New idea on traveling.

Here is the missing picture from the last post.  This is the current progress of back yard when the piston decided to turn into a high pressure oiler.  The marker sticking out is where the trench I dug last year is (I put it there so I wouldn't crash the mower into it).

Most people say van life is cheaper, but when I ran the numbers, that was definitely not the case; the only way I could see someone claiming that is if they don't include the cost of replacing the underlying vehicle, or assume it will last forever.  So I was doing a little bit of reading Sunday night, and came across another option: box trucks.  I can get a used box truck for half of what I can buy a van for, used vans too.  While I am not too high on Mitsubishi, they are one of the biggest players (Isuzu is the other big one), and depending on how old I am willing to go I can find them for as little as 10k, though most are around 20k.  The used vans I was looking at though were in the $25k-30k range.  From an overall vehicle length perspective, most of the smaller ones are comparable to my current truck, which is perfectly acceptable, but they are more compact in the front, so you get a lot more interior space.  You can get used U-Haul trucks even cheaper, but those tend to be abused within an inch of their life, and U-Haul is not known for pristine maintenance records, but U-Haul at least publishes gas mileage figures: 12-14mpg in their small 10', 10-12mpg in the slightly larger ones.

This idea also breathed new life to the truck house idea: the basis for a lot of these box trucks and other smaller class C RVs is the Ford E series.  I believe this used to be the Econoline, but regardless, it starts at $38k brand new, which is nearly $20k less than an F-150.  I for the life of me don't really understand why (it is a 1-ton chassis not a half ton which surely outweighs the cost of a pickup bed), but it certainly makes it a lot more palatable from a cost perspective.  It does force some trade offs though: they don't appear to come in 4WD (it does have a standard locking rear diff though), if you want gas the only engine option is the 7.3L V8, and their features/options are very limited (though I didn't want most of them anyways).  But still, I prefer new (this way I know it hasn't been abused for the last half-decade), and this provides another opening that is more financially acceptable.  I didn't see any official gas mileage numbers, but in general I would expect it to be equivalent to a 1 ton truck, so in the 13-15mpg range.  3-5mpg is a large delta (I anticipated the van would get 16-18mpg).  For reference, the fuel consumption of my most recent trip at 13mpg would be ~615 gallons, at 16mpg it would be ~500 gallons, and at 18mpg it would be ~445 gallons, and gas was just over $3 per gallon on average, so fuel would cost ~$510 more at 13mpg vs 18mpg, on a trip that was $6300. 

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Productive, but not productive enough. Popped the excavator.

Saturday morning I went to pick up a freebie inflatable kayak off Craigslist.  I woke up early though, so I went out and measured how much wire I would need.  There is absolutely no chance a 50ft spool would cut it.  It looks like I would need a 75ft spool at least (this measured 78 feet), and that is just to get it to the deck, not the location of the hot tub.  I think at this point I will put off running the wire for next year though.  Honestly, given the cost of just the wire, it might be worth getting a quote to upgrade the house to 200A service, then I only need to run a new circuit from the house which would be 20 feet or so.  Either that or just run a 20A circuit for the deck, and stick with the inflatable hot tub for the foreseeable future (which runs off a 110V 15A circuit, instead of the typical 50A 240V built in hot tubs use).  

The kayak.  It is bigger than I expected.  It has a leak in the right tube.  I might (should?) be able to fix it, but otherwise it will only cost me a couple of bucks to chuck it if I can't.

I got my property tax bill in the mail Saturday and got a pleasant surprise.  With the reassessed values, my taxes went down.  The second bill is frequently smaller than the first, but the difference is not normally large.  I guess the other people in the town got hosed worse than me with the reassessment.

After all that though, it was time to get back to work on the excavator.  I ran it out of gas again, and since my can was full this time (it was mostly empty last time which is why it didn't get completely filled) I made a huge mess trying to fill it.  I used to have a large gas funnel, but couldn't find it.  I had a long one that I use to drain oil, but that had a lot of junk in it which I really didn't want to put in the excavator's fuel tank (I am pretty sure it does not have a fuel filter).  

So I made a trip to Harbor Freight.  While I was there I picked up a new worklight too.  It isn't as bright as the monster ones I got a couple years ago (I have one in the shed and one in the carport), but it is better than nothing.  The hope is that while I don't think it is bright enough for excavator work, it should be bright enough for hand shovel work. 

I also went and picked up the rolling cabinet from work that I am bringing down.  I am headed to KY this weekend.

