Sunday 21 February 2010

Half A Shower Room

Yesterday was a bright crisp sunny winters day.  The original plan for the day was do some welding in the boat. But a thick layer of night frost was slowly melting and making the inside wet, so that was out.

Frost melting as the sun moved round

I have been a bit neglectful of the motorhome project due to the boat project so decided to use the time do some bathroom fitting instead.

Much of the preperation for the bathroom has been done in small chunks over recent weeks.   Now it was time to fit the wall lining to 2 of the walls, the toilet, and some plumbing.


The wall cladding was from good ol' B&Q.  Once cut to size it was simply a case of sticking it to the wall with silicone sealant.  I say simple, I don't know about anyone else but when I use the stuff it ends up everywhere no matter how careful I am. 


The tap connections that came with the mixer fitting were absolutely useless.  I just can't figure out how you could use them to fit the unit to anything, in any way, ever.  So I got a 150mm length of brass threaded tube 3/4 BSP, cut it in half to make 2 x 75mm.  I used 2 sturdy brass tank nuts, one either side to clamp the tube to the wall, adjusted the projection out of the wall to accommodate the decorative bezels, and allow the unit to be tightened so the none of the brass thread was showing.

Before sealing and bezels put on

On the other side of the wall are the connections to the water supply.  I was limited to space in the wall to fit the shower room in the space available even after trimming the shower tray down.  My solution was to use washing machine tails.  This was the tightest way I could find of turning 90 degrees, and the thread is the same as the threaded pipe so no converters were needed.  All I needed to do was trim the ends of the threaded tube to the minimum length required and screw the tails on.

All fitted in a 35mm cavity

I have also plumbed the water supply in to the toilet which is now all screwed down and awaiting final sealing.  The gasket that came with the toilet was  pretty ugly so I decided to discard it and go with my messy friend silicone sealant.  That's for another day.  I might invest in one of those silicone finishing tools if I get back good reports form a forum question about to be asked.




Thursday 11 February 2010

Toilet door fitting

Today was a shower room day. Over the last couple of weeks I had done quite a bit of prep work for the room in small bits between other jobs.  Preparing the shower tray, and the wall that will take the shower mixer plumbing, waste holes and ceiling namely.

The shower tray and reinforced base I made was first to be fixed down,  As the room spans the wheel arch I had to make up a false floor.  Fortunately the arch is only about 65mm hight so still leaves enough room for me 5'7'' to stand for a shower. Just!

Next it was time to mark up the door for the toilet cassette.  I got the instructions out, scanned them for hints.  That IMO was a waste of time.  I got nothing of use from them, so I set it all up on a floor and it was then obvious what was needed.  I set about marking up the wall.



 
 The centre holes were continued out to the outer skin

Next with a hole saw I cut the corners out

 
With the outer skin & insulation removed
 
You can imagine I was delighted to find a stainless steel plate right in the way.  The SS they use in these ambulance bodies is one of the hardest types.  Removing this was quite a job as access to angle grinders was limited.  Once that was removed all I needed to do was cut the internal wall away.


Job done!