Work 11/01/11 and 11/08/11

Well here is an up date on the work I have been doing to DDH. I will be mounting a generator in the front in the void under the drivers area. It will be one of the finale things I do, at the RV shop where I have the bus. I will have to build a frame to hold the generator, that I can attach to the frame of the bus. I will also have to hang or attach a gas tank, as my bus is diesel. The generator was propane but "MIKE" could not find a part for it so it well have to be gas.

It was a pain to run this simple wire. First I had to go buy it. I'm not real knowledgeable about the electrical stuff, that is why it is over at the RV place trying to get "Mike" to help. He sent me to get what he said was number 4 wire metal covered. That is like the stuff I attached previously that went from the breaker box to the junction box for the 30 amp cord.

I went to Lowe's and Home Depot and could not find it, and Mike would not answer his phone so I could ask him what he was talking about. I had to drive back to the shop and talk to some other guy about the wire, and he told me to get 12/3 with a ground. I did and came back and ran the wire. only to discover that is was the wrong size wire. I had to take it out and return it. They did not have what I needed so I had to go to a electrical supply "City Electrical" in Pasadena and they made me a great deal on the wire. Uh I think its 6. I could be wrong. All I know it is enough to handle 50AMP.

Anywho here is the pics and some explanation.

 

I don't why I did not take a pic of it, but I used the devices that held other hoses and wires to hold this wire. I also used zip ties to keep the wire in place. I drilled a hole in the front of the storage bay and ran the wire along the top along the MC wire from the breaker box. I will be attaching a 50 AMP female plug there.

WORK ON 11/08/11 "I NEVER HATED MY BUS UNTIL TODAY" I ALSO PUNCHED MY BUS IN ANGER. 

I know that sounds strange but I was really frustrated doing this.

I wanted to pre-wire and cut the inner sheet metal for my AC's. For the first or front AC I chose the area close to the front. There is a vent there and it allows rain to leak in when it rains and the wind blows hard. I also want one there because it will be cooling the driver and passenger area when traveling. The other will be near the rear, and that should cool the the sleeping areas.

I only got one  pre-wired, and here is why. After measuring and cutting the first opening ( I used a grinder with a grinding wheel), and used a hole saw to cut a hole behind the wire chase. I wanted to run the wire inside the roof, between the inner and outer layer, and run the AC wire through the wire chase to the breaker box. I used a fish tape and it got stuck. It took me 45 min to dislodge the fish wire. Then when I finally got the fish wire from point A to B, and tried to pull the wire through it pulled the freaking insulation all the way down to the side. After attempting to correct that and pulling violently to try and pull the wire through. I somehow grabbed the 12v wire to my interior passenger lights and pulled it out of the light, and down to the side. I now have no operational interior passenger lights. I did eventually find the 12v wire and fish it back to the light, but for some reason it is shorter that it was before.  ahhhhhhhhh.

There is several supports in the roof structure of my bus that I did not know were there. I have heard of people replacing their roof insulation with board type insulation by pulling it through the outer and inner layers of the roof. You could not do that with my roof. starting from where I cut the opening for the AC unit. about 12 inches along the top to the side is a support that runs from front to back in between the roof support ribs and is welded to the support ribs. Then where the roof curbs to meet the side of the bus is another cross member that runs along the curb and is about 6 inches wide (if you see the pics and see where the seat belt is attached to the roof, the bracket is about as wide as the cross member.)   Then there is a support about 4in before the wire chase. 

What I thought was going to be a 45 min to 1 hr thing took all freaking day. (5hrs).

You should see my hands, from having to stick my fingers in the openings and feel around to find 12v ripped out interior wires, to trying to locate supports and feed wire around the supports, it looks like I shook hands with Freddy from nightmare on elm street. ahhhhhhh.

Like I said, at one point I got so flustered I actually punched the roof of my bus. It did not help the situation, but it made me feel better. Anyway here are some pics.

Above is the stained area where the vent is located. if you look really hard. you can see what looks like two stripes on each side of the stain. I thought they were supports and they were exactly 14in apart. The exact size of the opening for the AC unit. I thought great, I cut it here and use these supports for good structure to hold my AC. Well they are not supports. apparently they are adhesive strips to hold the thin layer of fabric in place in that area of the roof to prevent insulation from falling through.  

This is what the vent looks like on top. I will be cutting this out and placing the AC here.

I had measured and marked the area to be cut.

First cut made with a metal grinder. I did not want to cut through both layers at this point.

 This is what it looked like after removing the metal.

 After cutting and removing the insulation.

 Here is the wire ran. on the right edge of the pic you can see where the wire comes out of the chase and goes down to the breaker box. You can also see the seat belt bracket, and get an idea about the side support.