Sunday was mostly an excavator day.  I got most of the digging done, but not all (more on that in a second).  I did have a short heart palpitation when I first sat this branch, since it is the exact same size that conduit would have been and at this point I was digging right on top of my water lines.  It was a major pain to remove too, it was too slick for the excavator to bite and was a real pain to dig out since it was two feet into the dirt.

I got all the inline digging done.  The last bit you have dig from the side.  Turns out this is a lot slower and more difficult since you actually have to dig, you can't just rip through the earth like you can inline.  

I apparently didn't get a picture of the back yard and progress.  My bad.

I got just under half of the sideways digging done when bad things happened.  It started spraying hydraulic fluid.

The piston doesn't look difficult to change, but I have no idea where I would even look to find one.  I might poke around (and maybe ask Barry, the only other person I know with an excavator).  This is where it is leaking.

A couple of other notes, I turned off my water pump when I was digging over the water lines (for obvious reasons), but I apparently forgot to turn it back on before I ran the dishwasher that evening.  It looks like everything worked okay though, so I apparently have a large pressure tank.  It did completely drain it though.  I have never actually seen the pressure tank that was installed (it is installed underneath the house).  I am sure it was terrible for the water heater though, since it probably was running near empty for an hour or two.  Oops.

Surprisingly everything in the dishwasher came out clean though, no soap spots or anything that I could see that would indicate that most of the cycle was run without water.  

I also removed all the remaining lumber out of my truck and cleaned out the back to prepare for the trip.

Unfortunately this puts a large damper on my ability to finish this before I head to KY.  I am seriously debating just JB welding and gorilla taping the crap out of it (I am aware that Gorilla tape can't take the PSI hydraulics run at), and just letting it leak until I finish the trench, I am that close.  I don't really want to try to dig it by hand, but that is also an option, but it is in the area that got compacted when they put the house in, so it would be rough digging.  And at this point, it wouldn't happen before I get back.  I also need to keep a really close eye on the temperatures too; water lines don't freeze because they are buried well below the frost line, but right now there is I would guess ~18" of dirt removed from on top of them, so they may not be below the frost line at the moment until that material is restored, and it will be December before I get back from Thanksgiving.  Ugh.  And I still haven't put the snowblower on the back of the tractor or anything yet.  It might be time to dust off the white flag and punt the drainage until next year, even despite the fact that it was absolutely gorgeous outside this weekend.  

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Back from the LAN, but time is very short.

I went to the LAN last weekend, and I didn't really do much during the week; it is dark when I leave, and when I get home.  I might need to come up with a plan for that and buy some flood lights or something.  I did go out for a walk last week, and while we are at the end for foliage, I still got a couple of pockets of color.  This was taken going to the gym.  

The entrance for the rail trail wasn't completely barren yet either.

I did get to see a pretty sunset driving to the LAN.  

The house we rented was... interesting.  It looks like somebody who didn't know how to hold a hammer decided he could build a house.  They didn't know how to toenail things in, they didn't appear to know that drip edges were a thing, and there were electrical boxes falling out of the wall everywhere, among a whole slew of things that would not pass any kind of inspection.  That said it served us well enough.  If anyone is curious, I can get a bunch of pictures of things that are not quite up to snuff.

I might try to set up some lighting in the back yard or something so I can continue working in the evenings.  The only part that scares me is digging where my water lines are (with an excavator which will shred water lines without slowing down) basically by just a really bright flashlight.  I don't think I will hit them (they theoretically should be deeper than I am going), but I don't know how deep they actually are.  I might not make it to Krass' Friendsgiving this weekend, I might need this weekend to finish up the drainage.

Something else I have been looking at is whether to use this trench to bury the wire for the back deck and hot tub, or if I should just dig another trench next year for it.  Direct Bury wire is rated for wet environments, but I am still not sure I like the idea of burying the wire in the drainage.  I also didn't realize that wire had gotten so expensive.  A 50A circuit requires 6 gauge for UF-B type wire, which I can buy a 50 foot roll of for 150 bucks, but I don't think 50 feet will be enough, and nobody carries anything between there and a whole spool, which is several grand.  I also don't understand why a 50ft roll is 155 bucks, but a 125 foot roll is 650 dollars.  I definitely need to measure how much I need, it gets expensive quick.

Breaking stuff.

Later last week it warmed up a bit.  A lot.  It was nice to turn my heat off for a few days and even crack the windows for a couple days though.  

