Cost of Motorhome Ownership - Per Night Stay [Gulp!]

[Pudsey Bear]

Read his Auto, interesting character.

 

[nabsim]

Cruising? is that akin to kerb crawling?

Similar to putting your keys in a bowl Kev lol

 

[gasgas]

@marchie yes I did think that you would have used a paper spreadsheet. In about 1985 I bought an Amstrad computer because their 30Mb hard drive was the same price as everyone else's 20Mb hard drive. I learned later when I took mine apart because it broke, that Amstrad used 20Mb hard drives and ran them at 2/3 speed, thus increasing the capacity. Unfortunately that also meant the acutal volume of iron filings that were written to and read from was smaller and so the machines only lasted just a bit longer than the guarantee.
That wasn't the first dodgy dealings that Amstrad did . . but if I go on I will be thrown off the forum . . .

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Similar to putting your keys in a bowl Kev lol

Yeah but Liz puts hers in too, so I know what I'm getting.

 

[nabsim]

@marchie yes I did think that you would have used a paper spreadsheet. In about 1985 I bought an Amstrad computer because their 30Mb hard drive was the same price as everyone else's 20Mb hard drive. I learned later when I took mine apart because it broke, that Amstrad used 20Mb hard drives and ran them at 2/3 speed, thus increasing the capacity. Unfortunately that also meant the acutal volume of iron filings that were written to and read from was smaller and so the machines only lasted just a bit longer than the guarantee.
That wasn't the first dodgy dealings that Amstrad did . . but if I go on I will be thrown off the forum . . .

My first work computer was an Amstrad portable (now called a laptop), had an 8” green screen, mains lead or you could use about 10 battery’s if you could keep up with them. No hard drive but two FDA’s, boot from dos on one then use the other to load windows for workgroups 3.11
Was the best I could talk the accountants into getting me for the money but it did the job fine.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

My first one was a used Colour Genie, worked of a tape deck, crap and I binned it, a while later I bought a brand new Amstrad 464? I forget the model, had some coloured keys and the tape player was built in I think, my wife Julie seemed to manage better than me, so she got it in the divorce, next was a SX286 we needed it to run the accounts at Triple S, I got on better with that, sussed out how to do a spreadsheet etc as my then GF was a whizz (DDG too) at puter stuff, as she taught it (Anyone ever use Olive accounts? ) they still use it as it has thousands of customer records.

And I eventually bought a 486 DX. Oh the power , then I got a job managing a Puter shop, loved the job but hated the customers.

 

[gasgas]

..... then I got a job managing a Puter shop, loved the job but hated the customers.

In 1983 I got medical retirement from BT. Then I found it very difficult to get another job as soon as I told them I was medically retired. I decided the only way to get a job was to already have one so I took a job as a christmas help in a computer shop. I sold 3 times as much as the current manager so I got his job, at a significant pay rise. It meant I could go to the building society every week and bank £400 and live off the rest of my pay. Ataris were the best made, Texas were good but had expensive cartridges, Commodores were probably the best value for money, and as for Spectrums - I won't say anything because I will definitely get thrown off. I'll content myself with saying that Sinclair's first product was a 10 transistor amplifier that he sold as kits of components. He got the transistors by the skip load from Plessey Semiconductors in Swindon. When Plessey made a transistor and it failed the most basic gain test it went into the skip and Sinclair came along and bought the skips for £5 each.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

It was the weirdest job I ever had, it transpired that I couldn't advance with Triple S, my partner was risk averse and I wanted to branch out. One of my customers & his wife had become really good friends (still are) and they were branching out and had just opened their second PC shop the then manager went to run that, I was quite PC aware but not technical at all but I knew how to deal with the public being self employed most of my life (Bosses are knobs) but the customers ruined the job.

I'll give an example, this RAC breakdown driver came in with wife and daughter (this is 1996/7 ish) just curious to see what it was all about, they came back a few times just looking and they became a challenge for me to sell them the full monty, PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse with a printer and scanner and as much software as possible, big mistake, thick as pig manure all of them, they picked it up Christmas eve so it could be the present for their little darling in the morning, we opened up on Boxing day morning just in case anyone needed anything, they turned up, it won't turn on, they brought the whole lot back, so I plugged it in and it booted up no problem but all the aftermarket software had gone, so it must have turned on and little darling deleted it all, so I said to come back the next day as it takes ages to install it all.

