Lots of jobs!

Managed to get a lot of jobs done over the last couple of days:

Shower & Tap Installed

I wanted a shower tap that turned on and off instantly in order to save water. So showers will basically be, get wet, turn off, soap up, turn on, rinse! So I went for a standard lever tap and used 15mm copper pipe with compression fittings. I quite like the industrial look! The shower head is also an eco shower head, so hopefully save water there too.

Shower Light

I pondered over what light to have in the bathroom for a while. Then I found this USB rechargeable motion sensing LED light! It's perfect! It comes on when entering the bathroom and turns off when leaving. It has an internal battery which can be recharged by USB. So once it runs out, I can just whack it into one of my USB wall sockets and recharge it in an hour or so. It is also really bright and lights the bathroom nicely. Best thing, was easy install, no wires, just 2 screws.

Thermostatic Mixing valve

At first, I thought I'd just put the hot water from the heater straight to the shower. I then realised that once the water had heated, it would be 70 degrees! So probably not a good idea to shower with just that! I did some research and the best thing I could find was to use a thermostatic mixing valve. I would therefore need to run a cold feed to it, in order to get the mix. I also had to figure out how to go from a 15mm compression fitting to a 12mm flexi pipe. I found a fitting on ebay, that went from 15mm to a hose tail, so this was perfect. 

Gas Drop vent & divider

Seen as there is a gas joint on the water heater, I needed to add a gas drop out vent. I tried putting it into the already exposed floor but after drilling a test hole, I realised it was right above a chassis member! Annoying!! So, I had to move it to the side slightly and go through the wood.
I then added the divider by screwing 2 battens, one in the floor and one to the top and then attaching ply.

Consumer unit, Fused Spur & earth cable

I finished off the consumer unit by adding a 5 amp fused spur from the 10 amp MCB to power the electric side of the water heater, This was a pain as it was already in situ, so I had to climb into the bed box to do it! At 6 foot 2, it's not very comfortable!! I then had to fix the earth cable to the chassis. I used a standard 6mm2 black cable for the earth and just added yellow and green sleeving. It was then fixed to the chassis with a M6 bolt.

Water heater control panel

This was a right pain as I had to get it to the other side of the van. I tried several locations but settled on here, as it's easily accessible but also out the way.

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Reginald's Brain

I decided early on that I wanted a system in the back that would give me decent quality music on tap.
After a lot of reading and investigating I decided to go for a raspberry Pi.
It is hooked up to a 320w Alpine amp and 2 x 100w monitor speakers,
It draws hardly any power so is perfect for what I need. I decided to install it in the wall and have a touchscreen front end, so it is effectively like a jukebox.

I also installed 2 switches next to it, one for the Pi and one for the amp. Inside the casing, I put a ground loop isolator, to stop any hum from the ground wires and also, as the Pi requires 5v (instead of the vans 12v), I fitted a step down unit, to turn the feed to 5v - USB.

Here's the installation:

Once I had got the hardware sorted out, it was time to make the operating system look nice and customised. I used an image called car pc and tweaked the skin and a few other bits to customise it for Reg!

I haven't tested it inside the van with the speakers yet but I have tested everything with headphones and it works brilliantly. The weather is a nice touch for when we have a wifi connection. I'm umming and arring whether to buy a USB GPS unit, in order for the navigation to work, so we can browse local maps!

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Moving the VW fuses and relays

I went to see if my batteries would fit underneath the seats as I had planned. They did, however, they didn't fit in the drivers side due to the relay box being in there and also the earthing point for a couple of van electrics.

So, annoyingly, I had to come up with a plan to move the relay box somewhere else. I hate doing jobs that were unplanned, they just get in the way of progress!

Anyway, I went about removing the drivers seat and base. Managed to take a great big chunk out of my knuckle in the process. Finally got the relay and wiring loom free, then began re-routing it.
Built a box attached to the passenger seat and cut a hole for the relay plate to fit into. this took me most of today.. Urgh...

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