Friday I went over to Bob's.  I have been having problems with the windows in my truck not going up properly.  It goes up, but as soon as it closes it immediately went back down as if it detected that your hand was caught in the window.  Turns out that it isn't a separate sensor in this truck though, so Bob's recalibrated it on the spot for me.  Apparently they had just done a bunch of them in the previous week and he just went out and fixed it for me, and didn't even charge me for it.  It was just recalibrating the window motors, which only took a minute.  The window works again though.

Friday night I went out to see if there were any single cab trucks.  The last gasp for a truck house as opposed to a van is if a standard cab meets my comfort requirements.  I was curious about the wheelbase on the truck, and wanted to measure from the seat to the steering wheel.  I would have liked to sit in it, but as expected nothing was unlocked.  I only found a GMC on the various lots; no Chevy, Dodge or Ford.  The wheelbase on the truck was surprisingly long, 144" (my truck is 164"), and while it was as very crude measurement, It looked to be roughly 28" from the seat to the steering wheel.  My truck is 29", so there is at least hope.  The biggest worry is whether or not the seat goes far enough back to be comfortable.  The truck is preferable to a van in my opinion: the house is more separable from the truck, trucks are cheaper than vans, are more capable off-road, and I don't have to reconstruct the living quarters every time I replace the underlying vehicle.  

Saturday I wasn't feeling too great and slept in really late, but I still dragged myself out for a few hours.  I got the hose all coiled up.  

I also spent some time on the excavator.  I another chunk of the trench dug.  

The ground around the excavator is getting pretty rough.  The front isn't even on the ground, and you can see the middle is sitting on a sizable bump.

Sunday I felt better and decided to fix the rough ground around the excavator to make it easier to dig in a reasonably straight line, since I noticed the trench was starting to curve a little.  Flattening ground is really really easy with an excavator, far easier than the tractor.  

I also went and double checked to make sure that I was putting enough slope in.  So far it was perfect, and was sloped correctly all the way down.  

I then went and dug some more.  If you look at the dirt, the white is frost.  The excavator however didn't care in the slightest.  I basically went and ran it until it ran out of gas.

When I went into the shed to grab the gas can, I had a realization: if I finished the trench on Sunday, I would have no way to get the mower back to mulch the leaves until everything was 100% complete.  Since my leaves are all down at this point, I decided perhaps I should finish that up first, since I need to winterize the mowers and stuff anyways.  That went poorly.  The lawn tractor didn't start.  Turns out it is peeing gas all over the place.

I knew the tractor leaked a little bit of fuel, but the volumes leaking were a bit of a surprise.  I went and pulled it apart while the battery was recharging from me sitting on the starter, and didn't immediately see anything wrong.  

I got it put back together, and the battery was done recharging at this point, so I gave it a crank and it started right up.  I checked, and it doesn't leak when it is running.  

I went and tried to mow with it to chew up the leaves, and it was definitely not running right, so I decided to just park it and deal with it next year, and let it run itself out of gas.  There was practically none left in it anyways, it leaked most of it out onto my driveway.

I have a theory that I will run past Barry at some point.  It looks like it has a solenoid on the bottom of the bowl.  I think that solenoid is not working correctly (it should be NC - normally closed), allowing fuel to just pour in.  I have been using the inline shutoff, but that shutoff isn't original.  I  think if you get the mower started before it gets completely and utterly flooded, it will start.  And I think the lack of control over the solenoid is why it runs poorly, it is not able to properly regulate the fuel coming in, and as soon as something bogs or isn't perfect, the butterfly valve on the carburetor isn't compensating properly perpetuating the problem.

While it was running itself dry, I pulled out the chipper to do the same with that.  It wouldn't start either.  

Already frustrated with the lawn tractor, I decided to just drain it and deal with it next year.  I dropped the bowl, and there was nothing draining out of it.  I dropped the bottom of the fuel shutoff too, and still nothing ran out.  I think it is safe to say that the reason that it wouldn't start is that it isn't getting fuel, and of course the fuel line is underneath the gas tank.  Ugh.  It only had maybe a quarter of cup of fuel left in the tank, and with the bowl drained I am not too worried about it gumming up the carburetor.  So I just rolled it up the hill.  It looks like next spring will be Allen's Repair Service Grand Opening.  

While I was up there I also disconnected the battery on the lawn tractor, it had run itself out of gas by this point.  This way there is hopefully at least a chance the battery will survive more than one season (a rarity for me).  

I at least covered the chipper, just in case.  I have a big thick tarp to cover everything but I need to move the snowblowers and stuff first.  And with the luck I was having at this point, I didn't want to tempt it.  The sun was nearly behind the trees at this point anyways.

