| Author | Message | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: |
I'm putting together a strange kind of bus. Unfortunately, everytime I try to raise a question on the busnut board, I get flooded with "why the heck are you doing that?" and "you can't do that!" and "why don't you just do this instead." I was trying to avoid having to explain my "fool bus idea" everytime I had to ask a question, and I'm now realizing how that won't work. Then I had a flash of insight! What if I created a topic, to discuss my "fool bus idea"? Then if I start a *specific* different topic on, say, charging a massive 24kWh battery array, if people started feeling the need to talk about whether my entire bus made sense, we could direct that conversation to this thread and lower the signal-noise ratio for the topics on this board.  So. Here is that topic. First off, an explanation of what I'm trying to do can be found at: http://bus.getdave.com/ The infrastructure I want to create is outlined: http://bus.getdave.com/Infrastructure/ Even the interior is going to be different, it will be a mostly open floorplan: http://bus.getdave.com/Design/ The gist is this - I plan on travelling and boondocking in cities, *not* at camp grounds. I want to accomplish a few things: 1) Having a house-like environment (full plumbing, power, HVAC, etc..) not a low-power RV environment. 2) Not bothering the neighbors with 24 hours/day of genset. Or 12. Or 6... 3) Being able to be without hookups (fuel, water, electricity) for a week or more at a time. I know. Many of you think this is impossible. I don't agree. Posts of "that's impossible" will be ignored without further proof. Posts of "that's worthless" will be ignored regardless. Please keep in mind that what I'm trying to accomplish and how I want to live is fairly guaranteed to be different from what you want/get out of your bus. I'm not rich, and I'm not poor. I'll spend what I need to but that doesn't mean I just want to throw money away on things I don't need to. I'm an engineer and a geek, and I can build just about anything I set my mind to. I'll post more info about my bus later, but most of this is already explained on my site, so it would be helpful if you took at least a glance at that before the DaveBus bashing begins. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
CoryDane posted this about my bus on a different topic, I'm moving the discussion here, hope that's okay, CoryDane! From: http://www.busnut.com/cgi-bin/bbs/show.cgi?11/12662 ((I've visited the site you list.... )) Thanks! ((you are using a lot of power,)) I sure am. ((Question, why is the computer on 24hrs?)) I'm a computer geek and my computers are actually working full-time. I'm quite the slave driver. That's a huge cutback from the number of servers and whatnot that I have running in my house right now, I'm going to be replacing some of them with lower power boxes or laptops. And the touchpads are a separate computing device, they're generally sleeping and very lower power. ((A nice Solar assited system will be helpful, perhaps you need to think about adding it at the same time.)) Mostly I agree - but I figure I need to be able to handle generating most of my power in case I hit a rainy week and have very little energy coming from my panels. So it seems I can just setup so that my generator can handle my power needs and then add solar later. Re: genset autostart ((You won't be real popular at the campsite if the genset kicks in in the middle)) 1) I'm not staying in campgrounds 2) The autostart will only operate during specific hours. ((Are you planning a lot of booning??)) I'm planning on *only* booning. | ||
| John MC9 Rating: N/A |
Re: "I'm an engineer" That's great David! I once drove the Long Island Railroad Bus, and I got to know a lot of engineers! Seriously, I hope you find the info you desire. You're as persistent as me (I prefer to use the word "persistent"). Can I ask a few questions just to satisfy curiosity? You mention "only booning", and never staying at any campgrounds? Where did you plan to stay, and where do you plan to get water and dump the waste? Have you ever "full-timed" in an RV before? Have you ever tried to park a vehicle this large for free, for an extensive period of time (few days, week)? I realize all that sounds like some sort of a reality check, but what you wish to do, raises some doubts among those that have tried to stay overnight in a city area for free... | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
Good questions. I have a great support network of friends where I can get water and dump grey if need be. I don't need to dump black because I'll have a composting system. All I really need is to collect water, propane, diesel, and then vegoil for driving. I have not full-timed in an RV. We all need to start somewhere. The vehicle has been parked for almost a half year for free in San Francisco, the USA capital of no-parking. Every city has some area that isn't too horribly shady that has parking. I also have friends houses that I can park in front of until neighbors complain. | ||
| Bryce Gaston (Busted_knuckle)
Rating: N/A |
You have friends now! But after getting cahsed away from several places others may not be so quick to say hey park at my place! Might think of maybe Flying J they have plenty of parking, dump station(yeah I know compost, but keep it in mind just in case!), fuel, restaurant(veggie oil), Free showers(if ya buy 100 gal of fuel), and a stoer to buy anything ya need! Oh yeah gas for little red! | ||
| JR
Rating: N/A |
Clearly I'm an optimist..I own a bus...but I cannot see how all the criteria you describe could be met without some sort of long-term bus base (place to recharge your batteries, if you will). You'll have to pull a huge trailer behind you for all the WVO conversion apparatus, compost pile, and your batteries. Trailer would offer more roof-top SF for solar power. Some good there. The whole process just doesn't compute. May I suggest that before you start spending money on a bus, you design a static test for your proposed electrical system. If it works, you could use the components in construction of a MH. If it doesn't work, well... And, it isn't "parking" that's the problem, it's "camping" or "living" in vehicles that bug authorities...and they'll spot a bus sized vehicle and move it pronto. Of course, I'd like to see it if it works! Good Luck, JR MC9 with low-power RV stuff. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
I'm generally not planning on parking in front of friend's houses. It's been 6 months in San Francisco and not in front of friend's houses - that's not my main plan, that's the backup. I'm *not interested* in staying in campgrounds or at truck stops. At all. That won't happen. I'll sell my bus first. So it's not a useful discussion. And I don't believe that this is impossible, so telling me that I'll have to be selling my bus will also currently fall on deaf ears. I may be wrong, but I have to learn that on my own. I also don't need free showers as my page explains, I'd rather shower in my house/bus. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
JR: I'm not intending to have a "long-term bus base" The WVO fits in one cargo bay. This is almost finished. Please read the web site as this is explained there. The "huge trailer" I'll eventually be towing will be for my car. ((May I suggest that before you start spending money on a bus..)) Not really, since the bus is already bought, and I might as well design my "static test" on the bus where it will eventually have to take up space. I've already calculated all the space I'll be using. One cargo bay is vegetable oil with enough room left over for 100 gallons or so of propane. One cargo bay for clean and grey water. The batteries aren't that much space (see the HUP ones for an example) and will leave plenty of room in the final cargo bay if I need to put a genset there (presuming I can't use my 6V92 as discussed otherwise and can't fit it in the old A/C bay. Then there's the space behind the old A/C bay as well. The composting is going to fit into the space where the A/C compressor was unless I put an alternator there. I have spec'd it out and it's more than enough volume, though it would require making one myself. An intriguing project, actually. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
Rating: |
as i follow this thread i realize a few things. 1) you don't really want any advice, since you don't seem to be listening to anyone who comments on the subject, when most of them know substantially more than you do about the subject. 2) you have no concept of the current state of battery, solar panel, and inverter technology, *at all* if you think you're going to be able to get by charging for half an hour a day with the loads you propose. 3) you are in for an ugly surprise if you think you can cool down a bus with an ac system plugged into an inverter rated for 2k. you need to start with basics. off the top, you're going to want to block off some windows, and sprayfoam the entire shell. quality here counts, the better job you do and the thicker it is, the less energy you're going to have to expend later. when you aren't sprayfoaming, read this article: http://www.warbusaur.com/the_integrated_energy_system.html some of the specs are a bit out of date, and it's targeted at the cruising sailor, but it goes into a lot of basics that you don't seem to understand. then dump your "generate power off the main engine" idea. 1) it's hard on the engine, and unless you have a webasto or similar, your going to destroy the engine, simply by not getting it warmed up. (don't even mention an electric block heater, you won't have the power supply for it, even if your idea will work, which it won't because your bus isn't big enough) 2) you sit idling for half an hour in most cities, *especially* at wal mart, etc. and they'll ask you to leave, just like they will if you've been there for more than about 8 hours. there are, in fact, laws against idling in most states, and being passed in all the others very soon. by the way, veggie oil doesn't work below 160 degrees, and you're going to have to filter it down to 2 microns as well. i didn't see how you planned on heating it up so it's the right viscosity for your injectors? the best bang for the buck solution, as you have been told elsewhere, is a 15 - 20kw water cooled, diesel generator. feed the generator off the main tank (i would suggest you make sure you can't run the tank below about 50 gallons with the generator, just to prevent ugly surprises) you can run the genny on veggie oil as well, as long as you're running straight diesel when you start it and shut it down, just like the main engine. use the bus radiator to cool it. you can do enough sound deadening and exhaust routing to make it impossible to tell it's even running. you can actually make the entire bus stealth enough so that it looks like it's just parked, even while you have the genny and all the airs running, watching movies, etc. oh.. and you probably want to dump the roof airs too. there are much more efficient ways to do what you want that take less power to do. this: http://www.proheat.com/TRUCKS/truck.htm?Gen4specs.htm& is what you want and need but this one isn't big enough for your needs... (the ac might be, but i doubt it, the heat probably won't be, and the power output isn't even close, but you get the idea) you still need battery juice, so you add a somewhat beefy (140 amps or so) alternator that belt drives off the generator, so when you're running the generator you're also charging your batteries. use a 5000 aims inverter (500 bucks, they work fine for what you need) to pull current off your deep cycle bank to run the computer gear, etc. (put a ups in line to filter the power and keep your gear up when switching, most apc smart ups's will do this fine) run the generator whenever your using your ac, microwave, etc. or when you get 20% down on the batteries, use a make before break ac load switcher, or better yet a manual solution to change from generator based ac to inverter based ac, and shore based ac. (3 sockets in the wall, one cord to plug into 'em, prevents costly errors) frankly, most of your questions make me highly doubt your claim of "engineer" ... of any sort, no offense. this comment you made: "I don't need a generator head, I need an alternator, because I need DC, not AC current. That makes the RPM calculations moot." shows total ignorance of how electrical charging systems work, and rpm *always* counts when you are spinning something to create power. that and why did you ask about a generator if you wanted an alternator? makes me wonder what kind of engineer doesn't know what a pto is... or "running takeout"? or the difference between a generator and an alternator? this comment: "The alternator on the bus is very small wattage because it doesn't need to be any bigger." follows in the same vein, as amperage is what you are concerned about, not wattage, and i don't know about yours, but my bus came with an oil cooled gear drive 500 amp alternator that will do what you want easily, if i wanted to run the main engine for a couple hours a day. "Yes, I am charging batteries, and yes they can take it that fast." what batteries are these that defy current battery technology? unless your using a huge capacitor, you need to check your numbers again. "I'm not going to have one or two T-105s on this bus, I'm going to have about 33kWh of batteries." better check the weight your bus can haul. i've got an 18kva ups here on my noc (network operations center) that uses (40) Rolls-Surrette 6-CS-25PS's and the whole system will do what you want. it will not, however, fit in your bays, and if you want to give up 13,000 lbs (that's not a typo) to batteries that's your business. "Yes, you read that right. Before telling me that the bus can't carry that weight or that I can't charge the batteries that fast, please do the calcs, and first visit:" that site shows no real world numbers, and doesn't show what batteries and how many, and in fact doesn't match what you've been talking about here. "I notice that just about everytime a question is posted to this board, about half of the people respond not with answers, but with suggestions that are different than what the poster is asking for." that's because, in this case, the poster is ignorant of real world conditions that make his original plan unworkable with the numbers he has provided. "It's a bit frustrating. I know that I'll see it more because what I'm planning is unorthodox, but that doesn't make it impossible, nor does it make it undesirable for *me*" nope. it's completely possible. but you only keep, at most, 10% every time you convert from one thing to another thing, so this: diesel fuel ->rotational energy rotaional energy -> 110vac for air conditioning is smart. assuming v8 diesel main engine: diesel fuel -> (lose 80%) -> rotational energy rotaional energy -> 24vdc 24vdc -> (lose 85% to heat) -> 120vac for air conditioning. is stupid. the above losses are due to a) running a huge diesel when you only need at most a little 2 cylinder one that displaces under 50 cubic inches and b) any time you change from ac to dc, or back again, with a voltage change, you generate heat. your inverters are going to put off almost as much as your ac will remove. you'd be better off driving a 110vac generator head, a 100+ amp alternator head, and an ac compressor with a small diesel engine than what you propose. good luck. -dd | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
