Anyone interested in 83 Pace Arrow Tear down and Rebuild?

[fulltimin]

Started to look into some water damage in the kitchen of our 83 Pace Arrow. The more I looked, the more I found. I have some pics of the damage so far. Anyone interested in following a rebuild thread?

[femailyetti]

When my son was traveling with the cell phone tower crew he said he loved the '"Sheetz stores"". My part of the world just got a ""Loves truck center"" and A million ""Wa Wa stores"" on every corner.

[fulltimin]

Now that I had everything cleaned up, I looked at my spray foam cans that I had, (thought I had), and it turns out the only one I could find was one that was just about empty.

Nah, I am not going to dirty this thing up, with just a little foam left in the last can I had. Just forget it. As Scarlet O'hara used to say "I'll deal with it tomorrow"!

So, while I got something done, it wasn't what I expected, although, it was necessary.

By the way, it did rain today. That will top off our year with an even larger number for total amount of rain for the year, a new record, and more than double what Seattle, Wa usually gets. Woo Hoo! Go big or go home, right?

Hey, whatever.

Happy New Year Everybody!

By the way, if you are in an area where there are "Sheetz" convenience stores, they are offering free coffee, until 4.00 pm New Years Day!

I think I see a tiny road trip coming up tomorrow morning!

Son and daughter in law are coming over New Years Day for lunch.

Be safe out there!

[fulltimin]

After cleaning everything out, pulling, pushing, scraping, even using the air compressor just a little, I finally had things cleaned up to the point, that I was comfortable with it, and was sure it would work.

I then put it back together, and took another picture. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Lol.

[fulltimin]

My day wasn't totally terrible, but, but it could have gone better. Late today I decided to go out and work, and instead of adding more insulation to the passenger wall, I decided, that I needed to get ready to insulate the rest of the passenger wall. You know, the area in front of the entrance door.

I needed to put a little spray foam insulation between the floor and the side wall. So, I figured, I would spray that area, and let it dry, and after finishing the rear side of the passenger wall, I can then, just keep on going and move to the front side of the passenger wall.

Yea, right.

I located my spray foam gun, and I know none of you would do anything this stupid, but I did! Last time I used the gun, I forgot to clean it. Uh, Oh.

Did you know those guns can be taken apart? Well, they can. I looked at it, and decided, it looks like it should come apart, so that's what I did. I took it apart.

Here's what it looks like.

[fulltimin]

wildmanbaker wrote:
Are you noticing an increase in "felt" comfort level inside as you add more insulation?

As a matter of fact, yes. The heat/cold is not coming through the rear wall and the lower section of the passenger side wall, since I have the 2nd layer of insulation installed.

In areas where the insulation is covering the steel framing, putting my hand against the insulation, does not "feel" the cold like it does in other areas where the 2nd level of insulation has not been installed.

After working for a little while, with a pair of 100 watt halogen bulbs blazing away, the interior starts to warm up, at least enough to notice it. It may only be a few degrees, but it's enough to "feel" it.

Hey, maybe by the time I am done, I can heat this sucker with 2 candles and a flower pot! Lol. 🙂

[wildmanbaker]

Are you noticing an increase in "felt" comfort level inside as you add more insulation?

[fulltimin]

Ok, moving on to the moho construction. I cut a piece of insulation for the passenger side, behind the rear window area, and proceeded to glue that into place. This is indicated by the green arrow.

Next, I cut the piece of insulation for the area in front of the window area, and also got the plywood ready for the area above those two pieces of insulation. Indicated by the red and blue arrows.

No, those are not glued into place. I was in the middle of working on them and I was interrupted. Well, tomorrow is another day.

So, even though I didn't get finished what I wanted to, I did make a little head way.






As such, we'll work on it next time.

Be safe out there!

[fulltimin]

The good news is though, even though it draws 112 amps off of a battery bank, it only does so for a very short time.

That means, after the one minute of heating time, (it was not pulling 1343 watts the whole time), and another minute to run the water through the coffee, it is ready to make another cup.

Total usage of electric is about .03 kw. That means about 30 watts. That's the same as running a 30 watt light bulb for an hour.

That's also about 18 minutes of charge time from a 100 watt solar panel. Whoo Hooo!

[fulltimin]

I plugged in the Keurig coffee maker, into the Kill A Watt meter, and proceeded to make a 10 oz cup of coffee. Took a couple of pictures while I was doing that.

Turns out, the coffee maker draws 1343 watts when it's heating the water for the coffee. Fortunately, it only takes about 1 minute to heat that water. Takes another minute to run that water through the coffee, so within 2 minutes, coffee is ready. Yay. Yea, when it comes to coffee, I want it now, not 10 minutes from now. Lol.

So, the coffee maker would draw about 112 amps off of a 12 volt battery.

[fulltimin]

So, adding more panels, say 10 will produce 1000 watts per hour, 5kw for a 5 hour day, and would run a bunch of stuff intermittently, not necessarily all at the same time.

That would mean you could microwave a couple of potatoes, without damage to the battery system.

See how easy that is? Easy Peasy. Or so they say.

Obviously, there is a lot more involved than that, but that is the basic concept behind solar power. In addition to the solar panels, a charge controller is needed, so the batteries are not over charged.

An inverter is also needed to change the dc voltage to 120 ac to run those devices.

