Monday, June 25, 2012

Water Leaks and Wiring Considerations

Aside from the one hole in the roof, the water damage I found in the camper was from the plumbing problems and from windows left open.  The inside was sprayed with closed cell foam, and I could not find any leaks around any windows except for a few cases where I assume the windows were left open.  Only in a few places was the foam separated from the skin--on the roof where walking on the roof would cause deflection.

I was planing on removing all the windows.  Now I will not; I think I'll leave them.  While I'd like to change the machine screws fastening them.  If it is not necessary, I'll do that later. One advantage to rusted screw heads is the camper looks old.  I like the idea of an old looking (on the outside) camper.  A new camper screams target, come break in. As much as I'd like a cleaner exterior, I'm leaving that alone for now.  These screws are rusted pretty badly on the heads.  Some of these won't come out without a fight. Better to leave them alone, IMHO.

The wiring is all done with primary wire (single conductor) and the ground was through the frame.  I found all the internal wiring worked when I bought the camper.  I did not test the running lights, but I have confidence the wiring for this is good also.

While it is good, I may want to change the wiring for maintainability. I plan to fill the cavities with foam, so to keep the wire somewhat accessible I need PVC conduit inside the 1" framing cutouts.  The existing cutouts are rather large and everywhere. Since I'll be using primary wire again with the frame providing the ground path, the conduit does not have to be all that large to snake plastic coated wire though the conduit.

I need to finish my wiring plan and I can start running some conduit.

Considerations:

Electric jack wiring
More AC outlets
Fans
Air Conditioning?  Or provide wiring for future upgrade
Solar Panel Wiring
Round two conductor wire for cable glands (passing through the exterior) electric jacks, external lights, solar panels.
Cable glands for antenna wiring
Stereo, Radio, Ham Radio, and TV.  (TV location where to put it?) Speakers
Video Camera's--For backing up, and outside surveillance.
LED lighting (recessed or not)
Strip lighting.
Night Lights--a few small single LEDs

This job is not looking so hard after all.  Once I get the wiring done, which I can do on a rainy day, I can add insulation and start to enclose the inside of the camper.

No comments:

Post a Comment