I did do some math and concluded that it was probably okay to use the “wrong” units but really, there was no pressing need to do so and I’d rather have the right ones.
Without too much fuss I did get through to the battery manufacturer and they agreed that I had received the wrong units. Evidently, these 100-A units were a special order and should not have been released to the wild as general stock. Ooops. No worries. They say they have shipped me two proper units to arrive later this week, at which time I’ll pack up the wrong ones and they will arrange to have them picked up and shipped back. That’ll do just fine. Mistakes happen and it looks like they are keen to make it right and as easy for me as feasible. Fair enough.
Perhaps next weekend I will be able to commission the power system (and do the water test). That’s the last big thing I want to be sure to do this season.
While I waited, though, there was some other little stuff I could do. For example, baseboards. I am not ready to install all the baseboards, since some will go around the kitchen area that hasn’t been invested yet, but I can get a decent estimate of how much footage I’ll need there and I can certainly install all the rest of it. First thing, though, is I definitely want to pre-finish these before installing. But before THAT, I need to fabricate the baseboard trim itself. What, you thought for a second that I’d just buy some?? Ha.
Well, sure, I could just buy some generic baseboards but what I wanted to do is match it to the floor and I made the floor. It turns out through some kind of Chanukah-like miracle (never mind I did the floor over the summer) that my seemingly-not-enough wood managed to cover the entire floor and leave me a fair bit left over after that. A quick measure of the perimeter said I needed a little more than 500 linear inches of base trim. A quick measure of the extra floor boards said I had about 900 linear inches of floor boards. Great. Not enough to do two courses (double-high) but a single course, low baseboard is fine. Its purpose is simply to tidy up the interface between the floor and the wall. It need not be particularly tall. Once I removed the tongue-and-groove features (in retrospect, there wasn’t a good reason to remove the groove, it would have been hidden), the former would-be floor boards were more like 1.75 inches wide. That’s fine. A dwarf baseboard it is.
The finish I used on the floor, Rubio Monocoat, I really liked. It is non-toxic, looks great, and has no VOC. The only slightly tricky bit is that it comes in two parts which must be mixed 3:1 by volume. No problem, really, except when doing such a small amount of surface — 500 x 1.75 inches = only 6 square feet! — mixing up a tiny batch of the stuff requires some precision. Out comes the labware!
The smallest graduation I had was 5ml, so my smallest accurate batch would be 20ml (3×5 + 1×5). It turns out that was a very good guess. 15ml of the oil and 5ml of the catalyst and I had exactly this much left over… approximately none.
My stash of would-be baseboard planks. The wood does vary quite a bit in grain and color tone, as you can see. From a reddish blond to milk chocolate to semisweet, with straight grain, swirly grain, and some other interesting figure (such as the front and middle boards, far left edge). Once the finish has cured, I’ll install the trim for the BeDeLiA and behind the fridge. The rest of the trim goes along the galley kitchen, which needs to be built before there will be a place to put the trim. No problem. I can store the ready-to-go trim in the Cozy Loft in the interim.
Meanwhile, we had a work party at the homestead site, the one out in the middle of Somewhere, to clear some tree limbs and brush to make way for the rehabilitation of the driveway, which is currently just a muddy dirt path. Nearly a century ago, this land was in use by the Boy Scouts, as I understand it, as some kind of camp. This is their old road, which has been in intermittent use for access to the land since then, but certainly isn’t up to handling routine traffic or non-off-road vehicles — yet. No pictures of that – it wouldn’t have photographed well given the dense background of trees and brush. First shot: some woods. Second shot: some woods with a little less wood if you know where to look. Not worth the trouble to take pics.
The site visit was also my chance to meet with a local official about some regulatory aspects about water handling. The meeting went very well. I’m pretty sure we have reached an agreement on what I need to do to have my graywater legally dispatched. Interestingly, he was fine with the compost toilet but didn’t like my graywater plan (just give it back to the earth) — even though graywater is pretty benign stuff (sink & bathwater). If this means I need a septic system to take my fairly-clean graywater, fine. It’s a bit silly (and costly) but if that’s what must needs be done to satisfy the authorities, so be it. Considering this is the only municipal authority I need to satisfy (the municipality accepted that this thing is for their purposes an RV and therefore not “a building” per se, subject to inspection), I’m inclined to do a little hoop-jumping if that’s what it takes.
It seems likely that everything will resolve nicely soon. As such, we took the liberty of placing our mark on the site.
This is probably not the best or final location for the marker – it was simply what worked in the moment. I had no idea exactly how it was going to need to be mounted when I prepared the sign at home, so I just winged it with a couple of eye-bolts (rather than just eye it with a couple of wingbolts) and some light synthetic rope and figured that would be sufficient to the task at least in the short term. The point was to put something of our intention on the land, to hold our place, so to speak, as preparations are underway. So yeah, it sure looks like we’re doing this here 🙂