I'd like to make a request that before posting a "you can't do that" or "it'll never work" please realize that I have spec'd out the vast majority of the project and it can work. So, instead of telling me that something "won't fit" or can't "handle that much charge" please give me some actual information about why. Most of the information is on my bus site. I've sized and priced everything and figured out what can and can't work. And like all engineering projects, there are probably things missing that I don't know about - those are definitely things that I would love to hear about! But just saying "that won't work" isn't going to help either of us. | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
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David, Sounds like you're trying to do what I want to do. Well, except for the floor plan. We'll start and the obscure, and work our way down. I have an Optoma projector in my house, with a 7' wide pull down screen (silver, of course). I was planning on doing the reverse of yours. I was going to have the screen pull down immediately behind the driver, so if I have passengers (if my girlfriend stays with me long enough to see it built), the TV can be watched while traveling, and not distract the driver (errr, me) It would effectively make a privacy screen from the front also, without putting anything in the windshield to scream "there's no one in here" I believe you've underestimated your power consumption needs. I haven't done all the math yet, but I believe you'd need a whole lot of panels, and even then, you're only getting good charge say 6 hours per day, assuming you've tilted your panels towards the sun. Unless you're babysitting them, you aren't tracking the sun. I was thinking of having two sets of panels. One set would slide under the other for driving, and when I parked, I could slide them out. It would make for a nice (and slightly overkill techno) canopy. You'll need plenty of battery capacity to keep thinks like the fridge and A/C going. Oh ya, and it's going to be freakin' expensive. I don't plan on getting mine on until I've been on the road for months. I figure my monthly house bills to be on the order of $50k/yr. Not terribly high for this area, but still, $50k/yr. I could put all kinds of whacky improvements into the bus, and still have savings. By no means am I saying not to try. I'm going to. I think you'll still need to dump your black water. Where do you plan to do your composting system? The side of the road doesn't count. As for your not disturbing the neighbors, I'm going for the easy method of that. Avoid 'em. I don't like people, and every day I live, I like them a little bit less. I'd be perfectly happy parking in the middle of freakin' nowhere for a week. And computer geek, here's your solutions for connectivity. That's what i do, so I'm perpetually connected. 1) Verizon Wireless Kyocera KPC650, and at least one external antenna. This will give you high speed service in most metro areas, and low speed service anywhere else there is cell service. You should go hunting for a good roof mount antenna. I'm not positive what connector this thing has. It's a very small connector, but not the same configuration as any of my others (Orinoco, Senao, etc) 2) "NL-2511CD PLUS EXT2" . Search it on Google. You'll see it listed as "Senao" on Seattle Wireless. It's a 200mw 802.11b card, with two external antenna jacks. Most wireless cards are only 20mw. It's sold under several names. Mine says "Wireless LAN" on it. It works great under Linux, and as well as anything does under Windows. Then get yourself a pair of high gain omnidirectional antennas. fab-corp.com has a lot of antennas, and I know they are good (I've bought a lot of stuff from them). I'd try to seperate them as much as possible. Opposite corners (front right, rear left?). Don't forget, don't make your cables too long, you lose power the longer the cable run is. Use good microwave cables, not something you made yourself. Measure twice, buy once. I've had a lot of success with my 24dBi parabolic mesh antenna, with a 50' cable. I had a 1/2 mile link up at 100% signal strength for about a year. That had a 14dBi panel at the other end. I've done others, like 3 miles at 80%, with no special equipment on the other end. Yagi is for kids. Parabolic is for men. I recommend the omni's though, because you'll be driving, and people will think you're VERY suspicious if you're pointing a parabolic antenna, or a yagi at their house. Odds are pretty good, if you're screwing around, pointing antennas at someone's house or business, you'll get the cops called. Don't get the whole media "People are hacking wireless networks" thing going again. 3) DirecWay. They're offering 1Mb down 512Kb up for $69/mo as the home user "Pro" package. Latency is bad, because you're bouncing off a satellite, but there are plenty of places that you won't find either an open access point (BTW, usually very illegal), or have cell service. I haven't found an auto-aligning antenna for RV use that can be used while driving quite yet, but if you were to put the regular auto-aligning antenna inside a wind proof radome, you'd be ok. Don't forget that the wind speed may be pretty high. It's your vehicle velocity plus any other causes of wind (natural wind, passing vehicles, etc, etc).. For example, if you're on a 2 lane road doing 60mph, and a truck goes the other way, you're likely to have wind speeds up to 120mph at your antenna, and that's no including the natural winds. Wooosh, away goes the antenna. If you're handy, you could probably do it with some plexiglass glazing from Home Depot, and a heat gun. Remember to test your paints first, you don't want to accidently block the signal with the wrong paint. And, I now wave all liability for anything any may happen to build from this advice. The regular DirecTV antenna won't work, it points at the wrong satellite(s). I know those are available, and come in nice packages. Don't forget to watch your total vertical height. Don't want to smack the antenna off on a bridge. That's why I'm bent on getting a transit bus. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
Rating: |
"I'd like to make a request that before posting a "you can't do that" or "it'll never work" please realize that I have spec'd out the vast majority of the project and it can work." then why aren't you posting your specs and sources so that the information you are presenting makes some kind of sense? "So, instead of telling me that something "won't fit" or can't "handle that much charge" please give me some actual information about why." you claim you've done your homework, and to the best of my knowledge no one has said "it won't work" without saying why. "Most of the information is on my bus site." no, it isn't. a lot of wishful thinking numbers are, but nothing like real information. 1500w air conditioning? what planet did you buy that on? "I've sized and priced everything and figured out what can and can't work. And like all engineering projects, there are probably things missing that I don't know about - those are definitely things that I would love to hear about! But just saying "that won't work" isn't going to help either of us." haven't seen any posts like that, but i have seen plenty of "how are you going to solve x problem". you *do* realize this whole thing is a regular topic here, and, dollar for dollar, it's pretty unanimous that it's stupidly expensive for the return, right? -dd | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
Rating: N/A |
David, Listen to Sylverstone. I read most of what he wrote, and skimmed the rest. He seems to know exactly what he's talking about. I couldn't find any arguing points, and I argue a lot. Can I ask, what is your background? I haven't been here long enough to know who's who quite yet. I got a bit confused. Who's quote was this: "i've got an 18kva ups here on my noc (network operations center) that uses (40) Rolls-Surrette 6-CS-25PS's and the whole system will do what you want. " That battery is 318 pounds. Are you actually suggesting that you want to carry over 6 tons (12,720 pounds) of batteries with you? 40 batteries isn't very many for most facilities. Is that all you have for DC power backup? I missed the quote about charging in 1/2 hour. DC power rooms don't recharge in 1/2 hour. They charge very slowly, but likewise, hold enough juice to stay online for a few hours (hopefully). I thought you were hoping for a 6 hour charging time, and even that would be very optimistic with your given power consumption. Every facility I've been in says they plan to be up between 15 minutes and 1 hour on batteries, and then switch over to their generators. For them, batteries are a temporary solution, between outside AC power, and generator power. They are there to provide for brown outs, and give the generator time to start. Two of the facililities I worked with had locomotive generators. One facility I worked with had a diesel powered turbine. I'd never seen one before, but sure as hell, the room smelled like diesel. That particular facility is an old satellite ground station, converted to be a major internet and telephony peering point. They have very cool equipment there. I'm the only one in my company who even grasps what most of it does. If you want a very very serious answer for charge rates of batteries, output of various charging systems, and power consumption, I can send a note over to a friend of mine who does that kind of work every day. His facility has one of the largest battery rooms I've seen, and generators that ... well ... I can't say much more. Some secrets are suppose to remain secrets. | ||
| John MC9 Rating: N/A |
Re: "I'm *not interested* in staying in campgrounds or at truck stops. At all. That won't happen. I'll sell my bus first. So it's not a useful discussion. And I don't believe that this is impossible, so telling me that I'll have to be selling my bus will also currently fall on deaf ears. I may be wrong, but I have to learn that on my own. " Uhh, yeah, That's why I asked if you've ever full-timed in a motorhome. I guess those of us that have actually done what you're thinking about trying, are trying to tell you.... Is that on paper the "engineered" perspective can look fantastic, while in reality, it'll go up in a ball of flames. What JR mentioned: "it isn't "parking" that's the problem, it's "camping" or "living" in vehicles" He wasn't typing fingers in cheek, it ain't easy to stay aside the road, or in a parking lot, without being told to move. A friend of ours had his 22 wheeled rig towed while he was visiting with us. He parked behind a shopping center, where other trucks park. The city had a contract with a towing outfit, to tow any vehicle that does not have a permit to park at the location. Almost grand later, he got his truck back. (Indialantic, Fl.) We were told to move at 3am, while parked in a lot near Fredericksburg, Va at a WalMart. We had the manager's OK, but it was against town ordinance. In NYC, if you can park, consider yourself dead, or in a dream..It ain't gonna' happen. Years back (1960s) we could leave the Eagle in the bus stop at the line's end, and let the drivers and route forman sit in it. Now? I seriously doubt it. Without trying to be insulting, and I sure hope you don't take it as such.... living the gypsie lifestyle is being stifled as we breath. That's why I asked if you have experience full-timing in a conventional RV. The bus is going to call attention to you. more than a smaller RV would. If I were to attempt to do what you intend to do, I would consider a class B instead. You can live in it, while parked in a normal automobile parking spot. You can merge with society, rather than stand out like a sore lip. I'm trying to help, not hinder. What you're trying to do, has been tried to the tenfold. If you haven't full-timed, you don't know what's in store. And all that the guys are trying to tell you is, you shouldn't build something that isn't going to suit your needs. You can ignore the words of the experienced, that's your choice. (I have, and I regret it) "sylverstone" has offered you the very best advice you can get. Every ounce of what he has typed makes absolute sense. You are free to dispose of it, or heed it. It's your cash, not ours. But why? Why ask for advice, when you will reject every answer? I wish you luck with fulfilling your dream. | ||
| Bryce Gaston (Busted_knuckle)
Rating: |
