Hi Everyone;
I wanted to get some of your feedback and perhaps wisdom on something I have been thinking. I am looking at a BOL which currently has an old school bus on it. The owner used to use the bus to live in before building a cabin. The outs side is in good shape. No major signs of rust at all. The inside needs to be gutted pretty much because some rodents and other animals managed to get inside.
I have the opportunity to either take the location with or without he school bus. I don't intend to use the bus as a place to live nor try converting it as a green house (I have other plans for a green house). However I do plan to install a solar array and batteries at some point and thought that maybe it would be a good idea to us the bus for this purpose.
Here is my thought:
1) I could move the bus in position with the long side facing south.
2) Mount the solar arrays on the roof starting with a few with the possibility to expand in the future (since the bus is at least about 38ft long I could mount about 8 to 10).
3) Board up the windows and house the inverter, and batteries in the bus where they would be protected from the elements, saving me the trouble of having to build a separate building for this or housing them in the cabin.
4) Run cable from bust to cabin to power the cabin.
I would love to get feedback on this. Is this a good idea? What issues I may face? What suggestions can any of you give? Is there another use for this school bus beside a green house, living quarters or underground bunker (none of which I plan to do)?
Thanks guys!
No reason why you couldn't do it in my books. A 38' bus has the weight to make a good sturdy base for mounting against even strong winds. I'd be more apt to create an adjustable rack that allowed for folding flat onto the roof with even a hard cover to protect them during storms and such. I'd also rig the bus as a secondary BOV/BOL too. If you haven't found the thread on bus BOV's, go here http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=77&t=5113 to learn all the benefits this might offer.
I too have wondered how to rig this possibility to my RV too. Solar panels are fairly fragile and banging down back roads would be likely a bad idea unless you really had to. Also check out this site for more info on selecting and installing your array. http://rimstar.org/renewnrg/calculate_your_power_needs.htm
Thanks Knuckle for the links. This is very helpful for me.
I have no plans to use the bus as a BOV, mainly because of the cost associated to fix and maintain it (I have some mechanical skills but no truck mechanic 🙂 ), and also for the fact that I figured just as you did that the solar panels would be fragile and may break going down rocky roads in a hasty escape (a good idea though).
Knuckle said it. The weight makes it ubber sturdy and solid. I know from experience, any waterproof infrastructure is good infrastructure. Ive seen a number of local folks use them for storing dry firewood
I have a Tactical Harness and I have a Tool Belt. The Tool Belt is more Useful.
this is very gud idea for children bus.
The flaw I see with those who expect solar energy to be a reliable resource is that the batteries for storing power only have a short life cycle. If a guy was uber careful and never discharged their batteries too low, always kept them out of critical temperature ranges and so on, you could expect no more than 12 years life. I know this sounds like alot still, but consider where you are at with this life cycle when an event does finally occur.
If you didn't purchase all at one time, some of your batteries would be old while others would be fairly new. This means that you can expect to lose 1/4 of your potential storage capacity within 3 years, 1/2 within 6 and so on... and this is if you could maintain the batteries safe working parameters such as draw and temperature..... isn't that a bummer? 🙁