Getting My Chill On

It has turned cold here in the frozen wasteland I call home (and home on wheels).  Last week I kept the van all toasty warm.  It was in the twenties overnight but I left the van set to 75 degrees 24/7.   Felt great, climbing in a nice warm van from the cold parking lot.  Sprawling out on my nice soft foam mattress in the back.  Really quite lovely.   Sadly, I burned through a twenty pound propane tank in about six days.  The goal of this project is to live cheaper not find profit by investing in propane futures.  This past week I have been turning down the thermostat at bedtime.  Each night turning it a little lower.  Then on Thursday night I said to myself, “I am staying plenty warm”  Turning the thermostat down all the way is ~50. “With all my blankets on, I think I will just fine.”  

I woke up about 4am.  I was not just fine, I was cold.  I tried to tuck in a little better and might have drifted in and out a bit.  But no way around it, I was cold.   What a wimp!  Right?   That’s what I was telling myself.   Four blankets and I can’t even handle 50 degrees!   I just wasn’t drifting back off to sleep again I was going to have to give up.  I turned up the thermostat.   …Silence.  I turned it up some more.  Still nothing.  I turned it up a lot.   Ugh.  No heat.  Ok, well now we had a problem.

I turned on the lights.  Took a bathroom break and thought about it.   Earlier in the evening I had been working some with the area around the thermostat wires.  Maybe I had knocked something lose?  I had just put in a fresh propane tank the night before so I was sure I wasn’t out of gas.  I realized it was pretty seriously cold in the van.  No ice in the bottle of water I had on the table but still darned cold.  I thought about rounding up the tools I would need to access the wires.  They were up in the cab where it was likely colder yet.  Then kind of at the last minute before I dug in I happened to wonder if the furnace got turned off by accident?  I have master furnace power switch right by the entry door.  I looked.  Sure enough, it was off.  

The padauk against walnut.

Flipped that one switch and I had power again.  The furnace started right up and ran for a long time before it got back up to 50.  I don’t really know how long.  I was curled up in bed and asleep.

Back in the summer, a few weeks before, I had gotten my plumbing hooked up and my drain in place. I had running water at last! Not that I actually run all that much. Everything had really been working very well, but really my water related tasks were very small.  Also since I just drain into the ground, for stealth reasons, I don’t use much even for the small tasks.  I don't want someone to notice water coming from the bottom of my van, or a big wet spot where one shouldn't be.  How much water does it really take for oral hygiene and to wash one fork?  A few shots and that is it.  Because of this I hadn't noticed what was really going on. 

The first time I actually used more than a few squirts of water was after acquiring some take out food from this amazing Indian food place on the east side.  I brought it home in styrofoam packaging.  —Not something I like to microwave food in.  I off loaded it into a plate.  I had also purchased some lettuce I put into a bowl.  I was sitting there at my little table thinking I was living like a king, my food arrayed in front of me.  But when this meal was gone I had actual dishes to wash!   It was now I discovered a critical design flaw. 

My fresh water tank came with a bunch of ports.  When it arrived all those ports are sealed over except for the fill port which has a cap.  If you want to use one of them you have to drill it out first.  -making sure of course to not mess up the threads.  I was only using one port, in the back that I had hooked to the water pump.  Maybe others can already seen the problem.   The cap on the fill port is not vented.  So the first time I used significant amount of water, washing these dishes, everything was fine for about fifteen seconds or so.  Then the sides of the tank sucked in, the water slowed to a near stop and the sound volume coming from the pump went way up.   The tank had was not vented in any way, there was no way for air to get in.

I had to think about this one for a bit.  Here is the problem.   If I was building a nice stationary tiny home for instance, using a tank fresh water system, I would just replace the fill cap with one I made incorporating some mosquito netting.   Everything would be just fine.  The difference with my home on wheels is I go sloshing down the road in it.  Turning corners and generally doing things that are gunna cause whitecaps in my freshwater tank.  If I have an opening somewhere, water could easily come shooting out of it as I turn a corner.  I thought about something based on a valve of some sort.  Open would be the “parked” vented position and susceptible to leaking.  Closed would be the road worthy sealed up position.  This step, to close the valve, would have to be added to my pre-departure checklist. …Thats a list is already longer than I want it to be.

