Ready

Tyrion is ready for his road trip. All of the curtains now have wraparounds on them (the last one was hand-sewn) and bundle up very tidily. The cupboard is stocked with food and water for the weekend - I just need bread and milk, which I will pick up on Sunday morning as I head out.

I have found my satnav cradle, which is a shame really because I've ordered another from eBay thinking I would need it before the trip. I have tested the coolbox working with the satnav and camera and the three of them do not overload the socket. This means I shouldn't have any trouble keeping cold things cold and battery-powered things charged during the trip. I have ice packs for the coolbox to help keep it cool when parked - at the site I will run the coolbox on the mains, but when I park up for the speedway or visiting anywhere else it will not be powered. I don't expect a few hours here and there to make much difference, but the ice packs might mean the difference between the milk staying fresh or going off.

I have checked the storage box and made sure it has everything in it I will need. I have spare gas, mess tins for cooking, teaspoon, sporks, cleaning cloths, a mug and a bowl. In the wash-bowl I have my gas kettle, electric kettle, washing up liquid and sponge-scourers.

Later this evening I will be packing a rucksack with clothes, towel, tea-towel and wash kit. My brew kit will be packed on Friday after work, as I am taking the small plastic tubs I use for coffee and sugar at work.

There's nothing more I need so as long as I remember to pack my speedway tickets, I'm ready.

Update: I haven't mentioned it here, but I also have toilet roll - there's a roll in the chair-back organiser and a spare in the storage box. I also have a 'waste water' bottle under the bed because I'm not trekking across the campsite in the dark looking for the toilet block if I need a wee in the middle of the night.

Camper Limo

I came across this picture on Facebook and shared it immediately, with the comment Oh My God!

I can't believe someone would chop up several VW campers and weld them together to create this absolute monstrosity - with half a VW Beetle welded backwards on the roof, complete with door handle.

The inside isn't much better - there are curtains on some windows, but not on others, which strikes me as plain weird, and the inside of the Beetle just looks ridiculous perched up above. There is wood-effect flooring and ceiling, but these do nothing to detract from the awful green colour used both inside and out.

All in all this is an appalling vehicle. Whoever has made this has taken four or five classic vehicles and created an absolute monstrosity. I feel sorry for anyone who orders a limo and has this turn up to collect them.

More Electricity

I've had to replace several bulbs today - on a routine lighting test I realised that I only had one out of three brake lights working and no side-lights. That's all sorted, but while I was in Halfords I found a handy little 12V extension with a doubler on the plug end.

This means I can send power to the coolbox all the way at the back of the van and still plug my switching adapter in to power my satnav, dash cam and phone. While the coolbox draws 6A, the satnav and dash dam draw well under an amp each and the phone charger about half an amp. This means that the 10A fuse for the 12V socket should be sufficient.

It also means that I have another pretty light in the front.

Wiring Repair

I have a switched 12V doubler with a USB socket mounted in the front of the car. Using this I can plug in my Garmin, dash-cam and phone all at once. However, recently one of the sockets failed.

The double shows a red LED by each switch when they are off and a blue LED when they are on. The blue light on the failed socket wasn't coming on so I decided the problem was likely to be related to the switch.

A quick disassembly revealed a broken track. Now I may not know how to repair a broken track on a circuit board, but I know enough to realise that I could bridge the break by soldering a piece of wire between contacts either side of the break.

Soldering didn't take very long and very soon the unit was back in the van and as the picture shows, both lights are blue.

All Wired In

I couldn't wait. Impatience is one of my weaknesses. I decided to bring everything into the living room and get it done this evening.

I was rather surprised when I opened the plug socket and found that the earth lead had come loose - this was a better way of finding out than an electric shock.

This is likely to have been because the wire was pulling on the earth cable so I made a note to leave the earth lead longer than the others when I rewired it.

It was pleasing to see that the suppliers had included a wiring diagram. This meant that I didn't need to go back onto YouTube to remind myself of where each wire went. 

The picture above is the unit with all the wiring finished. The next job was to screw it to the inside of the unit.

With the consumer unit fitted snugly up against the shelf it is easily accessible to turn it on and off - which is important because all of the instructions I have read say that it should be switched off before plugging it in on site. So I made sure all the switches were off, connected the other end of the lead to the 13A adapter and plugged it into the mains.

The green light in the picture below shows that everything is working. I flicked both the RCD and MCB off and on again and they both cut the power, which means I have wired everything up correctly.

So Tyrion is all ready for plugging in on site, safely protected from current leakage, short circuits and overloads.

The next project I need to tackle is lighting.

It's Arrived

As my consumer unit hadn't arrived in today's post I sent a query through eBay to the seller asking where it was - the estimated delivery for it was Thursday.

Then I realised that although I had updated my address on eBay, I hadn't updated it on PayPal. Sure enough, when I checked my PayPal account, it was showing as having been sent to my old address.

