I appreciate your patience as I continue to try to catch up with posting updates here on my progress with the transformation of Lance from his start as a 2016 Kenworth T270 Medium Duty ambulance from a fire department in Wisconsin to an eXtreme RV or XRV for us to continue our explorations via our Land Yacht. I’ve got a few more updates to do but I just about have you up to date on all the various projects within Lance and this one will take you through the completion of the Head & Shower area inside Lance’s Hab/Habitat/Happytat ambo box.
Last month, May 2026, while I was still at our place down in the very southern tip of Nevada which we call “Road Runner Ranch”, I was able to finish building out the Head and Shower area in Lance.
* FYI, Christine and I are still sailors at heart so the Bathroom will always be the Head and the Kitchen will always be the Galley for us.
I drove Lance up to our place on Saturna Island mid May and am now working up here at finishing off the interior while we are up here through end of August.
Here is what I was able to get done before that drive;
To help with your orientation, this screen shot from my Fusion 360 3D model shows where the Head & Shower are located in the front DS Driver Side of Lance’s Hab/Habitat/Box which is on the far Right of this view. The Settee & table are at the opposite back end on the far Left with the Galley counters spanning both sides in the middle.
Note: You can click on any photo to enlarge it.
Here is what it looked like IRL (In Real Life) from the inside when I got started. That’s the SS Fridge/Freezer on the far Right, Blue DS Galley countertop peeking through on the Left and that’s the DS Front corner of the Hab in the far middle of this photo. The toilet will sit on top of the raised floor section and I’m getting ready to put in the the shower pan on the lower section of the floor that the blue cargo spreaders are resting on.
The framed in area above the Head will be a storage cupboard on the larger Right side portion and then the smaller space created on the Left will be a service area for plumbing and electrical which I’ll cover later on in this post. I started prepping the interior by gluing 1/2” Baltic Birch plywood on the XAL eXtruded Aluminium framing of the two walls you see here on the Left and Rear. I use these adjustable Blue Cargo Spreaders (from Harbor Freight) all the time and here they are helping apply pressure to the freshly glued in BB plywood panels to keep them flat and straight.
The small box protruding into the Head area on the bottom Left is the front end of the large middle exterior compartment you saw me filling up with all the plumbing and heating systems in the previous post. For maximum adhesion of the rigid foam Shower Pan I removed all the LVT vinyl floor planking that covers all the floor area inside Lance’s Happytat. To help with tiling the shower pan and getting the slope to the center shower drain just right, I bought a Vevor shower pan kit that is specifically made for this purpose and adds even more insulation to the shower floor. It is covered with a thin gray felt that grabs the thinsulate/mortar bedding compound I’ll be using to bed in the electric grid for the heated floor and the ceramic tiles. Very nicely designed bit of kit and the floor foam is cut in half with the felt glued on top to act like a hinge and made it much easier to press fit the floor into place after cutting it to size. You can see here how the area for the flange of the PVC drain is already pre-cast into the foam and you’ll also note the large circular recess surrounding it for bedding the drain flange into the floor. After checking that it all fit just right, I removed the foam pan, applied a silicone based adhesive with my cordless caulking gun (that I’m enjoying more ever time I use!), spread it out evenly with a notched trowel and pressed the floor pan back into place using my trusty cargo spreaders and some aluminium and plywood cauls to press it even and flat. It was difficult to see in the photos above but I also used 1/2” BB plywood to cover the wall between the Shower and the Fridge/Freezer compartment. I caulked all seams and corners with construction adhesive for additional sealing of those.
Next I put in this small bit of XAL framing to extend that exterior cabinet “bump” all the way to the inner edge of the Head raised floor. This will also create a handy storage area.
The black lines you see on the White ACM Aluminium Composite Material of the Head Floor is from me laying out the spacing for the heated floor electric grid you’ll see a bit later below. Now it was time to completely waterproof every surface inside the Head & Shower to ensure that there are no leaks in the future. I used the ever popular RedGuard and brushed it on all the surfaces.
After the first thin coat of RedGuard was on I went around and used more RedGuard to bed in some reinforcing felt that I cut into strips and pressed into all the corners and seams with more RedGuard. The drain area received several more coats of RedGuard as this will get the most traffic and potential for seepage. The pink colour is from the still wet RedGuard which quickly changes to Red as it dries fully. Et Voila!!
A very Red and very waterproof Head & Shower area. A bit messy but my 11cm/ 4 1/4” hole saw did a nice job of cutting this hole through all the layers of insulation and aluminium in the floor for the PVC drain to set into and exit out the bottom where it will connect to PVC pipe and on to the Gray Water tank. You can also see the 2 inches of insulation that are below the shower floor. I had some of this Blue Solid Surface acrylic material left over from doing the Galley countertops so I used this to create a nicely contrasting and durable shelf top on that bump out in the Head. This solid acrylic material is heavy but is very nice to work with; cuts easily and cleanly with regular carbide saw blades and router bits and then sands/files nicely to create a polished surface. I wanted to get this shelf installed before I started putting in the PVC planking that I’m going to use to cover the walls.
TOASTIE TOOTSIES!
As I mentioned in the previous post about our diesel powered Oasis Zephyr boiler, the rest of the floors inside of Lance are heated via the hot glycol (anti-freeze) pumped out of that boiler and flowing through the loops of 1/2” PEX-A tubing embedded into the insulated foam below the LVT vinyl plank flooring. But I wanted to be able to control the heated floors in the Shower & Head separately as it is always nice to have warm shower floors even in warm weather.
So I opted for another Vevor product, this heated mesh flooring kit that runs on 220VAC and has its own thermostat. The kit comes with this Orange plastic mesh which the Black heating cable gets attached to.
Also came with this every nice digital thermostat for controlling and reporting on the heated floors. This is the transition piece where the cable changes from the 220VAC power cable to the heated wire. As it is a larger diameter I routed a groove into the ACM flooring so this thicker diameter would sit flush with the floor surface and be better protected. The heated cable is one continuous length and you can not cut this so it took me a bit of planning to get the spacing right but all fit in very nicely and will keep our tootsies warm both when showering and sitting on the Throne!
There is also a temperature sensor that gets embedded in the floor and provides this data to the thermostat so it can maintain whatever floor temp you set. I put this inside a length of protective tubing and that’s the L shaped length you see here which then exits out the side wall and goes up to the thermostat. I put this sensor in this larger diameter tubing so I could remove and replace the temp sensor if it should ever fail. With all the heated cable and mesh in place I mixed up the epoxy thinsulate/mortar and spread out about a 13mm / 1/2” thick layer with a steel trowel and smoothed it all out. Didn’t get a photo when it was done so this is part way through the process. Finally ready to start tiling!
TILE TIME:
We found this Blue & White Spiral pattern ceramic tile online and both really liked it so that’s what is going on the floors. Comes in these larger approximately one square foot sheets with individual tiles glued to a mesh on the back which makes handling and setting them much easier. Laying out this type of spiral pattern is a bit tricky and takes some planning to make sure all the corners and joints line up and maintain the pattern. If you look closely you’ll see that you can only get a straight line for butting up against corners or lining up sheets in one place along the larger square formed by each spiral.