The more solar panels on the roof, the more electric you can use. In my case, if I can find the right size panels, I could theoretically fit about 20 of the 100 watt panels on the roof. 2000 watts an hour. 10000 watts a day, and more during the summer hours.

That's enough to run a small air conditioner during daylight hours. Not enough to run the ac 24 hours a day, but definitely enough when the sun is out during the hotter part of the day.

Not at all sure that the 20 panels will end up on the roof, but it would be great if I could. Dream on...... (hey, if you're going to dream, dream big, right)? Lol.

[fulltimin]

The next thing to take into consideration is the amount of draw off of the batteries, while either of those devices is running.

Pulling 1250 watts from 120 volts electric, will draw about 10.4 amps. Drawing that same 1250 watts from 12 volts, is going to pull 104 amps. That will exceed by a large margin what is recommended for a standard lead acid battery.

So, that solution is to either increase the size of the battery bank to the point that pulling that kind of amperage won't damage the bank, or change to batteries that will handle the larger amounts of discharge rate, without damage.

There are Lithium batteries that will support as much as 100 amps without damage. A couple of those would easily handle the 100 amp discharge for the short time those devices are running.

In addition, if it is daylight, 5 panels will be producing 500 watts,(theoretical, I know), which would reduce the draw on the batteries during run time.

[fulltimin]

Let me backtrack just a bit on the solar. 500 watts of solar on the roof, is nothing to sneeze at, although, having a bunch more, allows a lot more usage, for different things.

As an example, I took my Kill A Watt meter today, and plugged in an electric fry pan to it. I wanted to use it to make eggs for breakfast this morning.

The fry pan pulled about 950 watts while making the eggs. The good thing is that it didn't have to be on long until it was shut off. When I turned off the fry pan, it had used a total of .11 kw. or 110 watts. That is just a touch more than running a 100 watt light bulb for 1 hour, and I get to eat! Lol.

This afternoon, I plugged in an electric griddle, and we fried up some Salmon Cakes for supper. That was pulling 1250 watts, and used a total of 150 watts, or .15 kw.

That means that a 100 watt panel would need to charge just a touch over 1 hour to run the electric fry pan. Roughly 1.5 hours to run the electric griddle.

So, within roughly 2.5 hours, that single 100 watt solar panel would create enough electric to make breakfast and supper.

Granted, the longer you run a device, the more electric you will have to create, in order to run those devices.

Now, before you jump all over this, I did not factor in any losses between the solar panel, and the device using the electric.

Since nothing is 100% efficient, it will take longer than 2.5 hours to make enough electric to run both those devices, due to the losses.

[fulltimin]

While we are on the subject of solar, here's a little helper that almost everyone needs to give you an idea of how much electric different things use.

It's called a Kill A Watt meter, and plugs into a normal socket, then your device plugs into the meter, and while it is running, it will tell you how many amps and watts are being used. It will also let you know total Kilo Watts used when you are done using the device.

That is very useful, because many things use a bunch of electric when they are "off".

A number of years ago, I had a laptop computer, and I plugged it into the meter. I used the laptop for about 3 hours, and then shut the laptop off. I recorded the amount of electric used, but left the laptop plugged in.

I came back the next day, exactly 24 hours after I had originally started the laptop.

Much to my surprise, the laptop used as much electric during the 21 hours that it was "off", as it did, during the 3 hours that I was using it.

That is a good reason to either unplug, or plug things into a power strip that can be turned off, so as not to consume electric during non usage times.

[fulltimin]

joerg68 wrote:
I actually do have one small datapoint for solar: We have one 100 W panel, glued to the roof - so no angleing. And one AGM battery, I believe 70 Ah. In an 8ft hardwall truck camper. We are three-season campers - never in winter. Whatever works on propane is left on propane - fridge, hot water, furnace, cooking. LED lights throughout, no TV, no Microwave, no electric coffee maker - you get the idea.
We never had to plug into shore power all year. Often the battery was topped off by the time we had our breakfast.
But that is just our rig and the way we use it.

Basically your solar is used for lights, recharging cell phones, maybe a computer, and that's about it. Cool. Thanks.

[fulltimin]

STBRetired wrote:

fulltimin wrote:
I decided to use my bandsaw to cut the half lap joints.

If you use your bandsaw a lot, I recommend getting the Carter band saw guides. They are a bit pricey, but they do a much better job of keeping the blade under control than the slide blocks that you currently have. I replaced mine with these when I was having trouble with the blade wandering when re-sawing wood with heavy grain. The blade would try to twist to follow the grain and I had to leave too much clearance with the slide blocks to avoid heating up the blade from excessive drag.

A little expensive? That's about 3/4 of the price I paid for the bandsaw. Well, it is a Harbor Freight Special from a few years ago. Lol.

Actually, I have seen that type of setup before, but have never used one.

I used to buy my bandsaw blades, by the 100 ft roll, and make my own. I did not weld them, but I did use a good grade of silver solder, which worked quite well.

I would create a scarf joint on the blade, and then solder that, making sure that the thickness of the joint was no thicker than the rest of the blade.

That is what causes a lot of problems. If the joint is too thick, then the blade guides get widened a little to let the joint through, but the rest of the blade rides loosely in the guides, and it's nearly impossible to make a straight cut.

I don't doubt that this would work better, so I'll keep the link to it. Thanks.