Still caravanning

A long time has past since the last post, and not much has changed really.
Caravan has been static on a farm in Surrey.
I more or less gave up using an inverter as it draws too much current.
A long time ago I completed the heat exchanging fan/ ventilation unit. This is functional and useful in the heat (instead of leaving windows open), but I have not found it heat exchanges very effectively so am only using it sparingly.
I beefed up the door, so it is much better insulated, also painted nicely.

Tidied up some of the woodworking around the windows, but this is not quite finished.

I have regularly been using a rocket stove, and this is pretty good. It took me a while to get the fuel amount right and I have been using kindling and natural firelighters (based on wax soak), some harvested wood, but it really takes a long time to dry out without heating it. I confess to not cooking much, just heating food and boiling water.

The video below was recorded about 6 months ago and is a detailed update.

I am quite happy with the replacement spats I made for the wheel arches. The original plastic ones were split and looked awful. I tried to find replacements online, but sny available were very manufacturer specific (not available for my old thing) and ridiculous prices. I just used pine mouldings from B&Q.

Unfortunately I had a solar panel fail. I was an idiot, and it took me a long time to realise even though I though I was pretty good at electrics. The voltage was present from the panel, but no current was drawn. I noticed that the battery was failing to charge and over the autumn/ winter was continually using the mains battery charger to get power. I mistakenly thought the battery was a dud, and spent 70 pounds on a replacement only to observe the same thing (after I had taken it to the dump...) I then suspected the solar controller, ditto. I have 2 of these now. Then I tried to troubleshoot the panel to no avail (Titan Solar were useless at responding to queries), the replacement one (from another supplier) has been working just fine.

You can see a split in the plastic connector.

I have learnt that the new ultrathin flexible solar panels are not so good as they appear, I still intend to fix it, but it is REALLY hard to get to the internal components as they are bonded.

I had a small leak to deal with around a window about a year ago, but I have been really happy that all the seals have held and all the interior and exterior decoration still looks very good.

Spring update

So, I have been using the caravan on weekends if the forecast is not too bad.
I have it parked on a farm with electric and access to water. Its just very muddy around the van so I have to park 50 yards away and remember my boots!

I have had to abandon the eco-credentials a bit and bought a mains battery charger and a little heater. The solar panel was producing very little in December when I bought it, getting much better now.

Significant progress tidying up the interior woodwork. Flexi-plywood fitted around all windows now, and started work with some edging trim.

The front blind is upgraded, and I have added stain and an edging trim to the wood at the top of the mural.

A not fun visit before Christmas with Alan involved both of us scrabbling around the van trying ro secure a tarpaulin in the wind and rain, as there was a leak over one of the windows 😒
This is mostly sealed now, but not totally...

Heidi has stayed with me a few times now - she likes it, and has had good sniff around the farm.

Coldest visit so far saw me wake to 1.4 degrees C. I think it was about -4C outside. Very happy with my thermometer, humidity and CO2 meter, it allows me to judge the heat versus oxygen issue!

An aspect of the original van that had frustrated me was the door. It was thin, and researching upgrades drew a blank. So I have now finished a DIY upgrade. This entailed:

1. Cut insulation to the full size of the door.
2. Cut plywood to match
3. The insulation used was 25mm, I then bought some 20mm angle aluminium. This I cut at what will become the corners  so I can bend it around the perimeter of the new door.
4. Secure it all together using self-tapping screws into the existing aluminium on the door.
5. Add wood to beef up the frame.
6. I bought a thicker lock, but not thick enough. I modified it myself to cope with the new thickness of about 65mm.
7. The new lock is a different shape, I have also cut some aluminium sheet to make a surround and painted it blue.

No final  picture, last snag is sticking the new aluminium to the old, it won't lie flat. Duct twpe is great though.

Have been using the composting toilet regularly. Urine is fertilising the farm land. Been wary of the 'solids' part. Only coffee grounds and sawdust until this morning when it was properly christened...

Cold! and mural finished

Arrived at the van at about 10pm on Friday, the much touted cold weekend!

I had been thinking for a while how to use the redundant heat of the car engine, making a makeshift storage heater, with stones/ a hot water bottle. Anyway, in the meantime I thought it would do to heat up my curry leftovers. Wrapped it up in foil and placedon top of the engine. It got warm after 20 minutes.
The temperature really dropped that night, I made a couple of videos to document.