I created a quick 3D model (of course!!) to help plan the layout to get all the corners and seams to match up. Where I needed to cut some of the tiles such as around the drain, my trusty Dremel tool with a diamond cutting wheel worked like a charm to get nice straight cuts and smooth edges and you can maybe see along the bottom edge for this sheet I’m trimming square here. It had been a Looooooooong time, think decades, since I last did any tiling so I started with the floor in the Head as it will largely be covered by our Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to cover any learning errors, but it all turned out quite well I thought. Then I moved onto the Shower floor and started the dry layup there. You can see how I needed to trim the tiles a bit along the edges of the square SS drain which I did so that the outer edges of the regular square spiral patterns would match up with the outer edges. And it all slopes down from the edges to the drain. I thought it would look better to create a single upper edge surrounding the whole space so I put in some aluminium edging and tiled up to that along all the sides of the Shower and the Head floors and set them in place.
WALLS:
For the walls I wanted to find the best combination of waterproof, easy to clean and good looking so I ended up going with these White tongue and groove PVC planks that are about 18cm / 7” wide with grooves molded in to look like narrower planks, and started cutting them to size.
But I thought that all White walls and ceiling would be too bland so I decided to create a horizontal band to break up the walls that would wrap all the way round and fill this with some of the Blue & White spiral tiles I had left over from doing the floor. I picked up some aluminium edging meant to be used under tiles which you see propped up in the corner on the Right here and used that to make the transitions from tile to PVC planking. I taped off the top and bottom edges of the area for this band………….. ………. and installed the AL transitions edging all round. I had enough left over tile to cut these bands off the sheets and used that size to determine the width of the band. Worked out quite well and now time to put up all the PVC wall planks.
It was quite quick and easy to cut the 8ft long PVC planks to a nice fit between the top and bottom edges of the aluminium edging there the tiles start and stop. And now time to use my trusty Milwaukee cordless caulking gun you see on the Left of the floor to put a nice thin line of White silicone adhesive/sealant along each tongue and groove and back of each plank. The cargo spreaders and some square aluminium tube cauls helped to hold the PVC planks flat while the silicone adhesive cured overnight.
With the wall planks all done I could now grout all the tiles in this band and on the floors to finish the tiling. I did the ceiling with the same vinyl planking with a different pattern on it that I used for the ceilings in the rest of Lance. As with those other ceilings, I put in a strip of dimmable LED’s between each plank but more on that a bit later.
Et Voila! Lance finally has a not too bad looking Head and Shower.
LET THERE be LIGHT AND AIR!
We always like to have individual items do more than one thing and so we decided to install this 12V vent fan in the ceiling above the shower to provide both daylight and fresh air venting into the Shower & Head space. I’m not a big fan of the popular variations of the MaxFans that much of the RV and Van world seem to use and wanted to keep our overall vehicle height to a minimum and we’re at 2.9m / 9’ 5” right now with the solar panels and roof vent. So this Kohree vent unit seemed to check all our boxes.
This model also had a nice combination of both a manual override for raising and lowering the vent cover and a set of electric controls on the other corner of the fan as well as a hand held wireless remote.
It also has a temperature sensor to turn the fan on/off and a very quiet fan with 10 different speeds.
Other nice features are a built in rain sensor that automatically closes the vent though not much of a need when this is all inside that nice waterproof Shower. I had purposely left this space up on the roof in front of the four 450Watt solar panels and their Super Strut rails so now time to cut the only hole in our otherwise seamless one piece roof.
Yikes!!!! There are three thick aluminium plates in the roof of Lance, one for the top skin, the layer you can see here that forms the internal ceiling of the ambo box and then …… ……… the final layer of 5mm thick ACM that I installed for the ceiling surface below the additional layer of 20mm IPS foam insulation. The vent dropped in just right. I used this 2×2” square AL ceiling beam for a conduit for the wires to power and control the fan. I’m a BIG fan of these WAGO wire connectors and have used them throughout the build. They worked well to connect these 12VDC power wires to the fan and then tuck nicely into that square AL tube.
Checked everything for a good fit including this trim frame and then …. ………. bedded the vent into the roof with 3M 5200 sealant and some makeshift weights to let it cure overnight.
and MORE LIGHT!
As I mentioned earlier, I matched the ceiling in the Head & Shower to what I installed in the rest of Lance which are these planks of White solid vinyl with a nice grained texture and then put in strips of Black aluminium LED channel. I will then adhere dimmable COB LED strips inside these AL channels and snap on the diffuser cover.
All fully water immersion IP68 rated so no problems in this wet area. Worked out well to provide Goldilocks just right lighting both night and day. One last detail for those few times (so far) either of us needs to get up and use the Head in the middle of the night, I wanted also have some indirect low level lighting inside the Head & Shower area. So I installed some of these 45 degree angled aluminium extrusions in hidden areas such as under the door sill into the Shower you can make out below my hand and another under that little Blue shelf in the Head. To help keep our night vision and add a bit of “ambiance” I used these Blue LED strips which are also dimmable to whatever level of Blue light you’d like.
Testing out the LED strip tucked in below the door sill into the Shower.
DOORS!!!
After using Lance for over a year now with NO doors on the inside one member of the crew is eXtremely eXcited about having a DOOR on the Head!!! After some debate and research we decided to go with this retractable shower door that rolls up when OPEN like this ….. and then rolls out to seal and CLOSE like this. The flexible material rolls up on a spring loaded shaft hidden neatly inside this cassette that mounts to the left side of the door. The “door” slides on tracks concealed inside the AL extrusions top and bottom and I left a small gap at the top to help with air circulation.
FINISHING TOUCHES:
To keep things dry inside this storage cupboard above the head, I glued in some sliding door AL tracks and cut some clear 6mm / 1/4” acrylic for the sliding doors. And then mounted this mirrored Medicine Cabinet on the rear wall to finish things off.
SHOWER FAUCET:
You can’t have much of a shower with no water so along the way I installed this very nice adjustable hand held shower head that has a full shut off valve on the handle and …. …… connected it to a thermostatic controlled mixing valve faucet. These are great for maintaining a whatever water temperature you set it to coming out of the shower head. The button allows you to turn the water on and off as you wish to conserve water and have it off when you want to wash your hair, shave, etc. The SS cylindrical knob on the top end rotates to set the temperature and the one on the bottom controls the water flow volume.
To mount this I cut a sheet of 6mm / 1/4” thick aluminium diamond plate which fits just right into the slots of the 1” 1010 Series XAL framing. I drilled and threaded this plate to mount these two brass fittings for the thermostatic valve to attach to on the outside and push-connect fittings on the other side ………… …… for the Hot & Cold water 1/2” PEX-A lines to attach to. The Yellow handles are shut off ball valves on each PEX water line for servicing or winterizing.
The whole assembly then fits securely into the slots in the XAL framing.