Hey ya'll he's an engineer, he knows what will work!Why try to chang his mind, or make reasonable suggestions that are falling on deaf ears! I say Dave you know it, SHOW IT! After all what do the converters who've been there know? I'm sure even though some of them are also engineers, they don't have it all worked out on paper like you and by golly if it works out on paper it's got to work, I mean who ever heard of something not working after it was engineered and worked on paper! I for one am just a mechanic not an engineer! But I can tell you Dave be ready to make modifications to yer veggie set up! For 1 yer gonna need more heat than just the engine coolant(not saying that it's not a good base or plan it just won't work alone) a heated resevior near the engine will help get the oil to the necessary temp for the injectors! As for yer other plans I have no clue but I save if you are that confident with yer engineering then do it and prove it will work! You say you know it will but you are on here asking for others to tell you they've done it, which tells me you have yer doubts! SHOW US IT WILL WORK OR QUIT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE ADVICE YOU ARE BEING GIVEN! Yes I checked out yer site and I see nice drawings but no hard figures! | ||
| Jerry Liebler (Jerry_liebler)
Rating: N/A |
Dave, First off I agree with much that Sylverstone said. But, except for the "open" floorplan, my bus meets most of your goals and is quite conventional in many ways. My electrical infrastructure is: 7.5KW water cooled diesel genset, 12 volt house battery bank (780AH), Trace SW2512 inverter/charger. Fresh water is 180 gallons with onboard .9micron filtration and UV disenfection Waste water is 220 gallon black tank with permenantly connected macerator ( I can dump into any toilet that I can reach with 200 feet of hose) Webasto 45,000 BTU/h diesel heater for air, water and engine preheat. Refrigeraor that only uses 20 watts average. 12 volt flourescent lights (5 @ 30 watts and 1 @15) and several 20 watt reading lights. 30,000 BTU/h air conditioning that runs on under 20 amps of 120 volt power. While I'm driving the bus alternator will run my AC or charge the batteries. If I'm parked, I can go several days on battery power (without AC) or a week or more with AC by running the Genset. Or If I can get a 15 mp shore cord I don't need the generator. This is in a 35 foot bus that gets 10 mpg at 60 mph. Regards Jerry 4107 1120 | ||
| Bryce Gaston (Busted_knuckle)
Rating: N/A |
Hey ya'll he's an engineer, he knows what will work!Why try to change his mind, or make reasonable suggestions that are falling on deaf ears! I say Dave you know it, SHOW IT! After all what do the converters who've been there know? I'm sure even though some of them are also engineers, they don't have it all worked out on paper like you and by golly if it works out on paper it's got to work, I mean who ever heard of something not working after it was engineered and worked on paper! I for one am just a mechanic not an engineer! But I can tell you Dave be ready to make modifications to yer veggie set up! For 1 yer gonna need more heat than just the engine coolant(not saying that it's not a good base or plan it just won't work alone) a heated reservoir near the engine will help get the oil to the necessary temp for the injectors! As for yer other plans I have no clue but I save if you are that confident with yer engineering then do it and prove it will work! You say you know it will but you are on here asking for others to tell you they've done it, which tells me you have yer doubts! SHOW US IT WILL WORK OR QUIT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE ADVICE YOU ARE BEING GIVEN! Yes I checked out yer site and I see nice drawings but no hard figures! | ||
| John MC9 Rating: N/A |
When ya'll decide to sell that Jerry, give me a call, willya'? | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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>> I got a bit confused. Who's quote was this: >> "i've got an 18kva ups here on my noc (network >> operations center) that uses (40) Rolls-Surrette >> 6-CS-25PS's and the whole system will do what >> you want. " it was mine. That battery is 318 pounds. Are you actually suggesting that you want to carry over 6 tons (12,720 pounds) of batteries with you? >> 40 batteries isn't very many for most facilities. >> Is that all you have for DC power backup? i have a 40kva onan as well... my point was that i know exactly what it takes to run the loads he wants to run, for as long as he wants to run them, and, well, i think his numbers are way way off. it saddens me truthfully, because if they weren't, i'd do it myself... >>"Every facility I've been in says they plan to be up between 15 minutes and 1 hour on batteries, and then switch over to their generators. For them, batteries are a temporary solution, between outside AC power, and generator power. They are there to provide for brown outs, and give the generator time to start." my "real world" numbers are "15 seconds or so at least once or twice a week, occasionally up to 30 seconds" ... it's eithier that or "days" ... my generator fires up after 15 minutes of downtime, which gives us an hour to fire the generator if there's a problem and it doesn't start. it's kinda cool having lights, heat, hot tub, etc. while the rest of town's power is out... -dd | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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jerry: you're doing pretty much what i'm suggesting he does... what are you using for ac if you don't mind my asking? (somehow i don't think it's roof airs?) -dd | ||
| FAST FRED Rating: N/A |
Living a non Power Pole existance , with minimal use of charging equippment is what sailors have been doing for decades. Happily the biggest power hog is the refrigeration , and on a camper the propane would be first choice hands down. On a boat its sometimes dangerous , on a bus camper its a piece of cake . Heat can be done with propane or gravity diesel for little or no electric consumption. So if all your'e left with is Sat TV and a computer , your'e easily going to be able to create enough solar to feed them. Only hassle is air cond , where the power needed is so high an engine must be operated. Again the propane unit will put out far less noise and stink far less , so the folks whose home youre parked in front of will have less to complain about. Urban Camping will require a really good alarm system , and perhaps active measures, to keep hassle free. Your Way is indeed a unique requirement , why work so hard to live it when most of the systems are OTS? )Off The Shelf) FAST FRED | ||
| Pat Bartlett (Muddog16)
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Dave, that really is a nice looking bus, I know that doing it your way is what its all about! I'm sure most here are concerned for what ever the reason may be! I'm sure we all know you can't push a rope! When you complete this project I for one would really like to see the finished product! There are some very intelligent engineers that contribute to this board, not to mention some excellant mechanics, sure there are always some that are counter productive! Like FF says, OTS works for me, if I was a genius odds are I wouldn't even be here!.........Good luck! | ||
| peff Rating: N/A |
Dave, I deeply admire your enthusiasm and I tried doing what you want to do--self-sustenance/solar/fulltime in the Bay area. I am even an engineer and planned to the last detail. Others have posted concerns and I am NOT going to be the one to say it can't be done but here is my 3 biggest concerns for you: PARKING PARKING and PARKING!!!! I can't stress enough how to try to put this as #1 priority on your to-do list. My RV at the time (a very nice '73 GMC class A) was constantly towed from wherever I tried to LEGALLY park it, so much so that it finally went up for sale on Craigslist. I have read every city ordinance book from SF to Gilroy and not only are laws stacked against you but law enforcement will use (and often abuse) their authority at every chance to kick you out. Godspeed on your research and construction but PLEASE work out an absolutely foolproof solution (not a plan but a tested solution) to the parking issue. Best of luck Peff | ||
| peff Rating: N/A |
As an addition to my last post regarding the "why don't you just do this instead." issue: I have lurked on this board for a couple years and the wealth of information is astounding. When solving a particular issue, solar for example, comb this board, study the solutions and study again until you have memorized the posts. Then google a bit for products mentioned. Enough reading will get you to a point where you can see a pattern emerge on what reasonable options you have through other prople's experiences. A lot of these folks have more years of experience with these rigs than I have been alive and it's worth some attention. That's part of engineering: research. And this is a great place to do it. Your own opinion is the final word, but reading this board can put a little meat into it. Peff | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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Wow. A flurry of posts. Never have I been so attacked for asking questions and trying to clarify. People are regularly taking my posts incorrectly and then I have to clarify and then I get accused of not taking advice. Yeesh. The attacks aren't doing anybody any good, so it would be great if they ended. I never claimed I would fully charge a battery set in 30 minutes. I never claimed I wanted 14 tons of batteries. I never claimed that I wanted to cool my bus using only a 2kW inverter. Holy cow, it gets tiring having to correct this confusion and then getting bashed for it. Pretty soon I'll just have to give up and trying elsewhere to find people interested enough in my project to actually give me advice on it, as opposed to giving me advice on some project that nobody is even asking about. Anyways - let's try it once more before I give up.. Jwsmythe: Thanks for the feedback. You talk about power consumption needs but then discuss panels. When I did my panel calcs I found that I could fit about 1kW of panels on about 2/3 of the roof of the bus and I figured 4-6 hours of "sun." The way I look at it is that if I don't need A/C, the solar panels should be able to handle the load in the bus, and if I need A/C, then I have to run my generator for the rest of the charge. I figure about 2-4 hours of generator runtime each day if I'm using A/C - this is explained on my website. I don't have black water if I have a composting system. If I have a composting system, then my "black" output is perfectly safe compost. People can use it in their yards. This isn't something I invented and it's not a crackpot idea, plenty of people are doing this - I wish more houses composted toilet waste. And thanks for the connectivity info - I've got my cell for when I can't find 802.11. I hadn't seen the 200mw card, that's pretty excellent, I'll look into that. I'll probably use a rotatable Yagi or parabolic antenna on the roof - interesting note about the suspicion factor, I'll look into it. I don't think I'll do satellite because the lag makes what I'm doing impossible (character-based, not line-based connections). sylverstone: Any specs that you think are missing, please ask and I'll happily oblige. Some of them are researched but not fully decided, such as the battery bank - of which there are many options under 1 ton, but I haven't chosen the specific set yet. ((1500w air conditioning? what planet did you buy that on?)) It's those rooftop A/C units that you keep saying are a bad idea. Any search on rooftop A/C will find a plethora of them. I have two that are 1500W each, but I found that I could be quite comfortable running one of them when I was in the Nevada desert in the summer - thanks to some reflective insulation in the windows. So, I don't think if I'm ever anywhere that needs both of them on high, then I'll probably just drive to cooler climates. And yes, it is actually around 1500W just like the manufacturer states - I know this because I ran it off a 2kW generator that also powered a fridge and a few other things. I know for a fact that it was purchased on this planet, but I have no proof as to what planet it was manufactured on. I thought everyone had heard of Carrier A/C?? ((it's stupidly expensive for the return)) I'm sorry - how exactly do you know what my return is for being able to accomplish this? Jwsmythe: Again, I never claimed I could charge in 1/2 hour. I'm sure I'll have to state that a dozen more times. I never claimed that I want to carry 6 tons of batteries with me. I never claimed that. JohnMC9: I know people who have full-timed. I've talked to people who are doing it. I've talked to the police about it as well. I understand that the cops are not a full-timers friends. I understand that this is a challenge. This is probably the biggest challenge of my whole project. I knew that from stage one. Got that. I plan on taking that challenge on. I have no intention of parking in NY, but again, I have managed to keep my bus parked with minimal problems in San Francisco for a half a year. I give this issue much consideration and this is a big portion of my planning. I don't plan on getting a class B. I wouldn't want to live in a class B. If my bus plan is a failure, I will go back to living a "non-gypsy" lifestyle. Bryce Gaston: I plan on showing you that it will work, and I plan on eventually using electric heat for WVO before hitting colder climates. There's no reason to be rude. Jerry: Don't be silly, Jerry. Making a bus that you can full-time in is impossible! Your bus is impossible! It's probably going up in flames right now! You have 78 tons of batteries and your A/C units are the size of Canada! ;) Just kidding - thanks for the note - that is similar to what I want to do, though I want to be able to run my A/C off the batteries. Something which bus owners tell me is impossible, even though there are a number of off-grid folks doing it in their houses right now - and with a battery bank that isn't too big or too heavy to go on my bus. Fast Fred: I've gone back and forth on the propane fridge issue - I don't need the fridge for a while, so I'm going to worry about that after getting the propane tanks and seeing what there consumption is. Heat is going to be done with propane. I don't even need Sat TV because I don't watch TV. My alarm system will be more than really good - it's computerized and hooked up to cameras and the internet. I can be somewhere else and get photos of a possible breakin sent to my cellphone so I can decide whether I need to call the police. Pat: Try soaking the rope in water and freezing it. But first ask yourself if that's worth it. And if it's not worth it to you, realize that it might be worth it to someone else, especially if they really *want* to push a rope. peff: I'm not planning on full-timing in the Bay Area - I'll only be here sometimes. And again, I understand the parking issue. I have researched the laws. And again, my bus is sitting in SF right now and has never been towed. And also, I agree with your research idea. I'm not making up the stuff on my website, it's all backed by dozens of hours of research. Much of it done on this board (which I wish had better organization and search capabilities...) I realize that there's experience on this board, which is why I'm putting energy into trying to find answers. But there are also people who will skim or misread a post and have a quick reaction to it. Ah well. Thanks to those of you who have helped me so far - I do appreciate the input, otherwise I wouldn't be putting so much energy into having to repeat myself. 6 tons of batteries, yikes! | ||
