Tag Archives: Grey Nomads

Our weekly food bill…

25/07/2017 Charmaine Leopold

Keeping costs down

The cost of the weekly food bills are going up…this is a fact. So how do we make the most of our hard-earned money when it comes to shopping? There are so many things all of us can do to keep the cost down.

Grocery advice on specials

I personally do not have time to troll through the specials that come in the mail or through targeted emails from our favourite grocery stores. Most of the basic advice on doing the shopping I do adhere to……The top of my list is that I do not go to do grocery shopping when I am hungry, this is very useful for me keep in mind.

A basic shopping list

I used to have a basic shopping list of what I had to get and then top it up with things that caught my eye, but even this approach to shopping would have me spending way more than I had expected by the end.

Under $10 meal deals

Some supermarkets are trying to help families out by making $10 meal ideas, these are good if you have family and have trouble thinking outside the box. There are a few problems I have with this marketing angle from certain supermarkets.

Most meals require you to buy a lot more than is needed for that one meal.
A lot of the meals don’t cater for those with diet requirements.
I have noticed that a lot of these meals do not have quiet enough veggies in them for our daily requirements.

I have at times made meals using these recipes and have frozen the rest for more meal later as there are only two of us. I have also reduced the amount of meat in these recipes an added more veggies which significantly brought the cost of the meals down to even $6 instead of $10.

If you adapt you will save…Big time!!

Just recently I have decided to take a whole new approach to shopping and am saving a lot of money….Be on the look out for my next blog where I will explain it in detail.

Motorhome fit out

The last bit to go on the coach old air conditioning

22/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Will this ever end?

Well, it will I guess as we are almost there, it wont be long. All that is left is to clean up before water proofing the roof. I must say it has taken longer than I thought, but that seems to be what happens fitting out a coach into a motorhome. We had intermitted rain for some of this part of the water proofing section. Not only did I have to pump the excess water out of the roof area every time it rained, but then had to wait till it was fully dry before starting on it again.

I had run out of supplies a few times this week so it was handy that the hardware is nice a close. If we were still at Leigh Creek it would have been a 5 hour round trip to go pick up more things.

These are the only times I like being in the city.

Just the last bits of cutting things away before we finish doing the water proofing.

This is after the 3rd coat and I think this will be all.

Now that the water proofing has been done, we have decided a roof top deck would be a nice touch to the roof finish off. This will give us some more room, this one with a great views. We are not sure what type of chairs or table we want up on the deck. It will have to be fixed to the side some how, so we are leaving that for later on to do. I also am going to fix a wind turbine onto this area as well but again not sure how just yet. I guess all this will come to us over time. So this thankfully will the last blog on the old air-conitioning.

Motorhome fit out

It’s bedroom time

21/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Time to start fitting out the bedroom

Starting from the back of the coach to the front is the only way to go. Under the bed area is where the motor is, so the floor has a raised part, this is a great place to put in bedroom cupboards. With nothing being square or plum apart from the floor I was making it up as I went along. It’s nothing like building a house!

Lots of flat pack cupboard boxes to make up from Bunnings.

The bed should fit between the two bedside draws.

One bit at a time, this cover goes on so more draws can go on top.

Time to put some support in place and insulation before I go too far.

One more box and this level will be done.

With the black timber in place it only just fitted after shaving the back edges off the side boxes.

They only just made it in after Shaving off some timber.

No turning back now time to screw it in place.

Time for some sparky stuff

At this stage it was time to run some 12 volt cables for the LED lights as well as some USB chargers on either side of the bed. We need some speaker cables put in as well for the stereo that was going to go in later on. We are not running 240 volt in the bedroom as there is nothing we can think of that we need it for down this section of the bus so 240 volt is it .

All the power cables for the lights, USB charges and the stereo speakers are in. Lets hope that is all of it.

Time to fit in the down light before I go to far.

12v cables are in place as well as the insulation.

You can turn the LED lights any colour you like.

Now the led light strip in place and all powered up.

I have some fiddle bits of trim around the cupboards, which will be done later on when we get some other work out of the way first. All we have to do now is fit the draw runners on before putting the draws.

We have not decided what we actually want the walls to look like, there has been some ideas floating around but nothing that really makes us confident to want to finish them now. So I will be tidying up the bedroom walls with more ply where all the power cables run and then painting them till we find what kind for finish we are looking for.

Conscious Consumerism, Working on the road

No Cash No Coffee

20/07/2017 Charmaine Leopold 2 Comments

The introduction of a cashless society

Just recently, I heard that some companies are doing away with cash transactions all together and card only will be excepted with these certain establishments. Bernie and I are totally doing the opposite when it comes to starting our coffee shop on the road….That’s right you heard it here first!…Bernie has a great idea to use part of the bin space under the bus near the front door for our pull out cafe.

Affordable food on the road

Right now it’s just an idea, a concept that has to be fully planned out, but one thing is for sure we are only selling to people with notes and coins and not card. This is one way to keep costs down so we can make good quality organic food and coffee more affordable to those on the road. Why give the banks our profits when we can give it back to our customers instead.