When I arrived the inside temperature was about 7-8 C, this dropped steadily through the night. It did disturb my sleep, at about 3.30am to boil the kettle for my hot water bottle. The temperature reading then was 2.8 C inside. When I woke in the morning it was as below,

Saturday evening, I worked inside the van. A bit of body heat will help right?
I get the mural wallpaper finished and the right hand windowsill.

It's worked out pretty well. Saturday night was not so cold and I think my tactic of working to keep warm helped (it was after 11pm I downed tools). I kept the windows less open, and the CO2 reading was offscale in the morning (>6500 ppm), but the air felt OK, and airing in the morning brought it back to normal.

I have one tiny tear in the paper, and I notice in the morning that a hand sized section on the curve is not in contact with the wood, nothing I can do about either. I will add an angle moulding across the top next time, and varnish the paper for protection.

Now the winter projects need doing- upping the door insulation and adding a heat exchanging vent. In the meantime I will be more cautious planning to stay over!

Desert mural

Now, I am working on adding a wallpaper mural of a Route 66 view to the front curved wall. This was an early idea to go alongside reducing the front windows. I bought the mural in about March, so really want to see this finished...

The front wall is faced with standard 3.6mm plywood on the lower section, this is nailed in place. A couple of joints are not quite perfect. The top section is faced with flexible plywood and is NOT square, this will be an issue with the paper.

I buy thick lining paper and this goes on OK, I have to make several darts across the top to deal with the curve. Some joints and nails are still visible, so I add another layer of lining paper.

I hope I have learnt how to do this shaping with the cheap paper, now for the real stuff.
The mural is in 4 parts that you paste clockwise from the bottom right. The size is about 3 m wide and 2 m high, so I choose which view to go for (van about 2 m wide). I measure it so that the vertical join is down the right hand side of the window.

All through I am pasting the wall, although I am not supposed too; no choice. It just means each piece is a bit slow to put up as I wait for the paper to get damp and deal with the bubbles etc. I got a bit confused with the measurements, obviously it matters with this stuff, but nothing I haven't been able to cope with as I go.

First piece up successfully.

Pretty happy so far. There is a small tear in the paper halfway up the window, it doesn't show in this picture. I hope it will be unnoticeable when I fix the windowsill.

That's all I managed, back this weekend to finish it.

Chassis repairs

The repairs to the chassis are important, as this is fundamental to being roadworthy.
But I have not enjoyed this part, and because I delayed it, it caused extra problems. I also needed to use in total 3 mechanics and ordered various bits and bobs - this is now complete more or less!

The van is old - estimate 1985-1988. Not only does this mean some parts are shot due to age but some are no longer available.

So the instructions to the mechanics went like this:

1. (On purchase) "Yes, I know its a wreck, just do what you have to so I can tow it without killing anyone."
2. (Before driving Lancashire to Surrey) "Yes, I know its a wreck, but the first mechanic told me the chassis was basically sound?... just help me work out how to get all the workings around the A frame at the front fixed. Oh, and do that work please."
3. (After 2 months use, mostly on the same site in Surrey. After the site owner refused to move it having 'done his back in' trying to get the jockey wheel to behave, and after a few conversations where they said, 'it just won't move,' to which I said, 'well I did it'. My welcome is worn out... ) "Yes, I know it's a wreck, but I've hot most of the parts. My last mechanic just didn't have time to get the missing bits so I had to delay the work. I know it was unsafe, still I got here and I didn't kill anyone..."

This has been a slow piece of investigation work. The good news was that the basic chassis rectangle is fine, as is the axle. The wheels are adequate, new tyres were installed at the start.

The hitch worked on the first move, but after 6 months in the Darwen elements, it was seized. The hitch is attached to a large piece of steel which bolts onto the A frame. It also includes the damper, handbrake and emergency cable.

Detective work on the chassis reveals this label retrieved from the axle centre in the rain by Keith (father-in-law, thanks).

The correct coupling for this chassis is ALKO 90S, which I duly ordered. However, it is not that simple.

The handbrake on this is a 'gas lift' one, this is fundamentally different from the ratchet type on my van. ALKO don't sell that anymore. This part could not therefore be fitted, the brake cable under the van was also seized. What mechanic 2 did was remove the hitch bit on the left and fitted that only. So I did the long drive with no handbrake, the van is probably about 6-700 kg, I was assured this is OK as long as driven cautiously.