I closed the query on eBay, because clearly it was my fault it hadn't arrived and not the seller. Then I changed my address on PayPal and sent the seller an email asking them to send it to the new address if it came back undelivered.

Then it occurred to me that if nobody has yet moved into the old house, the parcel might have been left in a 'safe' place at the house - we often came home to parcels tucked in 'safe' places. So I jumped in the car and drove the ten miles (ish) to the old place and sure enough, there it was on the doorstep - not very safe, but it was there and now I have it.

So I came home, opened eBay and gave them top feedback, then sent the seller another email explaining that I am a little bit stupid but everything's all sorted now.

It's a little late in the day to start fitting it to the van - and besides, I need another 16A plug and socket before I can do that - so I plan to do that tomorrow.

Cupboard Door

I have been thinking for a while that I should put a door on the worktop unit. This would create some storage space where I can hide things away but can get at them more easily than the things stored under the bed - there's not a lot of other places I can think for storing things, apart from the footwell under the back seats. Rather than just diving into cutting and screwing, I have given it a lot of thought, considering the type of door and how it should open - I even considered using an elasticated net - but eventually settled on a door hinged at the bottom and secured with a magnetic catch.

Today that is exactly what I have done.

Hinging at the bottom means I have more easy access and visibility than hinging at the side.  It also means that I can finally abandon the mucky bungee cord I have been using to hold the stove in place and replace it with a more elegant looking option.

 

Here we can see the finished article. The shock cord attached to the unit serves two purposes, it holds the stove in place but also provides protection against the cupboard door popping open while driving - especially with the potholes around here.

 

So I'm back at work tomorrow and content that I have achieved everything in the van that I had planned to do during my time off. It's true that moving home got in the way a few times, but nevertheless, it's all been done.

 

Things for the future include fitting a 12v socket in the back (mainly for the coolbox while driving) and, of course, fitting the consumer unit once it arrives, so there is still more work to be done.

The Consumer Unit

Once I completed the basic electrical installation detailed in my previous post I began to look into the other elements of installing mains electricity in a vehicle. I figured there had to be a reason for consumer units, RCDs and all the other stuff - otherwise everyone would just wire a socket to a cable and call it an installation.So I have spent the remainder of today researching consumer units and associated technology and I learned a lot.

Doesn't look complicated at all!

I had been working on the basis that any electrical outlet, including the one in my garage and those on campsites, would be fused and protected and that this protection would be sufficient. However, unless I inspect the electrical installation of every location I connect to I have no way of knowing how 'protected' they are. Also the protection needs to be appropriate to the device connected. This is why circuit breakers in consumer units have different ratings.

What I don't want to happen.

Having worked out that I absolutely have to have some additional protection, I had to work out what I need. So the first place I looked was on camping supply websites. The most popular unit being sold was a unit containing an RCD, a 16Amp MCB and a 6Amp MCB. A little research on various other sites taught me that the RCD detects differences in the current passing through the device in each direction and breaks the circuit if the difference is over a specified amount (30mA seemed a popular amount).
MCBs are miniature circuit breakers which break the circuit either if too much current is being drawn or the switch is thrown manually. The 16A MCB is designed to protect the mains sockets, the 6Amp protects the lighting circuit. This very informative video explains how an MCB works.

So there is little point me relying on a 16A MCB to protect a 6A lighting circuit which would clearly fry before the current reached anywhere near blowing the MCB.

It took me a while to find an accurate wiring diagram - it seems that the experts are  hesitant to provide this kind of information, perhaps understandably - but after looking at a few images and watching a few videos, I am now completely confident that I can safely and accurately wire up a consumer unit.

The prices I have seen range from £5.00 for a used one (that looks like it might have been on fire at some point) up to £47.00. These have all been the same type, with an RCD and two MCBs. I have settled on £16.00 which gets me a new unit with the right MCBs.

This is what I have ordered, £16.28 including two MCBs of my choosing.

This means that I should have a fully operational and safely protected electrical installation in time for my camping trip in June - only 5 weeks until the Speedway World Cup in Kings Lynn.

Note: Again this isn't a 'how-to', it's a 'how-I'm-going-to'. If I get it wrong, it's my fault. If you copy anything here and get it wrong then it's yours. #justsaying

Electricity

Yesterday it occurred to me that I should be able to add mains sockets to the van without too much difficulty. I mentioned in yesterday's post about curtains (as opposed to the other half a dozen posts about curtains) that I was going to look into this.

Today I am blogging from inside Tyrion with my laptop charging on one of his mains sockets.

I don't yet have a consumer unit with RCD and MCBs in, but I have my eye on one or two on eBay and it will be a simple thing to add to what I have already, but here's what I have got...