| Bryce Gaston (Busted_knuckle)
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David I wasn't trying to be RUDE, I was trying to be REAL! As you state "I've sized and priced everything and figured out what can and can't work." See the way I read it, you already know it all and are just looking for someone to tell you "yes I have done it so it's not a waste of $, go for it!" But you are asking for help, advice and opinions. But then you come back rudely telling which one's YOU want and which ones YOU don't so my advice here is (and it is free). Read what people give and quitely filter it out instead of being so rude as to tell us what kind of answers you'll accept or won't! I believe everyone here is trying to give you some helpful insight one way or another, may not be what you want, but it does hurt to see where they are coming from either as you may someday look back and say ahh what was it so & so said about this or that? Wish I'd paid just a little attention as now I have to go back and waste time trying to find it! Just my opinion and yes everybody has one even you! Some stink and some don't, but why keep bashing the free opinions you are receiving? You ask for them then come right back "YAKITY, YAKITY, YAK! "I've sized and priced everything and figured out what can and can't work." That statement pretty well sums it up in my opinion(not that it's worth much, but I'm not charging you for it!) One last note you keep stressing "it's been park in SF for 6 months now" yes we understood that the first time but parking it and LIVING IN IT are totally different and people will notice and complain! But the great thing is that different strokes for different folks is what makes this world go 'round! Do it yer way and let us know how it works out! But since you don't want alternate suggestions or thoughts, if it doesn't work like the plans show it will let us know that too! Just my 2cents worth, but like I said earlier it's free so save the check! | ||
| Jerry Liebler (Jerry_liebler)
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David, I can and have run AC off of batteries. I have about 500 pounds of batteries and extreemely efficient air conditioners (10,000 BTU/h on 660 watts) so I can have 20,000 BTU/h of cooling for about 3 hours. For example, I've used AC run from the batteries to keep the bus cool while we ate. running AC off of batteries comes down to how much cooling, for how long? The weight will be about 1 #/120BTU or much more if you don't choose the AC units carefully. Regards Jerry 4107 1120 | ||
| David Hartley (Drdave)
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Starting to sound like the "Cool my 8V71 with electric fans" all over again. David, Quit asking us bunch of "Rube Goldbergs" if what you want is feasable. If you are 1/10th the engineer you think you are then you already know everything there is to know on any subject. If it were a perfect world then eveything that you are attempting to design and prove on paper would already have been done. But, Since it hasn't been done "your way" then why ask everyone else for help? There are reasons that some things are not done in a bus or rv conversion. Many times it is both a budget and complexity problem. Why not spend your time developing WARP drive or a ZPM power unit, It would make more sense. I admire you whiz kids, Been there myself most of my life. However going against the mainstream engineers and true hands on guys is not going to do much more than get you all upset. Sorry.... | ||
| motorcoach1 Rating: N/A |
with all that battery power you should be able to run a small gen of the hydrogen, after scrubbing it. just an idea | ||
| Dale Waller (Happycampersrus)
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Flux Capacitor = 1.21 jiga watts. Oh wait a minute thats time travel. | ||
| ned sanders (Uncle_ned)
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where is two dogs when we need him | ||
| CRANE Rating: |
Have any of you ever visited the Electric DeLorian site? You know, that DeLorian never runs the battery down. He also invented a self sustaining power supply for the RV. Go to the site and read about it, its in black and white. NOW, do we beleive what we read, or just what we hear??? crane | ||
| Chris 85 RTS
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The veggie oil section looks good, but I think that is secondary to the problems most people seem to be having. Floorplan: Not a bid deal. Do what you want how you want. I did a non-convnetional design myself, in that I have no bedroom. But I do have a private bathroom. If you plan on only living alone or with a SO, then who care if the toilet is private. Just put a fold down cabinet over it or something if you want to disguise it. Utilities: This seems to be the biggest area of conflict between you and others. As I recall, my 15,000 btu Carrier A/C uses 13A at 120V or 1500W. You mention you want to power both A/C's yet only list 1 in the power speadsheet. A second A/C doubles your power requirements, which exponentially increases your inverter and genset costs. As for water, you control your usage, you can decide how much you want to carry. You show 200 fresh, 100 grey, 50 black. Where does that extra 50 go? Once they get full, you can't dump in a public place, no matter how orgainc it is, people are not going to take your word for it. I'd assume no dumping, but you assume the risk, so do it your way. Composting toilet sounds great, but how often do you have to empty it, the compost doesn't evaporate, so it has to go someplace. You might have that all figured out, but you don't explain that. Batteries are always an issue. They are expensive and heavy and need recharging at the correct rate. I see nothing about all of this on your website. The rate of discharge is not linear. In other words the capacity at 10A is greater than the capacity at 100A. You'll get most of that charge back quickly, it's that last 10% you need that takes forever. Batteries can only be charged at a certain max rate depending on temp and amount of discharge. Charge too fast and boom! Pick a battery, run the numbers, post it on the website, show the genset time required and quiet the skeptics. Bottom line is I am not sure if you are looking for advice or validation, those are very different things. Also I think that sylverstone provided a wealth of information that took a ton of time to type all for your benefit. Whether you agree with what he said or how he said, a simple thanks would have been appropriate. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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*sigh* I reject the "advice" that tells me I'll need 6 tons to carry 24kWh of batteries when it seems fairly clear that I need under a ton. Yes, I'm sure I COULD buy 6 tons of batteries that aren't going to fit under my bus, but I'm not going to. So, unless there is something wrong with the 1400 pounds of batteries I have found, then I *will* reject the "free advice" that I can't fit the batteries on my bus. Maybe someone, somewhere is trying to fit 6 tons of batteries on their bus. Maybe they can. I don't know and I don't really care. So I"m going to respectfully ignore that "free advice". Can someone tell me how to do that without incurring the wrath of a dozen "Rube Goldbergs"? Please? And I won't reject the advice that deals with the questions I am asking. Like speaking of batteries - can I put 1400 pounds of batteries on one spot in the luggage bays, or do I need to strenghten the floor? Perhaps move the batteries? What ways can this be improved? What problems am I missing? The problem that the batteries are supposedly 6 tons is NOT one of the problems I am missing. If there's a number missing on my website (such as battery weight) then just ask me instead of assuming it will be something like 6 tons! When you take a group of people who have "gone against the flow" (such as a bunch of busnuts) it's pretty amazing that there would be such vehement attacking against someone who wants to go against the flow. If you think my project is so weird that you have nothing to say, then why say anything? Why mock me and mock my project? Is that supposed to be helpful? *sigh* Maybe it would be better if I just ignored all the mocking and pay attention to the free advice - I'm just surprised that the majority of posts on this board are the former and not the latter. Ah well. Truly thanks to all of you that *are* posting helpful information. It does not fall on deaf ears. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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"I reject the "advice" that tells me I'll need 6 tons to carry 24kWh of batteries when it seems fairly clear that I need under a ton." until you choose the batteries, and show the rest of the real world numbers, it's all vaporware. jerry has much more efficient ac than you, and he gets 3 hours out of his battery bank. if you ran with a ton of the same batterys he's using, you would get roughly the same, with one of your ac units. this tells me that your wanting a runtime of a week, running the main engine for half an hour every day" is not doable, simply because you cannot charge that battery bank back up that fast. you also don't have enough roof space to put enough solar panels up there to generate 1500w, so that's not an option either. "So, unless there is something wrong with the 1400 pounds of batteries I have found" the only thing wrong with them so far is you haven't posted any specs on them yet, so to us they're vaporware. your numbers don't add up with real world figures. "speaking of batteries - can I put 1400 pounds of batteries on one spot in the luggage bays, or do I need to strengthen the floor?" you'll want something under them, but the floor should hold it with no problems. "it's pretty amazing that there would be such vehement attacking against someone who wants to go against the flow." nobody is attacking you. we are simply asking for clarification on things, and you keep refering us to bad data as if it's gospel. your standing by your numbers, we're standing by our real world experience. you can say your design is bug free all you like, but we sait it isn't, and truthfully, you haven't even clarified your design enough to take it to production anyway. "If you think my project is so weird that you have nothing to say, then why say anything? Why mock me and mock my project? Is that supposed to be helpful?" your project is far from wierd. in fact, there's nothing wierd at all about it. everything you mention has been tried before. not a single idea you have presented has been new and original. most of it is very basic "live off the grid" stuff, and some of it is basic electrical and chemical engineering. the only reason you are being mocked is because you are playing the "expert" card and the "i'm an engineer" card, when your ignorance of the situation is glaringly obvious to the rest of us. i've given you the best advice i can on your project, and how to get there from where you are. you want to do it your way, go do it. 2500 bucks will get you an 800 amp alternator to charge your batteries off the main engine. problem solved, best you're going to get. next question? -dd | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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I never played the expert card. Sorry I mentioned that I am capable of building things. Evidently that was a mistake on this board. That wasn't meant to be a "card" I was playing. This was meant to let people know that I am happy to take on DIY projects if it's required to accomplish my goals. An example battery that I could use are the HUP Solar Ones. I posted that on the other board - should have posted it here. That would put a 24kWh battery bank at 1400 pounds. If I'm missing something there, please enlighten. As far as putting something under the batteries - are you talking about strengthening it, or just putting some sort of flooring on top of the cargo floors? | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
