me by phone during the week about what he wanted to accomplish today, and where he needed to start the work, but I always like to be on site when a contractor arrives and double check these things. That is especially true when they have big equipment that can move a lot of earth in a short time.

Phil was using his smaller backhoe to dig up tree stumps and pull debris out of the woods along the area where the pull-through driveway extension will run. He also pulled out concrete blocks, pipes, and other building debris that has been thrown there over many years. I did not, however, have him pull out the two piles of bricks as I presume they are the same as the ones on the house and we might want to keep them for future repairs.

I needed to get the air-ride seat base back to Chuck this morning so I put it in the car and drove to his shop in Novi. He was just pulling his stacker trailer out of the shop with his forklift when I arrived. After he finished getting it out and positioning it I gave him the air-ride base and he put it in the trailer through the side door. We chatted briefly about moving the two remaining windshields, during which time Barbara showed up, so I left them to their chores and headed home.

Back at the house we decided not to try hanging wallpaper today. The temperature was in the low 50’s and it was drizzling lightly and intermittently. Not wanting to waste the day we decided to straighten up the temporary workshop we have set up in the garage. We had just started that when we got a call from our son and he put his daughter on the phone. Madeline wanted to come visit her grandparents which we were all too happy to oblige. A return call pinned down the day/time as tomorrow morning. I helped Linda load the recyclables into her car and she took them to Recycle Livingston. She stopped at the Meijer’s in Howell on the way home to pick up ingredients for a fruit salad for tomorrow’s visit.

Part of the reason for cleaning up the garage/shop was that when I went to pull out the tub with all of our wallpapering tools I could not find it even though we both remembered recently seeing the tools somewhere. The more we looked the more it seemed that “recently” was either a long time ago or a product of our collective imaginations. We still have a lot of stuff in boxes from our move 2-1/2 years ago and we have boxes stored behind boxes in the garage making it difficult to get to many of them.

We worked steadily except for a lunch break and a couple of quick chats with Phil. Lunch was a half sandwich of hummus and onions on rye with leftover potato salad and collard greens Cole slaw.

Phil was working by the culvert that goes under the road and had dug away the earth in front of it. I got down and looked in; it was completely clogged. Phil said he knew a company in Walled Lake that could open it and clean it out using a hydro-jet system and agreed to give them a call on Monday. He was setting up his laser level to shoot the grade and mark the route for the French drain when I went back inside.We did not get the garage completely cleaned and organized but by mid-afternoon it was a lot better than when we started. I eventually spotted the dark gray tray that we have used in the distant past for wetting pre-pasted wallpaper. It was on top of some upper cabinets, not down on a shelf where we had been looking. Inside were all of our wallpapering tools except for a long edge that we used for guiding the razor knife when trimming corners. The smoothing tool was falling apart and completely useless so we threw it away. We will need to pick up a few new tools when we buy the wallpaper paste.

Linda made some hot tea and settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project while I worked on my iPad. I eventually went back to the garage to see if I could find my small gasoline powered chain saw. Fortunately, it was where I remembered last seeing it. We have a dead tree that needs to be cut down before it also falls across the road and several trees that are already down and need to be cut into small enough pieces so that Phil can use his front loader to move them to his dump truck.

As long as Phil is hauling wood debris off of the site we might as well take advantage of his willingness to take whatever will fit in his truck. The alternative is for us to haul it to the fire pit with our (currently non-functioning) lawn tractor and burn it. Unfortunately I could not find the small red plastic gasoline container that I use for gasoline mixed 40:1 with 2-cycle oil for use in small, air-cooled 2-stroke engines such as the chain saw. I also could not find our Ryobi multipurpose trimmer/saw and figured I had lent all of this to one of our children, probably our son.

Our 13″ McCullough chain saw has not seen regular use over the years but has always been willing to run when needed and proven to be very handy. It’s a nice size for cutting down small trees and de-limbing larger ones. In order to use it I needed a small gasoline container. I would normally go to Lowe’s in Howell but much of the drive is on dirt roads. It had been drizzling all day and the dirt roads were sloppy so I went to The Home Depot in Brighton. The entire route is paved except the first/last mile from/to our house.

THD had quarts of pre-mixed gasoline and oil in 40:1 and 50:1 ratios. Although expensive compared to the cost of gasoline at a filling station, I did not have to buy a new container, a bottle of oil, stop at the filling station on the way home, deal with mixing everything in the correct ratio, add Stabil fuel stabilizer to the container, and then remember what was in the container or label it. Sometimes the price of convenience is a price worth paying.

When I got home I added the fuel to the tank of the chain saw and set all of the controls according to the starting directions. I figured it would take a few pulls of the handle, perhaps quite a few, to get it to start but I did not expect the engine to be locked up. On a couple of tries I got the crank to turn slightly but mostly it would not budge. I have no idea what is wrong with it but I suspect that something is rusted or bent. Whatever the case I have no intention of taking the time to try to disassemble it to find out.