 I wanted to bring the wire out where I drilled the first hole. That is where the paint goes from white to primer, and it looks like an upside down U. but between that and the hole right above is a support, as well as between the second and third hole. that is why the wire is coming out of the third or top hole. This will all be covered by my upper cabinets eventually.

****WARNING****

THE FOLLOWING PICTURES ARE GRAPHIC IN NATURE, AND MAY UPSET SOME VIEWERS. PLEASE USE CAUTION WHEN VIEWING, AND COVER THE EYES OF SMALL SENSITIVE CHILDREN.

What you are viewing are medical pics of my colon exam.

   

I think I need some help. 

Really this is the area between the upper roof and lower roof. Just thought I would share.

ITS NOT REALLY MY COLON.

Anywho, What a pain in the butt. I apologized to my bus for striking her, and promised I would not do it ever again, ( I had my fingers crossed). I did not get to even start on the other AC opening so that is what I will probably be doing next Tuesday.

Until next time..... 

Update 10-23-11

Well good news / bad news. OK its really all good news, I'm just a little peeved, you'll see why later.

Well got do work on the bus 10-22-11. I have had it at an RV repair shop because of a deal I made with an gentleman, we'll call him Mark. Anyway, the deal is I will trade him my 15.5 foot Deckett deck boat for helping me wire my bus for electrical, as well as supply a good generator for the bus.

Needless to say it has sat, untouched for over two months until this weekend. I took off from work Sat and Sun, to work on the bus, and here is what was done.

Breaker box installed and wired.

  Here is how the day went. Pulled the bus into the bay and took out the converter breaker box to test. 110v side good, 12v side good except the charger portion was not working. took charger out, and it consisted of removing it from the breaker box. The charger portion, slides out of the breaker box and is contained inside its own galvanized box. Drilled out rivets and exchanged charger. Replaced rivets checked for proper operation, and placed back into breaker box. plugged it into outlet via 30amp cord, checked for proper operation, and charger would not work. Took out of breaker box, re-drilled out rivets, looked over charger. Checked wiring, placed shrink wrape over wire where the protective rubber was cut. Checked for proper operation, re replaced rivets, placed back into breaker box, plugged into outlet via 30 amp cord, checked for proper operation, have good operation.

I  cut out the opening for the breaker box in the long couch seat on the driver's side. A portion of the area under or within the seat will be used for storage, however the area where the breaker box is will be only for the electrical.

OK here is how the electrical is being set up. Service power will get to the breaker box by plugging into an 30amp outlet ( it's being wired for 50 amps and will have the 30amp chord replaced once I get a second AC unit). The 30amp cord was cut from the breaker box and wired into a junction box.

This pic taken, looking from the driver side, facing the rear of the bus.

 This is inside the underbelly storage. The cord will roll up and sit inside the bin. Once I fix up the underbelly storage with carpet and lighting, I will have a nice built in box for the cord, and an access door for just the cord.

At the junction box a coax cable is attached and runs along the top of the underbelly storage to the front of the underbelly storage and enters into the inside of the bus just behind where the refrigerator will be.

This is before the wire is secured to the top of the storage bay.

The orange wire is how I am going to connect my house battery bank. That will be later down the road but I wanted to wire for it now.

Service power enters into the back of the breaker box and powers 110v and 12v. I will have a second leg that will go to an external breaker box. This breaker box is a small house breaker box, and I will power the refrigerator, both AC's, hot water heater, and GFI for the restroom area (hair drier, not me....wife / daughters) with this smaller box.

But aren't you going to tie in your generator? you ask. Why yes. Simplicity and functionality is my middle name... uh names. I will have a female outlet next to the junction box that is wired to my generator. When I want to use the generator, I will plug into it with my shore power cord. When I have access to shore power, I can unplug from the generator, pull out my cord and plug into the shore power outlet.

I could put in a transfer box (about $200.00), and it can go out and I can replace it. Or I can do it this way and do it manually. Later if I get lazy, I'll do the transfer box.

This is looking down inside the seat area. I will be cleaning up the wiring and making it neater. You can also see the back of the small house breaker box.

Sooo, once we had it wired up, we needed to test it, and we did. and guess what. 110v good. 12v not good because charger was not working again. So I got to take out the charger re-re-drill out the rivets, take out the charger, but this time I had to remove the entire electrical board and charger from the galvanized box and figure out how to mount the replacement charger because the second replacement was a different type of charger. Once that was done, I had to re-re-rivet the box, and re-re-reinstall the charger into the breaker box.

I started at about 9:45am and worked non-stop until about 6:00pm. It does not seem like a lot was accomplished but, this is one of the major things that needed to get done. This is one of the areas I was a little concerned about doing myself. Most of the work was done by me with Mark jumping in once in a while as well as also giving me instruction. I have to give a lot of thanks to Mark for his expertise, ideas, and help.

