Locker Door Fitting

Less than a week ago I ordered some lockers form this firm Linky  I have to say the quality, design, price and service are absolutely brilliant.  I would throughly recommend them.

So gushing over.  Heres how I did it.  From the inside I marked where I wanted the center of the door. As I wanted the door flush with the floor inside but need to make the initial cuts from the outside, I drilled a small pilot hole 2" above the floor in the center where I wanted the door to fit.  It was then simple to work from this datum to mark out the hole to be cut. The door is 20" x 24" (WxH) and there will be another on the other side.  The reason for not drilling at the floor level is because the body of the drill will force the drill bit to aim downwards ending up below the floor line outside. 

Outer skin removed to reveal yet more stainless steel

I am now using a 9" angle grinder with a thin cutting disk for stainless to cut all the holes in the body.  It is quicker and neater than a jig saw.

Hole now cut easily with the 9" grinder

As the door is going to be glued in place so its necessary to rough up the surfaces to be glued.  A light sanding with a small grinder is all thats needed, then I clean the surfaces with meths just make sure there is no dust or oily surfaces left.

 

Finally the very nice door fitted

Extended Nozzle

After a bit of head scratching I came up with this to solve this problem See earlier post.

2 standard nozzles and a bit of reinforced tube

 With a stiff wire reinforcement bound in insulating tape

This got into the narrow gap just fine.  It was a bit difficult to steer and very hard to squeeze but a decent job was achieved in the end.

Window Fitting

The windows I ordered arrived yesterday so today I started fitting them.

I started with the roof light in the shower room. 

Fiamma-Vent-Turbo-28

Because of the room size and various bit of steel structure in the body this was the biggest unit I could use.  It does let in more than enough light though.  The roof is too thick, as you can see in the photos below, to take the unit as its designed to fit a maximum thickness of 85mm so I will have to make an adaption.  More on that later.

So on to fitting the kitchen window.  As usual now when ever I cut a hole in the body I seem to find a whacking great lump of stainless steel in the way.  So with the hole cut and the stainless removed I was relatively straight forward to fit the window.    

I then cut the hole for the O/S bedroom window. Again SS in the way.  On offering up the window its become apparent the inside and outside skins are not as parallel as the kitchen window was and this is going to make fitting this window more difficult.  The kitchen window was the same but the taper difference is less and there was more give to enable me to pull it all parallel.  To better understand, at the bottom of the windows the inner and outer skins get wider apart.

I have posted on the SBMCC forum to see if anyone has a good and neat solution for this.

I Need A Stiff Drink

Today I ordered  4 Seitz windows, a motorized roof vent, and 2 locker doors.

That saw of a grand! 

Now wheres that drink?

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.