Dinner was salad and leftover pizza with a small glass of wine. I went to Lowe’s after dinner and bought a new chain saw. Lowe’s sells at least five different brands of chain saws but they feature Husqvarna. I bought a Poulan Pro 18″ model figuring the longer chain bar would be useful for cutting down and/or cutting up slightly larger trees. I got it for 1/2 to 2/3 of the comparable Husqvarna models.

Poulan is Husqvarna’s less expensive product line and it seemed good enough for the occasional use it will get. We have too many trees on our property to be without a functioning chain saw, however, and Phil will be done cleaning and hauling timber at the end of his next day here. I will probably take the little McCullough somewhere to see if it can be repaired but that may not be until next spring. Even if I took it someplace on Monday I would not have it back in time, assuming it can even be repaired.

Back home I turned on the natural gas fireplace and we relaxed in the living room reading, writing, and playing games on our iPads. With the new iOS 9 Apple changed the Game Center so the login screen pops up every time you open any game. It is REALLY annoying and apparently we are not alone in that view. Linda was checking online to see if there was a way to disable it and saw a lot of chatter on the subject, none of it positive (but no way to disable the “feature”). She did find something that said it should stop popping up for any game where you have clicked “Cancel” three times in a row but she has canceled the login more times than that yet is still getting the screen. Interestingly, the login screen has stopped popping up on my iPad. The only difference between them is that I used mine the other day while waiting at Discount Tire without any connection to the Internet. Maybe that confused it.

We turned in just before 10 PM hoping to watch a little television but did not find much on that interested us even on PBS. We searched through the channels and happened on a program titled “If You Build It” (on one of the three PBS affiliates we can pick up) about project-based learning. It was interesting.

2015/10/01 (R) New Month, Same Project

Leave a reply

For various reasons we have not worked on the bus the last two days. For one, Linda is still recovering from a cold and/or seasonal allergies that may have been triggered by some weeding she did over the weekend. August and September are the time of year for ragweed in Michigan. For another, I was tied up most of Tuesday with the bus windshield replacement and yesterday we both had our annual physical exams, mine in the morning and Linda’s in the afternoon. Throw in an unexpected problem with the driver door lock on my car and a lawn tractor that wouldn’t start and that took care of most of the day. Since I wasn’t working on the bus I used some of my time to edit drafts of blog posts and started selecting and processing a few photos to go with them.

I got a call from Philip Jarrell around 8 PM last night letting me know that a last minute project came up that required his attention today. If all goes well he plans to start on our French drain and driveway extension project tomorrow. Our project is a relatively small job for Phil and I accept that he has to fit it in around larger projects for long-term customers who give him a lot of repeat business. Still, I think he likes working with us and does his best to fit us in.

I had hoped to get back to work on the bus today, specifically working on priming the walls and hanging the new wallpaper, but Linda had another annual medical appointment this afternoon. Neither of us likes to get into our work clothes and get involved in physical tasks for just a small portion of the day so after breakfast, and a leisurely morning in the living room enjoying coffee to the glow and warmth of our fireplace, she settled in to work at her desk for a while before going on a walk.

Our whole house generator threw a code 34 on Tuesday afternoon indicating that it required maintenance but would still operate if needed. I called Bratcher Electric to see what was needed and spoke with Karen. I think she and Mike own the business, but it’s possible she is Mike’s daughter. Whichever, I’m certain that she is family. Our generator was last serviced one year ago on the same date (29th) and the 34 was the total number of hours it has run since being installed in May 2013. I set up the service appointment for Friday October 9th.

While I had Karen on the phone I asked about the project Mike had come out to look at a year ago. I need his electricians to run a 4-wire, 100 Amp service entrance cable (SEC) from the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage, through the garage attic, and into the secondary distribution panel in the HVAC closet in the northeast corner of the garage, making it a main panel instead of subpanel. Karen said she would leave a note for Mike to follow up with me.

It was going on noon when I finally got back to work on the bus. It is a gorgeous fall day, chilly and breezy but with abundant sunshine, and I just could not let it slip away without getting something done on our interior remodeling project. I was at least 60% done with rebuilding the landing where the stepwell slide cover used to be and that seemed like the logical thing to get finished. It was 52 degrees F in the bus so I turned on the front electric toe-kick heater and set up the small Broan portable electric heater in the kitchen blowing forward towards the cockpit. I also noticed that the refrigerator thermometer indicated 43.5 degrees F. We do not have any food in the fridge but we do have freezer packs and containers of water for mass. 43.5 is warmer than I want so I checked the freezer reading and it was 28 degrees F. Yikes! That was way too warm.

Frame and center support for the new landing platform. Air lines crimped and secured.

The 31″ X 27.5″ piece of 3/4″ thick plywood for the landing platform flexed slightly when I stepped in the middle. I’m not sure anyone would notice it when stepping on it but we do not want the tile that will be on there to crack from the deflection. My solution was to cut an appropriate length of the 2.5″ wide 3/4″ thick poplar and install it on edge running long ways to support the middle of the plywood. I had to use an angle bracket at the back edge (by the driver’s seat) and place shins under it at several places to get it to fit just right.