CONTROL PANEL:
Finally, to enclose this service bay area I built this temporary panel and with many of our controls for the systems in Lance mounted on it. This is just a prototype I am trying out made out of scrap plywood with some of the switches, controllers and thermostats mounted in it. I cut this rabbet or tongue on the bottom edge that is a snug fit into the groove on the bottom length of XAL framing. The way it works is that you first put the bottom tongue into the groove and then …….. …………… tip the panel up into place. To hold this and likely all the panels in Lance securely in place, I’m trying out using these very strong round “donut” Neodymium magnets. This one is a 40 pounder, meaning it takes about 40 pounds of pull to remove. These magnets are available from less than one pound up to over one hundred. All the metal in Lance is aluminium which of course isn’t magnetic so cut a short 5cm/2” length of steel flat bar and drilled a 6mm hole in one end so I can bolt it to a T nut captured in the XAL slot on the back here. Worked out even better than I hoped and the panel snaps into place with a good “thud” and locks the whole panel tightly in place. But I only need to reach behind it and push hard with my fingers to pop the panel forward and out. Here is what the panel looks like so far. White thermostat for the heated floors in the Head & Shower in the bottom right (currently turned off) and the Victron Cerbo GX touch display above it and switches for things like water pump, Starlink power and the thermostatic controllers for the heated main cabin floors over to the Left.
I will likely change the layout a bit and add a few more switches and meters, but it all works for now and we’ll try it out on our travels in the next month and see what other changes we might want to make.
And th th th thaaaaats all for this update folks.
Hope it was entertaining and of interest to you and that you’ll be back for the next update in a few weeks.
We are going to be out in Lance eXploring more of Beautiful BC for the next few months till we head off to Europe at the end of August so I’ll do my best to get the last few updates posted for you. Next big project that I’m not starting on is to build all the Cherry veneered drawer fronts, doors and interior panels that will should pretty much finish Lance’s build.
Don’t forget to add your comments and questions in the “Join the discussion” box below and enjoy your summer wherever you are.
Right up there with the Electrical System in Lance, the Domestic Hot DHW and Cold Water DCW systems are critical to providing us with a great living experience and complete “off grid” independence. Below is a screenshot from my 3D model of the water system in Fusion 360 with the key components labelled to help show what’s what. (click to enlarge this or any photo in these blogs)
Note: DCW is also referred to as Potable water meaning safe for human consumption and drinking but all the water in Lance is potable so I’ll refer to it as DCW. As you have maybe noticed from previous posts, I build all my systems twice; First as a 3D model in Fusion 360 and then once I have it all laid out with everything fitting and working I “just” build it ITL or In Real Life as the “kids” say. It all looks very simple when its all done but getting there was quite the game of 4D chess to get everything to fit relative to each other, not have any of the PEX pipes interfering with each other and so on. Happy to report that this layout worked very well upon installing it and the whole water system has been working very well for us.
After designing and building everything with 3D models first and then building IRL for so many years now I can almost not imagine designing or building any other way. It DOES take some time to build these highly accurate 3D models where I try to be +/- 1mm but this is where I get to try out all the alternatives and ideas and find out what actually fits and works. This way for the most part I make all my mistakes (trust me!) here before I cut, weld, drill or mount anything which is a HUGE time and cost saving compared to making all those mistakes IRL. I won’t say I don’t make ANY mistakes IRL but very very few compared to doing this IRL to begin with, or just with freehand sketches,
Though to be clear I certainly still do use a LOT of pencil and digital freehand sketches at the conceptual and planning stages. IRL or Real Life does still help sometimes when I can have the real parts in my hands as I’m working out the 3D model for the placement of components such as the brass mixing valve and the black circulation pump which are the key components of the heated floor system we now have in Lance. To help explain that labelled 3D model at the beginning there are actually two primary and completely independent systems or functions that you are about to see me install. One is to supply all the Domestic Cold and Hot water to the sinks, showers and water outlets. The second is for our interior air heat which is provided by circulating hot Glycol solution through the loops of PEX piping you saw me install into the floor inside and also through the two “Cozies” which are little radiators with hot Glycol flowing through them and then thermostatically controlled fans blowing air through these radiators to heat up the air inside the HappyTat. We find that most of the time we prefer to just use the floor heat as this keeps our toes nice and toasty and yet the air up above our heads is pleasantly cool which for us is the Goldilocks situation. The heart of both of these systems is this Oasiz Zephyr diesel boiler from ITR International Thermal Research, a Canadian company based in BC and a company I am familiar with from previous builds. It is super efficient and barely sips diesel to power the boiler which internally has two separate loops; one for heating up the fresh water or the DHW circuits and the other separate circuit that heats up the non toxic Propylene Glycol solution, basically anti freeze, that provides the heat for the interior floors and air. This labelled illustration shows all the various inputs and outputs of diesel, exhaust (out the bottom), fresh water and Glycol.
To provide some bigger picture orientation this large view of the Drivers Side DS of Lance’s HappyTat showing the full Electrical System in the exterior compartment on the Front DS corner to the far left here and then the wide central compartment immediately behind it.
All these external compartments have their own locking doors and full aluminium diamond plate interiors keeping them all completely separate, secure and easily accessed and this is one of the best benefits of going with an ambulance box as these are all standard. I couldn’t seem to find a photo of the empty compartment when I started but this is what it looked like in all the very messy IRL when we were moving Lance down here to Nevada. I packed it this way because at this stage I was initially considering positioning the Oasis Zephyr Diesel Boiler (Olive Green box in the bottom rear corner) and the 40 USG white plastic Grey Water tank on the front.
But as I modeled this up and focused on my priority for keeping all runs of both electrical wire and PEX water lines as short as possible it worked out much better to flip that initial layout around to be more like this with the Oasis Zephyr boiler at the front. You can see how well this worked from this shot further along with the installation where the vertical Red DHW Supply PEX pipe goes directly out of the Zephyr and up through the ceiling of this compartment where the Galley sink is directly above. The shower is on the other side of that end wall of this compartment so it too is a very short run for the DHW to get to the shower head. I had thought about putting in a neat little DHW return line that allows you to turn on that hot water valve first to get the hot water up to the taps and shower but with these lines all being so short it works out that the hot water is there almost immediately so we don’t waste any water running it till it gets hot. So the design has worked out very well in day to day use. Installing the Zephyr involved quite a bit of work as it requires diesel supply and return lines which are going to come up through the two holes on the right here with the Black rubber gromets on them. Then there is an 1.5” steel exhaust pipe which comes out the bottom of the Zephyr (sitting up on its side in this photo) and then a SS muffler under the floor of the compartment.
Rather than install a separate diesel fuel tank I tapped into the main fuel tank on Lance by installing these two T fittings and valves, one for supply and one for return and then ran rubber fuel lines from these over and up through those two holes above into the Zephyr. Inside the Zephyr there is a 2nd mixing valve so that you can set the output temperature of the DHW to whatever degrees you prefer for both safety and convenience. So far it has been working out very well for us with almost instant hot water and essentially an infinite supply of DHW that makes long hot showers a breeze other than needing to keep the 100USG water tanks filled up. I designed the Zephyr lines to have this optional “summer loop” on the hot glycol circuit for the heated with the 3 way T valve on the Right that allows us to shut off the flow of he hot Glycol to the heated floor loops and the two “Cozies” that are small radiators with thermostatically controlled fans in them. For those curious, this diagram shows how the heated Glycol flow works such that by shutting off that 3 Way Valve the Glycol basically just makes a out and right back into the boiler and does not run any of it through the floor or Cozies in the summer. Of course the independent DHW circuit still works all the time with fresh cold water coming in from the main water tanks and coming out the DHW lines to the sink and showers.