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>Jwsmythe: Thanks for the feedback. You talk about > power consumption needs but then discuss panels. > When I did my panel calcs I found that I could > fit about 1kW of panels on about 2/3 of the roof > of the bus and I figured 4-6 hours of "sun." The > way I look at it is that if I don't need A/C, > the solar panels should be able to handle the > load in the bus, and if I need A/C, then I have > to run my generator for the rest of the charge. > I figure about 2-4 hours of generator runtime > each day if I'm using A/C - this is explained on > my website. Fair enough. Remember that solar panels don't run at 100% efficiency. It's a good idea to have more solar than you believe you need. I always expect using the A/C a lot, because I spend a lot of time in the southern US. It's an assumption which I should know better than to make. Once I'm on the road full time, I'm hoping to follow the good weather. I have a friend in the Anchorage area, and he's indicated to me that I'll quite likely need A/C running in the summer, so you can't go far enough away to get away from the heat, and the farther north you go, the lower the efficiency of your solar panels. > I don't have black water if I have a composting > system. If I have a composting system, then my > "black" output is perfectly safe compost. People > can use it in their yards. This isn't something > I invented and it's not a crackpot idea, plenty > of people are doing this - I wish more houses > composted toilet waste. I'm just a bit confused about how you're going to do it on a bus. Do you have a link to a working system for a bus? Sewage treatment stinks too, it's an unavoidable fact. If your bus smells like a sewage treatment plant, you won't make a lot of friends. > And thanks for the connectivity info - I've got > my cell for when I can't find 802.11. I hadn't > seen the 200mw card, that's pretty excellent, > I'll look into that. I'll probably use a > rotatable Yagi or parabolic antenna on the roof > - interesting note about the suspicion factor, > I'll look into it. I don't think I'll do > satellite because the lag makes what I'm doing > impossible (character-based, not line-based > connections). I recommended that Verizon specifically for a couple reasons. The Verizon "BroadbandAccess" network, as the advertise it, is much faster than other cell providers. They're using EVDO, and with that card you can easily get 1Mb down, 128Kb up. The other cards get slower throughput and smaller service areas. Odd, since they're the same provider, but the Kyocera card is much better. EVDO is the almost mythical 3G service, that looked like it would never make it to the US. Your service will fall back to 1xRTT, which will work virtually anywhere cell phones work. That's what you'll get with any other cell provider. That's only good to about 50K to 100K up and down. If you enjoy dialup service, then this is for you. Even if you use a Verizon Wireless cell phone, and rig it up to connect your PC through it, you won't see the full EVDO speeds, despite any advertising. See evdoinfo.com for LOTS more information. Latency isn't exactly great on 1xRTT or EVDO. You'll be looking at between 75ms to 150ms typically. Stay FAR away from Sprint. They're a bunch of theiving bastards. I don't just say that from rumor. EVERY time I've used them, the find a way to overbill me by $300/month. I was a Sprint customer years ago. They even screwed me when they took over Nextel. I was a very happy Nextel customer with many phones. When Sprint bought them, it took a couple months and then my bill magically inflated itself again. It was rather difficult, because I had to get new phone service for my staff. New numbers, update all my clients, etc, etc. I tried to transfer my number, as permitted by LAW, and they're still screwing with me. I can dial out and that number shows on the CallerID, but if people dial back to me, they get a Nextel notice saying my number isn't in service. It's a real pain in the ass. DirecWay latency is around 300ms. It's like dialup. I work extensively over SSH, spending most of my life in vi, so latency is a big deal to me. It's ok to actually say what you're doing, instead of trying to wrap it in fancy terms. It also helps people understand what you're trying to accomplish. I have used SSH over the DirecWay service. I went out to help a friend with his site, and needed to make changes to one of my servers. It was slow, but not impossible. If you're going to find yourself outside of metro areas, it may be a good idea to prepare yourself to run things remotely, so you can give the commands locally. Edit through a editor that lets you open files over an SSH or SFTP connection, and run your commands with 'ssh [host] -e "[command]"'. I'm sure you already know, SSH keys are your friends. I keep mine on a USB device. There are plenty of fun SSH tricks to use. >Jwsmythe: Again, I never claimed I could charge > in 1/2 hour. I'm sure I'll have to state that a > dozen more times. I never claimed that I want to > carry 6 tons of batteries with me. I never > claimed that. No problem. I got a bit confused in the quoting there, which I suspect others have too. In any case, it seems that you aren't taking full advantage of the advice people are giving to you. Most of these folks are telling you from real world experience, which is more useful than anything you'll find from product specs and calculations. I find specs to not be 100% true all the time. It's a lot of fun. I just got done fighting with a 7Tb array that absolutely wouldn't work as advertised. That upset me, but now I have two servers, each with a 3.5Tb array. In the end, that's working out fine for me, but it took a good bit of work, and lots of my time (and frustration). I asked some questions of the folks here, including about a roof raising on a Flxible. It was strongly suggested again, I kept wanting to do it, but in the end, their suggestions and pointing out obvious truths made me ditch the idea. I'm not sure that I'm going with the Flxible, I'm still shopping for just the "right" bus. I gotta get busy with it, I have a self-imposed timeline that I really want to follow. (purchase, buildout, and move in fulltime by October). Nothing's impossible, I'll just have to bust ass to get it done. | ||
| Dim Witt Rating: |
U da enjuneer U tell us. Ahh duh! | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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Dim Witt: This "enjuneer" is smart enough to realize that you're using the same IP address as Bryce Gaston. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Nice attitude, very helpful, thanks for the advice. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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>>Never have I been so attacked for asking questions and trying to clarify. you didn't ask for clarification. you said you had all the answers "I've sized and priced everything and figured out what can and can't work." and then you asked for opinions. they disagree with you, so now you're crying about it. >>People are regularly taking my posts incorrectly and then I have to clarify and then I get accused of not taking advice. Yeesh. when people are taking what you say wrong, it's because you are not communicating your ideas for some reason. in this case it appears that the reasoning is because you're using numbers that don't exist in the real world, and you are using the wrong names for what you want (generator, alternator, etc) >> The attacks aren't doing anybody any good, so it would be great if they ended. I never claimed I would fully charge a battery set in 30 minutes. no, but you *did* claim that you could run the generator for 30 minutes every day, and so far you've given no numbers to prove that your system will work, no specifications for batteries that will take that charge rate, and, as it goes against commonly known issues with such systems, we asked you to prove it, and you point us to a website that, frankly, if i was a computer sci major i would be embarassed to claim as my own. >>I never claimed I wanted 14 tons of batteries. no, however, i have a *working system* already that does what you claim you want, and that's what it takes. we've asked you to prove you have a better method, so we can give you the right answers, and you hide behind "i'm an engineer and i'm right" ... when in fact you aren't an engineer in any way that relates to this. you're a glorified beta tester who doesn't know the difference between a shell, a programming language, and a compiler. (or you need to fix your resume) i'm glad you're enthusiastic, but you need to either present a solid case for your plan, or you're going to get tons of "can't get there from here" because it's been tried and done before, and for those of us who do this kind of thing regularly, your numbers are way way off. (and if they aren't, why are you asking us? just go do it) >>I never claimed that I wanted to cool my bus using only a 2kW inverter. yes, you did. you suggested one or two with your 1500 w ac draw on your website you keep sending people to for the real numbers. you even mentioned trying to load balance them. >>Holy cow, it gets tiring having to correct this confusion and then getting bashed for it. Pretty soon I'll just have to give up and trying elsewhere to find people interested enough in my project to actually give me advice on it, as opposed to giving me advice on some project that nobody is even asking about. you got the best advice you're going to get out of the article i linked to and the post i made concerning it. the problem is that you want to live in your own reality (fine by me) and make your own failures (fine by me). we have answered every question you have asked. we have also made suggestions so that you don't spend a ton of money on a project that fails. (which, if you use your numbers, it will) but, like a noteable here says "do it your way" >>Anyways - let's try it once more before I give up.. allrighty. Jwsmythe: Thanks for the feedback. You talk about power consumption needs but then discuss panels. When I did my panel calcs I found that I could fit about 1kW of panels on about 2/3 of the roof of the bus and I figured 4-6 hours of "sun." The way I look at it is that if I don't need A/C, the solar panels should be able to handle the load in the bus, and if I need A/C, then I have to run my generator for the rest of the charge. be careful here. solar panels are rated perfectly square to the suns rays on a very bright day, at the panel. you can cut the numbers in half for a "real world" set of numbers in your area, call it 1/8th to 1/3rd anywhere else. >>I figure about 2-4 hours of generator runtime each day if I'm using A/C - this is explained on my website. not unless you updated it lately. that said, you won't be able to do this with the main engine, it's hard on it, but that's argueable. it's also against the law, which is not argueable. >>I don't have black water if I have a composting system. a 250 gallon single person blackwater composting system has never, to the best of my knowledge, ever been built. patent that puppy and you'll never have to work again. >>If I have a composting system, then my "black" output is perfectly safe compost. maybe, however it's a crime to actually use it in most places. <snip> sylverstone: Any specs that you think are missing, please ask and I'll happily oblige. Some of them are researched but not fully decided, such as the battery bank - of which there are many options under 1 ton, but I haven't chosen the specific set yet. battery charge rates, ac unit selection, chassis heat rejection numbers, cable losses, type of solar panels, charge controllers... ((1500w air conditioning? what planet did you buy that on?)) It's those rooftop A/C units <snip> Carrier A/C?? okay, so 1500w each, real world numbers on the rooftop ac's, and you think two is enough, correct? ((it's stupidly expensive for the return)) >>I'm sorry - how exactly do you know what my return is for being able to accomplish this? every project has a cost associated with it. for your rooftop ac's i'd grab an aims inverter so you can run both of them. <snip> >>Bryce Gaston: I plan on showing you that it will work, and I plan on eventually using electric heat for WVO before hitting colder climates. ... a diesel fired webasto, or propane is a much much better choice in a coach when you have to heat things up. -dd | ||
| motorcoach1 Rating: N/A |
