Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The Big Short


The shop I work at has been undergoing a huge remodel so I haven’t been there as much as usual lately.  I have been working on some of these non-shop odd jobs like the security upgrade I just finished and a few other things.  But tonight I was sort of in the vicinity so decided to spend the night here for a change.  It is much quieter sleeping in this industrial park area surrounded by residences than it is next to the train tracks or on a busy street in front of one of my usual haunts.

It was funny though.  There were some very smug hipsters working on building out a stealth camper at the shop tonight.  I stopped to observe them for a bit.  They had some big money into their project.  A newish high top, all white and shiny.  I would have loved to have that kind of budget for mine.   With them, however, observe was all I could really do.  They already knew everything so there was little they could gain from me.   I was looking at their sloppy insulation job.  Un-faced ridged foam on the ceiling with large open cell expanding foam between the pink foam and the frame members.  No vapor barrier!  Just 1/4” tongue and groove (of all things) over the top.

What happens when the puck lights get too hot in the
summertime. They melt.
I had hopes maybe they were building it to drive south and stay where it is sunny and seventy all the time.  …Alas, no.   It is staying right here in this cold climate.  Here is the thing, built this way they are going to have huge condensation problems.  Living in a steel box, the enemy is water.  Humans wash with it.  Cook with it.  Eat with it.  …and expel it on their own.  Think about your breath outside on a really cold day.  You think all that water vapor isn’t coming out all the time?  Or the steam coming off a plate of food being heated in the microwave. That water vapor is going to migrate itself right through all those cracks in that tongue and groove, through that open cell insulation and to the cold steel skin of the van itself.  There you will either have a mold problem, a rust problem or both.

What they should have done was put up a layer of plastic film.  I should have done this too even though I used foil lined insulation and metal taped all the seams.  I still get some condensation.  Second, if they wanted to use the tongue and groove beadboard they should have done an underlayment of painted plywood.  A lot of the information online is written by people who are smart enough to not live where I do.  But, that climate difference allows them to do it wrong but get away with it.  Here, when it is bitterly cold, this problem is going to be huge.

The newly built and very heavy duty side door
curtain rod holder. But the screws go into where
many wires live.
A second problem in the Hipster van, their puck lights were placed tight against the pink foam.  No way for them to dissipate heat.  The only good side of this are likely the light will overheat and be ruined fairly quickly.  Or, if it actually progresses to some fire, at least you don’t tend to sleep with your lights on.  They should be alerted to the smell and the smoke as long as they are there.  But these lights need a little bit of air gap.  Again, my foil lined foam helps me here but this is a summer problem.  Imagine how hot it is beating in the sun.  Now imagine you hop out of the van some morning and forget to turn off the lights.  They are gonna get damned hot.

I never claimed to have made no mistakes in my project.  I spent last weekend fiddling with one that will continue to haunt me, but that I got working for now.  How it manifested itself was the main two overhead ceiling lights stopped working.  I noticed this problem as I was getting the van packed up for The Wife and I to head north for our annual parents only camping escape.  First things first, I checked the fuse box and indeed did find a blown fuse so I made to replace it.  When I plugged the new fuse in it blew immediately.  So I had a dead short.

The thick heavy wire that I thought was a good idea.
At that time, I thought I knew exactly what had caused it.  The day before I was in the process of building a new door side curtain rod.  The one I installed the previous year was Walmart crap and I knew it wasn’t going to last.   I was right.  I think it was the fourth day of use we had some visiting Canadians in the van.  On the way out they got a little caught up in the curtain, breaking the thin plastic of it’s attachment point.  Of course no one can be as sorry and deeply apologetic as a Canadian who has damaged one of your belongings.

Since that time the year before I had a plan to build something better but of course time passes.  A year in fact.   It was just days before our departure this year when I got going on the new version.  I purchased a two inch copper coupler from the plumbing department and did an initial job of flattening it in a vice.  Then, flattened it even more with a hammer and anvil.  To this now flat hunk of copper I soldered a 1” copper cap open side out.  I drilled four holes in the corner of the flat part.  Then I affixed this unit to the frame of the van with some self tapping sheet metal screws.

Even pulling the switch out was very difficult due to
how thick and inflexible the wires are.
Those screws went into the frame where I have run a lot of electrical wires.  I didn’t notice at the time but I was sure what had happened was one of those screws tapped it’s way right into the wiring causing the short and now preventing my lights from working.  To me, that was the only logical explanation.  But the trouble with fortune telling, often it is wrong.

I didn’t get my curtain rod built.  Partly due to this new electrical problem and partly due to not having a metal cutting blade for my band saw.  My design idea hinged on cutting half an inch off one side of a 1” copper elbow so it would fit in closer to the van.  I didn’t have a way to do it straightly.  I can tell you for sure it can’t be done with a sawzall.

So then time passed again until this past weekend   From time to time I have prodded around the area of where I attached the rod bracket I had made.  Feeling in the frame holes to see if I could determine what wire was hit.  I was so sure of myself I didn’t really look into other causes.  The trouble was even though I couldn’t actually reach them, I couldn’t feel any wires in the vicinity of where I thought the pointy end of the screws would be.  I was confused.

Wire nuts are great but as I discovered, only when
joining the same types of wire.
Over the weekend I dug in.  I opened up the box where the switch is located next to the side doors.  I figured from this point I could test the wires with an electrical meter and find what wire was grounded.  What I found instead, once I got the box opened up and pulled out was even more confusing.  The wires tested good. I popped in a new fuse.  The lights worked fine!

I had been living without overhead lights for about two months at this point.  Not like a huge, huge inconvenience in such a small space with other lights. …Not to mention the long summer days with light pouring in the ceiling fan dome.  But yeah, I was kind of disgusted with my lazy ass self for not checking into it more earlier.   I turned the lights back off and put the switch box together.  Flipped the switch to turn the lights on.  Poof!   Another blown fuse.   Ahhhh.  I see.  I have learned something.

Here was my mistake.   I did a lot of reading before I did any building.   I read that bigger wire was better for DC current.  You get a lot less voltage drop when you use larger wire for longer runs.  The longest run I had was this one, from the fuse panel to the front of the side door and then to the floor to ceiling shelf and then to the lights.   I just happened to own some heavy gauge wire that I bought two houses ago.  Some #10 three conductor with ground.  House wire, solid core.  I thought this would be perfect.

This wire was not perfect from the very beginning.  Just to give you a bit of background.  Wire comes in two types.  Sold core, which is one strand of copper in the gauge you purchased.  It is heavy and inflexible.  This is the kind of wire you have in your house, running through the walls. The second type is stranded.  Take a whole bunch of little thin copper wires and twist them together to make up the diameter of wire you need.  Stranded wire is very flexible.  At home it is the wire that goes from a light or appliance to the wall plugin.  Its flexibility allows it to handle plenty of bending and abuse.

So there I was, trying to bend this thick heavy wire around corners in my van.  It was hell to get in place.  But now, a year and a half later I am discovering a new problem.  The short, that causing my fuse to blow was because this stiff wire was rubbing against the side of the switch box.  In the course of time, the insulation rubbed off and now I have a bare spot on the wire.

What I did to fix it was cut the wire back and run a short, three inch long bit of stranded wire from the end of the cut to the switch.   It wasn’t an easy job because using a wire nut on two stranded wires, or two solid wires, is easy and works well.  But, with one of each, not so well at all. I don’t know if this is going to cause me more trouble in the future or not.

So no, my build has not been perfect.  I have made mistakes.  I am sure there are mistakes yet to reveal themselves.  There are mistakes yet to be made.  But I do listen.  When I find another van dweller, I am all ears.