You went WHERE?? and you did WHAT??? Lance XRV Update 20 Oct 2024

by Wayne | Oct 21, 2024 | Compartments, Electrical, extruded aluminium, Heated Floors, HVAC Systems, In Floor Heating, Lance, Travel, Zoe + Razz | 8 comments

With apologies for the radio silence from me for the past few weeks and my thanks for your patience, I’m finally back with a bit of an update for you.  Both Christine and I have been eXtremely hard at our mutual “jobs”, transforming Lance for me and writing books for Christine, but as the saying goes “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” and other parts of our lives intervened for the past few weeks so we’ve been on a bit of a detour that I’ll tell you about a bit further below.

My work on Lance has been no less intense and consuming, but for the past few weeks a lot of it has been desk work as I try to keep up with all the research for all the equipment and supplied I need for Lance’s transformation and then getting them all ordered and shipped such that they arrive before I need them and don’t hold me up.  All very necessary and important work but not too exciting or visual to share with you and part of the reason for not posting any updates here the past two weeks.

The good news is that I now have most of the big items of equipment ordered and some have already arrived.  A few quick examples include:
These two somewhat heavy boxes that weigh in at just over 90kg/200 lbs
Inside is the Oasis Zephyr diesel hydronic heater that will look after all the hot water supply in Lance which includes all our DHW or Domestic Hot Water for showers and sinks as well as supplying all the heat for the floors and the interior air.  You’ll get all the details on that once I start installing it in the coming weeks.
Next set of boxes that arrived were these four cartons of the LVP “Click-Lock” Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. 
These are 221mm/8.7” wide planks of eXtremely tough vinyl flooring that I will soon be installing on top of the ACM Aluminium Composite Material that you’ve seen me installing in previous updates.
This was a special order via Home Depot as it has 30mil thick wear layer on top whereas more typical flooring has 6mil.  We used a very similar material for the flooring on our previous project building Mobiüs as some of you may remember and it worked eXtremely well so we’re going with what we know works again here on Lance.

And again, much more to show you once I start actually installing this final layer of flooring.
Many more bits and bobs are now on their way to us here in Klamath Falls including eXciting ones such as;
Three of these Bad Boys which are 400 Amp 12 Volt 5.12kWatt EG4 LL v2 batteries that will form the House Battery bank in Lance which will provide ALL the electrical power from 12VDC up through 120VAC.

Two of these Victron MultiPlus II inverter/chargers that will look after those EG4 batteries above by both converting their 12VDC into 120VAC current as well as charging the batteries from either the four solar panels up on the roof, the 320A alternator on Lance’s Cummins/Paccar engine or when we might have it, 30A shore power.

Three is a loooooong list of other Victron products such as MPPT controllers to manage the solar panel output, Lynx Distributors and Shunts to manage the electrical connections, and more that you’ll also be seeing once they arrive and the installation begins.
And four of these 420W SilFab solar panels that I will be building a custom rack for on the roof of Lance to keep those batteries all charged up.
And most recently including this weekend, I’ve been working with Progressive Automation to build some customized versions of their PA-18 Track Actuators, four of which I will be using to lift the Queen bed frame up on and and down.  It is taking some time to work out the Hall Effect sensors and controllers to manage the four PA-18 bed lift system and ……
One of these 3 stage telescoping lift columns for the large table at our L shaped settee.  I am hoping to finish up working with the engineers at Progressive Automation early next week and get the order in so they can start building these parts which takes several months.
I did manage to get some “real work” done such as putting together this three stage water filtration setup that will mount inside this middle exterior compartment on the Drivers Side of Lance.
And I started building with my adult version Erector set of XAL eXtruded ALuminium.  First up is the rack that will house those three EG4 batteries you saw above, each of which weighs 45kg/98lbs.
This battery rack will be going in here, the front external Driver Side compartment and I’ll cover all this in a future post once the batteries arrive and I start to install them in these racks.

And that’s about all I’ve got to show work wise on Lance for the past few weeks BUT part of the reason for this delayed update is that detour I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
I’ll bring you more details later but the quick answers to the questions posed in this week’s title is that last week we were on a 6 day road trip to eXplore the area at the very southern tip of Nevada. 

Why??? you ask.  Well for the past few months, we’ve been searching and researching where to set up our southern “Home Base” for the winter portion of our annual Snowbird migrations and after many, many months, this was the area that checked off most of the loooong list of criteria we had.

Our key priorities included a property that had warm, dry weather in the winter months in the southern US (to maintain our US residency), a place that was as isolated as possible from “civilization” and yet also close enough for access to good healthcare, airports, Amazon deliveries, Costco, Home Depot, etc.  A great view, no restrictions on what we could build and do on this property and the list went on.  Should be easy peasy to check off all these boxes right??!!??

To our initial surprise we kept coming back to the southern arrowhead shaped tip of Nevada; basically everything East, West and South of Las Vegas and
after many hours scouring properties in this vast area we decided that a road trip down there was in order as neither of us had every spent much time in this area and we needed to get a good feel for it.  So we packed some clothes and food and created a Puppy Palace in the back of “Rocky” our 2023 Honda Ridgeline pickup for our new pups Zoe & Razz and set a course south out of Klamath Falls on Hwy 95. 
Over the course of five days of driving this entire area we finally found just what we didn’t know we were looking for just north of the tiny little town of Searchlight Nevada.  Population <200 where you see the blue dot on this sat view photo. 
Searchlight was WAY too much civilization for us BUT ……… we’d seen a listing for 10.2 acres at that Green flag up to the right of Searchlight and figured why not check that out?!  So we did……..

……. and found THIS.  Now, might not look like much to most of you and did initially surprise us too, BUT THIS checked all our boxes!  10.2 acres, great views including the Colorado River and Lake Mohave if you look closely and if you don’t recognize them, this is in the middle of a forest of Joshua Trees!

And as you can see, not another soul in sight.  Yet downtown Las Vegas, the airport, Costco, Home Depot and much more are all less than an hour’s drive.
To put the icing on this well baked cake, it came with these two brand new (single use) 40ft x 9’6” containers which turned out to have 15 new solar panels and five 330 USG potable water tanks inside! 

Maybe you can start to see how this all adds up to a Goldilocks property that is just right, just for us!?

 
Along the way we had found a fabulous real estate agent (an all too rare find in our experiences) so we were soon on the phone with Aaron as we made the drive back “home” to Klamath Falls with a quick stop in Reno to say Hi to Christine’s sister Cindy and husband David.

So the answer to the second question in this week’s title; You Did WHAT?!? is …………………. On Wednesday we put in an offer (less than $6,000/acre) and on Thursday we got word it was accepted!!!! 

Holy Jumping Joshua Trees Batman!!!  After decades of life at sea, we’re now REALLY dirt dwellers!!!

While you are digesting all of that, I’ll leave you with the other “detour” we’ve been on that isn’t helping too much with us making progress in our “jobs”, and that is looking after the newest members of our family; Zoey and Razz who many of you have so kindly been asking about.  They are almost 5 months old now and quite the pair and best buddies as you can see.
Most recent update is that we were finally able to get them to the groomer after they had all their shots and as you can see in this “Before” shot of Razz, not a minute too soon!
Here’s the After shot of Razz
and his sister Zoe.
And thaaaaaaat’s all for this week folks! 

Really appreciate your patience and all your kind messages asking about us.  All is well as you can see and the next month will be even busier than the last so not sure how much work I’ll get done on Lance as we prep for the move down South, but I’ll do my best to bring you updates on the progress that is made.

Till then, thanks for joining and do leave your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

Thanks!

Wayne