On the rear side of this compartment I mounted the water pump that pulls water out of the two potable fresh water tanks and then pumps that through the three stage water filtration system beside it. We’ve been very pleased with the performance of the Kohree 7GPM 65 PSI 12Volt water pump. It comes with both the pump, inlet filter and accumulator tank rubber mounted on the thick Black mounting plate. The PEX line from the water tanks enters through the Black fitting on the far Right, into the screen filter then the pump and then the accumulator tank. and turns 90 degrees into this 3 stage water filter that takes out just about everything from dirt to bacteria before heading onward ………. …… to supply the various DCW and DHW components. We take the “belt & suspenders” approach when it comes to our drinking water also added the grey Acuva box and white cylindrical filter you see up top here. This uses a UV-LED light which disinfects microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, cysts) using UV‑C light, and then the Advanced Pre‑Filter also removes chemicals, metals, chlorine, VOCs, odors, and turbidity. The Acuva output goes up to this dedicated Drinking Water tap at the Galley sinks and puts out about as close to pure H2O as you can get. Been working really well for us.
Shifting over to the Glycol side of this system the heated Glycol exits the right side of the Zephyr and flows through these Red 3/4” PEX-A lines and then goes through the aluminium diamond plate wall into the Front Cozy mounted directly behind ……
…. as you can see IRL where it is mounted inside the toe kick area of the Galley drawers. It slides back several inches and tucks completely out of the way in the end. You can see better in this labelled screenshot of the 3D model. Glycol exits this first front cozy and flows back to the Rear Cozy and then is returned back to the Zephyr as I hope you can see in the 3D model. To get the best fit for the return line out of the Front Cozy I needed to modify it with this 90 degree copper elbow. and then mount a thermal sensor to the copper tube which connects to the thermostats in the Zephyr to control switching the fan On/Off when needed. All the wiring connects into the main Zephyr control box which may look a bit confusing here but is very well designed and easy to work with.
Completing the Glycol run for the heated floor loop, I mounted the 12V circulation pump just below the water pump so it has a direct shot at the 1/2” PEX-A floor loop supply line as you see here. When needed this pump turns on and pushes the hot Glycol through the whole set of loops embedded in the floor and then exits out that 2nd white PEX line and is returned to the Zephyr. As you might notice I have my ever present Pixel tablet with my 3D model running so I can easily refer to that as I build out all the lines. Last but definitely not least we wante to have an outside shower for times when we are in nice warm weather and in/out of the ocean, washing the dogs and so on.
i wanted this to be well protected and within the warm area to avoid freezing so I welded up this little bracket and mounted it to the to of the Water Systems compartment.
This bracket allowed me to mount the mixing valve that is below this white flip up cover and the quick connect fitting for the shower hose on the Right. All very simple with braided SS lines for the incoming DCW and DHW and then ………
…….. the third line wraps around and feeds the quick connect fitting.
The two SS supply lines are T’d into the respective DCW and DHW PEX lines with shut off valves so we can turn them off when servicing.
We may get a bit more “fancy” but for now plugging this coiled hose with a multi head garden sprayer on the end has been working very well for us.
OK, that’s a wrap for this week folks and hope it was equal parts interesting and informative.
Next post I will show you the recent build of the interior shower which has turned out eXtremely well too so be sure to stay tuned for that.
Thanks so much for spending time to join us here and thanks for your patience with my very irregular schedule of posts. Lance, Zoe, Razz and I are hitting the road next week to make the drive up to join Christine at our place on Saturna Island so my be more than a week till I can put together the next update but I’ll do my best.
As always, your comments and questions are VERY much appreciated so please leave those in the “Join the Discussion” box below and Ciao for Now my fellow adventurers.
It has been one of the busiest months yet for both Christine and me as we put our noses to our respective grindstones and pedal to the metal for making maximum progress on our projects. Driving this in part is our decision to turn our attending our niece Julia’s wedding on June 21st in Portland Maine, into Lance’s maiden voyage. Just a quick test run so we will leave Road Runner Ranch here in Searchlight Nevada in the first week of June and drive over to Portland Main, perhaps along Route 66 to start and then after the wedding head up the East Coast and travel back across Canada to our serene getaway “Northern Home Base” aka “Ravens Ridge” on Saturna Island in BC for the remainder of the summer. Oh, and did I mention that never content with small goals, to spice it up a wee bit Christine also has a deadline to submit her newest book’s manuscript by the 5th of June. So wish us both luck !!
WAYNE WARNING: Given that it’s been more than a month since the last update and the amount of work on so many different aspects of XRV (eXtreme RV) Lance’s interior and systems, this is going to be a longer post so you’d be wise to get a comfy seat and a large portion of your favorite beverage before continuing. Don’t say you weren’t warned!
To help make this a bit more digestible and let you skip parts you may not be interested in, I’ll break this up into sections with a sub-title header for each of the projects I’ve tackled this past month within the larger project of transforming Lance from his roots as a 2017 Kenworth T270 Medium Duty Horton ambulance into an XRV.
I’ll wait till you get comfy and fill up your mug/glass ………………………………………………
Finishing XAL Cabinetry Framing:
I have now pretty much finished all the framing using eXtruded Aluminium T-slot extrusions, often referred to as “80/20”, by framing the upper cabinets above both Galley countertops, Passenger PS and Driver Side.
This is the one above the Passenger Side PS Galley countertop. and this is the overhead cabinet above the DS Galley countertop.
with the ever present Fusion 360 3D model on my laptop. You can see a bit of the detail of the way I am connecting all the various lengths of XAL which are all 1 inch square with either 2, 3 or 4 T slots. You can also see some additional XAL framing above the Entry Door into Lance’s “Happy tat” which I’ll explain a bit more in a few minutes. Peering into the Fusion 360 3D model of the Happytat might help to give you some perspective of the overall layout. L-shaped Settee in the Rear (far left) with the Queen Bed (not shown) raised up into the ceiling and the two Galley countertops on the PS and DS in the middle and then the Fridge/Freezer PS front with the shower in between that and the Head/Bathroom on the DS front (upper Right here)
The last bit of XAL framing when pretty quick and easy to put the last piece of the L-shaped Settee into place for the seat that goes across the back in front of the two rear doors of the Happytat “box”. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but thankfully my Beautiful Bride has been taking some time away from her writing to create these drawings for the Settee cushions with the help from some AI of course to create these sketches a bit faster. She is now working with a local upholstery guy up in Vegas as we simply don’t have the time to sew these ourselves. This is a sample swatch of the upholstery fabric that Christine has found and we both really love.
For those curious, this is “Outdura Raindrop Lapis” which is eXtremely tough, easy to clean, long wearing fabric. ….. and this is the beautiful (we think) glass and stone tile that she found and should be here in a few days.
More updates in the next installment once these start to go into Lance so do stay tuned for that.
GALLEY COUNTERTOPS:
With the Galley XAL framing all in place it was time to switch gears and get on with installing the countertops themselves.
