Dreading The Moment, But It Wasn't Bad

The top line is the edge of the furnace
the fold at 8-1/2 is where the wall meets
the floor.   All measurements are based
from those two points.

My mother was an insomniac.   She would sit up in her chair every night, unable to sleep.   Worrying.   My mother worried a lot.   I suppose, I must own at least part of that.  But me, as I’ve gotten older?  I’m not an insomniac.  I just have all these extra hours in a day.   My work day starts at 9am.   I sit in my cubical.   Usually eat in lunch at my desk.   But I do take about a thirty minute nap out in the van every afternoon.   I work rolling the IT dung ball up the hill until six or six thirty if I am making progress on something.   I get some dinner and then I arrive at the shop about seven thirty.   I work on building the van and clean up the shop by midnight and write for about an hour.  I sleep in the van, in the shop.   Just over a partial wall there is a small manufacturing wood shop.   Those guys show up for work about six am and I can hear them over there gabbing and talking smack like a bunch of guys who work together do.  I drift in and out of sleep depending on their noise until seven when I drive to work and sit in the cafeteria there writing for about an hour.   Writing and remorsing over the fact that we just hired a new guy who sits down hall from me.   He buys all the plain cake donuts from the cafeteria right at 7am when they open.   How could you do that?   Start work at some place and buy all the cake donuts!?  Day one and you already have a plate full of enemies.

I am unbelievable close to hooking the gas up to the furnace! 

I shimmed out the box just a little bit extra
with a small strip of the concrete board.

I decided to build a flame proof enclosure around the furnace.   The instructions don’t call for such a thing but I really feel it seems like a “why not?” idea.  It is build out of some 3/8” Allura fiber cement backerboard and is really just an 11” square tube.   I first scored the concrete board into three strips each eleven inches with a utility knife and snapped it.  Then I placed the sides in place and used a pencil with a 3/4” block between it and the outer wall to trace the wall profile onto the cement board.  I used a wood cutting sazall blade to cut the profile in the board.   Initially I tried a metal blade but the cement board chewed the teeth right off in no time.  The wood blade cut through it with no problem. Next I cut the cement board strips to length to match the pad I installed a few nights ago and sat them all aside.   

I really hadn’t been looking forward to the next step.   Cutting the holes in the side wall for the chimney and air intake.   I started to dread this task the second I read the install instructions.   They included a drawing and I saw it’s measurements labeled in 16ths.   As in, “cut the center of the hole 3-15/16ths from the floor.”   Uhhhhh.   I am a house builder.  Used to “Eh, plus or minus half an inch, it’s fine!” and now I am looking at needing to be quite exact.   Where being off by a 1/32^nd of an inch doesn’t seem like much until you consider that is an error of fifty percent.

But this was a task that had to be done.  I started by making a template for where the chimney and air intake holes had to be drilled.     I took a hunk of one of the fishing posters I am using for template stock.   I suppose the piece was about twenty inches long, about a foot wide.   I squared it up along the edge of my fireproof box and folded it in half.   Then I placed it in position with half of the fold on the floor, the other half against the wall and the corner at the fold, very square.   I taped the paper in place.   Then I placed the furnace on top of the paper and marked where the side of the furnace fell on the paper.   Once this was done I lifted the furnace back out again and pulled up the paper to take it out to a worktable.   Following the diagrams in the furnace install instructions *exactly*, I marked the center point of the chimney and air intake holes.  Then I taped the template back into the van.   I drilled quarter inch pilot holes through the paper and then pulled the template back off.   After I pulled the paper off I followed up with a 2-1/4” bi-metal hole saw.   I had been dreading this point for fear of doing something wrong but it really seemed to really work out great.   I am glad I thought of the template idea.

With the holes cut, I put the furnace back in place and ran a couple of drywall screws through the mounting holes.   It only seems to be attached at the front.   I suppose the chimney holds it in place at the back.

Once the holes are drilled you should follow up with a little spritz of paint, just to cover the cut edge.   Painting that edge will really help reduce rust.   This is a spot that is going to have a lot the heat differential.  Because of the air intake and chimney this will be a point where you will build up some condensation so paint will help.   The instructions mention this as well call and for silicone caulk around the holes, paying particular attention to putting a bead between the two holes.   I should have taken a picture but of course I forgot.   I think I had about a quarter inch bead.   I feel like it wasn’t enough.   I got no squeeze out except through the cover plate holes.   I think there should really be some come out around the edges, just to prove you got good fill.   I suggest something more on the order of 3/8” if you are installing. 

Oh yeah, one other thing I have as a suggestion, do a better job of squaring it up on the van than what I did.  I put in the first screw then knelt down to take a look and place the second screw.   I should have stepped back a bit maybe.   It is a little bit crooked.  Nobody is going to notice but me, but I will notice it every time I walk up to the driver’s door.   Right now it is shiny and silver though.   I will spray it with some high temp white paint next week and that will make it stealth in a little better.  Then I might forget to notice it is crooked once in a while.

  

Now with the furnace all attached to the floor I built the rest of the flame proof enclosure.   I just used PL-200 (or Liquid Nails) to glue the edges.  I put a couple of cardboard boxes on each side to hold it in place and then put a toolbox on the top to apply some pressure.

While this was drying I prepared the gas pipe.   I am using 3/8” soft copper pipe but I was concerned in places the pipe is going to be in contact with the steel frame of the van.   I got thinking the vibration from driving could cause the steel to wear through the copper.   To prevent this from happening I purchased some 1/2” plastic tubing.  I pushed the copper pipe through the tubing - a job that started easy but was increasingly difficult.   The friction of the copper against the plastic made it bind up.   Plus the plastic had been coiled since it was manufactured.   To get around this, I clamped one end of the plastic to a workbench and pulled it straight.   Really the best thing would have been to apply some talcum powder to the copper as I pushed it into the plastic.   I think that would have kept it from binding.   After it was plastic wrapped I cut a hole into the propane box and threaded the pipe through and ran it up along the driver’s side of the van to the vicinity of the furnace.   Job complete until the glue dries on the box.

I have spent a week looking for the ANL fuses.   I bought them.   I know I have them somewhere.   But if they are not going to show up in a week of me digging through all the bags and buckets and boxes I have stashed in the corner of the shop, they are well and truly lost.   Damn.   I have also done some checking around and found they are impossible to buy locally.   Even here in my big city.   That actually makes me a little concerned.  If I go this route, I better get a couple of spares.  Maybe I should just use circuit breakers instead.   But, I have heard they trip off too quickly to use in an ignition circuit.   I have heard that the fuses are slow-blow, and can handle it just fine.  Still deciding.

Don't try this at home.   A wire in place
of a fuse.

But I am horribly impatient.   I really want to get the batteries charged so that when I get the furnace hooked up I am ready to test it.   I was confident of my wiring.  (Famous last words right?)  Don’t try this at home.   I used a length of 14 AWG wire and bridged the fuse position.  I will get some fuses ordered up tomorrow and have them with me on Monday.   Until then, I just have to be a bit more careful around the battery area.   Putting this in place allowed me to plug in the inverter and get the batteries up to full charge.

My friend Tim stopped over for a look at the project the other night.   I am talking to him about assistance, up to and maybe including building for me, my main table.   It was still too early for me to provide much information for him.   I need to get the floor to ceiling shelf that sits opposite the table built first.   Then I will have some idea of what size everything needs to be.