The fan update

I think I have figured out why my ceiling fan and front ceiling light stopped working along with the bath light and fan.  A blown fuse.  Duh.  Unfortunately, replacing it causes the replacement to blow immediately.  With the DC power on, I got a spark when putting in a new fuse.  Now, how do I find out why?  Do I have to dismantle everything to find a short?  What a drag.  Guess I'll be disconnecting the batteries and following the wire.  When I bought the van, the inverter, converter were blown due to a short in a wire under the fridge.  I wonder if mice have been busy?   At least I have a decent chance of getting it fixed now that I have a reason for the problems.

Pets in the Van

Nissa on tether in front of rock

One of the big reasons for me to invest in my camper van was to be able to wander about with my pets in tow.  Last summer, I had 3 cats and no dog.  I was waiting and disciplining myself to not get a dog after my last one died a couple of years ago until I had firmly gotten my post retirement life in some sort of order before saddling myself with another dog.  There was never any question about getting a dog, just a matter of when.


There seems to be a lot of people who worry about traveling with cats who hate the car.  Here's my experience with traveling with my cats and how I handled the challenges.

The Bed Raising

My van has a dinette/bed in the rear.  I have no need for seating for 6 or a 6'x6' bed and can comfortably sleep across the rear of the van.  I thought that having about 42 inches between the bed and the bottom of the upper cabinets was a lot of wasted space devoted to the bed.  It was also a lot easier to leave the bed in place while on the road than to make it up each day.  To that end, I decided to semi-permanently make a raised bed in the back.  I got poplar boards to make two boxes raising the bed area by 7.5 inches.   This is item 2 in my list.

The Fantastic Fan is not so fantastic

It finally got warm enough yesterday that the ceiling fan should have come on regardless of the thermostat.  It is sporadic and doesn't seem to work according to the speed control.  I made sure the lid was fully open so that wasn't it but it has to be more open than it did before.  This happened after I cleaned it up of the stink bug carcasses last fall so I must have done something to it.  I'm trying to figure out some way of putting a screen over the top side of it now that the stink bug plague makes that a needed thing.  In the pic, you can see some stink bug carcasses inside the center fan housing (those dark spots).  I haven't found a way to get them out.