Bus Living, Truck Living, Boat Living. You name it, if you live in a home that is capable of moving by itself, or have the desire to, then this is the place for you.
Hello All. I completed the flooring and now am in search of a roll of linoleum. I screwed the flooring to the floor of the bus and back filled all the holes with body filler and sanded to flush. I hid a photo of the finished job somewhere in Photo bucket and if I ever find it I'll post it.
Most of the past week was spent completing the drain for the black tank and wiring up the macerator. After 4 trips to the hardware store to buy, try and return pipe and fittings I came up with a fairly simple way to get pipe, slice valve, macerator and switch jammed into the 24" X 18" space between the black tank and the rear wheels. The tank dumps on the passenger side of the bus due to space limitations on the driver's side. Since I'll be using a 5/8" garden hose to dump with rather than the usual 3" slinky tube it shouldn't be too cumbersome. At the last minute I decided to extend downward the inner rear fender to help keep the wheels from kicking road gunk all over the plumbing--no pic of that yet. Jack
Trial layout # umteen--looks like it'll work.
All set to glue.
View of installation from about 10' away.
Another view. I lengthened the inner fender to protect the plumbing which still shows in this pic.
Lookin' good, Jack. I like the idea of a macerator, from what I have read you can pump out to any toilet if there is no dump station nearby.
One of the issues with designing any mobile toilet is placement of the black tank under the "drop." I had thought of a new term - a "brown" tank for extended stays. A small black tank under the toilet could be connected to a macerator that would chop the solids and pump the waste to a larger tank that could be located wherever it was convenient in the build.
Hey Jack --- been wondering what you were up to the past week. The girls on the Bikini team have been asking about you too. Looking good as always but can't wait to see how the floor looks. And like you, I added some splash protection around my rear wheels to limit the buildup of mud & such on my fuel & waste tanks. But in my case,I just added large mud flaps in front of and behind each pair of wheels.
And I have just about made up my mind to go with one of the composting toilets and only use my tank (singular) for gray water. Talked to a number of people who have been using them for a while and to a man, they seem to love'em. Not cheap going in but at least there is less plumbing to run.
Thats a good idea Redbear and I think it is done that way on boats--though Stuart would be the the one to ask around here I'd guess.
Tango, Redbear's suggestion might be something for you to consider since you said something about building your bathroom over the wheel well which would make a direct drop tank hard to do. Oh, I just remembered, the Johnson Pump macerator I used is American made BUT, the company seems to be Swedish owned (so maybe they'll send over the bikini temn to help you install their product!) Jack
Hello All. I'm all excited. I found the perfect (in my mind at least) floor covering for my old skool bus. The stuff looks just like the Terrazo floors that became popular in the 20's once heavy electric floor grinder/polishers became available. The real Terrazo is cement with marble chips pressed into it, ground smooth and polished. The stuff I found looks just like it. It's commercial flooring from Armstrong that has been out of production for over 30 years. The good things about it are that the "pattern" goes from the surface to the backing and the surface is extreeeeemly hard--that is great as far as foot traffic is concerned but made the stuff hard to trim and install. Wiffy has that carpet runners for cold toes look in her eye. We'll see. Jack
Hard to tell from the pics but the floor color looks sort of like freshly exposed granite.
Hey Tango, I'd been looking for the marble looking lino that Roach used in his bus but I guess he got the last of it. I knew I wanted "old fashioned" lino to go with my old bus so I ended up driving from one little mom and pop carpet store to the next and after a couple of days at it I found just enough of the terrazo looking stuff to get the job done. The edges were damaged from shop wear and there really wasn't enough left to do a regular sized bathroom without a couple of seams so the sales lady offered it to me for $15 and a promise to show her the bus when it is complete--I jumped at the deal! I have since found a length of rubber edging shaped in cross section like the letter "P" which will dress out the joint between the lino and the walls. It will leave an approximately 1/4" grey bead along the joint. Jack
Hey lost--Yup I've missed you! I hoped your absence had to do with a cross country run and that you'd just appear at my door step one day! What's up? Hope you are all OK. Jack
Jack, no cross country this winter. Not even any cross town. Spent a lot of time battling the elements in our partially insulated bus. It was the longest and coldest winter we've ever spent, except for a couple when we lived in PA, and then we were better equipped. Also, and this will seem strange to most, for much of January, February and March, we didn't have internet access. That's a function of living off grid and a battery pack which died in October. We decided to upgrade batteries as part of the replacement, and our supplier was unable to get the 8D AGMs we ordered until this past week. I suspect that cold weather finished off lots of batteries this year, and the manufacturers have apparently had trouble filling the demand. Miserly winter sun and weak batteries meant that we did little other than charge phones with our power system. Running the 4000 watt inverter was out of the question. Fortunately, we're good at living without power. And oh yeah, the generator died soon after the batteries did.
We have so much sun now that we can do luxury stuff even with weak batteries, and I'm picking up four brand-new 8Ds on Tuesday. Changing the batteries involves more than just swapping black boxes. I have to rip out most of our utility room/bathroom area and upgrade insulation under the floor extension. Also have to have new 2/0 copper cables made for the different battery arrangement. At least I will finally have fodder for a bus update. I've literally made no progress on the conversion over the winter. But then — we didn't freeze.
Glad to see that you're pressing on. I knew you would.
Amen, Tango. This is the winter that won't leave. Every time I think we're through with lows in the 20s, I get fooled. We raise a large garden, and I have thousands of seedlings in the greenhouse that I'm afraid to set out. Supposed to be 28 here tonight.
