I Have Kinda Boxed Myself In

I have been installing the shower room and toilet of late.  I have been doing it one wall at a time.  Now the 3rd wall is in I have a problem in sealing the wall to the rear wall and shower tray.  The gap is to tight to to get the gun in and my finger to finish it.

I have a plan that involves 2 nozzels a length of tube, a stick and a plastic washer.   Watch the next blog to see if it worked.

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.

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!

Finally got to do a bit more.

What with Christmas, dark nights, cold weather, snow and general apathy resulting from the former, not a lot has happened in the last 3 weeks or so.  I have been tinkering with the shower and toilet but nothing worth bloging.

I have been busy getting materials in to take advantage of the B&Q sale and pre VAT rise. I now have the bulk of what I need to finish. Well, certainly the expensive kit and the essentials. 

I have rearranged things a tiny bit from the former layout.  I have moved the fridge over to the off side and put a 400mm cabinet on the near side instead of the 500mm originally planned.  This has enabled me to put the Carver gas room heater in a better place than originally planned.  This heater is a room sealed gas heater. The flu is underneath which saves having to run a vertical flu. I will need to make a heat shield to protect the side of the cabinet.  As this is a convector heater I will probably put a small fan under the cabinet to boost circulation as required.

I have also cut the depth of the unit back by about 100mm to give more room when sitting in the passenger seat facing the back.

Flexi Shower Base Solved

The plastic shower tray was very flexible. I am told that some people put then straight in like that and don't have a problem with it, however the amount of flexing bothered me, and besides how many domestic showere flex when you stand in them?

My first idea was to make a cement slurry, and this did look promissing until I turned the tray the right way up (once set) and it fell out and smashed. Plan 2 was to use expanding foam but instead of letting it puff up I put clingfilm over it then a flat sheet with a large weight on it to force the foam to set more solid.  That stuck, but it was still too spongy.  Getting it out for the 3rd attempt was very difficult.

The third attempt was to cut out 14 disks of the right thickness, hardboard was spot on.  Stick these in the inverted dimples followed by a final infill of MDF.  Problem solved.

The base is now nice and firm.

I Can See The Light (s)

The correct lights turned up and are now fitted.  Many thanks to Weekend Leisure for taking the time to put things right, unlike the first company.

That looks better

All I need to get now is some additional mid line marker lights.  These shapes were originally where the handles for the caravan were when this was a caravan back.

Dry Fitting The Fridge

The fridge I got of ebay arrived yesterday. A saving nearly £400 on the equivalent Dometic model. (Dometic took over Electrolux) I am so pleased with it, its almost as new!  It even came with a new and un-fitted flue system.  So far I have only been able to test it on 240v but it works   a treat.

To make a cabinet for it to fit in I have used what would normally be decorative end panels from B&Q's IT kitchen range.

The cut out is for the bottom hinge.

A plinth will be added later

Dry fitted into its designated place.

It will be set back a bit further on the final fit.  Hopefully you will notice its a big fridge so more room for beer.  Hmmmm! beer ;-)

Dry Fitting The Kitchen Area

At the weekend I clad the walls and parts of the ceiling in the bed area with MDF.  I have made the bed area 4'6'' where our tops will be, and 4' at the feet.  I would like to have had 4'6" all over but the shower area needed 6" of space that I could not get from anywhere else.

Today I built the kitchen units.  The units are from the B&Q IT range.  The tall unit needed to be cut down to fit in the motorhome headroom.  Doing this was straight forward of course but once it had been chopped the factory holes at the top for construction fittings were gone, also I am modifying its use to fit 2 standard base unit doors, not the tall line doors it was designed for.  I used the top off cuts as a drill template to make new fitting holes where I needed them.  This was method was also adopted with the short decorative end panel as this for some reason has no holes what so ever.

So here is the kitchen dry fitted.

From outside

From passenger seat

How Difficult Can It Be??

Generally I am not the moaning sort.

However this week I am amazed that despite ordering new light clusters for the motorhome that were clearly shown as the version for motorhomes both companies sent the version for caravans.

The difference is in the reflector.  Caravans have a triangle because its a trailer.  The motorhome version has a square reflector to comply with the law.

The difference is obvious

The first company just said tuff! send it back.  The second were very apologetic and say I will have the right ones early this week.  I hope so as I need to go to an LPG fitters to see about an external tank that can be filled at a petrol station.

Then another company failed to collect an ebay purchase despite texting the collection person with a time etc.  So far they have not bothered to reply to my email about the cock up.

I should be dry fitting the kitchen area this week, and I have just won a large 3 way fridge on ebay which should arrive this week.

Steps

I have been busy with steps.

The first step was to remove the old rear step that was for the back doors.  This is where I want to put the water tanks. The recess the step provides is ideal to enable me to put the tanks under where the fixed bed will be.

The old GRP step fascia was removed to reveal the nice strong steel supports underneath.  The floor then needed to be cut away to the size of the tank.

GRP removed and floor cut out

The whole then needed to be filled to make up the new lower floor and seal up the rest of the whole.

18mm shuttering ply glued and screwed

All fitted with screws through the steel supports

and through the floor.

160l water capacity.

The tanks I am using were industrial food containers each 80l.  I will be plumbing these up in due course.  These 2 water tanks cost me £22 delivered!

The next step was to create a step.

I think when the ambulance was commissioned there was never any intention of using the side door as it was obstructed by a rack, also there was no step.  I needed to put a step in here for 3 reasons.  1 is headroom through the door. 2 my knees aren't getting any younger. 3 now only need a single step up so less to carry.

Carefully considered and marked out.
(Measure twice, cut once!)

All cut out

Nice new step