January 6th 2004
What can I say...
It snowed and then hailed most of the night. most of the white
stuff is not snow, but tons of little pellets of hail.
Everything is a mess. This morning it switched from hail to
freezing rain. As soon as the rain hit the windows of the house it
became solid ice as well as everything else it came in contact
with... There are icicles on all of the cars and anywhere else
that water ran off.
 |
The ground outside is made up of a layer of hard
packed snow (more like ice now) a layer of slippery hail pellets
with a crust of frozen ice on top from the freezing rain...
You know what that means...
A trip to the bus!
The Jeep is great for driving in this horrible weather.
In 4 wheel drive we were able to get some good traction and
break through the top layer of ice. I knew that it wasn't
going to be long before the ice got too packed to drive on, so
we had to make a quick stop and get back home ASAP.
|
 |
When we got to the bus it was sheeted in
ice. the front window (as you can see) was thick with ice
from the freezing rain.
With everything freezing solid as a rock I knew that I had to
go and get the bus warmed up or face the possibility of broken
pipes...
We worked quickly to hook up the power, turn on the gas, fire
up the forced air heater and light the wood stove. The
kids stayed in the back bedroom with the Mr Heater and kept warm
while Becky and I did some damage assessment.
|
 |
There was already frost on the sink and a nice
little icicle hanging off the faucet that was already frozen in
place and could not be turned on or adjusted in any way.
The toilet water was solid ice as well and could not be
operated. The dump lever was stuck like a rock.
I can't tell if the water pump is frozen, but the light I had
directed at it was still on when we arrived at the bus and the
hoses didn't feel solid, so I hope that it will be OK when
everything else thaws out and we can test it. At least we
had relieved all of the water pressure from the pipes before we
left the bus last time. With water forced out of the
faucet as it was, I can only imagine how much pressure would
have been built up with the pipes full and pressurized
already...
|
 |
On the bright side, the new remote panel fired
right up and accurately reported the charge in the
batteries. I did some quick programming and changed the
30A incoming AC level to 15A so we wouldn't blow the house 20A
fuse. I also changed the battery type & capacity
setting to match the 400AH (wet type) battery bank that is
currently hooked up.
I checked in on the charge cycle every so often and after
about an hour or so the charger dropped the voltage and held at right around 14 volts. I think it's safe to
leave the electricity hooked up over night now that the charger
is programmed correctly.
|
I wanted to leave forced air heater running, but on the lowest
setting (about 55 degrees) it would most likely run for most of the
night and use up all of the remaining propane in the current tank.
I tried to switch over to the full tank, but the switch was frozen solid
and felt like the handle would break before switching internally.
To make things even more difficult, I couldn't budge the fittings on the
tank, so I decided to do something else.
I ran over to the local department store and bought a small portable
ceramic heater that had a frost setting. I set it up in front of
the wood stove and put it on the medium setting. It's supposed to
kick on if the temperature drops below 40 degrees, so in theory it
should prevent the pipes (on the inside of the bus anyway) from freezing
and since it is hooked up to shore power I don't have to worry about
running out of heat before I can get back to the bus tomorrow morning.
We called the hitch installer and let him know that we were not going
to bring the bus in to the shop. He was not surprised at all and
has been having problems getting his supplies. He's going to give
us a call when he gets the parts for the Jeep tow bar
installation. In the mean time we'll just have to wait for the
weather to clear up to take the bus in to get the hitch installed.
I just realized that I forgot to hook up the light under the bus
again... Our water pump is exposed to the elements and is likely
to freeze solid tonight if it hasn't already... I'll try calling
my friends Tedd & Linda (where the bus is parked) and see if one of
them can plug it in. Otherwise, I gotta make an emergency run to
the bus tonight!
Update
I got in touch with Linda and she's going to try to find an extension
cord and plug in the light for me tonight <sigh of relief>.
I think that will save our pump for now. I can see that we're
going to have to enclose the water tank and pump so that we don't run
into this problem in the future especially when we're driving along at
60 MPH in the cold...
Thanks again Linda! I owe you and your family dinner some time
this week. You pick the place. |
