The B.V.

Number Two Son doesn't normally get involved in naming things in the household.  That duty is officially covered by The Wife my very own ICANN.   Secondary, and usually unofficial naming, nicknames and the like, fall to Number One Daughter who started this practice not long after she began to talk.   The rest of us just have to follow along.  So it was from this unlikely source the family has adopted a name.   He started calling my project “The B.V.” (Big Van) and it seems to have stuck with the rest of the kids and family. 

At this point in the project I have had the countertop and the sink in place for a month or so now.  I even got the drain hooked up a while ago, so I can brush my teeth via bottled water.   In a way, it is interesting each step I take, makes it so much more civilized than it has been.  I feel those things.  So, is it optimal to be using a bottle of water to be cleaning my teeth?  No.  But damn, it was so much better than it was before, I can move on to other projects for a bit.  --Like that fan I just put in.

The other thing, quite honestly, this step costs some money.   $75 for the pump (SHURflo 4008-101-E65 3.0 Revolution Water Pump)  I needed a fresh water tank for $61.  I chose a ten gallon (Custom Roto-Molding L1A RV Fresh Water Tank).  I think that is plenty of water to be carrying with me.   I decided to spend a little extra and get a $42 Pressure tank (SHURflo 182-200 Pre-Pressurized Accumulator Tank) and with it a pump silencing kit  (SHURFLO 94-591-01 Pump Silencing Kit) for another $26.  So total for the project, not counting all the surprises is a bit over two hundred. …And in case you hadn't already noticed, there are always surprises.

I use just a regular switch and wire to
it the 12 volt lines.

Then one Friday payday came and their hadn’t been the rush of disasters running a family of five normally entails.  I had the money.  The main parts came from Amazon Prime.  To put together this whole thing, I also used some bits I had on hand and there was at least two trips to the hardware store. …Because no project worth doing can be done in less than two trips to the hardware.

This particular project sort of crosses over a whole bunch of disciplines, starting with the electrical system.  I knew I wanted a switch near the faucet to control the pump.  The pump is on the 12v system and it should have it’s own fuse.   I used one of the runs of the 10-3 wire I pushed through the frame up to this spot back in the very early days of this project.

I cut a hole through the side of the floor to ceiling shelf.  Into that I hooked on one side of the switch one of the wires from the #10 wire.  On the other side I went to a red 12awg stranded wire and ran that wire to the area of the sink.  At the same time I ran hooked a black twelve gauge wire to the ground bar on the floor to ceiling shelf and ran that wire also to the area roughly where I thought the pump would be.

The life saver!  The ability to pull out the
sink while working on this stuff.

Back when my friend Craigie was helping me install the countertop and drop in the sink, I was very eager to glue the sink in.   But his advice to me was not to do it yet.  I realized in this project what he was talking about.   He told me, “when you install the rest of that plumbing, in this tight of space, it could be real handy to be able to pull that sink out.”  He was totally right.  It would have majorly sucked to attach the pump for sure.  But the whole rest of the job would have been more difficult.  I even say that including the fact, during disassembly, having the trap from the sink slip out of my fingers and dump all over my lap and the floor.   Even including changing pants it was less work to pull the sink to work on that plumbing.  Thanks Craigie.

I mentioned earlier about spending a little extra money for the pressure tank.  I think that's money well spent.  The way this works is the pump has a built in pressure switch.  It pumps the water up to a certain pressure and then it turns off.   Now, you open up a faucet, the pressure drops pretty quick.  But, the pump takes a second or so to wake up and start pumping.  In that time, the pressure has dropped quite a bit.  Your eye sees this, the brain kicks in, and automatically your hand turns up the faucet more to get the water output the brain wants.  But now, the pump is starting to come up to speed and starts really pumping some water to built the pressure.  What happens is suddenly you have way more water coming out of the faucet and splashing around than you expected.  You can train yourself around delay this splash causing situation but it is irritating when you forget.

