ELVIS the BELUGA WHALE

[jage]

Originally Posted by teeots

Its all ready to use except the grey water tank may need a vent. Do you guys have vented grey water tanks?

Yes there is a vent- before or after the P trap, I'm not sure. I know it's lower so gray water goes out the vent before coming into the sink...

Also, is that spigot your drain? I'd go with a drain valve over a spigot- 90º open/close plus won't get ummed up. Won't there be a significant amount of grey water / sludge always left in the tank bottom?

[teeots]

What sort of fitting is used to exit the van body for the grey water vent?

Yes the drain being located slightly up from the bottom of the tank is a pain in the butt. I wonder if driving onto wheel ramps will be enough to drain out the lower 1" or so of sludge. If not, I could pressurize the tank occasionally by lifting the flex hose off and using my conduit blower. How often the tank needs to be thoroughly drained versus just cracking the valve will determine how I deal with it. Its also pretty easy to remove the tank if it just needs a periodic cleaning, but of course less maintenance is always better.

Your probably right about the drain valve versus the spigot. If it becomes a bother to use I guess its easy enough to change.

[teeots]

I started working on a cabinet for the rear drivers side. The goal is to have a generous night stand with removable top to access the inverter/charger, other electrical stuff and possibly some storage. There will also be an access door at the rear. I built the frame with some fir ripped down to 1 1/8 x 1 1/2", then applied 1/4" to 2 of the faces that don't need to be supportive of any doors, drawers etc. I stuck it in the van for a fitting and I will need to do some scribing to get a better fit before I keep building.

[Bull10x]

Put this on top of your gray water tank
BECKSON 6 INCH BOAT INSPECTOR DECK PLATE access hatch

Then you need a 4" pvc stink pipe going through the cap of the van w/ a goose neck on it. Glug, Glug.

[Bull10x]

If you do use the inspection hatch, I was thinking that RTV silicone would probably hold up the best because of its resilience to oil (oily sludge in the bottom of your tank)

[teeots]

Double Danke Buddy!

[teeots]

We had a reason to travel to Vermont this weekend so last week I burned some midnight oil to work on the van (I had a friend help one night).

We put a 200 ah agm battery in the bottom of the night stand cabinet (temporarily) so we could have some light and water. In the night stand I also temped in a 12 circuit fuse panel.


The yellow are loads, and the grey are switch loops to the side door where I mounted 3 switches- 2 for interior lights, and one for the exterior work light above the side doors. The door card is made out of 1/4" plywood painted to match the cabinets.



The rear cabinet that houses the fuse panel will also hold the inverter charger and serve as a night stand. the top will open with a piano hinge, but this weekend I just dropped it in and its resting on 4 L brackets.



I wired up the water pump and it worked great. its the type that turns on automatically when pressure drops (valve opened). it worked great and we appreciated having running water in in the van. the water did taste a little funny, so I guess I'll flush the tanks again and see if it gets better.



We put up 2 LED strips from ledtronics, on the unfinished high top. These are temporary but will be useful for the summer while we use the van on weekends. I don't anticipate getting to finishing the top this summer, so they may be there for a while. They worked great this weekend. Plenty of light for now. They are switched independently and we found one to be plenty late at night. each 2' strip uses about 3 watts.





I also put the bike racks on the aluminess box before we left. I used the Thule sidearm style racks and decided to use 3 cross bars instead of 2 due to the design of the rack and the amount of cantilever of the rear of the bikes. I did not want the bikes sticking out into traffic, so the middle cross bar supports the swingarm , which determines the location of the front tire. I didn't have enough hardware to attatch the gutters to the third bar, but needed the additional support to take out the bounce, so I used short sections of thule crossbars as spacers and it worked great.




our local thule rack dealer called an hour after we left to say the extra bar spacers I ordered came in.

overall it was a fun trip, no troubles, got a few bike rides in although todays was in the rain, and averaged 13.9 mpg again!

[dhally]

I like the switches mounting position on the door - I've been thinking about where a good location would be close to the door but not in the way when we're inside. I was a little worried about the switches getting wet if we left the door open in bad weather. Does anybody have any experince with switches mounted there?

[jage]

dhally, what about doing Marine Grade rubberized, splash proof 12v switches?

Elivs really needs some deep shag carpet to go with those recessed lights, maybe some nice green like the jungle room.

[teeots]

dhally here is a contura water proof switch. http://bluesea.com/category/4/productline/overview/147 I found them before in a four gang (2x2) set which I want to use for my permanent set up, but I was in a hurry to get out of town the other day so I used the radio shack rocker switches. They did get wet this weekend when opening the door in the pouring rain so I think the marine switches are the way to go.