Follow Our Progress
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March 4th 2004
I was too tired to work on the web site yesterday, so there's some
catching up to do today. Let's see if I can remember everything
that we have done...
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I installed a new outlet in the hallway outside
the bathroom door. I found during our stay in Quartzsite
that it was too dark in the hallway to make it to the bathroom
and back without having to turn on one of the florescent lights.
With the new outlet, I was able to put one of our LED night
lights in just the right spot for those midnight trips to the
bathroom. |
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Becky painted the newly paneled wall behind the
bathroom and moved all of our clothes into some portable storage
drawers.
I'm not going to try to get the back closets done before we
leave. I'll save that job for another time... |
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One of the more exciting developments!
The boxwood stove has been replaced with a very nice EPA
certified wood stove. It's around 70% efficient and is set
up so that I can draw air from the outside of the bus.
We can't wait to try it out once we get the bus back outside. |
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Since I had the stove pipe taken apart for the
stove replacement, I decided to take a minute to inspect our
home-made insulated stove pipe. I had thought that I could use pellet stove pipe with an
extra layer of insulation for the lightweight fires that we were
burning in the boxwood stove. It turns out that the
exterior (galvanized side) of the pellet stove pipe was showing signs of deterioration and
even flaking a little where it was directly connected to the
wood stove. That's only after about 2 dozen or so fires...
I made the decision to replace the entire pellet stove pipe
with steel wood stove pipe rated for the higher temperatures. |
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I was not able to find a supplier for insulated
pipe in the smaller diameter that we needed, so I constructed my
own insulated pipe using fiberglass insulation and a kind of
fiberglass "rope" that is normally used for sealing
the wood stove doors. The result is a very sturdy insulated double wall pipe that
will hold up under the high heat that the wood stove puts
out. We'll have to check the temperature of the outside
pipe once we start using the stove again to make sure that it's
not getting too hot. We lost one layer of insulation by
getting rid of the pellet stove pipe.
It's all experimental, but basically identical to the larger
insulated stove pipe that is for home use... |
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Once the stove pipe was finished we put some MDF
around the base of the wood stove stand to hide the wheel well.
We gained about 2.5 feet or so of space to one side of the
wood stove. The girls found it a great spot to sit. |
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Another big project was installing the combination
AC/DC panel that we bought a few months ago.
The new wall cabinet we installed a few days ago covered over
the old electrical panel and made it possible for me to locate
the new panel.
While we were working on the electrical, we put in an extra
outlet for another LED night light and a place to plug in the
laptop when I want to sit on the couch and work. |
That about sums up the last 2 days. We made some other
purchases that need to be installed, but for the moment, that's all we
have had time to do. |
