1968 Travel Queen Resto Mod - 12. Waste Water
Part 12. Waste Water is pretty much self-explanatory. Is it black? Is it grey? And how is it done in this vintage resto-mod so that advantage is gained in such a limited space? These are issues both p...
Forum Discussion
{The following post is very confusing. As it is read, keep in mind all the alterations described to existing completed portions are simply "modifications" so as to make future possible component removal easier, in the event of needed repairs for particular parts of the camper}
Today I'm moving to the very end of the waste water - the dump valve.
Between the dump valve and the shower drain, I've realized I really constrained myself on space at the grey water tank.
I guess that's to be expected. Here we are with a camper interior that has headroom of only one inch shorter than I am tall - 6'3". I'm 6'4" with age. I've lost an inch over the years, but you know how those spinal discs get over time. Of course on the outside of the camper it's a little bit more, what with one whole inch of ceiling, framing and roofing, not counting vent heights. But camper height is only the one aspect. Most campers with tanks use a basement these days.
Lil' Queeny never had a waste tank before. And at least the black tank is self contained in the portable toilet system, so the challenge here is only grey.
The other skimpy space issue deals with the free area around the tank for plumbing connections. The galley sink has natural space for a straight in shot. The bathroom sink has a top surface access and is tight, but shares room in the battery box. The shower is the real challenge, because the shower elevation HAS to start out relatively low, and the inlet into the tank is at the top of the side wall. In that connection there's only 3" of elevation change between the two connections. That will be worked later and is quite a challenge.
But even back at the dump valve, there's a very short distance between the exit connection and the "enclosed" access door.
And this is no 3" dump gate valve for normal sewage hose connection. No, this is simple a 1.5" gate valve adapting to a garden hose connection. You know, grey water.
Between the tank and the outside edge of the floor is only 6.5". And a good deal of that is reserved for both the gate valve itself - and its required connectors and adapters, and the access door thickness.
One design would be as shown, with the hose adapter fastened here. There's two reasons I don't like it. One - it furtehr reduces how much tank water will come out by centering the drain hose that much more higher than the tank floor (already a design flaw for this particular tank - but I have it and I have to use it). Two - every dump will leave some leakage INSIDE the camper. Completely unacceptable.
I had planned on elbowing the downstream plumbing through the floor with a hose connector on the bottom (there's room above the bumper, a pretty good solution actually) but I don't want to drill large holes through the structural 2x2's and the line-up wasn't good here to miss those structural members.
My solution is this.
And it brings the valve adapters to this.
These are the players.
The "dump adapter" will thread onto the end of the dump valve, both providing a complete as possible emptying of the tank, as well as bringing all the connection outside, except of course the threading on and off of the adapter, but by then the water has "done flowed". Drips can be wiped up; acceptable for a freeze proof gate valve.
I'm not using the original access door. I'm ordering one that is not only insulated and locking, but has internal framing designed for a potential flip open section, so the door can close and lock with the adapter attached. Heck, that might even become permanent!
But getting the gate valve to this stage was interesting and the main challenge of the day.
Here's why.
This photo shows the tank raised 1/2", each piece of spacer board is 1/8" paneling. That was the distance needed to raise the tank so as to spin the gate valve flange. See that's an important issue to me. I don't want ANY tank (or fixture) connection that cannot be "repaired" in it's current position, with only minimal disruption to the rest of the camper - even in spite of my unique and challenging "space confinements".
And as with many things on this camper, I'm not just improving on a camper's original design, I'm designing a great deal of it myself. And I'm not a camper designer. But I do PLAY one on RV, so I have that going for me, which is good.
Because of adding the tank, I also added its hold down method(s). You know, because you never can tell when a grey tank is going to rise up against it's master and cause chaos and commotion. Very untrustworthy objects they are, but they do have a special charm that causes us to keep them around, don't 'cha think? Cute little things. :)
But because of that, I had build in various hold downs, to tame its wild nature, at every turn! There was a board on the bottom of the "eventual permanent mounting" of the shower floor. There was the battery tray. There was the cabinet dimensions of the dinette cabinet cut JUST far enough up to let the tank exist, but no more.