About this time Linda came out to let me know lunch was ready. We each had a half sandwich of hummus and raw onion on rye bread and some black grapes. She left for her doctor’s appointment and I made a big cup of Constant Comment decaffeinated tea. I called Chuck to see if he knew where his powered metal shears (nibbler) were and if I could borrow it. The answers were ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’ I decided to take his suggestion of cutting two new access openings in the passenger side HVAC duct to allow the two existing heater hoses to come out and go directly to the fan-coil heat exchangers with minimal bending. It will simplify the installation, eliminate soldered copper parts and connections that would restrict flow and be a potential leakage point. Since my car is in the shop for the next several days I will have meet up with him when Linda’s car is available.

Back in the bus I checked the refrigerator and the fresh food compartment was at 39 degrees F and the freezer was At 6 degrees F. Those are the sort of temperatures I expect to see. I had the freezer set to cycle between about 0 and 10 but occasionally saw it go as high as 17. I figured it had something to do with an automatic defrost cycle, but anything over 20 is troubling. Linda had suggested earlier that perhaps we need to replace the batteries in the remote sensors and the base unit. She may well be right and it won’t hurt to do that anyway.

When I got back to work on the landing I folded over the ends of the two air lines and put cable ties on them to close them off. The air supply for the solenoid valve that controls these two lines has a shut off valve which I intend to keep closed, but if it gets opened accidentally it could drain the auxiliary air tank through one or the other line if they were not crimped closed. I may eventually disconnect the supply line at the valve and cap it, but for now this will at least prevent an open line leak.

New landing platform structure with sound/thermal insulation.

After screwing down and cutting off the shims I plugged the hole where the air lines come through the floor with steel wool and secured the lines to the floor with cable clamps. I then cut fiberglass insulation to fit the two spaces in the floor. I used the same John’s Manville Sound & Thermal insulation that we used in my office and ham shack as I had some left. I put the plywood floor piece in place, evened it up along the front edge, and screwed it down but ran out of screws before I had it completely secured. Projects are like that.

I was walking towards the garage when I saw a car coming very slowly from west of our house headed east. The drive pulled past our third drive and stopped but I could not see what the driver was doing. The car eventually continued on, followed closely by a second vehicle and I thought the flashed me a somewhat dirty look, but they did not stop and were too far away to be sue. Still, I thought that was odd. I did not give any further thought to it until I went out to get the mail and noticed a lot of debris in the road and a large, dead tree in the ditch. It had been windy all morning and at one point I thought I heard the crack of a falling tree but it sounded farther away than where this one lay. The driver had obviously stopped to move it and was probably a little bit annoyed that they had to do that because I had not taken care of it. Hey, I didn’t know!

I moved it a little more and then got a metal toothed rake and pulled all of the small debris out of the road. There were limbs on the other side of the road that were 1″ to 2″ in diameter so the tree had obviously fallen all the way across the road. The property on the other side of the road is part of our yard but I would have cleaned up the branches regardless since the tree clearly fell from our yard.

Linda stopped for groceries on the way back from her doctor appointment and did not get home until almost 4 PM. We got a pruning saw and cutter and she helped me cut up some of the upper part of the tree and get the pieces farther from the road. We noticed another dead tree in the same area that looked like it would eventually fall over across the road. I can cut it down safely but will need the chain saw to do so. I was not in the humor to get it out and try to get it started at that exact moment but noted to myself that I needed to do this sooner rather than later.

We were not going to start any messy bus work at that hour so I changed into nicer clothes to go out to dinner. Before we left I texted Josh at Coach Supply Direct to clarify an earlier e-mail and let him know that two of the MCD shades were not staying attached to one of their clips. We left at 5 PM for the La Marsa in Brighton and stopped at the bank on the way. For dinner we split an order of Moussaka and got two salads as our sides along with the warm pocket bread and garlic spread. The food was good and we had a tasty, filling meal for under $14 plus tip. It is our best/favorite restaurant option within reasonable driving distance of our house.

After dinner we stopped at The Home Depot in Brighton but they did not have the screws I wanted. When we came back out I noticed that the tires on Linda’s car were under-inflated and on closer inspection that the side walls were badly checked. We drove to Discount Tire in Howell but they were closed. We stopped at Lowe’s and bought the screws I needed, some furnace filter material, and Lithium batteries (AA and AAA) for our TempMinder base/remote thermometers as we keep the two remotes in the bus freezer and fresh food compartment and the base station on the bus kitchen counter.

Back at the house I worked in my office for a while selecting/processing photos to go with blog posts but I did not feel like putting in a long, sustained effort on the task. I got a call from Phil at Precision Grading. His other job did not get finished today and he will have to return to that job site tomorrow. He hopes to start our French drain and driveway work on Monday but that may not happen. I am anxious for him to get started but I have no control over that. I appreciate, however, that he keeps me informed as it allows me to plan my own time.

