Annie is being framed (and walled in)

I've started the cabinet framing and john wall work.
The first step was to add a small shelf above the fridge (and above its required ventilation clearance).

There are also side walls, cut to match the ceiling's curve.

I'll build the door a bit later, probably along with most of the other cabinet doors.

Next, I built a frame for a john wall. This wall will also hold instrumentation. The john's counter and sink will be behind it. Here you can see the fresh and gray water lines in that area.

The blue tape on the floor (in the above picture) will be where the john's entry doors will be. It's a 2' wide opening. there will be 2 doors, one hinged one the forward end of the frame I'm working on. The other door will be hinged on the forward wall of the john (to be located on the blue tape behind the driver's seat).

We spent a bit of time deciding what wood and finish to use. Our first overconfident guess was spar varathane and maple, but after painting several full wall pieces, the aesthetics committee unanimously concluded that it made the maple way too yellow.

So we smartened up and made some smaller samples with different wood and finishes.
We settled on a water based clear satin varathene and 1/4" maple ply. (The lowermost right in the above pic.

We painted up new full size pieces, and liked the way they looked. Next step was to layout for the instrumentation holes.

The instruments consist of the solar and inverter/charger control monitors, the water and propane tank monitor, the thermostat, and the VSR control switch.

The holes are cut. Man, I love that oscillating tool!

A hole for everything, and everything in its hole:

Mounted up the walls. They are being held to the frame with glue and brads

Next up will be hooking in the instruments, enclosing the space under the fridge and yet to be build closet, and building the closet.

Annie is hot and drained

I ran the hot water lines.

For now they are just terminated with extra length. Better than too short once we have the exact sink locations finalized.

Then moved on to the gray water system. We are doing a bottom feed, so input and output share a common tank port.
The drain goes out the back doors.
It has a master valve, and a removable hose bib. The bib is mounted to a union. Here the bib is attached to the drain.

The bib needs to be removable because it has to extend past the closed doors to allow a hose to fit. I have a dummy union end that protects the union's gasket when we are not draining Annie. The dummy end also has a plug.
For traveling, the bib is stored right nearby in the battery box.

Then I ran the drain pipes back to the sink areas, and tied everything down.

The drain lines will also be cut to size once the sinks are ready.
Otherwise, all that remains is to run a vent line from the tank to outside underneath the floor.

An advantage of a bottom feed system is that it acts as a natural trap to reduce gray tank stinkies from getting into the house. However, it means that as the tank fills, the water level in the sink drain lines follows. To help ensure that this doesn't allow sloshing back into the sinks on steep/rough roads, I'll be adding Hepvo valves at each sink drain.

Outside of the sink installation and adding a fresh water pump accumulator tank (location TBD), plumbing is done!!! And that means that, outside of building the control panel, with it's instrumentation and switches, the operating system work is just about done.

We are finally getting ready for the cabinetry, john, and finish carpentry. It is now time for me to start being afraid, very afraid, of the aesthetics committee's judgements.

Annie couldn't hold her water...Now with a hopefully depend-able fix

Well, the check-valve idea in the last post didn't work well.
Looks like the valve doesn't work well with minimal ambient air pressure differential.
That bit of air leakage meant that, in normal pumping operation, the pump would never build up enough back pressure to shut down.

So, I got rid of the whole check-valve section.
Now, filling from a pressurized city source only feeds the lower tank port, and using the pump to fill the tank from an unpressurized source only feeds the upper tank port.

All is tested and, so far, works leak free.

Here are the revised diagram and photo.

How are we going to hold our water?

Depends on the source, I suppose. Up to now, it's been a completely tankless task. But that begins to change with this entry.

We will be installing our fresh water tank and plumbing it to a water pump and water inlet port (see the 21 Dec. '15 entry).

As you may remember from that entry, (or more likely don't remember since I didn't discuss its capabilities in depth), we are using a 4-way Anderson Brass valve. This valve allows one to
1. Fill the tank with city water, under city pressure.
2. Winterize using an  unpressurized source and Annies' water pump.
3. Run the cold line fixtures from the tank with the on board pump.
4. Run the cold line fixtures directly from city water, under city pressure.

Here is a pic of the various valve connection points:

The valve allows  two of the ports to be connected, depending on the function you want.
For example, to run fixtures from the tank, the tank is connected to the pump input:

I wanted to add another function for the times, out in the boonies, when we  might need to refill the tank from an unpressurized water source. (Of course we'd use an external in-line filter for that.)

So, I came up with a modification that should allow use to use the winterization mode to fill the tank.

In winterize mode, the pump's input is connected to the outside water port. If we want to fill the tank that way, we set the valve to winterize mode and set the external 2-way valve to have the pump output feed the tank's upper port via the check-valve (more about the check-valve later...once your eyes are thoroughly glazed).

Otherwise, we keep that 2-way valve set to normal mode.

In city fill mode, the pressurized source directly feeds the lower tank port, and via the check valve, the upper port as well. I want to be able to fill that way because it should be faster than only feeding through the lower port. The pump is turned off when we're filling from a pressurized city source, so its built-in check valve prevents any backflow into the pump.

When we use the tank as our water supply, the 4-way should function normally...with one exception.

If the tank water level falls below the upper port, I suspect there is a chance that the pump would just suck air through that port without my check-valve in place.

