Gray water tank, etc.

Finally starting to feel just a tiny bit like a home in here....


Finished the plumbing for the sink's drain. Used ABS and PVC for the s-trap. Braided pvc hose goes down into our gray water tank. PVC and ABS are yucky but there's not really any better options out there short of copper or galvy...and that's kinda crazy for our drain. Also, the sink came with ABS fittings and the gray tank has PVC fittings glued onto it so we just went with the path of least resistance there. At least it's not for drinking water.

Here's our gray water tank all bolted into place! We were able to position it right under our sink for an easy drain. Used more scrap metal from Shnitzer Steel to make the cage. Bolted the box steel onto the ribs underneath the bus.


We also built the skeleton for the bed. The whole structure (with the exception of the 2x2 ledges on the perimiter of the bed) is removable. This way if we need to take things in and out of the back door we can. We used some old plywood sliding doors from Julia's old closet for the platform.

Our fresh water tank insulated with foil bubble wrap. We had a problem with condensation forming on the outside of the tank. Hoping that this solves that problem.


More foil bubble wrap for the covered over windows. We figured out that the oven part of our stove operates with a direct vent system. This means that the reason there are 2 vents (one nested inside the other) is that the outer-most vent sucks combustable air into the appliance and the inner-most vent pushes combusted air out of the appliance. We can't just bend up some sheet metal around the outer-most vent and call it a day because it won't work....they 2 need to be separated on the way out and they need to terminate in such a way that they wont get involved with one another....hard to explain. Anyway, it's back to the drawing board with that. We are looking into ordering the parts for it right now. If it starts to look expensive, we are thinking of scrapping this thing altogether and pulling another stove out of the RVs they have at the pick n pull right now.


Found a bunch of this gorgeous tile at Bring Recycling!!! They match our woodstove! We're going to use this to tile over the kitchen countertop. Still hoping to do a swirly broken-pieces mosaic over the heat walls around the woodstove.


Also found these awesome pieces of junk at Bring. They are little archetechural thingies that I personally ripped off of a piece of rotting Victorian house that someone donated to Bring. Hoping to clean the up, refinish them and mount them somewhere in the corners of our bus...maybe making an archway in the hall? Not sure yet. I'm really excited about them though.

In other news....we've decided to put the propane tanks in a sealed box underneath the bench/couch. It's making the most sense to us right now. (Thanks to Richard for his encouragement on this topic!) It'll be a way for us to really shorten our run from the tank to the appliances which is always a good thing - less pipe, fewer connections, fewer places to leak. It'll also be cheaper than buying a super-expensive under-mount tank. We found a couple used under-mounts from the 70's with no OPD valves...that looked kinda rusty...and decided that we'd be better safe than sorry on this one. Pretty sure that's what we're going to start working on tomorrow. =)

Odds and Ends

Weatherized chimney in all it's glory. It is detachable at the seam above the boot. Had our first fire 2 days ago and it worked beautifully! Bought fire extinguishers. =)


Here's the shut offs for our propane lines - fridge and stove. We hid them underneath the sink so that we have easy access.


Here's the flex hose we're using to connect the propane to the stove. We'll use another one for the fridge. It's plastic coated steel.


J replaced the gaskets on our stove. Nice. Good seal.


Co-pilot chair - so we can both ride shotgun! Ripped it out of a van at pick n pull. Smells a little - will need to be annointed with some kind of essential oil? Cleaned it up and sawed off it's arm rests so it can snuggle up against the driver's seat. I'm going to make a nice fabric cover so that they'll match.


Here's a partial solution for our woodstove security project - plumber's flanges. This keeps it from sliding but not from jumping up and over. We find jumping hard to imagine but we're going to bolt down some u-bolts so that we can ratchet a tie down over it on the road just in case. In the pic it looks a bit like the legs aren't seated on the ground - they are. The flanges are just surrounding them tightly.



Ripped out two windows yesterday! They come out so easy. Sheet metal (aluminum?) from Shnitzer steel.