We watched The Woodwright’s Shop, Rick Steves’ Europe, and Travel in the Americas on DPTV (WTVS) and then went to sleep.

2015/09/23 (W) Autumnal Equinox

Leave a reply

We were up at 8 AM, had granola for breakfast, and enjoyed our coffee in the living room by the fireplace. I like cool mornings.

I spent some time yesterday morning, and again this morning, considering my full-frame DSLR options. The only 50 MP “35mm” DSLR camera body on the market at this time is the Canon 5Ds/R and there is no indication that Sony plans to introduce a successor to the A99 anytime soon. The A99 is still available, as is the vertical battery pack/grip and I am at the point where I will probably order one. It has a 24 MP full-frame CMOS sensor, which is double the resolution of my alpha 100. More importantly, it will accept all of my old 35mm Minolta A-mount lenses and they will work as designed.

Linda left at 9:40 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark. I gathered up the laundry, sorted it, and started the first load. I then settled in at my desk for a while.

I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to see if he could assist me on Saturday and/or Monday with climbing the tower to do some more antenna work. I then e-mailed Bill Gerrie to see if he and Karen were in Michigan yet. I pulled up the initial mockup of the October 2015 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and proofread my article on replacing the speedometer. Jorge had done a good job of laying it out. I e-mailed back four minor corrections, one slightly larger one, and a general comment about the lack of space following periods. I had an e-mail from Steve Smith (N8AR) with contact information for Yaesu Fusion technical support.

The washing machine beeped so I transferred that load to the dryer and started another one. I noticed that it was after 11:30 AM so I cleaned the cats’ litter tray, grabbed the garbage from under the kitchen island sink, put it in the trash can, and got it to the street. Alchin’s normally comes “around noon” but I had a feeling they had already driven by. They were still in our subdivision, however, and stopped on the way out to empty our can.

I had another cup of coffee and updated this post. By noon Linda had not called yet let me know she was on her way home so I headed to Lowe’s for a roll of plumber’s sandpaper. I also picked up the paste we need to hang the new wallpaper. On the way back to the house I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea to order some Cafe Europe half-caff blend. Linda was home when I got back and we had a light lunch. We have both finally taken off some of the weight we put on this past winter. Long, hard work days with little or no lunch seem to help.

By the time we got back to work on the bus projects it was 3 PM. It’s hard to make progress when the workday starts in the afternoon. Today is the autumnal equinox, so it gets dark much earlier in the evening than it did in late May, June, July and even most of August. Still, as anxious as I am to get the heat exchangers re-installed we have to deal with the wallpaper in that part of the bus first. Linda helped me assemble the right desk base, repeating what we did yesterday with the left base.

The left pedestal base with the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchanger mounted inside.

We installed the metal grates on the air openings (from the inside) and then used doubled-sided tape to affix the plastic mesh to the metal grate. We put a 1/2″ plywood spacer in the bottom and marked the locations of the mounting bracket holes and the heat exchanger. We took the exchanger and spacer out, punched the starter holes, and drilled. Linda cleaned the heat exchanger and used a pair of tweezers to straighten the bent radiator fins, of which there were quite a few. We cleaned off the two copper pipe stubs that provide the inlet and outlet for the antifreeze and then attached the self-stick 3/8″ X 1/4″ dense foam weather-stripping around the front of the housing. We mounted the exchanger to the spacer with approximately 1/8″ of the foam weather-stripping beyond the front edge of the spacer. We put the spacer/exchanger assembly back in the base and I secured it with screws while Linda pulled it into position, compressing the weather-stripping.

Linda cleans and straightens the fins on one of the fan-coil heat exchangers.

I took a few photographs as we worked and took some more of the finished assemblies. While we were working we got a call from Philip Jarrell of Precision Paving. Phil was calling to see if we still wanted the French Drain and driveway work done. He has been busy all summer and even more so coming into fall when folks decide they need stuff done before winter. He had given us a quote (estimate) back in the spring but could not do the work then because the soil was way too moist. The property has dried out nicely over the last seven weeks and he wanted to make sure he did the work yet this year if we were still interested. I told him “yes” and he said he would call “Miss Dig” right away to get the utilities marked and then get started.

The two desk bases with the fan-coil heat exchangers installed view from above and behind.

I think this annoyed Linda as it will be another significant expenditure, but it’s something I think needs to be done and it is not easy to get a slice of Phil’s time. (Actually, we have done a lot of difficult work together on the bus this summer and I think she was already annoyed from working with me on the right base.) Not taking advantage of Phil’s availability would likely mean a two-year delay in getting this work done.