I found a new shop in Bradford called Dickinson Caravans and as their website suggests, their accessory socket has hundreds (if not thousands) of parts and accessories for caravans and campers. I had a decent browse around looking for ideas and realised that I could start off with something that's effectively an extension lead with style (to paraphrase Toy Story).

I picked up a 16A plug and socket for seven pounds and considered a length of orange 16A mains cable. When I saw the price I decided I would probably have something at home that would do.

Wickes set me up with a switched double socket and mounting box for less than three pounds and as this was the end of my shopping means that the whole installation has cost just under a tenner.

In the garage at home I found a ten metre (ish) length of 2.5mm three core cable which if my memory serves me should have a rating of around 20 to 25 amps. As mains hook-ups on sites are 16A and the standard mains socket is 13A, this cable will serve more than adequately. It's not orange, so I hope sites don't have a rule about that.

I fitted the cable to the sockets first then pushed the mounting box against it to make sure it would close. The cable is quite thick so I had to make the hole in the back quite a bit bigger to get the front to screw on.

With the mounting box fixed to the side of the worktop I drilled a hole in the wood to match the hole in the mounting box. It's not a very tidy job, but isn't visible with the sockets in place so not an issue.

Then I passed the cable through the hole and wired up the socket and that was that end completed. I fitted the plug to the other end of the cable then used a multimeter to make sure everything was connected.

This was a very important step and I'm very glad I didn't skip it because the earth wire had come loose in the socket which meant that if I had plugged something in it would have worked, but it wouldn't have been earthed. Very dangerous.

As the picture shows, with the earth wire reconnected, everything checked out okay. At this point Tyrion was ready to take to a site and plug in (assuming they didn't ask about the consumer unit, that is). However, I am not going to be spending as much time on a camp site as on my own drive so I made a short adapter cable which means I can plug him into an ordinary 13A mains socket.

Remembering that the blue socket cost around three pounds and the mains plug and cable were already in the garage, I saved a few pounds making this myself rather than buying one in the shop. This plugs into an ordinary mains socket and Tyrion's blue cable plugs into this. That's how my installation is little more than an extension lead and why the whole thing cost less than a tenner.

As you can see from this picture, the cable at the moment just comes out from between the back doors rather untidily, but it's weatherproof and does the job until I decide to add an external plug and a consumer unit.

Also in this image you can see the other thing I picked up at Dickinson - a red rubber ball cover for my towbar. It's supposed to protect your caravan in case you accidentally bump it against your towbar, but I bought it because I liked the way it looks - and because it's red.

Note: Do not work with mains electricity unless you know what you are doing. I am not an electrician. This post is about how I have done something and is not intended as a how-to for anyone to copy. If I had electrocuted myself or fried my van today, that would have been my fault. If you do the same after reading this, it will be yours. #justsaying.

Finally! A Camper!

Today I sewed the bottom of the back window curtains so they slip over the wire rather than tucking under it. Once I had done this I realised that a couple of wraparounds ought to tidy them up nicely and I was right.

This made me think that the black curtain along the side of the bed might look better with a wraparound to bundle it up but I was wrong. It looked awful. I tried a couple of different things with it and in the end threw it away and replaced it with a terracotta one. The curtain I had cut up to make the two back curtains had plenty of material left on it so I simply tidied up the bottom, hemmed it on my sewing machine and threaded it onto the wire.

That made me realise that the left hand side of the van was the only side with black windows. I covered the back window infill with terracotta material and started planning a magnetic infill for the sliding door when I realised that perhaps I didn't need to.

I had attached the black curtain to the sliding door on that side when I was using curtains on a stiff pole mounted with magnets. This was because that when I opened this door I didn't want to have to fight through a curtain which didn't slide out of the way.

Using the wire means the curtains do slide out of the way. Because of this I saw that I could put a normal hanging curtain across that sliding door. I also realised that as the curtains move easily, I could put a curtain over the rear window on that side too - the one behind the worktop where the stove will sit. If I am using the stove I can simply slide the curtain out of the way.

So I drilled and screwed and cut up another curtain. This one was a little trickier because I wanted a single curtain all the way across, but it needed to be longer by the sliding door and shorter by the worktop. A minute or two of measuring soon sorted this and the day's practice at the sewing machine meant I was getting quite proficient at hemming by this time.

All of the curtains are now terracotta and all but one have velcro wraparounds fitted - I simply ran out of steam toward the evening and had to call it a day. I have the last wraparound half-completed and will finish it off another day.

Looking at the van with these curtains, nicely bunched up with their colour-coordinated wraparounds, it actually looks like a camper to me now. 

With only a few weeks to go before I head off to Norfolk, I am very happy with the changes I have made to the curtains. Instead of a car with blacked out windows, Tyrion now actually looks like a micro-camper. 

The trouble with this, of course, is that I now have to look at adding an electric hook-up and after looking online briefly, I am pretty confident that this is within both my budget and my physical capability.