Hi Dave have been watching your progress and all the input. The hydrogen gas deal wasn't a shot at you program everything has a use. Your water supply is simple , you have air power to pressurize your tanks so water flows uphill, use it Conservative and will go a long way no pump needed for the sink use a hand pump. have been watching the sterling solar engine experiments and they seam to do well so an acoustic generator could work for your needs but still in the experimental stages but designs are available. Solar panels have come a long way so keep researching thats always fun. a small parabolic reflector on medium days with a coil at the foci's will product most of the hot water you can use and a very small pump and a normal hot water tank. putting a flat turbine type fan on the roof about 24 to 30 inches will drive a generator as you drive down the road and when sitting still a good breeze will run it too. use diode lighting as much as you like and try not to use resistors if at all these will use current that is of value to your needs. now i wrote this and it's food for thought, every watt counts. i have a separate set of nicked battery's just to run stuff like bath vent blower and some lighting that is not used to often and it is on small solar panels a stand alone devise and one of my larger panels is a sky lite and works well for both uses,lets sun light in and makes power and looks real cool. when your running batteries there is a point that the battery becomes a filter capacitor when charging in the 40 to 50 % usage mode try to avoid that , the system will collapse. your generator will try the run your system and the battery's just flatten out and lose their memory and won't come back to float standards, at this time your producing a lot of hydrogen and the acid loses it's performance to produce the Nessary current or amps. just an idea to think about. There allot of good info that has been written on this and some times it's hard to decipher the usefulness for your needs hope all goes well. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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Jwsmythe: I expect to use A/C, but I'm hoping to not have to use both units on high for 6 hours straight. My experience in an incredibly hot desert for a week seems to back that up, but I may feel differently on the road and may need to find a different solution. > If your bus smells like a sewage treatment plant... Absolutely - again, I suggest looking into composting toilets. There are people using them in RVs and on boats. http://www.sun-mar.com/ http://www.biolet.com/ http://www.envirolet.com/ Heat and vented airflow create a bacterial situation that deals with the human waste - it's neat stuff, I recommend checking out their FAQs. I plan on using a kitchen composter in my kitchen as well - the less waste I create is better for me and for the planet. > I recommended that Verizon specifically for a couple reasons. I can see that - though T-Mobile is supposed to be changing to EDGE fairly soon, so hopefully that will happen before I'm full-timing. EDGE might be fast enough for me, though again, latency is the big issue. I didn't know about the phone versus card issue - I'll have to do some speed tests when I'm on the bus. I'll put down the verizon info in my notes. I had a similar experience with AT&T that you had with sprint. I try not to think about it. Ugh. They tried to steal my phone number and then had the gall to try to charge me for it. I spent a literal 12 hours on hold across a weekend trying to get my phone number back. You know ssh and vi, that's actually the world I'll be in. Groovy. And yes, it's not impossible, but after having dealt with it quite a bit, I don't really want that to be my networking "solution." Btw, I suggest using rsync instead of sftp if your platform supports it. It's freakin' amazing and fast. I also agree that published stats are not always correct and that I can expect losses from efficiency. I mention some of those losses on my page, actually. And I do want to take advice, but I won't take advice on issues that I'm not talking about, such as whether I can fully charge my battery bank in 30 minutes, something I never claimed to want to do. (And actually, it is possible, given a big enough battery bank and/or a small enough discharge, but that's not the point). If you want to give me advice that it's too expensive to make my bus work underwater, then I don't really care, because I'm not trying to do that. So I will ignore that advice. Is that unreasonable? | ||
| Bryce Gaston (Busted_knuckle)
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No coincidence at all! If I'd been trying to hide to identity I'd fired up the laptop off the neighbors WIFI, Just really getting bored with the "in your face I know what I'm talking about, don't tell me different, but I still want answers(even though I've repeatedly told you people I KNOW WHAT I"M TALKING ABOUT I"M AN ENGINEER AND HAVE ALREADY DESIGNED IT!)attitude! You bash and knock everyone who's given proveable info either good or bad, and keep insisting on I KNOW IT WILL WORK! Well fine SHOW US THE $ as they say! Or at least quit asking for advice that you really don't want! It seems clear as day and night all you want is someone to say yes I did it, it worked heres how I did it! But the truth is many have tried and learned the hard way by spending time & $ doing it and then going back to what works! But you don't wanna know what works you keep telling us what'll work! Ya wanna know what will work? Do it, prove it and then we'll all say hey you were right it did work congradulations! But the in your face attitude is not going to help you get what ya want one bit! I like the spirit, I don't like being told I can't do something either! And when I'm told that I QUIETLY GO AND DO IT, or I shut up and listento reasons why it won't work or why I haven't planned enough for this or that! Then I go and QUIETLY DO IT and come back and say see what couldn't be done! After you've proven yer way works is the time to be in yer face with attitude! Oh well, I've tried as well as everyone else on the board to give you ideas in their respective areas of knowledge, but we can't make ya read them all we can do is post and read the flacK we get back! signed Dimm Witt | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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david: at this point i'm going to assume that you are suffering some form of mental trauma. you keep saying that you never said you were charging for half an hour a day, yet the very first post in this thread is linked right to where you do say it. http://www.busnut.com/cgi-bin/bbs/show.cgi?11/12662 specifically: "So - I need a very large generator 12kW or more that I'll only need occasionally, and then for under 30 minutes a day. " and further down you say: "I don't need a generator head, I need an alternator, because I need DC, not AC current. That makes the RPM calculations moot." "The alternator on the bus is very small wattage because it doesn't need to be any bigger." "Yes, I am charging batteries" so how about you quit twisting what people are saying? one simple question for you: how are you going to charge your batteries on half an hour a day, in a manner that is not going to destroy said batteries due to constant undercharging? -dd | ||
| ChuckMC9 (Chucks)
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[shakes head in befuddlement] Dave, I remember you now, from a year or more ago. I won't comment on the infrastructure, because these guys know way more than I do, but I will counsel you to make a SCALE drawing of the interior. You are the only person I've seen who's trying to do a floorplan like this, and believe it or not, it's not unlike mine, except for the galley. If you click here, you'll find a real close to scale drawing of my open floorplan and it's easy to see how what initially looks like a humongous space gets eaten up quickly. Mine is 6" narrower than yours, but you get the idea. Notice the shading which shows bays, wheels, and escape hatches. I just noticed one of the chairs is in the wrong place, and I can scoot the loveseat back maybe a foot or so with the redoing I've done since the drawing. It's always amused me to see all the buses for sale with floorplans that aren't even close to scale which make them look much roomier than they are. | ||
| motorcoach1 Rating: N/A |
Bryce ! theres a bug on the windsheild | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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sylverstone: ((i would be embarassed to claim as my own)) ((who doesn't know the difference between a shell, a programming language, and a compiler)) Would it be possible to stop the ad-hominem attacks now? It's a shame you don't like my website. And I'm clear on the differences - when my resume states "UNIX shell" it clearly implies a "shell for UNIX." Perhaps you don't even like me as a person. Or maybe you think I'm ugly. But does this have any relevance to the discussion at hand? ((you *did* claim that you could run the generator for 30 minutes every day)) Yes, I believe it is possible to run generators and alternators for 30 minutes. I pointed out that I was hoping for this to be a reasonable average considering solar panels and that I don't always need A/C. Sometimes 0 hours, sometimes 2, sometimes 4, but I'm hoping to average at 30 minutes. I believe I posted that. ((and you hide behind "i'm an engineer and i'm right")) Not really, I said that I was an engineer *once* to point out that I like to build things. And I've posted some of the batteries I'm looking at. Okay? Have we got that? Can we move on? If not, how about this. I quit my job today. I'm not an engineer. I'm a ditch-digger. I'm unemployed. Who cares. Now can we talk about the bus? Or do I need to start a new topic about my status as an engineer? Because I only mentioned it once, and evidently I'm going to be crucified with the misunderstanding of that remark. I plan on running a 3kW inverter which will carry the AC load and most of the house load. The 2nd inverter is only for backup situations when it's too damn hot. I believe I've explained this a few times now? I know that I won't get a full day of solar. I have been told that if I have my panels flat on my bus (perhaps statically angled southward every time I park) with an unobstructed view of the sky, that 1kW of panels should give me 4-6kWh of power over a sunny day. Many solar experts have told me this - is this incorrect? The electrical usage on my site is for when I need to run A/C. I see three states: 1) Not needing A/C. Lower power consumption, should be handled by solar, except during lack of good sun. 2) Needing one A/C. Use genset/alternator or some other fuel->electricity device to help charge. 3) Needing both A/C - use gen/alt for more time until I find less heated climes. ((250 gallon single person blackwater composting system has never..ever been built)) I don't know where the 250 gallons comes in, but take a look at the links I posted above. Many companies offer composting systems from small to large. What's the 250 gallons about?? ((battery charge rates, ac unit selection, chassis heat rejection numbers, cable losses, type of solar panels, charge controllers)) Batteries: as I've posted, "HUP Solar ones" are one example. Here are stats so you don't have to look them up: 24V 1055Ah 80% depth-of-discharge, 2100 charge cycles, dimensions: 80x8.75x25, 1560 pounds. I figure 5-10% for cable losses. I figure 5-10% for inverter losses. The charge rate I'm shooting for with a normal genset *is* and has been outlined in numbers on my website. Solar - also haven't chosen, but all the solar panels I have looked at are around 12 square inches per Watt. This seems to be the standard, am I wrong? I have over 45000 square inches on top of my bus. I would *not* use all of it, but hypothetically that is about 3.75kW of panels. 1kW would be about 12000 square inches. Even considering the quantization of panels, there's still *easily* enough room. Do you have any charge controller suggestions? I am clear that I'll lose some efficiency there as well. I'll look into AIMs inverters - any thoughts on why the price is so much cheaper than Outback and Trace/Xantrex inverters?? I agree about using propane for heat, not electric. I wouldn't do electric unless I somehow magically end up with lots of leftover solar power in cold climates. I doubt that. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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this is kinda fun for tinkerng with floorplans... http://www.braunston.com/boatdes/javades.html -dd | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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((Dave, I remember you now, from a year or more ago.)) I doubt that, because I wasn't posting on this board a year or more ago. My drawing is to scale, I need to make more room for the kitchen and the bathroom, and I need to add more cabinets and drawers back by the kitchen but that's about it. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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>>I believe it is possible to run generators and alternators for 30 minutes. the last 10% of a charge takes a long time, without it however, you will do serious damage to your batteries. >>I pointed out that I was hoping for this to be a reasonable average considering solar panels and that I don't always need A/C. if the solar works, you will most likely need some a/c, which was part of why i suggested start with sprayfoaming the interior. the more insulation you have, the less overall power you need to expend to change the environment. sprayfoam is by far and above the best, although it is messy. >>Sometimes 0 hours, sometimes 2, sometimes 4, but I'm hoping to average at 30 minutes. I believe I posted that. i went into the inefficiencies in your plan in my other post, and i'll stand by my recommendation that you get a small diesel generator to do this with instead of using the bus engine. water cooled, 1800 rpm, 8kw will do ya, bigger would be better, don't bother with anythign over 20kw, you won't ever need it. it will probably cost you the same or less than trying to make the bus engine put out what you need. >>I plan on running a 3kW inverter which will carry the AC load and most of the house load. i think you will find that inverters are less eficcient than you think they are... >>The 2nd inverter is only for backup situations when it's too damn hot. there are two schools of thought on this. one is you get a big inverter and do it all with it. the other is you get small inverters to do what you need done, and use multiples. which one you go with depends on what you are trying to do, and if you're building it all at once or not. i for one use a modified sine wave inverter to run computer gear in my bus all the time, so the multi-thousand-dollar cost of a trace 4k or somethign similar seems way out of line when i can get an aims 5k for 500 bucks. the difference is in what you do with it. the trace will charge your batteries when you're plugged in somewhere. the aims won't. i'm using a baby diesel to spin a generator head via a very short shaft drive. the generator handles all my 110 and 220 loads (it can drive my wire feed welder if i have to) ... the shaft goes through a 3 belt pulley. the belts that run across it spin a 250 amp balmar alternator that charges my house batteries whenever the gen is running, so when my house batteries get down there, and i want to run the ac, i fire it up and it solves two problems at once. ... i'm seriously looking into spinning the ac compressor with the same shaft drive, which would solve a lot of the ac power draw issues as well. >>I see three states: >>1) Not needing A/C. Lower power consumption, should be handled by solar, except during lack of good sun. >>2) Needing one A/C. Use genset/alternator or some other fuel->electricity device to help charge. >>3) Needing both A/C - use gen/alt for more time until I find less heated climes. ((250 gallon single person blackwater composting system has never..ever been built)) I don't know where the 250 gallons comes in, but take a look at the links I posted above. Many companies offer composting systems from small to large. What's the 250 gallons about?? it's illegal to dump grey water almost everywhere, and it's flat out illegal to dump blackwater anywhere, the 250 as based on your original statement of how much fresh water you were carrying, plus a percentage for waste. the composting toilets are great, but you're going to be in for a bit of a surprise there when you start trying to use it in a real world situation... allthough movent of the bus will actually help it compost hotter. >>24V 1055Ah 80% depth-of-discharge, 2100 charge cycles, dimensions: 80x8.75x25, 1560 pounds. not much longevity at 80%... >>I figure 5-10% for cable losses. if your inverters are very cose to your batteries... >>I figure 5-10% for inverter losses. that's very very efficient. what brand inverter were you planning on? >>Do you have any charge controller suggestions? I am clear that I'll lose some efficiency there as well. have you talked to backwoods solar yet? >>I'll look into AIMs inverters - any thoughts on why the price is so much cheaper than Outback and Trace/Xantrex inverters?? output isn't nearly as clean, but for your purposes they work fine. >>I agree about using propane for heat, not electric. I wouldn't do electric unless I somehow magically end up with lots of leftover solar power in cold climates. I doubt that. did you check out the gen4 proheat? -dd | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