This project is actually a combination of two different projects that happened to make more sense to do at the same than at separate times. The French drain is intended to dry out the far west end of our property which has standing water in the spring and after heavy rains, and stays moist/soft for the first half of the summer. There are a lot of trees in that area and we have lost some and are losing others. The driveway work will give us additional parking for people visiting in their RVs and create the main approach to the location for the bus barn that I hope to eventually build. The topsoil that Phil pulls out from the driveway will be used to fill in low spots on the west end of the property, further improving the drainage in that area.

The right desk base viewed from above/behind showing the fans mounted on the back side of the heat-exchanger.

Linda returned to stripping wallpaper in the bus while I folded the laundry and put it away. For dinner we had a salad and more of the soup that Linda made yesterday. After dinner Linda researched wallpaper installation while I worked at my computer and uploaded eight blog posts from the third week of July. About the time I finished the last one Brendan called so I went upstairs and Linda put the call on speaker. He is a couple of weeks into his position at Eastern Michigan University teaching Art History and gave us a status report on how it is going, along with news of how Madeline is doing in her new daycare program University of Michigan.

We watched Dr. Michael Greger’s 2015 nutrition research summary on Linda’s iPad. This is an annual presentation that he does at the vegan Summerfest in Pennsylvania. His theme this year was the top health concerns of Americans, based on a major survey that was done by one of the national survey organizations, and what nutrition research has to offer with respect to these. As we already know, many different diseases, one common answer; whole-food, plant-based, nutrition with no animal products. We really are what we eat, and Americans are now some of the least healthy people on the planet. We went to sleep reaffirmed in our dietary choices.

2015/06/09 (T) Cyclo 5

Leave a reply

I was up at 7 AM, fed the cats, and made coffee, which has become Linda’s wake up alarm. Phil Jarrell showed up at 8 AM. He set up his laser level and checked elevations for a gravel driveway that would connect our concrete driveway around to our third culvert. Some of this driveway may eventually provide access to a barn, but it will also provide a second pad that is level and big enough to support a 45 foot bus conversion.

Phil moved the laser level to a different spot and checked the elevations of various points at the west end of the property relative to the culvert that runs under the road to the little triangle of our yard in the southwest corner. Although it did not appear so to me, all of the property to the west and north is higher than the bottom of the culvert. That means Phil should be able to construct a French drain that will help dry this area out and hopefully save the trees that are there. He will also use the top soil he pulls out of the driveway to fill in the various low spots.

Phil was done and on his way by 9:30 AM. I forgot to mention the hole for the ham radio tower base so I e-mailed him about that additional work. While it will almost certainly be less expensive to have him dig the hole while he is already here working on other things it is a project that requires my involvement, parts that I do not yet have, and coordination with a concrete company who can pump or cart the concrete from the truck to the hole.

The old driver’s chair in our bus is a Villa captain’s chair.

We had breakfast after which I sorted the laundry. The warm white load was small so I stripped the bed in the bus and added those sheets to the load. We cleaned off the twin mattress in the small bedroom with most of the stuff going down to my office. The stuff on the double bed in the middle bedroom then went to the small bedroom, allowing us to strip the double bed so I could launder the sheets and pillow cases.

Based on the e-mail I got yesterday from Cory at Rupes/Cyclo I figured out that I wanted the Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II Dual Head Orbital Polisher with the ProGuard backing plates. I also determined which foam pads and chemicals I wanted and placed the order directly with Rupes/Cyclo online. I also updated our PayPal account and used it for this transaction.

I went to my office and spent several hours doing a second floor plan drawing for the bus, this one showing the tiles installed as diamonds rather than squares. Over the course of the afternoon Linda heated up some Amy’s chili for lunch and I got two more loads of laundry done.

Late afternoon brought a call on our landline that turned out to be a recorded message claiming to be from the IRS and stating that this was their final attempt to reach us before filing a lawsuit. Yeah, right. The IRS does not make such calls, of course, nor do they send such e-mails. They like paper trails and contact people by registered mail or show up unannounced at the door. And they don’t sue people, they just seize assets. A Google search quickly revealed that this was an IRS Impersonation Scam that has been around for a while but gets resurrected from time to time.

The swivel/slide 6-way power base under the driver’s chair in our bus. We will reuse this if we get a Flexsteel replacement chair but not if we get an ISRI.

We were annoyed enough by this particular scam that I filed a complaint with the U. S. Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission. While I was on the FTC website I opted us out of receiving “Firm Offers” for insurance and pre-approved credit cards. I also verified that our landline and cell phones (2) are on the Federal Do Not Call list, although it has not eliminated telemarketing calls. The fact that we are on the DNC list, however, allows us to file complaints with the FTC when we get such calls.

For dinner Linda made a nice salad with poppy seed dressing and heated up a couple of teriyaki noodle bowls. It was yummy and a small glass of Moscato was very agreeable as well. After dinner I was revisiting the EZ Connector website when a TXT message came through with a picture of his Chuck’s new VDO 0–15 PSI turbo boost gauge. I was thinking about calling Chuck anyway so I rang him up and we had a long chat.