The Mini Vent in place, attached to one
of the ports in my freshwater tank.

I got the idea from thinking about places where you add a bathroom to an old house.   Usually drains from sinks, tubs and the like have to be vented up to the roof of your house.   This venting does two things.  It allows sewer gas from the greater sewer system to escape up into the sky rather than getting into your house and making it all smelly. But the other thing a vent does is prevent suction when you are using your drains.  Without a vent, when you would pull a stopper to drain a sink, the water would actually be greatly slowed in the pipe because of the vacuum it would create behind it.  But when you start to look at remodeling an old house sometimes running a pipe up to the roof just really isn’t an option.  Imagine tucking a half bath into the space under a stairway.  

They make something to answer this call.  It is called a Mini-Vent or more formally a Air Admittance Valve sometimes even a Branch Vent.  The job of the mini-vent is to allow air into the drain and prevent this vacuum problem but be closed any time some sewer gas wants to get out.  Well, I thought about the problem I had.  I want air to get into my freshwater tank but I don’t want any water blowing out.  This valve is perfect.    

The valve I chose was made by IPS Corporation and is labeled a Studor Mini Vent.  Johnny Menard had three different varieties of these on his shelves.  I chose this particular brand because it has a built in filter to keep the wee beasties from climbing in my fresh water tank for a bit of a swim.  Of course it was the most expensive one at around $30.  Installation was easy, I just had to buy a few adapters to take it from inch and a half threads down to half inch.  Once installed it has worked perfect.  

The nicks out of my thermostat wire.  Unrelated to my
heat problem up above.

In the side of the floor to ceiling shelf I wanted to add a flush mount monitor that will be my “in” to all the various data and controls I have planned for the van later.   When I bought this little monitor the flush mount feature was really the one I was looking for.  But when I got it, I realized all of this stuff is likely meant to be mounted on either plastic or thin steel control panels, not the 3/4” wood I have.  All the mounting hardware is way too short to fit.  I will have to do some looking into options for mounting.  I did a bit of cutting and fitting to move this project along though.  In the process I very nearly cut off the thermostat wire.  Instead I just took a very large nick out of it.  If I was planning on always using this thermostat, I would want to replace this cut wire.  But, I have other plans down the road so I will just leave it for now.

And finally one more thing I did involved the back shelf.  I glued a strip of padauk to the front edge of it.  Then when the glue was dry I used a half inch round-over bit in a router to cut a round edge on the front.  It was looking nice.  I heard some that a problem with padauk is it has a tendency to fade to brown as it ages.   I didn’t want it looking just like the walnut.  I wanted to preserve its color.  And granted, exposure to sunshine is the main reason why it fades.  Inside the windowless van I don’t get a whole lot of sunlight.  So this wasn’t a huge thing, but I wanted to do what I could to keep it vibrant.  I looked on the interwebs to see what I could find.   It was crazy what they suggested, but I kept coming across the same solution time after time.   To keep the color from fading in padauk you finish it with super glue.

Thinking this was going to be a crazy thing
to do, but it worked out great.  Using
Superglue as a wood finish!

I couldn’t really imagine how this could work.  What they suggested was taking a bit of paper towel.  I used a McDonalds napkin.  Put some superglue on the napkin and spread it over the wood.  I thought sure all this would do is glue the napkin to my project but it really didn’t.  The napkin kind of conformed to the rounded edge profile and hardened in that position.  All I had to do was squeeze out some glue and rub it on the wood.  It goes without saying you work very quickly.  The dry time is maybe eight to ten seconds.  You have to spread out the glue in a thin layer.  You get a couple of swipes.   But to keep a wet edge, you have to keep moving across the project as well.  I worked fast and really it was an interesting process.  I suppose I put on four or five coats.  There were a couple of spots I over worked and those places ended up a bit cloudy.  I discovered I could go back over those small areas and the finish would blend right back in.  Sort of like working with shellac at Ludicrous Speed.  Word to the wise though, ventilate well.  Super glue, drying with this quantity and amount of surface area exposed, puts out some wicked fumes.