A few days later they bring it all back in again, no software but at least it had turned on so some progress, now I was much younger then and much more polite, so we did this dance for a few weeks, when Mr RAC came in on his way home one dark night really pissed off saying we had sold him a pile of crap, I told him my tech man had gone through it so many times he was wearing the motherboard out and he was going bald with the stress of having to re-install the software, so I said we would look at it one more time, but just bring the box in we really do not need the scanner etc, I had said this many times and the next day I found out why he didn't understand, he brought the box in all right, he brought in the cardboard box the PC tower came in, nothing in it just the box, I told him to take his box back home, tell his daughter to stop deleting files as we had taken pictures of his screen showing all the different folders, we had a record of how many times he had given us unpaid work as we had to log the tech hours, and to find another PC shop and if he wanted to take us to court we had evidence of his time wasting and slung him out of the shop.

 

[trevskoda]

At the individual level, Trev, the spiralling costs of Motorhomes, especially during the pandemic, meant that prices were rising much faster than savings could accumulate; and, at a nation level, if everybody waited until they had the cash to make a purchase, the economy would be much smaller, far more peopl would be out of work, and the smaller economy would have less scope to pay Benefits to the extra unemployed. And public services in the wider sphere would be further impaired

So, I'm not polluting the planet in my Euro 5 m?home, I'm reflating/expanding the economy and expanding public services ....

Steve

Any thing that deflates my wallet dont get bought, my lat g dad told me if you cannot aford things do without, i owe no man a penny.

 

[trevskoda]

In 1983 I got medical retirement from BT. Then I found it very difficult to get another job as soon as I told them I was medically retired. I decided the only way to get a job was to already have one so I took a job as a christmas help in a computer shop. I sold 3 times as much as the current manager so I got his job, at a significant pay rise. It meant I could go to the building society every week and bank £400 and live off the rest of my pay. Ataris were the best made, Texas were good but had expensive cartridges, Commodores were probably the best value for money, and as for Spectrums - I won't say anything because I will definitely get thrown off. I'll content myself with saying that Sinclair's first product was a 10 transistor amplifier that he sold as kits of components. He got the transistors by the skip load from Plessey Semiconductors in Swindon. When Plessey made a transistor and it failed the most basic gain test it went into the skip and Sinclair came along and bought the skips for £5 each.

Banking 400 a week, must have been some job, folks here dont earn that in a mth

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Huge money in IT in the 80s Trev

 

[marchie]

Any thing that deflates my wallet dont get bought, my lat g dad told me if you cannot aford things do without, i owe no man a penny.

But money in its own right has no intrinsic value, being a medium of exchange, and it's purchasing power is diminishing over time because of inflation. There is the famous picture of a German in the 1920s hyperinflation, pushung a wheelbarrow stuffed with Reichsmarks to buy a loaf of bread. Thieves left the currency and stole the wheelbarrow!

If the economy were an engine, money would be the engine oil, facilitating a smooth rotation of the moving parts ...

Steve

 

[gasgas]

Banking 400 a week, must have been some job, folks here dont earn that in a mth

Very slghtly adhering to the topic title:

It was good money. I bought a duff VW Devon campervan (old aircooled rear engine obviously) with a 'broken gearbox'. It cost me an old wreck of a car, value about £200 at the time. Getting back to the topic, the camper was cheap because the owner's wife couldn't drive it. You could start the engine and select a gear with the wavey-around gearstick, but you didn't know what gear you had got. I lifted the floor rubber covering and saw big cracks in the H cutout steel plate. Aha I thought, and welded the cracks, thinking I had found the fault but no, it wasn't that. So I got Mrs Gasgas to operate the gearstick while I went underneath to inspect the linkage. All the joints were working properly. I lowered the van and took it to a VW main agent. "You need a new gearbox, £1500". I thought well if I need a new gearbox at least I can remove it and do the labour myself. I got underneath it again and saw where the linkage went into the box. It was in the middle of a square cast alloy plate held in with lots of bolts. I undid the bolts and removed the plate and a bit of gear linkage. The bit that actually moved inside the gearbox was like the end of your little finger, which lived in a plastic marble with a slot in it. The slot was worn very oval and obviously not operating correctly. I went back to the VW shop with the worn marble and said have you got one of these? Yes, here it is, 35p. I then went to the workshop and said this is what you want me to pay you £1500 to replace, it's just a 35p marble. I fitted it and the gearchange was a mere flick of the wrist, working perfectly. I resprayed the camper and sold it for about £4000 I seem to remember. It was a beautiful camper which may even be still on the road, it was Ziebart rust proofed and there wasn't a speck of rust anywhere. I sprayed it with the then-new 2 pack paint, two tone and it was beautiful. I asked my pharmacist friend about this new two pack paint. I said it's got a skull and cross bones on the tin and it has cy-an-o-acryl-ate (I douldn't read the word fast). My friend asked if I had heard of Hitler. What did he use to kill Jews? Cyanide. Well that's what is in cyanoacylate. He said "when you see a car worth dying for, spray it with that stuff". It is now banned. I am still alive. I haven't seen a car worth dying for. Although a BMW i8 is a wondrous work of art.

