Wallas and Wipers...

...working in time for Winter. Which arrived at the weekend.

The hob arrived back with us on Tuesday last week, with a replacement fuel pump installed. I took it apart again to check it over, added a few tie-wraps and some cushioning on the places where the HP fuel pipe might chafe, and since we'd had a bit of practice it didn't take long to re-install. After 2 priming runs it fired up and everything worked as we'd hoped it would, so now it's time to plan our first outing in the new set-up.

The "new" wiper motor arrived, too. I got this off eBay from a scrap merchant - sorry, vehicle recycling enterprise - for about the same price as the Britpart junk sent by Cr*ddocks. The difference is that this part was original equipment made by someone who knew what they were about, not someone in a sweatshop in Nanking, making pattern parts using a kerbstone as an anvil.

A quick bench test - Learning Has Occurred, you see - and it was fitted and running inside 20 minutes. The (w)ear window wipes, washes and is weddy for Winter.
Sorry.

With that in mind, it seemed an excellent idea to do the first full test of everything on Saturday, the First Day of Winter. We have a viewpoint in the hills just inland, so I packed up the truck with a basket of goodies, a sleeping bag and DVD and headed off. Sue went South for the weekend with the dog, so I was solo.

Everything worked just as planned, with one exception which I'll come to later. The Wallas performed as advertised and I was warm and in shirtsleeves within minutes. The bedding was dry - I was expecting a cold damp feel to it after weeks without an airing  - and the insulating window blinds that Sue had made up worked well.

The material for these came some time ago from Vanguard Conversions in Fort William but there hadn't been any impetus to get them done since we had no heating. 

We ordered enough material to make an insulated cover for the fridge, too.

Sue used my measurements and her sewing skills to produce them at a fraction of the cost of the same thing I'd seen at the AO Show in September. One downside of these is that it completely seals the inside from outside lights and the "situational awareness" that being able to see out gives you. During the evening 2 or 3 cars came into the area, hung around for a few minutes and then left. I was aware this was happening, but felt a little uncomfortable that I knew no more than that. With the roof up it was obvious I was intending to stay for a while, and some folk don't like that much. My cover story, as if I really needed one, was that I was waiting for the Northern Lights. I had a camera just in case....

I made dinner on the Wallas, which did the job well. Positioning the pot on the hob controls the range of heat as well as adjusting the controls and probably more quickly. It's more important now to make sure the truck is parked level since the hob surface is polished, flat and offers no "grip" like the gas stove. The pot I chose had a slightly convex bottom and the vibration from the hob's fuel pump made it head for the low side quite quickly! I might add a small lip around the edge of the hob to guard against this . It wouldn't be good to have an unattended kettle of boiling water fall onto the floor, or anywhere else.

Being able to stand up to cook makes the whole job much more pleasant. There's very little condensation, if any, but I kept the top half of the rear window open anyway, with no noticeable affect on the temperature. The work we did to insulate all the metal inside has paid off. 

No, not a super-kettle..I needed a pot lid

After eating, I settled down in the sitting room with a glass of wine to watch a DVD. Luxury camping, this. In fact the feeling, with all that space overhead and no outside light coming in, was like being in a cosy cave. Come time for bed, I thought about leaving the heater running to test its noise level but decided not to. I wanted see how cold it'd get inside. In fact, the insulation we've put in and the Alu Cab quilted roof lining meant it didn't get really cold despite being below zero outside. In the morning - I slept for 8 hours straight - I could reach down and turn the hob on from the bedroom, and with the kettle in place already I could make breakfast from the bed. Big grins.

In fact, almost everything worked just as I'd designed it to work, which is really satisfying. There's nothing that needs major changes but, of course, it hasn't got the Soup Dragon's seal of approval yet. Only two "gripes":

1. The only thing that didn't do its job was the water pump. What is it about electrical stuff, pumps and me? It worked well in the last configuration so why not now? It makes all the right noises but won't pull water up the 300mm or so from the tank to the filter. I tried sucking on the tap to prime it, but got nowhere, so I pulled the drain plug out and filled the kettle from that. Hmmm.

2. Another thing that is sensitive to being level, or not, is the sink. This is the first time we've had a fixed sink and I hadn't really applied much thought to how a sink is designed. It's just a fancy bucket with a hole in the bottom, innit? Well, no, it's not quite that simple. If the bottom of the sink doesn't slope down to the drain hole in all directions, not all the water drains away. That's not obvious when you look at one - it all looks level and "square".  Our sink bottom is completely flat and the drain is at one end of it so I didn't have to run the pipe horizontally (a potential smelly grottrap) It needs to be set at a very slight angle, compared to the horizontal line of the hob, to get almost all the water down the drain. This is easily done but something I missed - we try hard to get everything square and level and some things work best when they aren't.... Never really thought about it before.

Later, at home, I played about with the pump again. 

I can get it to work if it doesn't have to pull water "uphill" more than a tiny amount. I recall that the previous pipe run was just over a metre and horizontally from the top of the tank, with a very slight bow in the middle. Once I'd primed the pipe the water stayed in it so became its own non-return valve. Maybe this is why it can't cope now? I could lower the pump a little but, quite frankly, it's way too big for the tiny job it has to do so irrespective of the reason it won't work, I think I'll replace it with something a lot smaller - then we can use the space more efficiently anyway.

The trip home was in bright sunshine, frozen puddles and ponds and the gorse white with a hard frost. A fair test of everything, I think, that I was warm, dry and comfortable all night. Job done.