letter-to-mom

Battery refresh in the van done jazz alley

Dan Weatbrook

— 3 min read
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Battery refresh in the van done jazz alley

Good Morning! Monday, Jan 29th 2024

Hey Mom! How are things?

Things are good here. This is just a quick note to say hi! This weekend, I finished a big project on the van. The entire “house battery” system is complete now. During our road trip between Christmas and New Year’s, we realized that the batteries on the van were not up to the task, as they could not keep the heater running all night. So, the second morning of the trip, I got on the internet and bought the new battery I had been looking at and chatting about with Eric. And that started the journey. The new battery was at the house when we got home from the trip. I have written about this before, but the summary was that I spent a weekend removing the old batteries from under the rig and installing the new battery. 

Well, then it turns out that we needed a new charger for when the rig was running (I had actually installed that earlier in December) and a new charger for when we plug it into the house, and while we were at it, we might as well get a new solar charger to match the rest of the gear we had bought, and finally, a switch to be able to cut the power coming in from the solar panels on the top of the rig (because that is code now). 

So all the parts had arrived, and it was warm and rainy at the pass, so we decided to stay down the hill this weekend. So, only on Saturday I got in the right frame of mind and spent the day figuring out where I wanted everything mounted and how I wanted to wire it all together. And I got it all done, and everything all buttoned back up. So now we are in a great place with all of that. Having that all in a happy place with sound equipment and good wiring feels great.

After that, Catherine and I spent the evening cleaning the house and finding some stuff to get rid of, which also felt good.

Sunday, I headed down to Kyle’s house to work on the race car, and then in the evening, Catherine and I went to Jazz Alley with Curt and Amy. We saw Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin Quartet, and they were great.

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 Alex’s head shot for his new job. Apparently they do his for everyone. He also got a hair cut :)

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This is was the temporary install of the new chargers and battery.

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This is me trying to figure out where everything is goign to go, and how to get it all to fit in, with good clean wiring.

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This is getting closer to the final arrangement

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The solar cutoff switch is on the left, and the solar charger is next to it.

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here are all of the chargers installed, and the inverter is at the bottom.

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And here is what it looks like with everything all buttoned up.

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Here is Kyle after we finished working on the race car yesterday. There is still a lot of work todo, but it is coming together.

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Catherine and me waiting for Curt and Amy at Jazz Alley

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The band on the stage. The drummer is the son of the Lee Ritenour, and the bassist is from Serbia (he had won a world wide competition for your musicians.)

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Me, Catherine, Amy and Curt after the show.

Love ya

Dan W

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