Mechanic 3 was very perplexed when confronted with this. After much head scratching and googling, I got hold of the following parts, which he came back and fitted in an afternoon.

In the intervening months, the handbrake cable had freed up, so that's something! Above is the required type of handbrake. Another issue was that the jockey wheel was an integral part of the removed coupling, meaning I needed a new jockey wheel and a clamp to bolt to the side of the coupling (this was also wrecked, hence the back problem described above... ). The other part in the picture is an energy store to assist the brake mechanism, its predecessor was likewise wrecked. The parts pictured cost £55 and the coupling was £180 but I hope to sell the handbrake from that - it's no use to me. No picture of van, I haven't even seen the work yet.

The other chassis related problem I had is using the corner steadies/ legs. These were really difficult to move with the standard 19mm socket often sold for this purpose. With much added grease and scrubbed of dirt, these now turn much better, but I have found the bolt heads were getting rounded. This problem was getting worse, but using an 18mm socket instead more or less resolves the problem - I have one spindle quite bent but can live with that. It would be a major hassle to replace the spindles or leg assemblies. 

October update

Been very slack updating the blog. Lots of progress but also it doesn't seem like much, as I am only working on the van alternate weekends while spending time with mum.

Any way here goes:

So I started working a fold away table. I took ideas from a few online sources, especially this excellent video - https://youtu.be/owluWNKs7dU
I had some 25mm tube lying about, it was from a disused breakfast bar, and I tried to use this. Following advice I bought some bits for galvinised pipe (scaffold really), this is slightly bigger than the tube I had. This caused an issue as did the weakness of the tube. See below

At this stage I was optimistic, I had spent some time crafting some 18mm marine plywood to be the table top. This is a bit heavy, so the next stage caused a problem...

Oh dear, so I shortened the 'horizontal' section to stabilise it, this is only partially successful.

A bit more tweaking and its usable.

I did improve on this by replacing the 2 top pieces of metal tube with stronger steel, that was attached to the original ugly table. You can seethe final version in thevideo below. I am pretty happy with it now, it is easy to assemble and disassemble and sturdy.

I got some coloured elastic to make nice ties for the glasses and mugs.

I started on the widowsills with flexi-ply but there is lots more labour required on this.

A few weeks later, I just recorded a video to show progress, but iPad battery died half way. Anyway  now I've accidentally deleted it...

In few words, I have finished the upholstery on the difficult folding part of the mattress. I bought large curtains to cut down for the top faces, and some quite cheap plain material for the rest. I bought a Singer sewing machine from Argos and have been learning to use while bizarrely choosing the most difficult section first. It's surprisingly OK and sturdy, even the zip went in quite easily. For the whole project I have bought a 5m continuous zip. I used this tutorial to help - https://jennyswizzle.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/campervan-mattress-cover-tutorial/

Composting toilet 🚽

Looking forward to a proper 'eco' part of the project. I have bought a urine seperator and detailed instructions from Free Range Designs.
This will fit easily in the existing 'bathroom'. The toilet will deal with the 3 'p's. The urine in a bottle can be used on the garden. The poo will compost, I think I will use the sprinkle sawdust approach to speed it up and reduce odour.
I am using left over wood for this. The seat base will be 18mm marine plywood but chipboard at the edges because my wood is not quite wide enough. Used a jigsaw to cut the centre hole.

I follow the instructions to build the box, but as the toilet will be boxed in by the shape of the room, I don't need to face the back or sides. A small shelf is added to prop up the urine collector. I looked in lots of shops and online for a suitable bottle, but was not impressed. I decided to use an empty fabric softener bottle - this is ideal and nicely fits the spout from the seperator. Together these parts are shown below.

I need to secure the bottle in place, later.

I tried and failed to get an old second hand wooden toilet seat, and ended up paying £30 at Argos. The tricky part is making this airtight. The rubber spacers are easy to remove from the bottom of the seat and lid. I also remove the hinge, and saw the back to get a straight edge. This makes a mess of the varnish which I didn't like anyway so I sand this off.

The bit that sticks out at the back will act as a stop when the lid hinges.

Next idea is paint the seat and lid with the blue coach paint. I use the undercoat and 2 coats of coach paint (Tekaloid 318) as on the exterior.

The attaching into the van is straightforward, I add a handle to the lod because there is no gap to get a grip of it otherwise.