This was as far as I got with the excavator.  I am within a few feet of where I will need to dig it manually, my water line is right behind the excavator in this picture.  I am hopeful it is buried deep enough that I won't hit it, but I think I will only dig down to the frost line and do the rest by hand.

I forgot to grab a picture, but I did get the next couple shelves installed in the shelving unit.  At this point though, unless there is a freak heat wave (there is one day this week actually warm enough) it won't be getting stained.  

With clocks turning back, it is dark even if I leave early now, so my only option is to go home at lunch, which only gets me maybe 20 minutes to work before my lunch break is over (and I have to eat lunch during that period), but I am still hopeful that I can get the drainage in.  I am running out of weekends though, since at this point all my weekends are accounted for before December.  I am going to the LAN this weekend, there is a Friendsgiving the following weekend, and then the week after I will be driving to KY for Thanksgiving.  Certainly something to think about, since I haven't even pulled out my snowblowers yet.  I am not too worried about the tractor mounted one, but I do still need to grease it up and all that.  I guess the end of the working season kind of crept up on me this year; I was overall less worried about it because my vacation was earlier, so I wasn't trying to fit things in before the trip, but then never realized that "hey, the season has changed".

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Building shelves

Monday after work I went and pulled my hose off.  It was supposed to get cold enough that it would freeze.  

Last night however was rainy, so when I got home yesterday I decided to try covering up the back of the truck.  I still have plywood and stuff that I haven't cut yet back there.  It didn't work, the bed still had a bunch of water in it when I awoke this morning.  Oh well.

I also got the top board glued and nailed.  I wasn't thinking, and even my big furniture clamps are too small.  I am otherwise using the same construction technique as I used on the armoire (glue and a few finish nails).

The next board is marked and fitted, though I didn't get to gluing it yet.  I am going with two 16" shelves (the height of the totes I am using) and will then have two slightly taller shelves for things like the hot tub pump, Jackery, and so on.

Foliage is very much nearing the end, but isn't completely gone yet.

Even the late changers are turning now. 

It is supposed to be in the 60s today through Friday, so I am hoping I can get at least one of the shelving units stained, but it looks like I might have an opportunity next week as well.  

I decided that for the van conversion, I would put in a water pump and a small on demand RV water heater.  I did go back and double check the Transit vs the Promaster, and I came to the same conclusion as last time: it is better to pony up the big bucks for the Transit.  The Promaster still hasn't gotten the new Ram engine (it is still running a Chrysler Pentastar not known for reliability).  Still only FWD, and still no options for a larger fuel tank, which means it only comes with 24 gallons.  It is 7 grand cheaper though, and gets better mileage (at least until the Pentastar breaks down).  I haven't looked too much at van modders to see if I can get things like a larger fuel tank installed in it.  I know Titan Tanks doesn't make one, but there might be others.

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.

Nothing like snow to realize that winter is coming.

During the week last week, I was bored and started drawing up some designs in meetings.  I went and priced out some trucks, and discovered that nobody offers a half ton extended cab long box anymore (the same configuration I have now).  You have to go to a three quarter ton for that.  Going to a three quarter ton erases a lot of the cost and fuel mileage savings that pickups had though, and forces me into a monster engine (while adding several thousand pounds to the vehicle).  So for half tons it is basically standard cab or else.  I haven't sat in a standard cab where the seat went far enough back in decades.  So I started looking at vans instead.

I also went to Home Depot to price out the shelves I wanted to build.  Holy crap plywood has gotten expensive.  These sheets of underlay were 8 dollars last time I bought one, which was only a couple years ago.  

The sanded plywood which I decided to use has also almost doubled in price since I built the armoire (this is what I used for the sides and structural shelves on that).  It was almost enough to make me consider just ordering a wire rack since they are actually cheaper now, but my last experience ordering one kind of soured me on that.  It took three tries for them to send me ones that weren't horribly bent when I bought one for the bathroom.

The big project for Saturday was to get the excavator started.  It turns out that the battery is quite easy to find, it is right below the floor pan.

I got one of the strap removed.  The bolt for it was destroyed and it took a very long time to get it out, since it fought me every step of the way.  Considering the machine had 0.1 hours on it, this is a bit concerning.

It confounded me for a while after I did get the bolt out.  This is a pretty poor design if I am being honest.  

In the end, I just went brute force and bent the strap.  I got the battery slid down enough to get the charger on it, and surprisingly the charger said it was about 90% full.