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>I can see that - though T-Mobile is supposed to > be changing to EDGE fairly soon, so hopefully > that will happen before I'm full-timing. EDGE > might be fast enough for me, though again, > latency is the big issue. I didn't know about > the phone versus card issue - I'll have to do > some speed tests when I'm on the bus. I'll put > down the verizon info in my notes. Well, if T-Mobile starts doing their own thing, it will take a while before they have widespread coverage. It costs a bundle to get new technology deployed. They can't just start selling phones with a new tech enabled, they have to upgrade all their tower equipment first. > You know ssh and vi, that's actually the world > I'll be in. Groovy. And yes, it's not > impossible, but after having dealt with it quite > a bit, I don't really want that to be my > networking "solution." Btw, I suggest using > rsync instead of sftp if your platform supports > it. It's freakin' amazing and fast. rsync is good for synchronizing a bunch of files. If you're editing one file, and want to just hit "Save", it's easier to have something made for it. I haven't seen any that natively use rsync. Usually it's ssh, sftp, ftp, or a few more propriatory methods. I use rsync extensively on my networks. I just switched a server over this morning using rsync on over 5 million files. It made it easy, since I could rerun it many times to get it right. It was a very live server, so I couldn't keep it down for very long. The majority of the files were already transfered, so the last rsync only took about an hour, most of the time spent building the file list. I guess I didn't post it here before. I'm the Sr. SysAdmin for one of the top 500 sites on the Internet, as ranked by Alexa. Well, that's the flagship site. We have several others that are also high ranking, plus tens of thousands of hosted sites. People usually reference me for tech stuff, which is why you'll see my posts on here at all hours. My phone only rings from 7am to 3am, 7 days a week. It'll be fun building my bus. The first thing I'll have on my bus is my laptop with the Verizon wireless card, on a small inverter, and my cell sitting beside it. That's a serious consideration in my bus design. I *HAVE* to be available. People freak out if I disappear for more than a few hours. I swear, their worlds would collapse if I took my time driving across I-10. It's easy to find yourself without phone service for days out there. | ||
| John MC9 Rating: N/A |
(David - I'm glad your here, man. You really took the pressure off. Thank you.) | ||
| Buswarrior (Buswarrior)
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Hello John MC9 You, sir, are a riot! ROFLMAO! happy coaching! buswarrior | ||
| Pat Bartlett (Muddog16)
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Don't you just love this place? I believe Dave will fit in nicely! Pat | ||
| Chris 85 RTS
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T-Mobile already had EDGE available in most major markets. Expect about 150kbps out of a 4 timeslot PC card. You may get peaks up to 200kbps. That assumes you are the only user. Expect much slower during peak times and in dense urban areas. There are no 8 timeslot (380kbps) devices available yet, and if you hear of one let me know ASAP. | ||
| Chris 85 RTS
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On our system, a GSM EDGE Basestation, we have about 600 - 1000 msec of RTT using GPRS or EDGE. Most of that is in the RLCMAC layer but there are alot of network elements between you and the cloud. CSD will give a better latency but lower speed. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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sylverstone: > the last 10% of a charge takes a long time, without it however, you > will do serious damage to your batteries. That's too bad - do you know where I can find more info on this? > i'll stand by my recommendation that you get a small diesel generator > to do this with instead of using the bus engine. Any suggestions on where to find a used genset that is over 10kW and will fit in the A/C cargo bay after "stealthing?" > i think you will find that inverters are less eficcient than you think they are... Sure - but they're inefficient on the power used, right? So a 3kW inverter should be able to pump out 3kW while using something like 3.3kW, yes? > not much longevity at 80% [depth of discharge]... I wasn't planning on using it at 80% - that's just the stats. I figure that I'll go down to 50% as stated on my site. Seems like that's a good tradeoff for battery life cycle. >>I figure 5-10% for inverter losses. >that's very very efficient. what brand inverter were you planning on? Trace, Outback, maybe AIMs. What should I expect? > have you talked to backwoods solar yet? Yes, and to The Solar Biz. > did you check out the gen4 proheat? Looked at it, but as you mentioned, it's too small. And as I mentioned, I'm not convinced it makes sense to package all these units together as opposed to buying them separate (except for the direct drive of the A/C compressor, if you wanted to always run the gen when the A/C is on) | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
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Jwsmythe: > rsync is good for synchronizing a bunch of files. Right. After dealing with remote servers and slow connections in the non-bus world (different from what you probably generally deal with at a top site) it has been taught to me that I'm best off just having full mirrors of remote compouters and doing partial rsync's to keep everything up to date. There's a few gotchas with things like --delete and the efficiencies of moving large directories, but generally it's been a great solution. I'm with you on the full availability, I need to have my network generally up and running at all times... | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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"Any suggestions on where to find a used genset that is over 10kW and will fit in the A/C cargo bay after "stealthing?"" well, i can fit a 180 gallon fuel tank in the bay my heater core and forward ac condenser came out of, so my experience isn't going to help there. (my bus is a lot bigger) hrm. you're going to want your inverter(s) as close to your batteries as you can get. you'll want your dc supply to be as close as you can get as well, but you want to keep heat away from your batteries (it'll kill 'em) ... silence is golden, so i think if i were you i would consider using a bay for this, since your veggie oil tank can go in the engine compartment (you need to heat it anyway, right?) in mine there's room for a generator where the factory air conditioning pump comes out... i.e. like greg bush is doing in his 3408 caterpillar powered, 15 speed road ranger shifted scenicruiser here: http://www.scenicruiser.com/images/owners/gregbush/GregBush02.jpg the cruiser is a T drive, so there's plenty of space on eithier side of the engine compartment (once side was a/c, the other side is a right angle fan drive for cooling) not sure how yours is. you can see in the pics he's using the bus's cooling system for the generator as well. so you put the baby diesel there, or in a bay (quieter) and then you just need to work out what you're going to spin with it. from here out this whole thing is the "power pack" many generators (120 volts ac for this discussion) and alternators (14.4 volts dc for this discussion) have the ability to mount a pulley at either end, so a simple bracket and a shaft coupler would allow you to spin both at the same time from one end, the other end, or, if you want to get tricky, the middle. there's never any reason not to gang these together, as an alternator won't do much or load much if the batteries are charged, and you probably won't be running the power pack at all unless you want ac current, or air conditioning, and in both cases your batteries will be less than 100%, so it just makes sense. so your diesel gets shaft coupled directly to your ac generator, which gets shaft coupled to your dc alternator. at the back of the alternator, (or the shaft between the generator and the alternator,) (or the front of the generator) you can put a pulley if you ran out of length, or a shat coupler if you haven't, and then hook up the ac compressor. (if your using belt drives it'll sit next to the the ac generator) if you just string them all together you have a package that should fit in the heater core bay or engine compartment pretty easily, you can weld a frame together to keep it all lined up, and you don't have to deal with belts, clutching, anything. (you'll want a "plate to shaft" adaptor for the air conditioning compressor, which, since the ac compressor is clutched, is the last in the string) put it on roller slides (think sun server rack, but heavier) so you can pull the baby diesel out a few feet to work on it, or the whole shebang out if you need to mess with anything else. put your webasto in here somewhere as well, so you only have to pull one diesel line from the main tank.. then put your batteries and inverter(s) on the other side of the bulkhead. (you can run ac voltage much farther with much less losses than you can dc voltage) genearlly speaking, i design for a theoretical 85% energy loss every time i do a conversion from one form to another which is why i would rather go this route. you can't get to cold, 14.4 vdc, or 120v ac, straight from veggie oil, so you have to make a conversion. heat is easy, but useless for this. rotation is also easy, and works well for this, because then it's one more conversion to what you want to use. -dd | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
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Ya, rsync doesn't move, or at least it didn't last time I looked. There was some discussion on adding that in the future, but the author had some serious concerns on referencing what files to move. For example, if you have say 100k files, he'd have to fingerprint every file (timestamp and MD5, probably), and then cross reference every file before even considering a transfer. His concerns were with the memory usage and time it would take to make the decision on if files get moved or not. It's time consuming for my stuff to resend on large moves. Once, someone had the bright idea of renaming a directory with 50Gb of stuff in it, and then they wondered why they killed the T1 it was working over (internal fileserver to external fileserver, before distribution to the web servers). If you're doing too much work, you'll find that you don't have the local storage to make your changes. You had mentioned going to laptops to save heat and power. You'll be rather limited on storage then. If you go with external drives, you'll now be pulling down more power. Sure, a few drives won't suck down a big bank of batteries, but every bit counts on limited power. I was out with my girlfriend for a weekend, and couldn't find any of my power inverters before we left. We took her SUV, so we stopped at an auto parts store. They had a cool little jumpstart kit. It was $10 more than just an inverter, so I got it. It was a battery, with built in jumper cables, 12v socket, and 110v AC inverter. To charge, it was plugged into the 12v cigarette lighter socket. It turned out to work very effectively. The wiring on her SUV is kinda wierd. The 12v cigarette lighter socket was a key switched circuit, and was the primary power source for the radio. As long as we left the inverter in, her radio would stay on. Her radio would run for days on it. My laptop (AMD64, 15.4" widescreen) would easily run for hours while charging it's own batteries. I tried the same thing with a smaller pack, that would fit in the back of my laptop bag. I disconnected and removed the jumper cables, so I wouldn't get too many weird looks at the airport. It still gets extra looks and get swabbed to make sure it's not a bomb, every time I take it on a plane. The idea was that I could watch movies on my laptop. Spinning the DVD and running the screen on the airplane only let me run for about 1.5 hours between the laptop battery and the battery pack and inverter. Too bad the other jumpstart pack was too big to carry in my laptop bag. I stopped carrying it, it was throwing my back out, carrying it through tight spots in the airport. My laptop bag and all the gear I carry is roughly 30 to 40 pounds. I am the guy who has everything required to travel. My laptop bag has several wireless cards, and few wired cards, lots of cables (cat5, serial, and cisco), chargers for the laptop, video camera, spare batteries for the digital still camera, laptop (of course), and which ever books I feel are appropriate to the job I'm going to. That's something I'm really looking forward to avoiding. I fly a *LOT*. For a while, I was spending more time in the air and at hotels, than I did at home. From June to September 2005, I was home for about 6 days. Once I get the bus and get it set up, I won't have to fly much any more. Oh, you need me in [insert city here]? Sure, I'll be there in 3 to 5 days, and I won't have to pack only the required gear. I'll be able to go out to my bus for whatever I didn't happen to bring with me. Not that the bus will be a tech lab on wheels, but that's already what my house looks like. My office is full of old workstations, servers, and parts. They already have a new home, I just have to move them. | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