There's even a wall cleat to hold the dinette floor that provides a little "hold down". No sir - I guess I wasn't going to let no grey water tank rise up and embarrass me in public! Thank you very much.
So I couldn't lift the tank enough to thread in the gate valve flange. At times I wonder if I should have just added a basement when I built the floor. Then I could have also increased the cab-over bed height to add one of those 10" mattresses! Woo hoo!
But that would have defeated much of my whole goal. No, we can do this. What with the Home Depot and all. Let's do this!
It's a good thing I made sections removable. Out came the shower floor.
Off came the hold down board.
Filled were the holes. Primed was the spot.
Tank still wouldn't lift.
Out came the dinette cabinet. Moved was the fresh water cabinet wall.
Okay, okay what's going on here. Why am I having to mess with the fresh water just to get the dinette piece out? That's not handy! Let's fix that.
Okay, that's better. These two little original cleats were the culprits. We don't need those. Get them off of there! They weren't fastening anything, just in the way and preventing the whole "lift out" unless you shift the fresh water cabinet forward.
A little bit of primer. Better!
Where else is the tank hitting? Right along the dinette cabinet under-side that rests close to the tank roof. Cut a half inch off of that and bingo!
Before.
After.
What else? Oh yes. There was that one door catch member when I was looking really close and examining, where the screw mounting round heads were slightly touching the tank material. Not good. I mean sure, I had tamed my wild grey water tank. It was coming right along to my voice commands. But it was still a tank. It might shift every so slightly to the left, over and over again until those screw heads made just the slightest little holes. Not acceptable! I changed the screws out to flat heads.
This photo actyually shows the small gap between the tank and the catch. Neither will shift and the gap is about 3/16". I would say it was an 1/8", but that would be a lie.
So now, the galley, the dinette, and the fresh water cabinets can each be removed, without touching any of the other two. That'll make any future repairs and modifications lots easier!
I was able to lift the grey tank enough as is, but here you see the dinette floor cleat still providing hold down. I think I'll leave it alone, but it could also be easily removed and shortened to give a little more lift if needed.
And that leaves only one other hold down - the battery tray. And it's easy enough to remove the batteries and a few screws, to lift the tank as necessary in future.
Oh, I also got the grey water tank "fill level" instrumentation installed. I haven't run the 12V wiring, but I'm not sure I will.
Today I'm moving to the very end of the waste water - the dump valve.
Between the dump valve and the shower drain, I've realized I really constrained myself on space at the grey water tank.
I guess that's to be expected. Here we are with a camper interior that has headroom of only one inch shorter than I am tall - 6'3". I'm 6'4" with age. I've lost an inch over the years, but you know how those spinal discs get over time. Of course on the outside of the camper it's a little bit more, what with one whole inch of ceiling, framing and roofing, not counting vent heights. But camper height is only the one aspect. Most campers with tanks use a basement these days.
Lil' Queeny never had a waste tank before. And at least the black tank is self contained in the portable toilet system, so the challenge here is only grey.
The other skimpy space issue deals with the free area around the tank for plumbing connections. The galley sink has natural space for a straight in shot. The bathroom sink has a top surface access and is tight, but shares room in the battery box. The shower is the real challenge, because the shower elevation HAS to start out relatively low, and the inlet into the tank is at the top of the side wall. In that connection there's only 3" of elevation change between the two connections. That will be worked later and is quite a challenge.
But even back at the dump valve, there's a very short distance between the exit connection and the "enclosed" access door.
And this is no 3" dump gate valve for normal sewage hose connection. No, this is simple a 1.5" gate valve adapting to a garden hose connection. You know, grey water.
Between the tank and the outside edge of the floor is only 6.5". And a good deal of that is reserved for both the gate valve itself - and its required connectors and adapters, and the access door thickness.
One design would be as shown, with the hose adapter fastened here. There's two reasons I don't like it. One - it furtehr reduces how much tank water will come out by centering the drain hose that much more higher than the tank floor (already a design flaw for this particular tank - but I have it and I have to use it). Two - every dump will leave some leakage INSIDE the camper. Completely unacceptable.