2015/06/08 (M) Home for a While

Leave a reply

It rained until well after midnight last night. The rain was not steady but more in the form of heavy downpours associated with thunderstorms. The gutter along the rear of our house was not able to handle the volume of water and it was spilling over onto our deck making a sound that we are not used to. I noted that I should check the gutters for clogs at the downspouts today. My phone chirped, which meant I had an e-mail, and I presumed it was from our whole house generator. When I got up this morning the clocks on the microwave and range were flashing “2:06”, so my first thought was that we must have taken a power hit then, but the messages on my phone indicated that utility power had been lost and restored around 3:45 AM; at least that was the date/time stamp on the e-mails. I got up just before 6 AM and finally figured out that the clocks probably reset to 00:00 when the power blipped (3:45 AM + 2:06 elapsed time = 5:51 AM).

I sat in the living room writing with my iPad and playing games until a little after 7 AM and then made coffee, which got Linda out of bed. We had planned to empty out more of the bus today but the weather was gloomy and we were tired from the rally so we had a long, leisurely morning before busying ourselves with inside chores. Linda worked at her desk and I wasn’t in the humor to work downstairs in my office so I set my computer up on the dining room table. Other than an occasional trip to the bus or the garage I mostly sat in front of my computer and talked on the phone all day.

Linda called Alchin’s, our regular trash collection company, to see if they would pick up the old RV furniture. They do not have a special truck they can send and could not take the steel furniture even if they could get it into their garbage truck. Linda suggested we find a company like “Got Junk” and searched online for one in the area. We decided to call “Chuck It Junk Removal” as they are located relatively close to our house. Keith, from Kish Lawn Care, showed up around 11 AM to cut the grass and Brad, from Chuck It Junk Removal, showed up around 12:45 PM to look at the furniture and flooring we pulled out of the bus and give us a quote on the cost to haul it away. As Keith was finishing mowing the grass dark clouds were rolling in from the west and not long after he left we had more rain, although nothing like last night.

My dentist thinks my current intermittent teeth issues are the result of clenching my teeth at night so I made an appointment to get fitted for a mouth guard to wear while sleeping. I also got hold of Phil Jarrell and he decided that tomorrow morning at 8 AM would be a good time for him to stop by and take some elevation readings for the driveway extension and a French drain for the far west end of the property. Besides the obvious economy of having him do both jobs while he is on site, we need a place to put the topsoil he will dig out for the driveway and we need topsoil to fill in low spots on the west end of the yard.

I managed to finally get some orders placed today. The big one was for a SureCall Fusion5s multi-band cell phone booster (transceiver) system from Cellular Solutions in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. The other was for a window seal from Prevost. This is not the seal that holds the glass in the frame but rather a large rubber part that seals the space between the window frame and the structure of the coach. We may need to unlatch the large fixed window on the passenger side and use it to get the old refrigerator out and the new one in. This window frame has not been opened since we bought the bus and may not have been opened for many years before that, possibly not ever since the bus was built. I want the new seal on hand in case the current one gets damaged trying to open the window frame.

Besides these two purchases I talked to someone at A-1 Upholstery and described our home made sofa plans. She suggested that we would need ~9 yards of 54″ wide material for the sofa seats and back cushions. I sent an e-mail to Josh at Coach Supply Direct reminding him of some things we had discussed at the rally last week and Rick Short at Isringhausen with questions about their 6800 series bus driver seats. I also finally got to talk to Mike at Suburban Seating in New Jersey. As I suspected we cannot buy the seat directly from ISRI, but I may be able to order it through Suburban Seating and pick it up from ISRI USA in Galesburg, Michigan. That would be much nicer than having it shipped to our house on a truck from New Jersey.

I called Rupes/Cyclo to try to get answers to a few questions about the Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II Dual Head Orbital Polisher and its various pads but could not figure out how to talk to a real person. I submitted the online Contact Form with my questions and got a speedy reply from Cory as a result of which I now know what to order. All I have to do is figure out how many of each thing I need. The Cyclo 5 is available on Amazon Prime, by itself, but it did not appear to be the Mark II model. Some of the major distributors claim to give you a set of “free” ProGuard Orbital Backing Plates, but the Rupes/Cyclo website clearly states that the polisher is not sold without one of the three head options. I prefer not to patronize businesses that misrepresent their offerings and will probably order the polisher, pads, and chemicals directly from Cyclo even if I am paying MSRP.

I got a call from Gary Hatt at Bus Conversion Magazine. I had not looked at or replied to e-mails in over a week and he wanted to make sure everything was OK. While we were talking we got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage so Linda took that initially until my other call was concluded. I had e-mailed Curtis earlier in the day and he was responding to that communique.

Somewhere in the middle of all that we had chickpea salad on a bed of greens for lunch. Linda then went for a walk, met Chris (K8VJ) at Lowe’s to pick up some SLAARC mail, and roasted vegetables for our dinner when she got home. I sent Chuck Spera a short e-mail inquiring about how to open the latches on our emergency escape window and then called it a night.