Empower people to make a real choice

Some people may say that this is going to make us loose customers, yeh that’s most probably true. Providing a cash only cafe gives the people the money in their pockets and not the banks. We want to empower people to have the choice in making real savings without loosing out on quality, these days this very choice is getting much much harder to find. If the banks show some initiative and offer a better solution to cashless transactions then of course we would consider it, but until then, it’s cash.

Another way we want to be empowered to save is to encourage people to use their own cups and get a further discount on their coffee purchase, we may call it something like ‘your cup discount’. We are all for recycling as much as possible and help customers do the same. If you have a good idea please leave a comment and we may use it….all ideas are helpful.

Motorhome fit out

Still Removing The Old Coach Air Conditioning

09/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Back To The Air-Conditioning

We had already done the first part of the work on the bedroom ceiling, but to finish that job. We had to rip the rest of the old air-con off the roof. I started with getting the sola panels off first, then remove the cover plates.

Now time to remove the solar panels again.

This will be the last time the roof looks like a coach roof

This will be the last time it will look like this.

The finished look of this project we will have a roof top deck up here, but not now that is a job for an other day. Now it’s time to remove the evaporator, heat exchange radiators and blowers. Stripping out the copper pipe, heat exchange radiator pipes as well all the electrical pits.

Stripping all the sparky stuff and back grill to accessing the pipe work.

Old air condition control unit in the ceiling.

One side of the evaporator, heat radiators and blowers to be removed.

More Stuff For The Scrap Yard

I did a trip to the scrap metal yard with all the copper, brass, evaporator and the heat exchange radiators. It’s always good to get some money back, that lot gave me $145 to put back into the project. Next will be cutting out all the aluminium that we don’t need off the roof air-condition area. I all ready have some that we have removed so that we will have an other trip to the scrap yard soon.

Did I see rain?

Well it did start raining on and off for a week, lucky we could put the covers over the holes and with some buckets inside it didn’t get too wet inside. This means I went back inside to do some more work on the bedroom/bathroom ceiling, while it rained but thats an other blog.

1st blog on THE OLD COACH AIR CONDITIONING

Motorhome fit out

Removing The Old Coach Air Conditioning

05/07/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

It doesn’t work so it has to go

From the start the old coach air conditioning never worked at all, the gas was gone and Des had already fitted a reverse cycle air conditioner into the coach before it ever became our project. I started to remove the old air-con in Leigh Creek S.A. in my free time.

The old compressor pump was the first thing to go.

One less thing we have to drag around. No more compressor pump.

The coach is getting lighter.

After taking out the compressor pump, which almost made me blow a pooper valve. After the compressor out it was onto the roof to remove the condensers and fan system. Now the coach is about 120kg lighter, every bit counts the lighter the better.

Condensers and the fan unit are no more.

This is where the condensers and fan came from.

Now Time To Pack Up.

It was starting to get to hot to be working on the roof at that time of the year in Leigh Creek S.A. So before I put the panels back on we used this area store the spare set of wheel for the Toyota land cruiser. The next stop was to Yulara N.T. to do some camel farm work which was great fun especially getting to race at the end of May in the camel races. Curtin Springs Cattle Station was a six day a week job so not much could be done on the bus when we were there, until Zac came up for a trip to do the outside just before we left there in November 2016.

One of the main reasons we decided to head back to Brisbane was that we realised we could not both work and get the bus built properly. The other reason was that while in Yulara we bought a gas strut storage bed that costed us $500 and by the time we got it out to us at the farm it costed another $480. This was way too expensive, so on to Brisbane it was as we found out it was the cheapest way to get the parts we would need for the fit out on the bus.

Motorhome fit out

Bedroom Ceiling…. Time To Prep

27/06/2017 Bernie Cross 4 Comments

Over My Head….. Just.

The bedroom ceiling is the lowest overall in the back of the coach, so it just touches the top of my head. The old ceiling carpet had already been removed by Des, so all I had to do was grind the toilet ceiling panel off then scrap back the foam underlay that was glued to the ceiling.

Old Toilet ceiling, it had a 10mm step down made out of sheetmetal.

Toilet ceiling after removing the sheetmetal panel.

Time To Remove The Underlay

With scraper in hand it was time to start scraping back all the old underlay. This might sound like an easy job, but it had been glued up there very well. I thought it wouldn’t take to long, but I was wrong again as the bedroom ceiling end up taking around 8hrs just to get the foam off.

Last of the foam off the bedroom ceiling.

Now To Get Rid Of That Glue

With the contacted glue still all over the ceiling, the only way that I could think to do was to put a sanding disc on a grinder and go for it. Well… it worked, I had been covered in glue and dust. Thank goodness for a dust mask and safety glasses as once I was finished the job there was crap all over the place.