After several months of research, phone calls and Emails to find full uncut lengths of the countertop material and colour we wanted and which we could get delivered to us, this bundle of joy finally arrived at the FedEx Freight Terminal in S. Las Vegas. We found this Blue Lagoon pure acrylic at Solid Surface.com (where else?!?) and got a great price at $639 for this 1/2 inch thick 144 inch x 30 inch slab. They did a great job of packaging it all up and it arrived in perfect condition. Would have been a bit of a challenge to bring this 12 foot slab the 75 miles back to RoadRunner Ranch but I needed two pieces that were just under 6ft each so I brought my handy cordless circular saw with me and cut it in half and loaded it into Totu our 2006 Toyota Tundra, and we were off. Well, I did make a quick stop while I was up in Henderson (south part of Vegas) at our favorite Home Depot to pick up four sheets of 1/4” and 1/2 thick Baltic Birch plywood and these two other boxes which you’ll just have to wait for a bit to discover what’s inside them. This 1/2” solid acrylic material was very nice to work with using my regular carbide tipped saw blades and router bits and after some careful “measure twice, cut once” checks between the model and the actual interior I quick had the larger DS Galley countertop cut out. With the cutouts to go around the intersecting XAL parts and the bed lift linear actuators on the far Left here, it was a nice close fit.
You’ll note that I now also have the combo mesh/blackout screens for the MasterCraft double pane glass windows now installed and secured to the walls. Repeating the same process and the PS Galley countertop went into place.
We like the look of thicker exposed edges around all the countertops so my next step was to cut 1” and 2” strips of the acrylic sheet and glue them along all the edges and overtop of where the countertop attaches to all of the XAL framing underneath. Pretty simple process using a purpose made epoxy glue and matching gun you can see in the middle Right and then clamping the two mating surfaces together. Now for the FUN part! Cleaning up all the now 1” thick edges where the two pieces had been glued together. The clamp on strait edge was a bit help to quickly have a straight guiding surface for me to hold the base of the router to and shave off the edges.
Just like on our boats we don’t want any sharp corners to bump into so I quickly put together this little jig using some scraps of XAL to guide the router around the corners. A short length of the 1” radius external corner XAL was the Goldilocks size for nice safe corners so this worked out great to guide my smaller cordless 1/4” router.
and you can see how the glue joint pretty much disappears when these edges are routed nice and flush. Final polishing of all the countertop surfaces will make this pretty much vanish and I’m very happy with these early results.
Using a 3/8” radius carbide round over router bit I put a nice smooth radius on the top edges……. …….. and then switched to a 1/4” radius bit for the bottom edge as we thought this combination looked and felt the best.
What do you think? T’was a wee bit messy I suppose but otherwise worked out very well and …….. …… provided Christine with some chuckles and entertainment courtesy of her very own Frosty the Snowman. Now on to the details starting with the cutout for the nice big and deep SS sink. Once I had the large opening cut out with the circular saw I cleaned up the inside edges same as I did with the outer edges using the router and a 1/2” radius round over bit to provide what we thought was the best look and feel for the undermount sink. Gee, actually starting to see a Galley in here! With the sink test fitted and approved, next detail was to use this flush bottom router bit to cut a shallow recess in the XAL where the edges of the SS sink would sit down flush with the rest of the XAL surfaces. This was necessary so that the countertop would sit perfectly flush on top of all the XAL and sink edges. The final result was well worth the eXtra effort to get this clean fit between the undermount sink and the countertop material. One more job checked off the list! Moving over to the PS Galley, next job was to fit this lovely 2 burner induction cooktop into the countertop using the same process as the sink…… ………. layout the opening with masking tape and pen, cut out the opening with the circular saw and Japanese flush cut hand saw……. ….. a little bit of filing to put in some small grooves for the screws in the side edges of the cooktop and it slid into place just right.
I will install an 120V outlet underneath to plug this into and won’t fasten this down permanently so it can be easily lifted out and put atop our outside table when we want to cook out there. If you peer through the mess you just might be able to see quite a large and lovely two sided Galley?! Final bit of kit to finish off the Galley for now was to install this marvelous dual kitchen faucet that we can’t wait to try out. Quick and simple install, just drill the 1 1/4” hole in the countertop, assemble the braided SS Hot & Cold hoses into the base of the faucet and insert through the hole. A brass nut then slides up from below and threads onto the base of the faucet with washers sealing both sides and it is ready to be connected to the hot and cold PEX hoses when they go in on the upcoming plumbing phase of Lance’s transformation. All the potable water we put into the two 170L/45 USG water tanks will go through a set of three filters but to clean it up to the next level I installed this Acuva UV water filter with its own faucet.
I can taste that fresh clean water already!
Water Fill Up @ RoadRunner Ranch!
Speaking of tasty fresh water, for those of you wondering, here is how we provide plenty of fresh water for our current totally Off Grid home here on RoadRunner Ranch.
First I load this empty 1270L/335 USG IBC Tote (International Bulk Container) into the back of Totu. Then make the 2 mile drive into the booming metropolis of Searchlight (pop 245) to this “secret” water tap carefully tucked away on this abandoned lot courtesy of one of our neighbors “Amber”. This is fresh out of the ground from the large wellhead that provides all the “city water” to the homes of residents of Searchlight and has incredible pressure and volume so only takes me less than 20 minutes to completely fill the IBC Tote. Then drive back home to RoadRunner Ranch, connect the hose to the large valve on the bottom of the IBC Tote which leads into ……. …… here and use an electric pump to transfer the water into our four IBC Totes stacked up inside the end of one of our two 40ft shipping containers.
BTW; All of this equipment and the containers came with the property!
With all four IBC Totes filled up, this provides us with over 5,000L / 1340 USG of sparkling fresh potable water which is more than a year’s worth for us.
Each tote takes me about 3 hours round trip so not bad for free fresh water!
OK, now back to Lance …….
Mini Split is Major!
Remember those two boxes you saw when I picked up the plywood and the solid surface countertop material in Henderson/Vegas?
Well, here’s what those were. Yup! This awemazing 9000 BTU Pioneer mini split ductless inverter heat pump.
While our primary source of heat in colder weather will be our heated floor which is provided by the Oasis diesel boiler heating up the Glycol flowing through the PEX lines embedded in the floor and through the two “cozy” heat exchangers for hot air, this mini split air conditioner uses a heat pump which we can run in “reverse” to rapidly heat up the Happytat in situations when we have left Lance sitting for several hours or days in extreme cold such as the Norther Territories of Canada, Alaska and the Arctic which we are already eXcited about eXploring in Lance. Of course the primary purpose and use for this Mini-Split will be at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum when we are in hot humid conditions on our upcoming travels throughout North and Central America. I’ve been quite blown away by how much these units have increased their efficiency in cooling/heating/dehumidifying and even more so with their power efficiency.
At full crank this unit will only use about 700 Watts so we will be able pretty much use this as much as we want when fully off grid and unplugged powering it from our 15.36kWh lithium house battery bank. (much more on that in the next update posts)
Do you recall me pointing out the additional XAL framing I installed above the Entry Door into Lance’s Happytat? Well here is what that was for. I put in two vertical XAL supports in the framing above the door and so all I needed to do was bolt in the mounting plate that Pioneer includes with all their Mini-Splits and then you simply lower the unit onto this plate and click it in place! One of the benefits of doing a custom build is that you get to make everything a Goldilocks (just right) fit and this is a good example.