2015/05/26 (T) Reflections

Leave a reply

I decided to put off doing the laundry until later in the week. Linda made a grocery shopping list while we had our morning coffee. I called Pat Davidson at Apex Roofing to discuss the installation of a roof access hatch. We did some online research for pest control companies in the Brighton-Hartland-Howell area and decided to call Best Pest Control LLC. I talked to the owner, Ryan, about his perimeter defense package, and decided to give his company a try. They will spray outside the house for ants, spiders, hornets, wasps, and yellow jackets. I called Phil Jarrell from Precision Grading and left him a voice message regarding some additional driveway work, a French drain for the west end if the property, and a hole for a ham radio tower foundation.

I showed Linda the pullout pantry slide hardware I found last night on the Rockler website, a German made top-bottom pair specifically designed for this application and able to support up to 450 pounds. It’s pricey, but it looks like the right stuff for the job. We also found some assembled pullout pantries online, including some that were 5″ wide, but they were not deep enough and getting just the right height looked tricky. We really want to maximize the use of our available cubic inches.

Keith showed up around 10 AM with his new Scag riding lawn mower. He is still going to have the Hustler repaired as a backup, but the Scag is a nicer/better machine. It is fuel injected, which should be more reliable, and it is faster, which makes more efficient use of Keith’s time. It also has a seat that can be adjusted from soft to firm, making for a more comfortable operator experience over the course of a long day.

As much as I need to work at my computer and drafting table I need to work even more in the bus right now. I started by reassembling the inside of the cabinet above the refrigerator, except for the liner carpet, and reinstalled the fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling. I am keeping the carpet pieces for now, but mostly to use as templates for new material. I would have preferred white Formica interior surfaces, as they are brighter and easier to keep clean, but the bus has a lot of curves and carpet is a very conformable and forgiving material.

The interior of the bus deconstructed in preparation for a new floor, seating, and custom desk.

My next task was cleaning out and securing the area under the bed platform. I removed the half box covers, the flexible ducts, and the floor-mounted cleats. I threw the ducts away and stored the other pieces in the garage. I then reattached the strip light on the top edge of the forward side of the base, reinstalled the two circular HVAC registers (so the cats could not try to get under the bed through the holes), put the cover plates back on the two duplex AC outlets and reinstalled the outlet expanders which also have dual USB charging ports. I need to put some sort of temporary netting over the port holes in the section of the HVAC chase under the bed, but I need to find a suitable material for that. The long term plan is to seal those holes and install registers in the sections of chase outside the bed base. I thought about disconnecting the lift struts for the bed platform so I could raise it higher and reinstall a drawer onto its glides, but decided to leave that for another day.

While I was working in the bus Ryan from Best Pest Control called me back and said he had a crew that could fit us in within the hour so I said “sure.” I closed up the house as they would be spraying around all of the windows, doors, and doorwalls. Two guys showed up a little while later and I walked them through the job, wrote a check, signed the work order, and they got busy. They found two hornet nests by the east end of our deck and destroyed them. I hate to kill even a hornet but they have been buzzing around our windows and doors, poking at voids in the mortar on the face brick, and occasionally getting into the house and we need to put a stop to their use of our residence as a place to build their homes.

The pest control guys were already gone and Keith was driving away as Linda returned from the supermarket. I helped get the groceries into the kitchen. After they were put away we had a light lunch around 1 PM of fresh baby carrots, mini bell peppers, sourdough pretzel nibblers, hummus, and red grapes.

The dinette seat used to fit in this corner The strip mirrors have been removed from the outside wall next to the window.

I have been taking a lot of short breaks while working on the bus. It was warm and humid again today and warmer still in the coach even with windows open and the roof vent fans exhausting air. But the breaks are not just to rest, they are also to ponder the details of how the interior will get rebuilt and what additional deconstruction still needs to take place.

In the front of the coach there was a 120 VAC electrical cable coming out of an access hole in the passenger side HVAC chase, passing through a 4″ flexible duct adapter, and disappearing through a hole in the floor. I originally thought the cable came from the duplex outlet on the wall just above the access hole but I discovered that it did not. It was routed through the chase from somewhere farther back in the bus. I determined that that the hole in the floor appeared to go into the OTR HVAC bay and sure enough, when I opened the bay there was the cable coming through the ceiling. It turned towards the center of the bus and then went through the wall into the bay to the front. It was then easy to determine that it was the power feed for the electric heater mounted on the rear wall of the front bay.

The storage area under the end platform with the 4″ flexible ducts and cover boxes removed.

At that point I knew which circuit breaker to turn off and was able to cut the cable in the living room without risking an electrical shock. I slipped the 4″ duct adapter off and set it aside. We don’t generally use the electric heater in the front bay, and certainly do not need it this time of year, so I wire-nutted the ends of the hot and neutral wires, coiled them up, and stowed them in the HVAC chase for the time being. I coiled the end of the wire coming out of the floor around one of the Aqua-Hot coolant hoses so it would not drop into the bay below.