All the old glue has gone with most of it on me…

I’ll Just Keep On Going

Now that I’ve started on the ceiling, I’ll keep on going and finish it all off inside the coach. The next project will be the bathroom then onto the kitchen ceiling area, so once I have cleaned all that up it will be ready to glue and pop rivet some white Colorbond sheet metal that came with the coach from Des. The ceiling is a good job to do when the weather is wet and raining so while its nice and fine I will go finish removing the old air-con on the roof above the bedroom, they are the wholes in the ceiling you can see on the photo.

Motorhome fit out

Bedroom Walls & Windows

12/06/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

Time For Some Inside Work

Now with the roof fixed while in Bowen, it was time to start on the bedroom. The first thing was the windows…. I had to remove the old toilet window which Des had put in, because for us it was in the wrong place.

Time to remove the old window so we can fit the new one’s

Des had kept the old panel he cut out for the window he put in.

Time For Some Walls

With the window in place it was back inside to fit the insulation and wall paneling 16mm ply the we got when living in Yulara N.T. First thing was to remove the old aluminium sheetmetal so we could put in the new insulation.

Removing old sheet metal to put the new insulation in.

With the inside panels going on its starting to look more like a bedroom, later we will be putting some kind of lament over the ply to finish it off.

Right side insulation and paneling going on.

Charmaine doing some OH & S, Insulation in and starting on the timber paneling after fitting the bedroom window on the left side.

Bedroom ready for the trip down the Queensland coast from Bowen.

So with the bedroom side walls in place it was time to set up the new sleeping area for the next part of our trip down the Queensland coast. We also had to re pack all the stuff we moved into the shed while house sitting in Bowen.

One step closer to having a motorhome, so the dream’s getting their slowly but we are on our way.

Motorhome fit out, On the road problems

Big Bus Big Adventure Air Conditioner ???

06/06/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

Is The Air Conditioner Working

The condenser unit was fitted in the front bin on the drivers side and only had an out vent so if the bin door was closed, things didn’t work that well. This should have been one of the first things that I should have fixed, but as we were not on the road much I didn’t think about it at all. Now after driving from S.A. to N.T. and now into QLD, it was defiantly time to fix it.

Time For Some Modifications

To start with we had to seal the air-con unit to the outside bin door, so off to the hardware store for some sheetmetal. Ended up getting some flashing which would mean I would not have to bend any 90 angles. So out with the tin snips and pop rivet gun to make some ducting.

Made up some ducting to get the air out.

Rubber seals in place so the hot air only go’s outside.

Time For Some Intake Vents

Now all we had to do was the intake vents, I thought three would do for a start and thats all they had at the hardware. So back to the coach I went to start fitting the intake vents. First off was to mark out the holes for the vents then cut them out.

Marked and cut out ready for the new vents

New vents in place so no more over heating while driving down the road.

One Cool Motorhome.

Now that job is done It’s so much cooler inside when driving down the road. Also when we stay somewhere I don’t have to open up the air-con’s bin door again, now that all the hot air is blown outside.

Motorhome fit out, On the road problems

Time To Fix The Motorhome Roof

02/06/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

Why Is It Wet In Here?

The only time it’s good to have a leaky roof is when their is nothing to get damaged inside. After a year thinking the roof was ok in Leigh Creek, we started having problems with the roof again. Mainly because where we moved to rained a bit more. To start off we thought it was only the fiberglass panels that were replaced from the old original bus windows that Des had fitted.

Thanks to Zac for his great help in getting the huge job started by cutting out the old Sikaflex. I was working six days a week @ Curtin Springs Station N.T., all I could manage was regluing after work. It did stop the water coming in around the fiberglass panels.

Fiberglass panels before we reglued then back in place.

Its Still Wet In Here.

Our first house sitting job was in Bowen for Michael and Michelle. We had no rain forecast for the next few days so Charmaine and myself started on the roof to fix the rest of the leaks. The first job was to remove the solar panels and hatches from the roof.

Removed the Solar panels now the hatches.

The Fun Starts Now …….Not !!!

The fun of sanding back the old paint job as well as getting rid of the surface rust around the hatches. It was one of those jobs you love to hate, but had to be done, so with buckets of water and sanding paper in hand it was head down & ass up and off to work we go.

I Do Like Painting

Time to undercoat….. we had been so lucky as it had been raining all the way around us and only that a couple of rain drops on the coach. So after I Sikaflexed all the joints it was time to undercoat using some Infrared Heat Reflective Primer.

Second undercoat, ended up with three coats

Now for the topcoat, the best part of the job as it’s almost done. Des (the bloke we got the coach before us), had already paid for the paint, so now it was time for three topcoats.

Topcoat Solar Reflective Elastic Ceramic Membrane.

A Job Well Done

So after four days we had finish painting the roof and the inside temp had gone down at least 4 degrees. The paint was a polyurethane membrane which meant no more water leaking when it rained and would be a lot cooler in summer. We just have to remove the old air conditioner unit which is now under the solar panels. This is way down the back of the coach once done the roof will be totally finished off, in time this back area will also have a deck for us one day.