I thought the last post was a big one, but I never imagined this one to be such a mission. This part of the build was done in two stages; one to get a usable toilet and shower for going away on holiday in summer, and then finishing it all off.
Bed partition
So the build is being done from the back to the front, as the design hangs off the bed frame as a core structural component. The first part to this is the partition separating the "bedroom" from the rest of the space. This also acts as the walls for the garage.
One problem I found was there was a bit too much flex in the bed frame. This would've meant that the partitions would be taking a vertical load, and I didn't want that. So I installed a leg out of a piece of profile that I accidentally cut the wrong length for my roof rack, which was quite satisfying.
I also added some PVC edge trim to add some robustness to the edge of the wood
Loo cassette access
One very important aspect of the toilet is how to remove the waste from the van. I chose to have a hole on the outside of the van to access the cassette because I feel it's more hygienic, convenient, and I had no room for internal access anyway. Unfortunately it meant I had to remove the wheel arch box and wall from the van to get access to cut the insulation and anti-vibration rib.
The door doesn't come with a solid face. The idea is that you use the metalwork cut from your van to fill it in so the paint matches.
In part of test fitting the door I was determining if I wanted the hinge on the top or the bottom. With the hinge on the top you need to hold the door open (or find a way to prop it), but with the hinge on the bottom it's subject to lateral stress which could easily break the small plastic hinge pins.
I decided on having a top hinge. Since I like to try and design the systems around me to be as easy to use as possible, I came up with a solution to keeping the door open: it just so happened the button was the perfect size to fit a 20mm diameter magnet inside. This magnet sticks to the wall of the van to hold up the door.
Lastly I had to refit the wall and make a hole in that for the cassette to travel through.
Shower cubicle
To add some lateral strength to the rear wall a shelf was fitted which braces against the bed frame.
I seem to have failed to get a picture of the next bit, but just imagine where the adhesive is but with PVC cladding on it complete with blue wrapping (you'll see in other pictures if you can't)
Loo install
Unfortunately, to access the cassette hatch, the loo needs to be raised, so I made a platform.
The hole in it is for the cassette vent. A vent which, frustratingly, doesn't line up a bit of the van I can drill through, so I made a groove in the floor for some pipework.
The Thetford C403 toilets have mounting points for brackets which do not come supplied for some reason. These brackets can be purchased, however I designed and 3D printed them instead.
These brackets are first mounted on the wall and the loo is then seated on them. There are other screw holes behind the seat for fixing to the wall behind and these were used once everything was done.
Seating
What does this have to do with the shower build, I hear you ask? Well actually installing this now will help me to properly locate where the front shower wall will go.
Shower cubicle, continued
There's some bits I failed to document here, but basically I boxed off the C pillar by using a beam of wood with some ply and PVC.
I went for two drains because vans are never level and I wanted to minimise the chances of it pooling in the corners.
At this point it was usable and the van was deployed for summer holidays. Between that photo and the next one is about a 3 month gap...
One thing delaying me was trying to figure out what to do with the space between the loo and internal shower wall. I couldn't find any decent use for it so I just boxed it off.
To round the corners I 3D printed a jig to be used with a router trim bit
Now I could've sworn I took a photo of the results, but I can't find it anywhere...
Doing that inside was a mistake.
Now, because I'd done so much before this step, fixing the bottom of the wall in place without using visible screws presented itself a challenge. Another reason why this bit took so long. How I solved this was I used 5mm steel pins (for strength over dowels) and routered an L shaped groove in to the end of the plywood wall I could slot the pins in to.
Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the L shape in the end of the board, but just imagine the grove in the above picture going down through the ply and PVC where the leftmost black mark is.
Vent
To extract the steam from the shower I designed and printed a mushroom vent to sit on the roof above the shower. This will also house the light for the shower.
Loo roll holder
Very important, this. It'll keep the loo roll completely dry whilst having a shower.
Plumbing
The pipes you see are the fresh water in and cold water feed to the calorifier (blue), hot water feed from the calorifier (red), fresh water fill up (black), fresh water breather (transparent/white).
The pump has an accumulator to smooth out the pulsating flow. There's cut off valves either side for maintenance work.
The shower drains are connected to the waste tank with 32mm hose. This is then drained through a comically large ball valve.
Electrics
So I don't have much in the way of details for this because it's not properly fitted. I'm waiting until I figure out how my seating/bed will work before I finally fix it all in place. However, to achieve a working hot shower I needed to hook up the solar, batteries, and inverter so I could power the immersion heater within the calorifier. For now, this picture of a rat's nest is what I have to keep me going.
On the left, the big blue thing is the inverter. On the right the two boxes are my batteries. In the middle the small blue box is the solar charge controller. To the left of that, with all the wires, are my bus bars simply made from flat copper bar. To the left of that is my fuse box and consumer unit.