Next steps for this installation will be to remove this once I have it property fitted and connect the control and 240AC power cords and the two copper lines for the refrigerant. Looks may be a bit deceiving here in terms of the headroom when going up/down the entry way stairs but we had calculated this all out and even our taller friends well over 6ft won’t have to duck or have any limitations getting in or out.
I waited till I had this inside unit of the Mini-Split installed to finalize the height of the fridge/freezer and I’ve now lowered it about 50mm/2inches so that there is a bit of clearance between the Fridge door when it is opened and the rotating louver on the bottom of the Mini-Split when it is in operation. Well that was pretty quick and easy but not so fast Wayne!!
Just where and how are you going to mount THIS piece of the puzzle; the exterior half of the Mini-Split??!!
Don’t want to put it on the aft bumper as it looks atrocious and you give up using one of the two rear doors and also blocks tail/brake lights.
Room underneath is very limited for such a large item that measures LxWxH at 73cm x 56cm x 30cm / 29” x 22”x 12”
Hmmmmmm, what to do, what to do ?????????? I spent a LOT of time under Lance measuring every bit of available space, trying out every orientation I could come up with and for awhile I thought the best solution was going to be to dismantle the unit cut out the compressor and all the copper refrigerant lines and compressor so that I could mount the fan and conder unit horizontally. The compressor MUST remain in the “normal” upright/vertical orientation or else it won’t work but the condenser/fan unit works fine at any angle. So for a good while that was my plan; cut the compressor/condenser unit in the photo above into two separate pieces, mount the compressor unit in its required vertical position in a space underneath and then mount the condenser/fan unit sideways or horizonal underneath. It was still going to be a close fit to clear everything and not reduce ground clearance but I was pretty confident it would work and found one person on YouTube who had done something similar and it had been working well for him for several years already.
However, in one of those “Wait, what if …….???” moments in the middle of the night, I wondered if I just might be able to leave this condenser/compressor unit as is and mount the whole thing vertically underneath?? I did a LOT more measuring back and forth between the space under and behind the stairs into Lance and the Pioneer unit itself and convinced myself that while it would be a VERY close and tight fit, it WOULD/COULD work. The original Horton ambulance box had its own AirCon unit and its condenser/compressor was mounted under the steps but it was a special short and long unit made for this purpose and my Pioneer Mini-Split was MUCH larger.
I disconnected, unbolted and removed that original Horton unit which I needed to do in any case, and did more measuring and plotting with lots of consultations with my partner in life, and here’s what we came up with …….. I made a this plywood mock up that might give you a clue as to the plan?
Yup, turns out that with literally 1mm / .03inch clearance I could just squeeze this into the space between the first step and the rear wheel well.
I laid out the lines, measured a few more times, got out my trusty mini circular saw, took a deep breath and started to cut out part of the aluminium diamond plate on the rear of the steps. Whatta ya think?Is it going to fit? Well I did say this was going to be a shoe horn fit, and for a change this was NOT hyperbole as you can see! With a little help from my friends; Misters Crowbar, floor jack and ……….. ……… tie down ratchet strap, guess what?
It fit!!!!!
For those concerned and in spite of appearances in these photos to the contrary, this was all done very “gently” and the unit does fit without bending or damaging anything. Part of the challenge with this solution was with the orientation of the unit because I could not block or impede the flow of air in/out of this unit and had to also have the location of where the copper refrigerant lines hooked up. Amazingly, it all worked out in the end. Once I knew for sure it would actually fit, however closely, my next challenge was how to hold this 24kg/52lb unit solidly in place?
My pack rat tendencies came to the rescue yet again and I was able to repurpose some of these rectangular extruded aluminium channels and bolt them into the AL frame of the Horton box in the just right locations for the compressor/condenser unit to fit snuggly into.
It was going to require that I install two of these AFTER Christine and I wrestled the unit into position on the ground underneath Lance, but it would work. Here is how it was looking underneath around this time. See that spot at the rear between the Pioneer unit and that black leaf spring holder on the frame of the Kenworth chassis?
There is 2mm of clearance there, BUT it clears and nothing rubs!! In the end, this actually had MORE ground clearance than the original Horton compressor/condenser unit but I wanted to improve on it a wee bit more so I fabricated this “skid plate” out of AL diamond plate that I had cut out of the Horton box when modifying it for the transformation. I bolted two horizontal lengths of that same rectangular AL channel I used for the vertical mounts and then threaded up through the bottom of the diamond plate into these to securely attach this all together. Should be able to protect the unit from any rocks or debris that might fly up and hit it. OK, so it was now all mounted and bolted very solidly in place, now I needed to fabricate a new stair riser to replace what I’d cut out and cover this corner of the Mini-Split. I built a frame out of some of the 10 Series 1” XAL left over from the cabinetry framing and bolted that to the AL diamond plate of the steps to create a solid frame that could be stood on. Added 2” of PolyIso rigid foam insulation for acoustic and thermal isolation and then started to fabricate rectangles of AL diamond plate that slid just perfectly into the slots in the XAL framing. This simple little new step turned out to be quite the challenge of its own as I always consider future access for maintenance and repair into my designs and knew what I’d need to be able to access the forward side of the Pioneer unit for connecting the electrical cables and copper lines for this initial install and any future work that might be required. I used to love making little wooden puzzle boxes that had a specific pattern of sliding intricate pieces to open it up and this experience came in eXtremely handy here as this step box turned into an origami puzzle of its own. That side facing plate you see above slides down, then the top frame and its encapsulated plate slide out ……… …….. and now you can slide the front facing plate up and out…….. …. to reach the end goal of accessing the electrical panel. I fabricated this new cover plate and glued the wiring diagram from the original cover to the inside. Connected the 240VAC power in wires ….. ….. and screwed the new cover plate in place. Lastly I reversed the puzzle box “secret” sequence est Voila! The new step was done and the new Pioneer Mini-Split
was fully mounted and ready for installing the copper line set and control wiring. When I am all done, I will be sliding lengths of this rubber channel into the exposed slots of the XAL for a nice finishing touch and a bit of aesthetics.
Oh, and just one more thing ……..
One of the more eXciting things to happen this past week was that my Captain Christine brought back these three boxes and these two boxes, back home from one of her most recent drives up to Henderson for her fitness workouts and shopping’ Holy 3Dimensions Batwoman, boys and girls,
Wayne finally has his own 3D printer!!!!
Not that I am going to have much time to unbox and start learning how to use this Bamboo P1S 3D printer with the “combo” option of the four spool AMS Automatic Material System on top, but BOY is this going to be fun, eXtremely eXciting AND very useful for printing up so many new tools, fixtures, containers and whatever else I can design and model in Fusion 360. Even Christine shares much of my eXcitment with things she has already got in mind for me to print. Stay tuned for much more once I get some time to start using this awemazing new bit of kit.
In closing (FINALLY WAYNE!!) I’d be remis if I didn’t include kudos to our intrepid helpers who are ALWAYS on the job and without whom none of this would be possible!
A BIG congratulations if you’ve made it this far in this marathon monster mashup and please do be encouraged with any remaining strength and perseverance to put your comments and questions in the “join the Discussion“ box below. We are back at it in the morning and will do my best to get out another update before we start on our newest adventure heading to the East Coast and back.