> you go with external drives, you'll now be pulling down more power. I would need external - do you think that laptops with a few 100GB of external storage would take more power than a low power desktop? I hadn't looked into the power consumption involved, but I imagine the portable drives aren't too much since they often use the laptop batteries. > Sure, a few drives won't suck down a big bank of batteries, but every > bit counts on limited power. That's why I want over 20kWh of batteries > Spinning the DVD and running the screen on the airplane only let me > run for about 1.5 hours between the laptop battery and the battery I bring extra batteries - and I've been meaning to start ripping the DVDs to the HD, I imagine the HD is less power than the DVD drive + laser, but I've never tested or reasearched that. > Once I get the bus and get it set up, I won't have to fly much any > more. Oh, you need me in [insert city here]? Sure, I'll be there in 3 I'm on that for fun rather than work reasons - but I have a feeling there will be times when I'll have to pack my bus away somewhere and fly to a location rather than driving cross country. Such is life, and it's better than paying rent. | ||
| David Hartley (Drdave)
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After over 30 years fighting my way along with computers, networks, servers, wan,lan. unix, zenix, BSD, Linux, Windows and thousands of hours chasing bugs, problems and whiny users I won't say that I am over it yet. After doing support covering 5 states by myself, sleeping on planes in airports and while rocketing along I-95 at 3:00 in the morning I find that there comes a point in every techie's life that you finally start wondering "WHY" .. I have done a lot of stuff over the years and can do a lot of interesting things that few would either enjoy or understand. My bus conversions are a departure for me as they all follow the "KISS" principal. So simple that I work very hard to NOT work too hard on making things perfect in the eyes of others. A laptop for GPS and email, with the software I need for remote network management whether its a windows or linux network. A built in wireless adapter and no recurring network access charges each month. No satellite internet, no phone lines. A Sprint PCS phone and a Nextel phone. I have dish network with a King Dome rooftop antenna with w 27 Inch LCD over the front windshield. I have no wish to overbuild or over technify the bus. Makes things a little simpler. My first bus conversion I built to travel to network sites. It had lots of technical stuff. I encountered being chased away from parking adjacent to the network locations so many times that it ceased to be justifiable. Seems that people that install Million Dollar network centers would rather pay for cars, hotels and airfare rather than pay my expenses to camp on their door. To each his own. If you are making millions like it sounds that you should then no engineering task should be too small. That 24 hour high-stress will get you eventually as it did me. Now I get to spend the last few years of what life I have left trying to unwind and de-train the people who call me at all times expecting miracles. Good Luck... | ||
| JW Smythe (Jwsmythe)
Rating: N/A |
> That 24 hour high-stress will get you eventually > as it did me. Now I get to spend the last few > years of what life I have left trying to unwind > and de-train the people who call me at all times > expecting miracles. We're in the business of miracles. It's 3am. I'm going to get some sleep before the "emergency" calls at 7am. Too bad I'm not making the millions my bosses are making. If I was, I'd have a large full time IT staff. As it is, I have an unreasonably small staff, and the magic that they want produced simply doesn't happen on their schedule. At least I got out for a drive today. Wheeeee, found some open road, and a motorcycle that thought his bike was faster than my car. I laid off at 135mph, because I was coming too close to traffic ahead. He didn't pull away from me the whole time, and I had to be gentle so I didn't ride up too close to him. The phone only rang 3 times with emergencies while I was out. "Sorry, I'm out playing today. No laptop. I'll give advice, but I can't do anything for you." | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
sylverstone: Inverter is going to be right near batteries. The DC supply might be further away, but I'll keep that in mind when I chose the bay to put my batteries in. The veggie oil gear can't fit into the engine compartment, it takes up about 2/3 of one cargo bay - I was going to put it into the rear compartment, but I'm starting to think I should put it in the middle compartment so my water tanks can be in the back - that's where the kitchen and shower will be. ((you can see in the pics he's using the bus's cooling system for the generator as well)) I still don't understand this - on my bus the radiator squirrel cages are belt driven - doesn't this mean the cooling won't work unless the bus is moving? Or are the cooling requirements low enough that just pumping through the radiators without fans is fine? Any suggestions what baby diesel to use to accomplish 10-15kW power? | ||
| Dale Fleener (Dale_mc8)
Rating: N/A |
Maybe I'm missing something, BUT; there are several references throughout this thread about having the inverter close to the batteries. I agree with this but have seen no mention of isolating the two of them. Battery gasses can and do corrode electrical components, electrical components sometimes generate sparks that could make Hydrogen from the battery to explode. And while I'm wondering, consider the placement of any photovoltaic panels over living areas, etc. I installed PV panels over the bedroom which meant that the bedroom had to be in the sun as much as possible. This made sleeping very sweaty at times. In addition to rooftop A/C's, think about one of the small, 12 volt, rooftop water coolers. They are not a replacement for an A/C, but in the boonies will run on the output of a fairly small PV panel. I had one hooked up directly and found that as the sun went down, the cooler turned off just like needed. Well, duh!! MORE things to consider. Dale MC8 | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
Rating: N/A |
>Inverter is going to be right near batteries. The DC supply might be further away, but I'll keep that in mind when I chose the bay to put my batteries in. zero gauge cables from the alt to the batteries can mitigate this somewhat, but it's better to have the really heavy stuff to the rear on most coaches. >The veggie oil gear can't fit into the engine compartment, it takes up about 2/3 of one cargo bay. in my bus the space in the engine compartment where the ac pump was *is* about 2/3rds of a cargo bay on my bus, but vertical instead of horizontal (my bus has really big bays as well, which is why i figured yours would fit) >I was going to put it into the rear compartment, but I'm starting to think I should put it in the middle compartment so my water tanks can be in the back - that's where the kitchen and shower will be. engine heat will heat up and try to cook anything in the engine compartment, so you'll have to be careful what you put in there. gumpydog's site has a slick article on how to build your own tanks, so i would consider your ac / heater core bay for your fresh water, and your black and grey water can take the top of the bay your batteries and inverters are in. (permanent mount those, put roller slides under the battery / inverter pack) put the power pack in the engine compartment on roller slides so you can work on it easily, and that leaves your entire front bay open. take a run of copper pipe and run it back and forth under your veggie oil tank and you can use engine coolant through it to help heat up your veggie oil. do a second one so you can use your webasto to do the same thing (and it can radiant heat your coach as well) ((you can see in the pics he's using the bus's cooling system for the generator as well)) I still don't understand this - on my bus the radiator squirrel cages are belt driven - doesn't this mean the cooling won't work unless the bus is moving? Or are the cooling requirements low enough that just pumping through the radiators without fans is fine? through the radiators with no fans should be fine. putting a small electric fan in there somewhere if it needs more cooling is simple. >Any suggestions what baby diesel to use to accomplish 10-15kW power? not my area of expertise, but a good, low rpm 2 cyl diesel, rated for about 20 hp, is what you're after. -dd | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
Rating: N/A |
>There are several references throughout this thread about having the inverter close to the batteries. I agree with this but have seen no mention of isolating the two of them. Battery gasses can and do corrode electrical components, electrical components sometimes generate sparks that could make Hydrogen from the battery to explode. we hadn't gotten to "care and feeding of inverters" and "ventilation of battery compartments" quite yet i was going to suggest that when he was building his battery rack and tanks, he build a polyethylne battery box that uses a computer fan to pull air into it whenever the system is running (duct the output from the inverter cooling fan to it, it's running anyway) to positive pressure the battery box, therefore venting it to the outside >And while I'm wondering, consider the placement of any photovoltaic panels over living areas, etc. I installed PV panels over the bedroom which meant that the bedroom had to be in the sun as much as possible. This made sleeping very sweaty at times. i'm paneling the entire top of my bus that's flat, and thinking about flexibles for the curves, but i agree with your observation >In addition to rooftop A/C's, think about one of the small, 12 volt, rooftop water coolers. They are not a replacement for an A/C, but in the boonies will run on the output of a fairly small PV panel. I had one hooked up directly and found that as the sun went down, the cooler turned off just like needed. Well, duh!! nice. what's it for exactly? -dd | ||
| David Ljung Madison (Daveola)
Rating: N/A |
Has anyone done any experiments to find out how many BTUs of heat were "avoided" per Watt of rooftop water cooling? I bet they are more efficient than A/C up to a small amount, I'd be curious what the return is. I'm tempted to paint/cover the top of the bus with some sort of reflective material. sylverstone: Why is it better to put heavy stuff in the rear - is it for better balance/driving? My engine compartment space isn't that big - I was probably going to put my toilet composter in there, it would love the heat after all. As far as heating the vegoil, I already have setup engine coolant heaters for the vegoil - it's all documented, of course, on my site: http://bus.getdave.com/Infrastructure/Vegetable-Oil/ It's loaded with heat exchangers - the only thing not shown is a final electric heat stage which I'll add in the future depending on how close to 160-180 I can get. I don't think I want the ac/heater bay for water because the plumbing is going to be in the back of the bus. Here - my current plan is something like this: Engine Compartment: Black water composter Rear Luggage Bay: Fresh and grey water (3-400gal) + water heat/pump Mid Luggage Bay: Vegoil + Batteries or propane? Then I'll put the gen and bus heater in the front luggage bay and/or AC/heater space, hopefully leaving some room for the propane or batteries that didn't go in the mid bay, as well as some room for growth (possibly a second diesel tank to increase my boondocking capabilities) As far as battery ventilation - if I go with the HUP Solar Ones they already come in two metal boxes, and I was planning on running tubing with fans to a vent in the door. I doubt the battery boxes are airtight, but I preume that doesn't matter as long as there's enough flow. | ||
| David Hartley (Drdave)
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Evaporative air coolers only work in dry climates with low humidity such as the deserts. They will add substantial humidity into the interior which could add to a condensation problem as the exterior cools below dewpoint. Then you risk mold intrusion. That will basically invite serious health risks. The idea is to keep the humidity at 60% or less at all times and even lower if you can manage it. Propane heat and cooking will add enough moisture anyway. | ||
| sylverstone (Sylverstone_pd4501864)
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your bus has more tread area in the rear. -dd | ||
| Jarlaxle Rating: N/A |
"not my area of expertise, but a good, low rpm 2 cyl diesel, rated for about 20 hp, is what you're after." Semi trailer reefer motor...often a Perkins, about 20-25HP. |