Top vent is for the range hood fan, bottom vent is for the pilot of the oven. The duct tape is temporary, folks. =) We are going to paint the sheet metal white to match the rest of the bus.


I ripped this ugly 12 volt fan out of the old ugly range hood that came with our stove when we scored it free. The hood is too big for our space so I salvaged what was useful in it. Haven't hooked the fan up yet so I don't know if it works. If it does (I think it does), we're planning on bending a sheet of pretty, decorative metal grill over the front of it. Difficult to explain effectively but it will look cute, godammit. The sheet metal covering the windows still needs to be caulked and insulated. We're going to use that foil/bubble wrap stuff in several layers and then cover the whole thing over with wood. Still need to fabricate some kind of heat-guard for the back of the stove.

Blocking out those 2 windows has really changed the space in an exciting way. For some reason I was getting an Austrailian vacation feeling in the bus now. I've never been to australia but it seems like a good theme to roll with for now. =)

You might have already been able to tell from the pics: it finally stopped raining for a minute! YAY!

Pictures!

Here's Julia's hilarious photo essay of our wood stove installation.....maybe it's only funny to me but here it is. I think the pics speak for themselves.





It's in! Don't worry - the gray cement board look is temporary. We are going to do a tile mosaic over it in time. The very top part of the side wall above the heat barrier is going to be filled in with wood, too. We're thinking metal blinds (not fabric curtains) behind the wood stove. The window that gets cut in half by the side wall is going to be blacked out.

The chimney is secured to the roof but we still haven't weatherized the flue collar. What with snow and rain we're worried that the silicone won't cure right. We're waiting for a dry, non-freezing day. In the meantime, we uesd good old duct tape to hold down the collar and weighted down a tarp over the top of everything. Of course, we can't really light it up with duct tape wrapped around the flue and a tarp over it. Which means we haven't been able to test the stove - there are still questions about whether the stove will have enough draft to work in our bus. We also need to replace the braiding all around the stove door and in some other places (if we're keeping it). Once we decide what stove we're going with we'll still have to tackle the fun challenge of how to secure it in place!

Here's a pic of how we did the heat walls:


Here's me re-wiring our salvaged RV propane oven with high temp wire. The previous owner - some weirdo McGyver - got in there and did some real funky wiring.

Spencer came over today to help us test out the propane part of our stove. It works! I tested and there are no leaks, either. We plumbed the main lines for the propane this afternoon. Working in groups is fun! We still need to figure out the venting situation before we can situate the appliances and hook them up.

We aren't planning on mounting the 2 BBQ tanks under the bus anymore because I've decided it's dangerous. I've been looking at side-mount tanks meant to live underneath RVs. They're about $300. I'm planning on buying one off eBay when Mercury stops being retrograde on the 18th.

Pics of propane progress to come!

Woodstove

The latest revelation: building in the Oregon winter is a serious matter. The rain is pretty manageable (except when we're trying to saw holes in the roof), but the bitter cold is a more formidable problem. The small space heater we've trucked in has been helpful, but even still we've had to learn to master the art of dressing in so many layers we start to look like marshmallows. It has been a day-to-day challenge, but one I feel like we're facing admirably (especially considering Erin's sunny California roots).

Considering these icy and clouded conditions, what better goal to set than install a warm and welcoming hearth in our home! The last couple of days we've been learning much about wood stoves. It's been important for us to keep in mind that our wood stove is going to serve more as a crucial tool, rather than a pretty showpiece, as it will be our only source of heat. We've been reading up on the guidelines for installation for our particular wood stove (Vermont Castings Intrepid II) in the manual that's online. We've been trying to follow the codes for safety as much as we can while also balancing the uncommon fact of being installed in a school bus. Here's what we came up with so far. Good thing that we scored our wood stove for free on craigslist because all of the other pieces ending up costing more than we had expected, almost $400 in all.

