Last weeks big accomplishment was finally getting all the bits and pieces together to make running water a reality in my trailer. Plumbing is one of those difficult things where even once you familiarize yourself with all of the common components and how they go together, if you don't do it on a daily basis just the simple lack of organization and dexterity makes it an exercise in frustration. Interfacing with tank water, outside water, wood-fired, and solar loops just adds to the challenge, but with enough raw perseverance I got the job done.
Starting at the tank I carefully replaced the 3/8 nylon hose fitting with 1/2, and ran a new potable hose to the old strainer, and ran that into a new shurflo revolution pump to replace the original which worked when I got the trailer and then not so much shortly thereafter. After that I hung a right out from under what will be the folding bed in the front of the trailer and dove into a piece of ancient 1/2 inch hard copper that I found lying around the barn.
Heading back from there we take a moment to T-off to the hot water heater. I'm all for recycling but this old copper pipe is hard to clean well enough to take solder well!
This is one of the cleaner installs I've done on a tank. I like plumbing with copper because not only is it attractive allowing me to leave everything exposed as a demonstration/teaching tool, it also allows me the tightest possible cluster of components, and will handle the high temperatures of solar and wood fired loops. The foundation here is a whirlpool 6 gallon water heater which I chose because it has both side and top plumb ports, which saves me the hassle of pulling the TPRV and drain out to put in a solar/wood fired loop.
What you are looking at here is the hot and cold coming up in the rear with a ball valve shut off, next the cold dives into the tank but also splits off to feed the Thermostatic Mixing (tempering) Valve. Tempering valves are important when installing wood-fired and solar loops (which can get up to 212 degrees) because they protect against scalding temperatures at the tap. This is a serious concern, do not install a solar or wood-fired system without one.
The hot water comes up as per normal, before feeding the mixing valve, and I like to throw a temperature gauge in here just so I can keep track of what's going on in the tank. A street female fitting adapter is not something you'll find at the normal hardware store, but is excellent for keeping things compact. The pressure gauge (top right) is not strictly necessary, but I like to have one because pumped systems are closed loops and without much plumbing to dissipate excess pressure, this will let me know if I need to add an expansion tank. On that note, I'm also planning on heading back and throwing in a brass check-valve just downstream from the pump to keep high pressures from back-feeding into the weak vinyl hose and nylon fitting.
Protruding out the right side of the tank is the Temperature Pressure Relief Valve, which spills extra pressure and hot water when the temperatures get too high. Generally in solar loops we replace this with a simple PRV valve to allow for higher temperatures. I'm lazy so I might not. The PRV feeds a pipe which exits below the trailer, also very important.
In the front is two capped off T's, these will feed the thermosiphon wood-fired hot water loop on one side, and the pumped solar hot water loop on the other. Finally I painted the whole thing to keep it from looking stupid in it's exposed location.
What you are looking at here is the hot and cold coming up in the rear with a ball valve shut off, next the cold dives into the tank but also splits off to feed the Thermostatic Mixing (tempering) Valve. Tempering valves are important when installing wood-fired and solar loops (which can get up to 212 degrees) because they protect against scalding temperatures at the tap. This is a serious concern, do not install a solar or wood-fired system without one.
The hot water comes up as per normal, before feeding the mixing valve, and I like to throw a temperature gauge in here just so I can keep track of what's going on in the tank. A street female fitting adapter is not something you'll find at the normal hardware store, but is excellent for keeping things compact. The pressure gauge (top right) is not strictly necessary, but I like to have one because pumped systems are closed loops and without much plumbing to dissipate excess pressure, this will let me know if I need to add an expansion tank. On that note, I'm also planning on heading back and throwing in a brass check-valve just downstream from the pump to keep high pressures from back-feeding into the weak vinyl hose and nylon fitting.
Protruding out the right side of the tank is the Temperature Pressure Relief Valve, which spills extra pressure and hot water when the temperatures get too high. Generally in solar loops we replace this with a simple PRV valve to allow for higher temperatures. I'm lazy so I might not. The PRV feeds a pipe which exits below the trailer, also very important.
In the front is two capped off T's, these will feed the thermosiphon wood-fired hot water loop on one side, and the pumped solar hot water loop on the other. Finally I painted the whole thing to keep it from looking stupid in it's exposed location.
After that I switched to a roll of soft copper that I've been hanging onto forever for use in a stovepipe heat exchanger but haven't used yet. With this I made a trip around the trailer, following the bends and curves unique to an airstream. Here I pass by the ancient (but hopefully still working) pressure regulator from the outside water inlet. I added a possibly unnecessary ball-valve to isolate it if need be.
Next up we pass by the shiny new shower pan, which means it's shower time, so lets hang a right and look up!
After consternating over half a dozen recycled fixtures my affection for simplicity and raw parts won the day, and I built the shower valve out of two simple ball-valves, although the cleanness of the work leaves a bit to be desired because I had to disassemble it once to change the orientation of the valves (which I later realized would have been better how I had them in the first place, dammit).
After trying a variety of shower heads when this whole setup was plumbed outside to a solar loop during the summer, I decided to go with the Body Spa RV shower kit, at 45 bucks it's a cheap piece of plastic, but it really does seem to deliver the most powerful shower for the least amount of water, just as advertized. I replaced the lame vinyl hose with a chrome steel one I had sitting around from another shower head.
With a swoop to miss an access door, and switch back to hard copper, at the end (cause I ran out of soft) it was time to head toward the newly installed sink.
Although usually used to connect sink fixtures to wall stops, flexible braided stainless hoses work just fine on ordinary fitting adapters.
Down from the sink it's back to plastic, which fits into an ABS T, one end of which vents out the top of the trailer, the other end going toward the greywater tank. Because we've switched from blackwater to composting toilet, there is no longer a concern here about sewage gasses heading back up the pipe so I omitted the normal trap to save on space. If there wasn't already a vent there I would have just used a vacuum breaker instead.
One thing I'm proud of is just how much of the original ABS pipe I was able to recycle back into the trailer. By leaving enough pipe sticking out of the fittings to couple onto when I cut it out of the trailer, I was able to avoid buying any new pipe and just needed a couple a couplers, a T, and a few elbows to fit it all back together. I left a plugged end here as a clean-out. One thing I did to save space was to run the normal drain stack vent out the back of the trailer, beneath the bed. Again, with blackwater this would be a no-no, but with a grey water tank is a fine location to vent to. Sorry no photo, I'll try to add one later!
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