I am not sure what changed, but after I charged it, it did start turning over.

I was confused and sad, so I went and ate some lunch.  Came back after lunch, and more out of sadness, hit the key, and... it started?  I don't know what I did to fix it, but everything started working.

Apparently I forgot to turn off the key or something last weekend.  It now has 144 fake hours on it.  Whoops.

Because the bolt was destroyed and there was nothing actually holding the battery in place, I didn't do anything with the machine.  While I had the charger out though, I did top off the lawn mower battery, which has a history of dying.  

That evening I made a Home Depot run to get a new bolt and I picked up the lumber for the shelves, crying inside a little as I did so.  It was well past dark when I got home, so I transcribed the post it note floorplan to something closer to scale.  

Sunday came time to play with the toys.  I got the excavator fired up, played around with it a little, and then got to digging the trench.  I remembered to dig the channels away from the house first this time.  

I discovered something about the excavator though, it gets really hot really quickly.  I know most of the places that I read online recommended adding a fan to the engine compartment, but I didn't realize how quickly it heated up.  This was as far as I got before I stopped to let it cool down.  I could feel the heat coming up through the seat.  Still though, this only took a few hours, and considering it was my first time using the machine, that isn't bad at all.

It wasn't in the danger zone though, the hydraulic fluid wasn't warm, it was just the motor.  

After stopping to let it cool off, I decided to get started cutting for the shelves.  I am making it too wide to use the table saw; the shelves on this are 22" deep and my table saw only goes to I think 16".  Instead I just clamped a board down to use as a fence so I didn't have to deal with the wobbly cuts like I had on the armoire.  It is a lot slower to cut like this, but the result is better.

Apparently my circular saw doesn't scare away turkeys anymore, though admittedly they didn't stick around too long.

I got everything cut for the first set of shelves.  I decided to do this first before going back to digging because this gives me something that I can work on during the week.  Days warm enough to stain are at a premium this time of year, and I wanted to make sure I am ready, though I could stain it inside like I did the armoire I guess if I am willing to put up with the smell.

I actually cut well into darkness.  It kind of worked, but I did screw up one cut.  I am not sure if that was because of lighting or not though, the saw slipped under the fence.  But I called it a night at that point.  It was almost 9PM anyways.  I got a good chunk of the second one cut up too.

I cleaned up the third room enough to be able to assemble it.  I have kind of neglected this room, and just kind of used it as a dumping ground for far too long.  And given that these shelves are quite large (6' tall, 4' wide, and 22" deep) I had to shift a lot of stuff around.  

This morning I awoke to an undesired surprise.  It was snowing.  It wasn't collecting in the driveway, but the yard was white, and the truck was white.

I didn't get a good picture of it, but it was still coming down at a decent clip too.  Winter is definitely on its way.  

Foliage is pretty much done for the year, outside of the few trees that for whatever reason wait for Thanksgiving.  This looked much more vibrant on Friday, but I forgot my phone.  

On another note, I made my first mega-payment on the mortgage.  It wasn't quite enough to get it under 6 figures, but I still very much on track to have it paid off in 10 years or less.  I had actually debated only making a smaller payment, and then kicking off the events that would give me a van to convert, but I didn't really have enough money for that.

Doing the van floorplan raised some interesting questions.  I have more or less settled on overdoing it a little bit on the electrical side, since that is what I would use the most.  I am still debating on the big plumbing decisions though.  Most of my original designs just used a hand pump faucet in the sink, and no indoor shower.  For travelling, this is for the most part fine; if I am out in the woods I can shower outside, and while slower a hand crank faucet is fine.  I am not sure I like the idea of building something I would live in without something I consider a basic amenity though: hot water.  Hot water though requires a full fledged pump and tank system, the plans to keep it simple and basically just use buckets is not really tenable.  Moving to a full system also means I need a place to put the pump, tank, water heater, and so on.  It requires propane plumbing, and I haven't looked up whether it requires bumping up to a 20lb tank from a 5lb tank.  It also isn't clear whether those are sufficient to get it above luke-warm.  I am leaning towards having hot water, but not an indoor shower currently, I just need to do more research on it.  I might just get a mini 2 gal propane heater or something if the tankless ones won't cut it.  The other design decision I am debating is whether to leave the side door available or not.  It would actually be kind of nice to run the kitchen all the way to the front.  The back doors must remain open because of my requirement to be able to haul lumber and stuff, which is why the whole center galley is open.  I am not sure I see the need for three entrances though: you can get in from the front, and the back.  Do I really need a side door too?

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.