The stove is sitting on the bulky box built over the wheel-well across the way from the kitchen. We positioned it here originally because it would be right next to the shower for our wood-fired hot water heater plans and because it is pretty centrally located for more even distribution of heat. It also felt right because it sort of bridges the kitchen and living spaces (which seems appropriate for a working hearth). We need to send out many thanks to our friend Spencer for helping us get the 250 lb. behemoth in the bus - quite a feat indeed. We picked up some fire and heat rated 1/2" cement board at Jerry's called Wonderboard that we're using as a hearth pad and for the wall shields (eventually we'll tile over these). For the walls, we cut up some of our left-over copper pipe into 1" pieces and used those as spacers between the wall and the cement board. We also left a 1" gap at the bottom and top of the wall shields for air-flow. According to our manual, for a corner centered stove, we are supposed to position it 10" from each back corner to the walls. Since we have such a limited amount of space to work with, it was a bit tricky to get it in a good and safe position, but we worked it out in the end.

For our flue/chimney arrangement, we're using standard single-wall stovepipe going up to about a couple inches below the ceiling, then transitioning to special insulated double-wall chimney. The two are connected by a thing called a dripless chimney adapter. The hole in the ceiling has an extra 2" air space around the chimney for safety purposes. We are a bit concerned that if we leave the actual chimney at the height we had originally envisioned (2' about the roof), we will not achieve adequate draft for our stove to function properly. However, the kind of chimney we purchased (Selkirk Metalbestos) conveniently can twist on and off if we decided to have a removable extended chimney down the road.

We spent all day yesterday cutting a 12" hole in our ceiling. Erin used the reciprocating saw for most of it, but we also used a tin snips cutter and good old fashioned ripping with a wrench. It took a while and a lot of arm muscles. The edges of the hole are not the prettiest, but luckily it'll all be covered over over in the end. Next we secured the chimney to the roof using these special brackets and then waterproofed it all with hi-temp silicone. We finished this at about 6pm when the light and temperature started dropping precipitously and our fingers were not responding as well to the delicate job we were trying to accomplish. The top of the bus where we were perched started icing over as well. So we frantically got a tarp over the hole and called it a night. Of course when we woke up today it was raining! I suppose we'll have to wait to finish the chimney until it stops. In the meanwhile we'll get started on the propane.

Pictures of the wood stove set-up coming soon...

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Erin's Update #1: In addition to rain it is now snowing here in Eugene. I mean, like, many inches, non-stop, covering everything. This forth-generation Californian is very impressed. It's magical and silent. I don't think we'll be getting to that chimney weatherization today.

Erin's Update #2: Our housebus compadre, Spencer, recently agreed to trade his help with the propane system (stove/oven, fridge) for a few hours of child care, burned CDs and a pool cue bag. =) We got together, planned out our system and bought all the components yesterday. Exciting progress on several fronts!

Plumbing

We are back in action again after a restful two-week California vacation! We didn't wait more than a day to jump right into the next phase of construction on our bus: plumbing. After much debate about what would be easiest and most non-toxic, we decided to go with copper pipes for the freshwater (kitchen sink) system instead of galvanized steel. Since our goal of the moment is to finish the bare minimum basics of our conversion first, we decided to forgo the shower installation for this phase of construction. (Eventually we plan to install a wood fired/solar hot water heater!)

Diagram of our plumbing system (click to see a close up).

First we picked up all the tools and materials that we would need to do the plumbing at our local hardware store, Jerry's: a small propane torch, flux, lead-free solder, a pipe cutter, copper pipe and fittings, two dielectric unions, a check valve, a shut-off valve, teflon thread-seal tape and a few galvanized steel fittings for the 55-gallon drum and pump. To actually learn the technique, we found a couple of copper sweating demonstrations on YouTube that were highly informative. It turned out to be easier and less dangerous than we had expected and we got a water tight seal on our first try! In the end, it also turned out to be way less strenuous than manhandling the galvanized steel fittings with vise-grips and plumbing wrenches, etc.

Sweated copper joins.

