It's been a long time

That was how my bus looked in November from the inside.

That was how my bus looked in November from the outside.

Wow! What massive changes have been effected since then. The inside has been gutted and rebuilt to be more home like. The outside looks far less like a school bus.

Reading around, several sites suggest that a Navy shower is the way to go with a motorhome. That's a case of wetting down in the shower, applying soap then rinsing off, turning the water off between wetting down and rinsing off. The same sites suggest that it can all be done with a single gallon of water. I know it can be done with a bucket of water and a flannel washcloth.

At Lowe's today I hunted for plumbing parts and found that just about everything is non standard. I suppose that's the main reason why plumber's putty exists! So, I have parts I can put together. I had a look at dish racks but found only one. It looks very much as though building my own dish rack into my drawers is going to be the sole solution. That'll take some more plywood and some wooden dowel plus time. It's not hard.

After returning from Lowe's, I measured the bathroom between the body ribs in order to drill a hole for my piping. Lo and behold, I got my measurements almost spot on and the pilot hole went into an area well away from body ribs. That makes me very happy.

Before I did that, I finished putting the shower base support together. One end must have been a shade longer because it's definitely some form of trapezoid. With the shower pan in place though, it won't notice and to be honest, won't make any difference!

The next thing was to drill the hole for the shower waste pipe. That was pretty easy. The time consuming bit was hollowing out a pan around the hole for the nut and flange. By the time I'd finished, the mosquitoes had bitten me pretty thoroughly but the shower base now looks pretty good.

After that I investigated water pumps. It seems the marine galley pump I was advised to consider which is foot operated is actually available locally at West Marine. The hand pump that I'd like so much seems to have a rubber diaphragm which turns me off. Old fashioned hand pumps never used diaphragms so that was an expensive look alike. That killed my interest right away!
Using a water pump means I don't need a faucet on the bathroom sink. I removed the faucet. I was going to empty the water down the shower but the outflow from the shower is a shade higher than the shower base. Water will collect so its probably best not to do that but to cut a new hole for the handbasin outflow. That shouldn't take long at all!

I haven't decided where to put the water pump yet. I don't have it and thus don't know where it would work best. I have a feeling the water outlet will be flexible - some kind of hose maybe with a nozzle.

For water inlet and outlet I'll definitely have to have a drain cock on the grey tank and some kind of input for the white tank. I'm not keen on having the white tank filler accessible to the outside world. There are too many freaks that would slip something in the water for fun. I don't mind them pouring my grey water all over the place though.

I might just have a filler for white water inside and bring water in, in 5 gallon containers or perhaps have a filler cap outside that leads to a faucet above the real filler cap inside. That would allow me to filter the water!

I've started to fill the drawers in the galley. Thus far I found my plates will only just fit in the plate drawer. That was to be expected. This is just the kind of irritating thing that would happen! The drawer will take 9 inch dinner plates. To be honest, I was never keen on the blue & white mainstays plates. I bought them because they were cheap. That was the sole reason. I might just as well sift through my stuff to find the things I actually want in the motorhome and the stuff that can be abandoned. None of it is of high enough value to sell.

The plan for the plates was to put them in a rack, standing edgewise but that plan will have to be abandoned. I really didn't want to have plates lying flat but I suppose bubblewrap would help. Perhaps just having them angled would work through it'd reduce drawer capacity. Its something to think on.