This whole problem gets cured when you add a buffer tank.  This is a little tank with a thick rubber balloon inside it.  Pump air into the balloon a couple of times a year to pressurize it.  The ballon maintains the pressure in the waterlines giving the pump time to come up to speed.   Rather than the surprise splash, it is just like the kitchen sink at home.

The parts tacked into place and the wires
hooked up and ready to test.

The first step is to set your major components in place. Water weighs eight pounds per gallon and so I potentially had a dense eighty pounds which needed to be secured to something.  I really only had two attachment options.  I could strap it to the furnace enclosure, but case of in the high g-force event, such as locking up the brakes to prevent impact, I couldn’t say what would happen.   I didn’t want this weight breaking my furnace and it’s accompanying propane line free inside the van.  Something like that could make it more enjoyable to have just hit whatever jumped out in front of me.

Really that was the only other option. I knew where the water tank had to sit.  It had to be strapped to the floor to ceiling shelf.  That is the strongest wall outside of the bulkhead wall. 

I bought a pump that was self priming.  The ones that are not specifically labeled self priming are instead known as gravity priming must sit below the water tank.  You need gravity or a hand pump to prime (or initially fill) the pump with water.   Gravity priming pumps are in general slightly less susceptible to damage from freezing and much cheaper to purchase.  But I felt this design was far too limiting because it locked me into where the pump had to sit.   A self priming pump can sit anywhere vs only below the water tank.  My pump ended up directly above the tank.  That placement couldn't have been done with a gravity pump.

But it was this mounting of the water tank that determined where everything had to sit.  Once the water tank’s home was firmly established.   I tried the pump in a few different spots.  I just wasn’t feeling it until I put it on the floor to ceiling shelf wall up above the tank.  I think having it on this more solid wood wall, rather than the thin plywood of the side walls, should make for a lot less radiated noise.

The pump has some rubber footies that I ran some two inch drywall screws through.   The pressure tank had the same.  Thinner plywood on the outside wall I used some 1-5/8ths.  Getting the pipes all run and tightened down was difficult.  I ended up with some loops.  I guess that is supposed to reduce radiated pump noise.

Down there you can see the three-way
elbow.  A plumbing first for me!

To the fresh water tank itself I wanted to use ridged pvc pipe.  I’m not really sure why.  I guess I just have a deep mistrust of the flexible hose and it’s connectors.  Maybe having actual pipe makes it seem more like home. :-)  I don’t know.  I only needed a couple of feet and as The Wife always reminds me, I never throw anything away.   I already had some of the straight sections of pvc in stock, left over from a plumbing project on my house a few years ago.  It took a trip to the hardware store to purchase a 1/2” pvc three-way elbow.  I have to confess this is a bit of a specialty part and the first one I have ever used.  Basically, this is a T connector that is also a 90 degree elbow.  I wanted the water to come out of the tank and either go to the right to a valve which if opened drains to the ground, or up to to where the pump is going to be attached.

I ran the pvc pipe up to about the top of the tank where it changed to flexible reinforced plastic tubing.   The reason for not tying the pump to the hard plumbing was vibration noise.   The plastic tubing takes the vibration out.   The pipe attached to the pump, and then the buffer/accumulator tank.  I initially attached the pump to the wall and then was trying to attach the supply lines to it.  I ended up removing it from the wall, hooking the lines up while I could better line things up, then reattached it.

The pump and buffer tank with the sink removed.

The section of pipe heading off to the floor drain I screwed down to the sub floor and in one section put some PL-200 construction adhesive alongside the pipe.   I drilled a hole down through the floor and mounted the pvc pipe into that hole with expanding foam.

The system as I have built it, to a home builder, looks fatally short of valves.   True, this isn’t like a home where you have a valve in front of and behind everything to facilitate repairs without shutting off all the water.   This project is a little different than that.   It is just so much smaller there was no need for all the additional cost and complexity.

It was a happy moment, that first night.  Living in a van that now had running water.