 

[marchie]

Very slghtly adhering to the topic title:

It was good money. I bought a duff VW Devon campervan (old aircooled rear engine obviously) with a 'broken gearbox'. It cost me an old wreck of a car, value about £200 at the time. Getting back to the topic, the camper was cheap because the owner's wife couldn't drive it. You could start the engine and select a gear with the wavey-around gearstick, but you didn't know what gear you had got. I lifted the floor rubber covering and saw big cracks in the H cutout steel plate. Aha I thought, and welded the cracks, thinking I had found the fault but no, it wasn't that. So I got Mrs Gasgas to operate the gearstick while I went underneath to inspect the linkage. All the joints were working properly. I lowered the van and took it to a VW main agent. "You need a new gearbox, £1500". I thought well if I need a new gearbox at least I can remove it and do the labour myself. I got underneath it again and saw where the linkage went into the box. It was in the middle of a square cast alloy plate held in with lots of bolts. I undid the bolts and removed the plate and a bit of gear linkage. The bit that actually moved inside the gearbox was like the end of your little finger, which lived in a plastic marble with a slot in it. The slot was worn very oval and obviously not operating correctly. I went back to the VW shop with the worn marble and said have you got one of these? Yes, here it is, 35p. I then went to the workshop and said this is what you want me to pay you £1500 to replace, it's just a 35p marble. I fitted it and the gearchange was a mere flick of the wrist, working perfectly. I resprayed the camper and sold it for about £4000 I seem to remember. It was a beautiful camper which may even be still on the road, it was Ziebart rust proofed and there wasn't a speck of rust anywhere. I sprayed it with the then-new 2 pack paint, two tone and it was beautiful. I asked my pharmacist friend about this new two pack paint. I said it's got a skull and cross bones on the tin and it has cy-an-o-acryl-ate (I douldn't read the word fast). My friend asked if I had heard of Hitler. What did he use to kill Jews? Cyanide. Well that's what is in cyanoacylate. He said "when you see a car worth dying for, spray it with that stuff". It is now banned. I am still alive. I haven't seen a car worth dying for. Although a BMW i8 is a wondrous work of art.

In an attempt to steer the Thread back off topic, I just bought an antique corset bone, rumoured to have belonged to Guinevere when she had her liaison with Sir Galahad. So that's 'The Cost of a Knight's Stay', then ...

Steve

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Can someone PLEASE unplug his router.

 

[Bear]

For me personally ...life is far far FAR to short to be sitting poring over figures and filling bloody spread sheets in ...

We simply get away in the motorhome with each other and the dogs ..

As much as we can
Drink as much as we wish
Eat what we wish
Watch as many sun sets as we can
Walk on as many beaches as we can
Have the heating on as much as we want
Stay wherever we fancy ...free/site/etc

How much that costs ....I neither know NOR care
If we can afford to do it ....and want to then we do it .

None of us know what tomorrow has in store for us .

So agree with you. Just retired and after 50 odd years at the coal face, time to enjoy while I got my health n faculties ( thunk I git me faculties ).
Life's for living and we don't know how many beats on the ole drum we have inside, we got left.

 

[Bear]

Or downsize

Got a tag thought fleetingly to downsize. Gave me heed a wobble and nope needs the space.

 

[wildebus]

I think some folk miss the point.
Steve is doing his sums and logging all his data, but - and he can correct me if I am wrong - I don't think the numbers generated makes any difference whatsoever to how he enjoys and uses his Motorhome. They probably remind him that he should be using his Motorhome more, but he wouldn't need the spreadsheet for this.
Horses for courses .... He looks at the financial data for the running of the vehicle. I like to look at power usage of my Motorhome for example, but doing so doesn't make me or prevent me to use or not use it. All part of the hobby/pasttime of Motorhoming that some do and some don't, it is that simple.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

I keep saying to Liz, it's the cost of using it.

 

[nabsim]

Steve is just OCD and has spreadsheets for everything, would surprise me if he has a master spreadsheet listing links to all others including suitable descriptions of course