Big Difference Today

I am using a very thin vinyl floor covering for the wall.  It has a light texture and pattern, is warm the the touch, wide enough to fit without joins, relatively cheep at £7.99 sq/m and looks great. The only problem with it for me is I am useless at fitting this type of material.  So a quick call to Robert the Carpet last week set him up for fitting this morning.  This is the result.  Robert is happy to consider more of this type of work.  07983 429182.

While Robert was fitting the wall covering I was busy plumbing up the water storage containers.

That done I got on with making some spacing rings for the water heater flue.  The ambulance body on to is over 2 levels and of course where the hole needed to go staggered the 2 which means some packing is needed.  This will be seen when I fit them so I wont try to describe the problem.

First thing needed was some round disks.  I saw on Youtube how to use a circular saw to cut a disk.

The plain wood part I made to cut 90 degrees.  It slides in a grove on the table. I am sure it has a proper name. You can so the one on the left of the table.  Once the blank is cut with a jigsaw its simply a case of screwing through the center and spinning it against the blade.  Only thin slices can be taken at a time, but by moving the slide forward it can be trimmed until the right size is made.  Here's how.



Finally today I finished the trimming the small window in the bedroom area that I started a few posts back.  Here is the finished result.  I didn't bother until now as I needed to remove the cover for the vinyl fitting.

I am pleased with the result

It feels like things are really coming along now.

Kitchen And Bedroom Ceiling

I have been working on the kitchen and bedroom ceiling the last couple of days.

In the kitchen I have fitted the worktop and Smev combi sink / cooker.  You would think they would supply you with a template for the outrageous price of this item, but NO.  It's not difficult I know but............  Oh well.  Anyway its fitted now.  Not finally but dry for now.  

I have also dry fitted the Morco hot water heater but for now its not on the wall. The hole for the flue is also cut and since then its done nothing but rain requiring a temporary blocking.  It can be seen in the bottom of the cupboard for now.

The wall covering is being fitted on Thursday.  I am using a very thin floor vinyl but won't be fitting that myself.  I have a very good carpet fitter friend that going to do this for me.  So in preparation I have fitted the bedroom roof.  

This is quite difficult to photograph as I only have a 28mm lens.  Hopefully you will get the idea. This is the product  Linky  I am very pleased with it, and it looks great.  It has been glued in with Sicaflex 211.  As I hadn't used this product before I did a test with this and silicone adhesive.  I DA'd the surface with 40 grit and did a sample of each overnight.  Sicaflex won.

Extensions To Everything It Seems

I have been on the motorhome project all this week as time allowed

The ambulance body has one huge problem when it comes to fitting anything standard off the shelf.  Off the shelf windows and roof fittings seem to work on the assumption you are going to fit their products into parallel bodies that are between 25 and 40mm thick.  So if you are doing an ambulance neither of these apply.

The theme of the week has been fitting Seitz windows, Fiamma roof vent and the locker door for the toilet.

Here are some pictures of the problem.

 Look at the taper top to bottom and the gap to be bridged

The solution I decide on was this.  There is a wonderful product called Foamex (Best link I could find) used mainly in the sign making industry.  It cuts easily with a Stanly knife and is generally an easy material to work with.  In this instance I have made an extended frame and covered it with mat black vinyl as used in sign writing.  (additional photo of installation to come).

Next problem was the toilet door.  At this point the body is really flaring.  The inside is the square side its the outer skin that gets wider.

I used expanding foam to lock the inner and outer skins together and provide some insulation.  By now the body is about 90mm thick whereas at the top its only around 35mm.  So this gap need bridging.  Fortunately the toilet door comes with a channel which was convenient for use to accommodate my friend Foamex.

As Foamex is a PVC based product its easily heat molded and shaped.  A piece 120mm wide was used to bridge the gap in the body.  The curved corners were formed using a hot air gun. 

In the previous entry I fitted the N/S locker door, I have since fitted the O/S one as well.  I have also dressed the gap with GRP faced ply.  This is used extensively in the truck and trailer body building industry.  Linky  Fortunately I have a fair bit of this left from my trailer manufacturing business in the form of off cuts.

The same problem was solved with a different material for the bathroom roof vent.  Go back a bit and you can see the thickness of the roof.  I couldn't use Faomex on this as the fan runs too close so instead I used white polyester coated steel .8mm thick this was hand folded around a metal pole and inserted in the inner frame and then glued into place.

  The gap is for the fittings on the opener

Here it is fitted. The fly screen will hide the edges

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!