Lots of Electric Work

Spent a lot of this past weekend working on electrical projects on the Carpe Diem.  I am not a fan of electrical work.  I would say that the stupid butt joint connectors I worked with were the main reason I detest electrical work.  I can't imagine soldering the connections that are above my head as I'm clambering around under the trailer.  I used heat shrink butt joint connectors; let's just say that the percentage of them working as planned was pretty low.

Today I worked exclusively on the trailer lights.  I should say that I worked while waiting for it to stop raining.  Even though the teardrop is jacked up, crawling around on my back on the wet pavement was less than ideal.  Except for the butt joints, everything went as planned.  Unfortunately, I couldn't test the connections today.  I'm hopeful that next weekend will be beautiful and I can pull the Carpe Diem out to the road and give it a proper test.  All I can say is, those trailer lights better freaking work!  I don't want to have to crawl under the teardrop again to make all those connections.  I took my time.  I heat shrunk and taped everything very carefully.

Last night I took some images of the teardrop's lights.  You can see that I didn't get the spare re-mounted as of the images.  I ended up throwing everything in the cabin last night.  But, the lights work!  It wasn't pitch black out, but it was dark enough to see how the light looks.

I like the LED fixture in the galley.  It swivels and throws off a lot of light. 

The porch lights are much brighter than I thought they would be.  

Night vision red dome light.

Regular dome light.

The reading lights are as bright as the the dome light; but I really like the warm iridescent bulbs in the fixtures.

Here we go.  Short week.  Already looking forward to working on the insulation of the cabin.  Happy Memorial Day!

Electric and Other Stuff

So today was a mixture of many small projects.  I started wiring the trailer for electric.  I was a little intimidated by the idea of doing this.  I've had some negative experiences with electric in my house and have always ended up having the electricians come in and do it.  It just scares me too much.

So, today I started by testing out the various fixtures while connected to the battery.

Here are the two main interior fixtures, the dome light and the reading lights.  The first thing I had to remember is that sometimes fixtures come with different color wires.  Both of the above fixtures had white and black wires.  I just had to remember that black was hot on those fixtures.  I then connected the red wires to these terminals and all was good.  I was so happy to see both light fixtures actually light up!  Then I decided to wire the interior lights together to put them on one circuit.

The reading lights have a recessed connection, so they had to be installed onto a block of wood.  This then was screwed to a piece of hardboard, which was glued to the foam.  It all should work out smoothly for me when it comes time to cover it with the headliner.  I'm hopeful that I can put that section on in one large piece.

Here you can see how I braced the foam to the roof.  Using these planks of wood worked pretty well.  I used Gorilla Glue for the first time.  That stuff is interesting.  It's kind of like working with the extruded foam; it actually looks like that when it dries.  It also 'expands,' which regular glue does not do in the same way.

Here you can see the small pieces of hardwood that are glued to the foam.  This gave me something to 'screw' into for each fixture.

Here are the fixtures mounted onto the hardboard and foam.  You can see the channels I cut for the wires.

You can see the hole coming in from the cabin.  I just got plain lucky that the shelf in the cabin was at the same height of the counter top in the galley.  I was able to tuck the wires into the power center area very easily.

This is the hole going into the power center.

You can see how the fuse panel will fit into the side wall there.

Here you can see the two 12 volt power port holes and the small square hole is where the 12 volt battery meter will be placed.  I decided to use two steel boxes.  One will potect the back side of the 12 volt outlets and the other will be for the one 120 volt outlet that I will install after I put the power port entry hole on the outside of the teardrop.

Another big task was putting the original hinge back on.  You can see on the image above that I used the butyl tape to seal the top part of the hinge.  I then screwed into a 1" by 1".  This gave the hinge something to 'bite' into and I think allowed me to really tighten the hinge.

These clamps worked well to hold everything where I wanted it while I was screwing it in place.

Here is the 'porch light.'  These will be tied into the four small LED lights, one on each corner too. 

They will all come to a central switch on the shelf area.  I can't wait to see how these are going to look at night!

Everything worked!  I shouldn't have been surprised, but given my history with electricity, I was!  I had not had the chance to 'sit up' and use the reading lights before.  I found that leaning against the bulkhead, which is headliner covered foam, was very comfortable and the lights will work perfectly!

I thought I had done something wrong with the vent.  I couldn't get it to turn on.  Then I realized that you have to have the vent hood open for it to turn on.  It is quiet and truly moves a ton of air around.  It isn't too noisy, but just noisy enough to work for us as a white noise creator.

I also was able to fix up the drawers and doors.  I had done a poor job on their fronts.  I routed the edges of the doors and sanded their fronts properly.  

One of the last projects was installing the new screw/bolts that hold the struts in place.  These struts hold up the hatch.  It was amazing to me how much a small bag of stainless steel hardware can cost.  

Tomorrow I have to get the second half of the hinge installed and the vent and doors sealed up so that the teardrop can go out onto the concrete patio.  

Vent Placement and Interior Cabinets

I've been thinking about the placement of the Fantastic Fan.  For several reasons I can imagine it being directly overhead in the cabin.  The first is that the fan's blades are clear.  This would be really neat to look up at the night sky.  Also, my wife and I are big fan people.  We sleep with a fan on at night, both for the sound, which helps us sleep, and the movement of air.  In the worst case scenario, a really hot night, having the fan blow directly on our faces might be great.

However, the shape of the interior of my teardrop only has a very slim area that is 'flat.'  That spot is about midway in the cabin.  Believe it or not, this impacts a bunch of other things.  I have reading lights that I plan to install at the front/top of the cabin, just a bit away from the bulkhead doors.  I had planned on putting in a dome light.  It has a red/white bulb to allow for night vision.  Now that I'm getting closer to the point of installing everything, I'm thinking of putting that dome light closer to the cabinets in the cabin.  This would be helpful when trying to get into the cabinets when its dark out.  I think the reading lights will be useful for general light and of course for reading.

 

So, I've had some discussions with folks about interior cabinets.  One friend of mine says to keep the 'shelf' that currently sits in the interior of my cabin.  It actually, as I've said before, could double as a bunk for a person under five feet.  It is also a convenient place to stow just about anything that fits in the large area (5' by 2').  However, I'm leaning towards doing something like this:

 This would basically be exactly the same amount of 'space,' it would just look more 'finished.' At least that's how I feel about it right now.  One thing for sure, I want to insulate all of the walls.  I don't want to take the easier route of not insulating the exterior walls inside the cabinets; otherwise those cabinets will 'sweat' when we are in the cabin.  I plan to make the cabinets fit the entire width of cabin.   I know some designs have a space for a built in DVD player, etc. but that is not a huge need for me.  Most of the time I spend will be out of doors.  If the need arises to being socked in due to rain, we could always watch something on our iPhone!  Not the big screen, but in a pinch it could work.