Camping At Work: Battery D is dead, probably.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Battery D is dead, probably.

I gained access to a decent battery charger last night and let the battery. I let it charge at 10A and when I checked on it a few hours later, it dislayed F01. I looked this up and it means "F01 Internal Shorted Cell Battery - Cannot be charged. Have battery checked by certified auto service center."

So this week, I'm going to drop that battery off at the vendor and see if they can get it working. Apparently, this is one of the first two batteries I got in Oct of 2009. It's been going bad all summer, so hopefully I can get them to replace it if need be.

On another note, I finally finished up the leftover tank of propanee from last year. Yesterday and today I've been running the propane heater quite a bit. Yesterday I ran it for over an hour during the day, and this morning I let it run for 30 minutes as it warmed the van from 25F to 50F. So a new canister is in and I have 3 remaining.

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About

I keep track of my equipment costs here.

Photos are here.

I work about 117 miles from where I live. My work schedule is fairly interesting. I work night's – 12 hour shifts. It alternates between 3 and 4 shifts each week. Factoring in a 1 hour lunch break, I work 33 and 44 hours. I then end up with really long weekends. The drive takes 2 hours and 15 minutes each way, so on a 12 hour shift, a round-trip is 16.5 hours. That leaves 7.5 hours to sleep, hygiene, and eat. For the last two years, I have been either renting an apartment or staying on a coworker's couch for the 2-3 days (and it is daytime that I sleep) that I'm at work. Rent in the DC area for a single bedroom apartment is very comparable to my mortgage payment on a 5 bedroom house at home.

For a permanent solution, I have decided to use a conversion van as my apartment during the work week and hope to sleep in the work parking lot during the day. I checked with the both the county sheriff's office and the county attorney's office. While there are rules against sleeping on a public sidewalk or park during the night (which might apply to someone inside a van) there are no issues with me sleeping at those same places during the day. Private parking lots require permission of the owner, otherwise I could wake up with a $100 fine on the van. The sheriff's office advised me that I should be prepared to be woken up a few times if someone called in a suspicious vehicle. Otherwise, there are no legal issues with me camping out in the area on a semi-regular basis.

My quest for cheap living begins.