I am glad that I did a lot of the work so I will be familiar with it in case I have to troubleshoot it. 

I had already run most of the wiring to the areas where 110v and 12v will be needed. All I really need to do now is start putting in boxes and wiring up outlets and switches.

Now for what peeved me. I had taken my AC unit to the RV shop about two weeks ago, so it could be put on my bus. However when working on my bus this Sat, I walked by and found out my AC's compressor had been cut out. What the ****. Well I was told by Mark that it was done by mistake. Supposedly it will be taken care of by the owner. We will see.

The other thing was that I had taken off  Sat and Sun to work on the bus. Sat was an good day, but Mark was suppose to meet me at 12:00 or 12:30pm, Sun to do more work on the bus. Well he did not show or answer his phone. So I wasted a day off for nothing. Oh well I just hope he has a good excuse.

So that's the update on the bus. I still need to run wire from where the generator is going to be mounted to the rear breaker box. I need to wire up the second leg for the small house breaker box, then starting hooking up outlets and switches for 110v and lights for 12v.

Thanks for reading and well see you next time.

Update 101311

Well, just want to give an update to what is going on with DDH. I have been moving and I had made a deal with a guy to trade a boat I have for electrical work. Unfortunately he has done nothing but give me excuses. So looks like I will have an extra boat, and have to figure out the electrical on my own.

I am in the process of finding a place to park it where I can start working on it. I wanted it done enough to start taking trips when the weather got cool, but it doesn't look like that will happen.

Anyway will post once I start back on her.

Update 061411

OK been a while, but here go's. The biggest news is DDH is now officially registered as an RV. What a pain in the butt it was. I took all the paperwork, inspection, insurance, weight slip pics of inside and out. When I got to the window after waiting 45 min in line, I was told it could not be registered because it was not "complete", then they could not give me a definition of complete. End result I went to another location and they registered it.

One of the problems I had when getting DDH ready for registration was the state inspection. I had to explain several times that it did not need a commercial vehicle inspection. That was difficult for them to understand. But because I am a former DOT inspector I was able to convince them I only needed a safety inspection like a regular RV.

Now here are some pics updates.

 
I went with laminate tops because of price and weight. I thought I would do stone and may replace it later.

I got the sink from a salvage place I found on online. Got it for 30.00

Had enough of the counter left to make a bathroom counter top. I did have to cut off the backsplash so it would fit,

The above pics are what I am doing with the floor heater. I am building a chamber for it so it will suck air from the cavity in the wall, from where the wall meets the ceiling, and blow it out into the hall way area.

Here is a current shot from back to front.


Until next time.

Hole

I cut my first hole in the bus. What a scarey moment. In  the process of hooking up plumbing, I had hooked up the hoses to the water pump. I used flexible hose to connect to the water pump because I had read that it will cut down on noise and vibration.

 

Here you see the top of the water pump. This is looking down from the top. The blue pipe running from the lower left then up next to the right of the pump is the supply hose from the fresh water tank. The flex hose that is exiting (as we are looking at it) the bottom of the pump turns turns to the left then up and around and into the one-way valve (it looks like an egg) then out to a T. The T directs the water through the T and out to shower, sink, and such. The T (where there is no hose attached yet is where the city water will hook into. It will also have a one-way valve to prevent water from going out of it when not hooked up to city water.

A closer look at the one-way valve and flex hose.

 

Other side of the water pump. I still have to get a filter to attach to the pump. I did not know it did not have one and or that I needed one until I read the owners manual.

This is a earlier pic of the rear drivers side of the bus to show the stop sign. I really wanted to keep it.

 

the sign unattached from the bus. The hot wire has power on all the time. I need to find some way to use it for some type of 12 v device. I cut the wire and taped them up.

Test fit.

not pretty, but this will be hid by the bed frame. I will probably make it look neater.

I took two 2X2's and secured them across the top and bottom with lots of silicone. I used one 2X2 on the left side and a 1X2 on the right as there was a support located there. If you look close to the right side of the opening you will see where I had originally set out to make the cut. I found out however the support and had to move the opening over to the left. Luckily I had not gotten to far with the cutting to make the move.

I was concerned about the possibility of moisture entering the wall of the bus, so I put the wood in for support and also lots of silicone to hopefully prevent water from entering.

 

Test Fit.

I used self tapping drywall screws. I think I will get some stainless screws and replace them.

Fill pipe connected.

The hoses will pass through the bed frame and through the floor inside the storage area inside the bed frame. I will have to disconnect the hoses, and remove the bed frame to access the water pump area.

Well that's it for now.