This weekend I wasn’t sure how much I would get done with it being Easter, but I managed to get some work done. I cut the holes for the water fill hatch and the outside shower. Then I located and drilled the two holes for the furnace. Since the furnace vents are a slip fit from the outside, I went ahead and screwed the furnace into it’s final position. The hatches are just sitting there for now; they will be installed properly after the exterior skin is in place. After that I installed the two battery trays. The trays are a bit longer than my current batteries, but I want the ability to upgrade to group 27 sized batteries in the future. The straps hold the batteries securely in position despite the size difference. After that, there was still a good bit of daylight, so I wired the two batteries into the junction box via 50 A circuit breakers. Then I wired the junction box to the fuse panel via a switch, and I got the first interior circuit run. I wired the linear actuator relay circuit to the fuse panel, and then ran a wire around the inside of the cabinetry to the kitchen cabinet and hooked up the actuators. There’s still circuits to run for lighting, power sockets, water pumps, and the furnace, but those will be easy. The winch, however, will take some doing since it’s pre-wired and bound together, it’ll take some finagling to get it to cooperate and hook into the junction box. Not sure if that will be next weekend or not, but stay tuned to find out.

This weekend, I finished the cabinet frames, then framed in the drawer openings, installed all the cabinets, and put the paneling on them. I had previously believed that with a variety of rotary tools, die grinders, and 1/4″ routers that I had no need for a rotozip, and boy was I wrong. I picked up a rotozip yesterday and it kicks serious butt doing paneling work. The work would have been slow and painful with a rotary tool, and the router would have been too big & bulky to get into the tight spaces; the rotozip had plenty of power and speed, but it’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand for the tight spaces.

With all the cabinets installed, I drilled and cut the various holes I need for wiring and plumbing. I also cut the hole in the exterior wall for the water heater and built the platform that it will be installed on. Next on the project list is to finally run all the wiring! There’s also a few more holes to make in the exterior for the water fill compartment, the exterior shower, and two small holes for the furnace intake & exhaust.