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2 July 2000
Every now and again something happens that
shows you just how tenuous your current lifestyle (or life itself)
can be.
The other day, while working on the truck I heard
a crunch followed by the sound of a high-reving motor. I rushed
to the street to see a truck from a business on the high side of
the steet embedded in the fence of the building nextdoor. Some workers
from the business were running across the road so I joined them.
There was no-one in the truck, apparently it had
just started itself and taken off. Now I've experienced sponaneous
combustion before, but sponaneous internal combustion? The owner
was visibly distressed and someone suggested that a mechanic sould
look into the problem. "Forget the mechanic" I said,
"you need a bloody exorcist!". Everybody laughed and the
mood lightened a little.
This is a very busy road but by sheer luck nobody
was driving past at the time. The point of all this is that, in
the words of the classics, shit happens, and it can happen to you
at any time. No matter how warm and comfortable you are, with a
great partner, a couple of cars, a nice house and 2.3 kids, this
can all be taken from you in an instant by a possessed truck.
I reckon you should "reinvent"
yourself a few times during the course your life, so if you're bored
going through the motions and thinking about changing things, then
do it, and do it soon.
25 July 2000
I've been preparing the bedroom
for lining. This involves applying batterns to the walls and installing
the conduit for wiring behind the batterns.
Fig 1. Bedroom floor and walls
before battens.
The above photo shows the floor and two walls
of the bedroom, both have been painted with Barrier 2000 insulating
paint and battens have been screwed to the floor.
Some time later the beds, conduit and most of
the battens have been installed.
Fig 2. Beds installed and most
battens in place.
It's not obvious here but in the foreground are two single beds that are mounted on rails so the configuration can be changed. Note also that the walls have been lined between the steel braces with 20mm closed-cell foam for insulation.
Fig 3. Detail of wiring.
In general you should try to reduce the number of junction boxes (j-boxes) used when wiring by "looping" connections at places where the wires would be cut anyway, eg. a light switch. Sometimes however it's necessary and above we see the bedroom corner, with wiring coming into the corner from two GPOs (sockets) and the 12v bus, and branching to positions behind the beds. Note the double conduit, one for 240v and one for 12v wiring.
Fig 4. Open slotted trunking
duct
Almost all wiring in the motor home runs in two
ducts that run around most of the vehicle. These ducts hold the
high (240v AC) and low (12-24v DC plus video, control etc) voltage
wires and segregate the two types of wires.
The duct I've used is called "Open slotted
trunking" duct and it allows wires to be brought out at
any point through the slots. |