With apologies for the radio silence from me for the past few weeks and my thanks for your patience, I’m finally back with a bit of an update for you. Both Christine and I have been eXtremely hard at our mutual “jobs”, transforming Lance for me and writing books for Christine, but as the saying goes “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” and other parts of our lives intervened for the past few weeks so we’ve been on a bit of a detour that I’ll tell you about a bit further below.
My work on Lance has been no less intense and consuming, but for the past few weeks a lot of it has been desk work as I try to keep up with all the research for all the equipment and supplied I need for Lance’s transformation and then getting them all ordered and shipped such that they arrive before I need them and don’t hold me up. All very necessary and important work but not too exciting or visual to share with you and part of the reason for not posting any updates here the past two weeks.
The good news is that I now have most of the big items of equipment ordered and some have already arrived. A few quick examples include: These two somewhat heavy boxes that weigh in at just over 90kg/200 lbs Inside is the Oasis Zephyr diesel hydronic heater that will look after all the hot water supply in Lance which includes all our DHW or Domestic Hot Water for showers and sinks as well as supplying all the heat for the floors and the interior air. You’ll get all the details on that once I start installing it in the coming weeks. Next set of boxes that arrived were these four cartons of the LVP “Click-Lock” Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. These are 221mm/8.7” wide planks of eXtremely tough vinyl flooring that I will soon be installing on top of the ACM Aluminium Composite Material that you’ve seen me installing in previous updates. This was a special order via Home Depot as it has 30mil thick wear layer on top whereas more typical flooring has 6mil. We used a very similar material for the flooring on our previous project building Mobiüs as some of you may remember and it worked eXtremely well so we’re going with what we know works again here on Lance.
And again, much more to show you once I start actually installing this final layer of flooring. Many more bits and bobs are now on their way to us here in Klamath Falls including eXciting ones such as; Three of these Bad Boys which are 400 Amp 12 Volt 5.12kWatt EG4 LL v2 batteries that will form the House Battery bank in Lance which will provide ALL the electrical power from 12VDC up through 120VAC.
Two of these Victron MultiPlus II inverter/chargers that will look after those EG4 batteries above by both converting their 12VDC into 120VAC current as well as charging the batteries from either the four solar panels up on the roof, the 320A alternator on Lance’s Cummins/Paccar engine or when we might have it, 30A shore power.
Three is a loooooong list of other Victron products such as MPPT controllers to manage the solar panel output, Lynx Distributors and Shunts to manage the electrical connections, and more that you’ll also be seeing once they arrive and the installation begins. And four of these 420W SilFab solar panels that I will be building a custom rack for on the roof of Lance to keep those batteries all charged up. And most recently including this weekend, I’ve been working with Progressive Automation to build some customized versions of their PA-18 Track Actuators, four of which I will be using to lift the Queen bed frame up on and and down. It is taking some time to work out the Hall Effect sensors and controllers to manage the four PA-18 bed lift system and …… One of these 3 stage telescoping lift columns for the large table at our L shaped settee. I am hoping to finish up working with the engineers at Progressive Automation early next week and get the order in so they can start building these parts which takes several months. I did manage to get some “real work” done such as putting together this three stage water filtration setup that will mount inside this middle exterior compartment on the Drivers Side of Lance. And I started building with my adult version Erector set of XAL eXtruded ALuminium. First up is the rack that will house those three EG4 batteries you saw above, each of which weighs 45kg/98lbs. This battery rack will be going in here, the front external Driver Side compartment and I’ll cover all this in a future post once the batteries arrive and I start to install them in these racks.
And that’s about all I’ve got to show work wise on Lance for the past few weeks BUT part of the reason for this delayed update is that detour I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I’ll bring you more details later but the quick answers to the questions posed in this week’s title is that last week we were on a 6 day road trip to eXplore the area at the very southern tip of Nevada.
Why??? you ask. Well for the past few months, we’ve been searching and researching where to set up our southern “Home Base” for the winter portion of our annual Snowbird migrations and after many, many months, this was the area that checked off most of the loooong list of criteria we had.
Our key priorities included a property that had warm, dry weather in the winter months in the southern US (to maintain our US residency), a place that was as isolated as possible from “civilization” and yet also close enough for access to good healthcare, airports, Amazon deliveries, Costco, Home Depot, etc. A great view, no restrictions on what we could build and do on this property and the list went on. Should be easy peasy to check off all these boxes right??!!??
To our initial surprise we kept coming back to the southern arrowhead shaped tip of Nevada; basically everything East, West and South of Las Vegas and after many hours scouring properties in this vast area we decided that a road trip down there was in order as neither of us had every spent much time in this area and we needed to get a good feel for it. So we packed some clothes and food and created a Puppy Palace in the back of “Rocky” our 2023 Honda Ridgeline pickup for our new pups Zoe & Razz and set a course south out of Klamath Falls on Hwy 95. Over the course of five days of driving this entire area we finally found just what we didn’t know we were looking for just north of the tiny little town of Searchlight Nevada. Population <200 where you see the blue dot on this sat view photo. Searchlight was WAY too much civilization for us BUT ……… we’d seen a listing for 10.2 acres at that Green flag up to the right of Searchlight and figured why not check that out?! So we did……..
……. and found THIS. Now, might not look like much to most of you and did initially surprise us too, BUT THIS checked all our boxes! 10.2 acres, great views including the Colorado River and Lake Mohave if you look closely and if you don’t recognize them, this is in the middle of a forest of Joshua Trees!
And as you can see, not another soul in sight. Yet downtown Las Vegas, the airport, Costco, Home Depot and much more are all less than an hour’s drive. To put the icing on this well baked cake, it came with these two brand new (single use) 40ft x 9’6” containers which turned out to have 15 new solar panels and five 330 USG potable water tanks inside!
Maybe you can start to see how this all adds up to a Goldilocks property that is just right, just for us!?
Along the way we had found a fabulous real estate agent (an all too rare find in our experiences) so we were soon on the phone with Aaron as we made the drive back “home” to Klamath Falls with a quick stop in Reno to say Hi to Christine’s sister Cindy and husband David.
So the answer to the second question in this week’s title; You Did WHAT?!? is …………………. On Wednesday we put in an offer (less than $6,000/acre) and on Thursday we got word it was accepted!!!!
Holy Jumping Joshua Trees Batman!!! After decades of life at sea, we’re now REALLY dirt dwellers!!!
While you are digesting all of that, I’ll leave you with the other “detour” we’ve been on that isn’t helping too much with us making progress in our “jobs”, and that is looking after the newest members of our family; Zoey and Razz who many of you have so kindly been asking about. They are almost 5 months old now and quite the pair and best buddies as you can see. Most recent update is that we were finally able to get them to the groomer after they had all their shots and as you can see in this “Before” shot of Razz, not a minute too soon! Here’s the After shot of Razz and his sister Zoe. And thaaaaaaat’s all for this week folks!
Really appreciate your patience and all your kind messages asking about us. All is well as you can see and the next month will be even busier than the last so not sure how much work I’ll get done on Lance as we prep for the move down South, but I’ll do my best to bring you updates on the progress that is made.