OK, so much for theory. Now on to actually installing the ***$$(**@ thing.

The tank has a 41 gallon capacity, and sits 17" high. It will live under the bed, and feed the bath and kitchen sinks, and the H2O heater. The top of the tank is above the level of the exterior fill port.

First I made up a frame to mount the tank.

Upper and lower section being glued. They will also have metal braces.

Mounting the frame and tank to the floor. It's bolted in, and the tank is also glued down with 3m 90.

The tank sit almost directly over the axle. 

I mounted the pump, and started experimenting with plumbing line placement.

Most of the lines are 1/2" PEX. The pump is connected with flex hose in the hope that it will help de-couple noise and vibration.

Detail of the fill port connections:

 And the hook-up at the tank:

The blue lines are the feeds to the eventual fixtures. That probably won't get its own writeup.

The  line at the lower right of the tank will go to the drain outlet (and valve). The drain will exit through the floor near the rear door.

The clear hose exiting the tank at the upper left is the vent hose. It vents at the external fill port.

In the next few days, I'll tie the lines down, temporarily plug up the ends and start testing for leaks.

A cool project

With the ceiling done, we're moving on to installing the fridge and closet unit. This will go on the driver's side, in between the future bed and the future john. (Those features will be described in a future feature.)

The fridge and closet will sit above the already installed hot water and house heaters, as well as the main power distribution/fuse box.

First step was to construct the frame and shelf that the fridge will rest on.

 

Time for a sanity check. Probably still sane(ish)
The shelf height is set by the  height of the H2O heater. Its top is 17" above the floor.
There will be a couple of drawers, one over the fuse box, and one over the heater vent. They will be built later in the build.

 

Then with a lot of grunting, and even more help from the aesthetics committee, got the fridge into Annie and up on the shelf. The fridge is a Norcold DE0061 12V/120V compressor based unit. We'll be running it on 12VDC only.
We decided on a compressor fridge because it isn't sensitive to being tilted, like an absorption fridge is. If we are parked for a day at a sloped trailhead, that could damage an absorption fridge.Also, it doesn't require the external venting that absorption units need.

Looks like the depth measurement was right on. The fridge radiator is the deepest part of of the unit.

Added a rubber bumper, and tapped the sidewall mounting holes at 1/4-20

Installed the fridge drain hose. It drains through a hole I drilled in Annie's floor

I also swapped the doors to open with hinges on the left, and made up some door panels.

 

Next step is to attach wall mounting strips. These are 5" wide lengths of 1/2" ply. They will support upper cabinetry, and are attached to the wall by 1/4"-20 flatheads and/or bolts, and 3m 90. This is why I tapped the holes earlier.

They also have a couple of steel angles added that will be used to tie the fridge mounting frame to the wall. See in the pic:

Next, I finalized the fridge placement, and bolted the shelf to the floor. The pieces of beadboard are spacers in place of the final maple wall ply.

Then on to making the framework. First the member that ties the angle to the front frame:
It has a slot to sandwich the angle.

And bolted through.

 

The front frame is tied to the ceiling and a ceiling rafter. It is also glued and screwed to the shelf.
An angle bracket helps stiffen things up.

Same mounting method is used on the left side of the fridge.
The frame is installed, and the fridge is temporarily screwed in.
The frame will also be part of the john's aft wall system.
I'll be adding rigid foam insulation to the sides and back of the fridge once I have all the clearances for cabinetry and other hookups established.

Before I get onto the more finished cabinetry work here, I'm going to install the water systems. So part 2 of this chilling tale will be put on ice for a bit. Reason is that I want the easier access to route the piping before buttoning up and making pretty.

Ceiling the deal, part 3, or The Ceil is dealed

In order to install the side panels, we first needed to find a way to mount them close to the walls without bumping into the roof ribs. This mount design also needs to present as much surface area to the roof panels as possible to provide maximum glue and brad support. The roof and walls do not meet at 90deg, so the mount design is a bit more involved.

So, I cut some 1.5"x1.5" wood strips that fit between the ribs. The strips are ripped with a 73 deg angle. That was empirically determined.
The strips:

 

The angle:

 

I pre-drilled holes to screw mount the strips and 3M 90 glued them to the walls.

 

They are screwed into the walls. Their height is set to just clear the roof rib metal.

 

These panels are mounted with a combination of VHB, 3m 90, and brads. 

The first panel is up:

 

 I would've said I was sure that the wood would fit like a glove, but as much as I need to give myself a rousing hand of applause, I could find no hands up there. So, although I would've said that if I could've said that, I couldn't say that, so I douldn't say that....(apologies to Ogden Nash)

OK, I now felt much better, so I installed the rest of the sides, except for the complex curve ones at the front. Those also have to fit around those foam blocks 

 

For the front, I had to cut the pieces into a weird shape. This is the driver side piece:

 In order to connect the front pieces,  I added some tabs to the existing ceiling with TiteBond III.

The front pieces need to be "convinced" that they want to spend the rest of their existence in a contorted shape. The convincing took place overnight with 3m 90 and brads used as incentives. Here's our redheaded  Irish convincer, Studs McSquash:

By the next morning, we, and the panel, found that Studs was quite convincing:

And so, excluding trim work (which will be done much later in the build), the ceiling and this chapter are done.