The area of the bus that was the outside rear corner of the dinette kept drawing my attention. That corner was decorated with vertical strip mirrors with beveled edges. There are also strip mirrors used as wainscoting on the lower portion of the outside wall of the hallway and at the end of the hallway opposite the bathroom door. The strip mirrors are the one thing in this bus we have never liked but they did not bother us enough to not buy the coach. Now that we are involved in a major interior remodeling, however, we are looking for ways to remove them or cover them up. We really do not like them.

In the case of the former dinette mirrors, I had previously determined that the ones against the wall of the coach were mounted (glued) onto a sheet of plywood that appeared to be mounted to a pair of cleats along the two vertical edges. I tried prying under the bottom of the first strip but it cracked and chipped. It quickly became apparent that removing these strip mirrors from whatever they are glued to was probably not a viable option.

The beveled strip mirrors in the hallway of our bus. We really do not like these things.

[p4 R] After removing a 1-1/4″ wide piece of thin trim wood I was able to loosen the left (forward) edge at the bottom. The walnut trim around the fixed window just forward of the mirrors, however, prevented me from pulling it out any farther. I had a reasonably good idea how the window trim was attached but first I had to remove another piece of 1-1/4″ thin trim that covered the gap between the window trim I needed to remove and the trim for the next window forward. With Linda’s help I removed eight screws and the 3-sided window trim came right off. We set it carefully aside and returned to the mirrors.

With the window trim removed we were able to pull the left (forward) edge of the plywood mirror backing out enough to see behind it. Our lucky “break” (no pun intended but, whoops, there it is) was that the screws holding the plywood to the left cleat pulled out of the cleat. I say lucky because the screw heads were under the glass mirror strips and none of the mirror strips broke. We kept working it out until the upper edge bumped into the return air grill trim on the underside of the upper cabinet. We removed the grill and set it aside. We were then finally able to pull the left edge out far enough that I could remove a couple of screws that were holding the right cleat to the panel that forms one of the back walks of the pantry. Something was still holding it and when I changed position I saw that there was another screw near the top. I removed that screw and the whole panel came out with the right cleat still attached. Three more screws and the left cleat was also out. We reattached the return air grill to the underside of the upper cabinet and then reattached the window trim.

The wallpaper behind this panel was in very good shape except for the screw holes where the cleats were attached. We plan to put shelves in this corner to utilize the space and they may get used for some ham radio equipment. Regardless of what ends up there having the mirrors out gives us more room for the shelves and will just plain look better.

A view from the kitchen of the dinette corner and hallway. A custom desk will go where the dinette seating used to be and double as work surface for the kitchen.

The mirrors on the other wall of this corner are glued directly to the walnut panel that forms one of the backs of the pantry. I tried loosening the bottom edge of the one in the corner and it cracked. That area will be concealed by the desk, but we will cover all of the mirror strips with some sort of thin panel. We have the same problem with the mirror strips across from the bathroom door and may just have to live with those as I have not come up with an attractive way to cover them. I need to investigate the strip mirrors in the hallway. There is a good chance that they are glued to plywood panels that are screwed to the wall at locations covered buy wood trim. If we are lucky removing the trim will allow us to unscrew and remove the mirror panels. If not, we will just put the trim back on.

I have had the idea for a while that we could make another low pantry or shallow storage area along the hallway wall above the HVAC chase where the strip mirrors are currently located. Linda does not like the idea as she is concerned it will make the hallway to narrow. The storage would not be any deeper than the HVAC chase is now, and would not be any higher than the wood trim along the top of the strip mirrors, which serve as a kind of wainscoting.

By this point it was 5:30 PM. Linda headed inside to fix dinner while I got trash and materials out of the coach and carried them to the garage. Linda let me know that a severe thunderstorm watch had been issued effective until 10 PM. It rained lightly off and on until we sat down to eat and then the downpour came but we did not have anything severe, just heavy rain for a while. She made a dish using garbanzo beans, garlic, kale, salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice. It was delicious and the fresh lemon juice really made it sparkle. She also served the last of the risotto she made for dinner when Steve and Karen were here on Saturday. We had strawberries with Lotus brand Biscoff cookies for dessert. I worked on this post on my iPad, took a shower, and went to bed. I never did make it to my office today.

The Phase Place

Welcome to the next phase (hosted by QTH.com)

Tag Archives: French drain (Phil Jarrell)

2015/11/16 (M) Tiling the Cockpit, #3

2015/11/11 (W) Two for One

2015/10/20 (T) Pop-X Pickle

2015/10/16 (F) Desk Installation

2015/10/03 (S) Wallpaper Stumps

2015/10/01 (R) New Month, Same Project

2015/09/23 (W) Autumnal Equinox

2015/06/09 (T) Cyclo 5

2015/06/08 (M) Home for a While

2015/05/26 (T) Reflections