Because our system involved such a variety of pieces (copper, steel, brass, threaded, non-threaded, dielectric, etc) that each have their own set of unique needs, the most challenging part of the whole process ended up figuring out which pieces to put together first and in what order so that it was possible to put them together at all. We were working in tight places and everything was all relative to everything else. But once we had thought it out enough, it all just sort of came together. It sure was satisfying to be able to pump water out of our faucet at the end of the day with absolutely no leaks!

Shut-off valve near tank.

Check-valve below water pump.

The other piece of the plumbing involved a pretty massive bushing/bulkhead contraption that will double as a fill hole and a vent for the tank.

Our 55-gallon drum freshwater tank.

Fill hole and vent.

To secure the 55-gallon drum, we screwed down 2x2's on either side to act as a sort of cradle. Then we put four hefty screw/eyelets in and secured two tie-downs across the tank. Eventually we will put in front and back supports as well. We also plan on insulating the tank with that thin foil-bubble wrap insulation to cut down on general condensation and the possibility of freezing.


Up next: propane and woodstove!

Wait List Suprise!

Just a quick post to say that Julia and I were stoked to learn that we got in on the waitlist for next weekend's Eugene Holiday Market (Decemeber 15th and 16th)! This means another week of busy busy sewing and another week of non-bus related work. So for all of you wondering if we're still building the bus -- we are!....just not this week. =)

Though we haven't been doing any hands-on work in the last few weeks, we've been learning more about how the bus relates to the seasons here in Oregon. For one - there's moisture. Lots of it. We are going to invest in a dehumidifier pretty soon and turn it on every now and then to cut down on the condensation on the inside of the windows and on the ceiling. We are also planning on putting a space heater inside the bus for the time being and turning it on first thing in the morning along with our black-tea-and-mate ritual so that by the time we're ready to start work it'll be nice and toasty in there.

The bad news: the vent on the ceiling escape hatch started leaking. We caught it early and sopped it up with the usual towel-and-bucket routine. Fixing the leak is obviously the first thing on our to-do list when we start up on buswork again. The good news: The doors and windows are solid. My caulking paid off!

Holiday Market & Magic

Hey folks,

Erin here. J and I have been super busy this last month stitching together tons of new clothes to sell over the winter season. It's been difficult to put the bus work on hold for the time being and invest all our energy in a different direction. We are looking forward to getting back to work on the bus plumbing in the coming weeks.

Our two-week run at the local Holiday Market was a huge learning experience for us. Learning to be effective craftswomen is an ongoing process and we've been lucky to receive a lot of advice and encouragement from old-timers in the Eugene craftsperson economy/community. Lately, I've been struck by the magical quality of craftswomanship and the magical prowess of my fellow craftspeople. Handmade things are a novelty these days. They are unexpected, vital little anachronisms. The main reaction I get at crafts fairs is disbelief ~ "Do you make all of this?!" or "Is this handmade?!" and then, "How long does it take you?!" and "Where do you find the patience?!" ~ which to me indicates that what craftspeople do - or what craftspeople are - somehow blurs the lines of reality for a lot of folks. We are so used to being alienated from the magic of creation ~ not knowing how our homes are made, not understanding how our cars work, not knowing the name of the person (or persons) who made our toothbrush in China, not even really knowing how they made that toothbrush in China.

It's funny to think that the basics have become magical. The hand-knit sock is the new unicorn. Yeah, maybe you can find those in darkest India but here? In Oregon?!

A plug for a good book: I was lucky enough to find a book called "Women and Craft" at my local used bookstore the other day. It's a collection of short pieces (essays and stories) by a bunch of women from the 80's in the UK edited by Gillian Elinor, Su Richardson, Sue Scott, Angharad Thomas and Kate Walker. It was awesome. Everything I've been trying to rant about in the last couple years - gendered ideas about art and craft, magical crafting, women and making stuff and how important it is, the history of women's work, what it means to sell your craft - it was all there. Good luck finding it...looks to me like it was released in the UK only. Where was this book when I was teaching my section on feminism and crafting?! The UCSC library didn't think any book like this existed.

Warm holidays to all who read this. Check back for more bus updates later this month. More new clothes will be posted at The Patchwork Underground tomorrow!