Some news about the shower setup…
Far Left: My shower faucet and shower head combo unit has been purchased somewhere in England and is being shipped to the USA thanks to a friend in the Flxible community (Thanks Kerry). I went with this unit because it was only one I liked that had a vertical exposed thermostatic valve and I liked the integrated hand shower pole thingie.
Left: I couldn’t find a pre-made bi-fold frameless shower door that would fit the open in my shower, so I ordered this one, which is being modified in the shop.
Right, clockwise from upper left:
1) Shower door showed up and was unboxed and slightly disassembled. We knew it was going to be both too high and too wide for our use, but I wanted to see if the hardware could be modified to our specs.
2) This piece of metal is what would attach to the wall.
3) This round area connects to the wall piec via the gray piece that you can see in the photo above for the bottom and to the left for the top. Our plan is to remove the glass, cut the extruded metal parts to the height we need and then have new glass made to the size needed.
4) I think this is the top pivot along with the part that attaches to the wall.
We also plan to try to prevent the door from being able to swing out into the hallway by making the base of the shower almost touch the bottom edge of the glass and then have a clear silicone squeegee edge on the glass, which will make it extend below the shower enclose lip.
The bottom of my shower is inset into the frame rails, which makes the bottom of the shower lower than the top of my waste tank. A special pump is being used to suck the water out of the shower drain and push it down a pipe into the waste tank.
That pump got repositioned in an attempt to make everything more serviceable. The pump is installed behind my refrigerator, which would make it rather hard to service if something went wrong.
In the left shot above you can see a framed mount for the pump that includes foam vibration insulation, etc.
On the right shot above can see that the pump can be accessed from the window above and pulled out for service. It has has hand tightened fittings. I thought that was an innovative idea and was happy to see that the shop came up with the solution without my prompting.
1) The door opener handle has been reinstalled on the dashboard.
2) An empty mockup dash air conditioning unit has been acquired. This is the second one we tried since the first was too large. Most aftermarket dash AC units are horizontal so that they can be hidden within a classic car’s dashboard. This is the only one I could find that was more square and therefore easily fit above the webasto heating grill that is just below it. Now that we know it fits, the actual unit can be ordered.
3) Now you’re looking inside the dashboard where the lever you see is what’s used to release that long metal arm that was shown in the first photo, which allows you to open the door. The thing on the left is a solenoid that will be attached to the lever via a cable. It will allow me to open the door of the bus via my iphone or a keypad in the bus. There will also be a backup manual cable that will run to a hidden area under the bus where I’d have to undo a combination padlock and pull a ring to unlock the bus if this electronic system fails me.
4) The metal that surrounds the gas and brake pedal area has been fixed up with many holes removed, etc. The paid on many of the surrounding areas has also been cleared in preparation for some dash paint touchup.
The top photo shows the main part of the system where each red block on the edge of a module is the wiring for a single relay. Green blocks are digital inputs (where the system can read things like a switch being turned on, or a door contact switch closing), etc.
We had to add to the system by creating a similar cabinet on the other side of the bus, which is what you see on in the lower photo. That was because the electronic shades used in the bus use polarity reversing to change their direction, which required more relays that we had designed into the original system.
We got the bus’ Music/AV system going for the first time while I was at the shop. That’s because the AV receiver showed up. That’s the box in the upper left. The photo to the right of that shows the TV down and three dark areas, which are where the front speakers reside. We couldn’t get the TV going because we could not find the remote control anywhere. The lower right photo shows the area under the dining/workstation booth where you can see the subwoofer installed on the wall. Unfortunately, the sub was dead out of the box, so we had to disassemble the booth to get it out and sent in for service. The final shot shows some random parts that showed up after I left the shop, which includes a replacement for the TV remote.
I gotta say that the sound system sounded absolutely amazing even without a subwoofer. I can’t wait to hear it with all 5.1 channels running and after being equalized using the Audyssey Gold setup. You can read a review of the speakers here if you care to get an idea of what I’ve installed in the bus:
http://www.soundandvision.com/…/test-report-paradigm-millen…
I came up with a simplified logic setup to control my two roof heat pumps. This allows me to simply enable heat and/or air conditioning and then specify just two settings: Heat Below temperature and Cool Above temperature and then the home automation system does the rest. I can have a much more sophisticated setup where the program changes at night, on weekends, or if the sun is shining on the bus, but I’ll hold off on that until I’m living on the bus and decide if that level of complexity is necessary.
I’ve decided to wire the remote start/stop of my generator to my Victron Color Control GX panel in the bus. That will allow me to control and monitor the generator from the CCGX panel in the bus, or via my iPhone even while I’m away from the bus. For more details on this setup visit: http://
I have to thank my buddy Chris at Technomadia for suggesting this. He had been working with the beta version of the software and let me know that is was just announced.