I had planned on elbowing the downstream plumbing through the floor with a hose connector on the bottom (there's room above the bumper, a pretty good solution actually) but I don't want to drill large holes through the structural 2x2's and the line-up wasn't good here to miss those structural members.
My solution is this.
And it brings the valve adapters to this.
These are the players.
The "dump adapter" will thread onto the end of the dump valve, both providing a complete as possible emptying of the tank, as well as bringing all the connection outside, except of course the threading on and off of the adapter, but by then the water has "done flowed". Drips can be wiped up; acceptable for a freeze proof gate valve.
I'm not using the original access door. I'm ordering one that is not only insulated and locking, but has internal framing designed for a potential flip open section, so the door can close and lock with the adapter attached. Heck, that might even become permanent!
But getting the gate valve to this stage was interesting and the main challenge of the day.
Here's why.
This photo shows the tank raised 1/2", each piece of spacer board is 1/8" paneling. That was the distance needed to raise the tank so as to spin the gate valve flange. See that's an important issue to me. I don't want ANY tank (or fixture) connection that cannot be "repaired" in it's current position, with only minimal disruption to the rest of the camper - even in spite of my unique and challenging "space confinements".
And as with many things on this camper, I'm not just improving on a camper's original design, I'm designing a great deal of it myself. And I'm not a camper designer. But I do PLAY one on RV, so I have that going for me, which is good.
Because of adding the tank, I also added its hold down method(s). You know, because you never can tell when a grey tank is going to rise up against it's master and cause chaos and commotion. Very untrustworthy objects they are, but they do have a special charm that causes us to keep them around, don't 'cha think? Cute little things. :)
But because of that, I had build in various hold downs, to tame its wild nature, at every turn! There was a board on the bottom of the "eventual permanent mounting" of the shower floor. There was the battery tray. There was the cabinet dimensions of the dinette cabinet cut JUST far enough up to let the tank exist, but no more.
There's even a wall cleat to hold the dinette floor that provides a little "hold down". No sir - I guess I wasn't going to let no grey water tank rise up and embarrass me in public! Thank you very much.
So I couldn't lift the tank enough to thread in the gate valve flange. At times I wonder if I should have just added a basement when I built the floor. Then I could have also increased the cab-over bed height to add one of those 10" mattresses! Woo hoo!
But that would have defeated much of my whole goal. No, we can do this. What with the Home Depot and all. Let's do this!
It's a good thing I made sections removable. Out came the shower floor.
Off came the hold down board.
Filled were the holes. Primed was the spot.
Tank still wouldn't lift.
Out came the dinette cabinet. Moved was the fresh water cabinet wall.
Okay, okay what's going on here. Why am I having to mess with the fresh water just to get the dinette piece out? That's not handy! Let's fix that.
Okay, that's better. These two little original cleats were the culprits. We don't need those. Get them off of there! They weren't fastening anything, just in the way and preventing the whole "lift out" unless you shift the fresh water cabinet forward.
A little bit of primer. Better!
Where else is the tank hitting? Right along the dinette cabinet under-side that rests close to the tank roof. Cut a half inch off of that and bingo!
Before.
After.
What else? Oh yes. There was that one door catch member when I was looking really close and examining, where the screw mounting round heads were slightly touching the tank material. Not good. I mean sure, I had tamed my wild grey water tank. It was coming right along to my voice commands. But it was still a tank. It might shift every so slightly to the left, over and over again until those screw heads made just the slightest little holes. Not acceptable! I changed the screws out to flat heads.
This photo actyually shows the small gap between the tank and the catch. Neither will shift and the gap is about 3/16". I would say it was an 1/8", but that would be a lie.
So now, the galley, the dinette, and the fresh water cabinets can each be removed, without touching any of the other two. That'll make any future repairs and modifications lots easier!
I was able to lift the grey tank enough as is, but here you see the dinette floor cleat still providing hold down. I think I'll leave it alone, but it could also be easily removed and shortened to give a little more lift if needed.
And that leaves only one other hold down - the battery tray. And it's easy enough to remove the batteries and a few screws, to lift the tank as necessary in future.
Oh, I also got the grey water tank "fill level" instrumentation installed. I haven't run the 12V wiring, but I'm not sure I will.
