Hard Wired.....

 7:55 am - Wednesday - November 12th - TWW - 49° F, humidity 22%, wind 7 mph out of the southeast....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 72° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and and I were boondocking on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.....

Looking south at sunset

Looking west

....at Rincon Parkway just north of Ventura, CA.  It is not possible that this was 10 years ago today!  We haven't been there since, and now I'm wondering why.

As is becoming our custom here at TWW we began Tuesday with a 1 mile out and back walk in our fastest time yet.....19 minutes and 34 seconds....

....my knee, thank you Jesus, is not hurting me at all....a little stiff, maybe, but NO pain!

As you may, or may not recall, we had issues with keeping the water bay warm enough on nights when the temp dipped below 30° F last winter.  We have an electric heater down there, but it draws 10 amps, and drains our Bluetti battery bank overnight to ZERO, so that was a no go.  We have a propane heater which has one vent in the water bay, as well as the kitchen, and salon, but it is to noisy to run at night.  We tried two 100 watt light bulbs, but they were not adequate on the nights when it got really cold.  Then one day my brother-in-law, Glenn, sent me a text about a blog he had read where the guy used ceramic electric bulbs to keep their water bay warm, and it worked, so I read the blog, purchased the items he recommended, installed them (one on each side of the water bay) and it worked!  The temp never got below 35 ° F, which is cold, but not below freezing.  The setup I used to provide power to those two ceramic heaters (used for reptile cages) was temporary, using short extension cords.  I  meant to hardwire everything, but never got around to it last winter.

Fast forward to this winter....it hasn't really gotten below 40° F at night yet, but that time is fast approaching; in fact we'll have temps down around freezing, and below this weekend, so I needed to get that done.  Some of the items I purchased at Home Depot Monday were for this project.  I already had some of the things I needed.  At any rate I spent a number of hours permanently installing those ceramic bulb heaters Tuesday....

Driver side

.....I used ceramic light bulb sockets (well they used to be ceramic, but are now plastic like everything else) to hold the ceramic heater bulbs.....

.....I installed an electrical outlet on the forward wall in the water bay into which I plugged the 'Thermo Cube', which turns on the power when the temp gets down to 35° F, and shuts off when the temp gets back to 45° F. I then plugged the two light bulb sockets into the 'Thermo Cube'....

Passenger side 

.....to provide a permanent electric connection I attached a grounded male plug to one end of a length of ROMEX, and plugged it into an outlet under the kitchen sink, and ran it through a hole I drilled in the floor under the stove last winter, then connected it to the electrical outlet box I've had for years.  I've got a piece of flexible electrical conduit through which I'll run those wires from the electrical outlet up through the floor under the stove.

I also wired up the second Victron charge controller I purchased to connect to those portable solar panels I've got on the roof of the trailer to provide an extra source of solar power for the house batteries, and will install that Wednesday.  In all I spent around 5 hours on those two projects.  While I was thus occupied TLE was ironing those gray dress slacks I bought at Savers Monday.  They were quite wrinkled, so she first ran them through Phyllis' gas dryer for about 15 minutes to get out the really bad wrinkles, then ironed them.  They look great, so now I'm ready for the wedding.  By the way, the wedding involves one of our son Tim's friends whom we've known for about 25 years.  Since Tim is flying in from Georgia to attend the wedding (as a groomsman), we decided to drive to SoCal to see him...we haven't seen him since April of 2022.

Clouds began to roll into the Seligman area early afternoon, and for the next 5, or 6 days it will be cloudy, with possible rain Saturday and Sunday.  TLE had me grill two steaks (Top Sirloin, and New York Strip) on the Sea-B-Que around 5 pm for dinner.  She added a salad, and a baked potato for sides.  We split the New York, and will use the Top Sirloin for afternoon snacks.

Thanks for stopping by!