It's Been A Busy Few Days Again.

I wanted a float to better show the water level in my tanks.  After a post on a forum a member came up with an ear plug.  Its perfect and I have plenty of them.  

I decided on unused!

I finished the wiring and tidied it all up and labeled it ready for connection to the fuse panel.

Yesterday I glued the support battens in ready to take the roof panel today.  This is what it looked like this morning.

 Tidy!  NOT

At the end of the day things looked considerably different.

  
While the adhesive was going off I wired up the fuse panel.

Last job of the day was putting in the lights for the main area.

The light on the right is door entry operated

On a side note the windows for the boat project  arrived today.

 

There will be 8 of these and 3 x 18" portholes. 

All Systems GO

Well today was the day!  I finally made a cup of tea using the on board systems.  Well to be precise it was my wife.

First though I had to put the work surface down with the sink glued in and connect the gas, water and waste.  That didn't take long then it was test time.  I powered up the pump and heard bubbles, I had put the pump in the wrong way round! Oh well that was soon remedied.

With the pump in the right way round I opened the sink taps.

Water :-)

I didn't have a kettle so a saucepan it had to be

The gas ring boiled it pretty quick

Our first cup of tea made aboard :-)

Everything else worked as well 

I could had had a shower

 I could have had a ????

I had problems getting the fridge to light, it turned out to be a broken wire on the auto igniter.

The water heater worked a treat

Dry Wet Test

I connected the water inlet up today and did a test.  I am pleased to say no leaks and the air transfer as the tanks filled worked fine.

You can see the water level, but it would be handy to a small red ball floating in the tube.  I am open to suggestions on this as I can't think of anything that fits the bill.  It needs to be about the size of a pea or slightly bigger.  The tube ID is 16mm so I would say 10-12 mm would be ideal.

I also made the flue connection for the fridge, wired up and tested it on 12v.  It works, so I know its good on 240v and 12v, just the gas to go.  Fingers crossed.

I have also done a few other small jobs.  I had to buy 2 x extensions to get the Turbo vent to open and shut, Link this meant I could put the fly screen on and this finished the installation, I put the lock barrel in the toilet door, cut the worktop for the cupboard on the N/S of the MH, put the backs in the 2 base cupboards. Its now making it feel like things are moving on.

Its All Bits And Bobs

Today has been a day of doing odds and sods.  There is currently a lot of parts not finished but can't be finished as the will be in  the way, or something else need to be done before etc.etc.

So today this what I have done.

1. Finished plumbing in the Morco.  I could had done it the easy way and had all the pipes vertical and through the work top but I wanted all the pipework hidden which meant bringing it through a hole from inside the wardrobe.  The cold in was easy as this already had a 90 elbow, the hot came with a straight.  To get a 90 elbow I had to cobble together bits of an odd size that the heater came with.  It is 13mm OD and I had no fittings so in the end I swaged some pipe and made joints that way.  The gas was a bit tricky but with the use of elbows this was eventually achieved.

2. The heater I am using is a Carver flued through the floor.  I have put a small fan in the bottom of the cupboard to give some boost as require.

3.  Wired up and tested the shower room fan.

4.  Wired up and tested the shower room lights.

5.  Wired up the toilet but not tested.

6.  Ran the main power cable and earth for the living quarters power supply.

All the domestic wiring will be served from a switched fuse panel in a service cavity wall which is a wall part of the shower room.  I was concerned about designing the wiring, but in reality it has designed its self with just a little forethought as to where power will be needed. All the wires are tagged.

7.  Cut the hole for the water filler.

8.  Made the door panel for the toilet cassette.

9.  Final fixed the cupboard near the heater which houses the fan.

So a lot of jobs done bringing it all a bit closer to completion.  It was good to power up some lights and fan.  It feels a bit like its coming to life.

Water System

Today I put the water supply system in.   Yesterday I filled the water storage tanks up to test the plumbing for leaks prior to final installation.  Pleased to say all was OK.

 Behind the kitchen sink

I have put all the joints here as I can get to them easily again if needed.  They will be behind the panel the 2 ends will connect up to the kitchen sink.

This is the pump and accumulator, with the feed to the bathroom.  This will all be under the bed.  The pipes going to the left will be under a cupboard.

I decided to have reverse sensors instead of a camera.  I fitted these today as once the main water storage tanks are in I won't be able to get access without removing them.

Roof Flue Ring & Laminate Floor

This is the spacer ring I have made to facilitate the fitting of the water heater flue.  In the earlier blog I made the disks.  Then I cut the hole out shaped them to up, and dressed the edge with a thin off cut of GRP sheet.

I didn't want to get into a session today, just have a potter so I laid the laminate flooring to the storage area floor under what will be the bed.

 £9.98 well spent

I also had a good tidy up which required a trip to the dump.  In the end I took a car load of stuff.  Where does it all come from?

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