Till then, thanks for joining and do leave your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
In last week’s “Toasty Tootsies” post I went over the way our In Floor Heating system works and concluded my explanation with what I thought was a rhetorical question;
“Brilliantly simple don’t you think??!!
Well, based on the number of comments and Emails I received, while our In Floor Heating system might indeed be “Brilliantly Simple” my explanation was NOT! Therefore, let me try and mend this by revisiting our In Floor Heating and do my best to improve my explanation of how this Open Direct type of system works. If I’m successful I think that most of you will come to agree with my assessment that this Open Direct system is indeed “Brilliantly Simple”!
But you will be the judge of that and so Please do add your comments as to how well this second attempt helps you to understand how our In Floor and Domestic Hot Water systems work and don’t hesitate to add your additional questions and things that still don’t make sense to you.
OK, here is my second attempt to show how this all works;
Deeper Dive into our Open Direct System;
One of the Emails I received, (thanks Benjamin), asked the following set of questions that included many of the points of confusion others sent me so I thought I’d use this to frame this expanded explanation of the Open Direct system I used to design our In Floor Heating or IFH and Domestic Hot Water or DHW System.
Benjamin wrote:
If I understood your installation diagram correctly, you run the drinking water through the same pipes as the water for the underfloor heating. Drinking water and “heating water” are identical, or not installed separately. First of all, this is economical because you one water circuit less. But I have a question about summer operation: drinking water and heating are usually installed separately, because in summer mode
you want to avoid hot water flowing through the heating system, and
the water should not stand still in parts of the circuit for a longer period of time to prevent the formation of legionella.
You can probably avoid point a. with valves that separate the entire heating circuit from the drinking water circuit in summer. But if the heating circuit is not flushed for several months during summer operation, legionella can form and then be flushed into the drinking water circuit when the heating system is put into operation. How do you avoid this? Is the underfloor heating completely drained during summer operation modus?
Thank you very much for further information!
First, let me try to resolve some common sources of misunderstanding that Benjamin and many of you mentioned;
I should have emphasized more how the various parts of our overall water systems are separated from each other. In last week’s post I mostly left out the Cold or “drinking” water system so it needs to be understood that this has its own set of plumbing and ALL the water we drink and cook with comes directly from the water tanks to the cold water taps/showers onboard. All the water in our water tanks comes directly from the onboard watermaker so it is as clean and close to pure H2O as is possible.
One of the things that seems to confuse many people at first is to understand that there are only TWO conditions that causes water to FLOW in a plumbing system:
The regular water pressure in the system causes water to flow IF and ONLY IF water is being REMOVED from the system.
There is a continuous circulation loop with its own PUMP that causes water to flow round and round through the CIRCULATION loop.
When neither 1 or 2 is true, there is NO FLOW of water through the plumbing.
The Hot/Warm systems are the ones based on the Open/Direct system on Möbius and this has TWO different but interconnected systems:
The In Floor Heating Mode which provides WARM water to heat floors when wanted.
The DHW Domestic Hot Water Mode which provides HOT water to all the sinks and showers at all times.
I have modified the following illustrations from last week’s post to show a clearer picture of how these two systems work.
When no Hot water tap is open there is NO Cold water entering the system. However, when one of the In Floor thermostats turns on a Zone Circulation Pump, warm water then flows out of the Calorifier, through the in floor PEX tubing and back into the Calorifier. This is a continuous loop so warm water is flowing through the floor tubing anytime the circulation pump is running.
The DHW system always takes priority so whenever a Hot water tap is opened, the system works like this in DHW Mode. When any HOT water outlet at a sink or shower is opened, the regular pressure in the Cold water system which runs about 60 PSI, causes Cold water to enter and flow through the PEX tubing in the floors to refill the hot water that has been removed from the Calorifier. When the Hot water tap is closed the system automatically reverts back to In Floor Heating Mode and the Circulation Pump causes Warm water to circulate though the floor and keep it toasty warm. To answer another question I received and as should now make sense, we do not actually “drink” water going through the DHW or In Floor Heating, though there would be no problems if we did.
It can initially be a bit confusing because when Hot water is consumed (taken out of the Calorifier by turning on the hot water at a sink or shower) and the system is in DHW mode as per above, it is necessary to replace the water that has been removed from the Calorifier so Cold “drinking water” does enter the DHW system. This is exactly the same as in ANY home or other setup with a Water Heater or Calorifier; when Hot water is taken out, it must be replaced with water from the Cold water supply.
In operation this works extremely well and does so automatically by design. Anytime Hot water is wanted, the Open Direct system ensures that this takes priority and Hot water flows from the Calorifier to the tap or shower as long as it is open. As soon as you close that tap and are no longer needing Hot water, the system reverts to In Floor Heating Mode.
Summer vs Winter:
The difference between Summer and Winter is that in Summer/hot weather when the In Floor Heating is turned off, the IFH Circulation pumps never turn on so no water is flowing through the floor UNTIL a Hot Water tap is opened. Said another way, the ONLY time water is flowing through the floor PEX is when the system is in DHW Mode because a Hot water tap has been turned on. The rest of the time, there is NO water flowing through the floor tubes.
This turns out to be part of the “brilliance” of this type of system in my opinion because the design ensures that the In Floor Heating automatically adapts to whatever the weather is. HOT water ONLY flows through the floors when it is needed and the circulation pumps turn on in colder weather. NO hot water flows through the floors in warmer weather because the circulation pumps never turn on.
This sets up the ideal system as it ensures that the water in the PEX tubing is always being refreshed and is never standing still for any length of time.
Better yet, in hot weather, when you are using DHW and there is water flowing through the floor tubes, it is absorbing some of the heat in the room or from sun shining on the floors and so that by the time the water gets to the Calorifier, it is now a bit warmer so you save energy in the Calorifier because the replacement water has already been warmed up and does not take as much energy to heat up to whatever temperature you have sent the Calorifier to maintain.
Once this all makes sense I think you too will see just how “brilliantly simple” this Open Direct system is. It is completely automatic, no valves or switches to change, no need to drain the system or do anything else other than keep using everything on the boat/house as you always have.
Trust me, it does take a while to figure this type of system out. It is one of those things where it is very simple but ONLY after you understand it! To begin with, it can be VERY confusing! My suggestion, and what I used to do a lot of, is to draw out a schematic for yourself and trace the flow of water in the different scenarios from summer to winter and from In Floor Heat Mode to DHW mode and I think you will quickly see how it works.
Hope this helps and if it still doesn’t make sense just send me additional questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below to let me know what’s confusing or not making sense and I will do my best to answer them all as quickly as possible or in next week’s post.
Thanks for your patience with this not always so clear ex teacher!
Welcome to this first Möbius Update post of 2022! I hope you have 2022 off to a great start already as we work to do the same here aboard the Good Ship Möbius. I am slowly warming up to getting back to weekly blog posts here so thanks very much for your patience in waiting for this first one of the new year. I’ve been warming up particularly well now that I have the in floor heating all working which I think may well be Captain Christine’s favorite feature so far.
And apparently she’s not the only one as Ruby & Barney have discovered how well the in floor heating heats up their little doggie beds.
With the weather getting colder since our return at the beginning of December from our 2 months back in Canada and the USA, I’ve been mostly working on getting all the Domestic Hot Water or DHW systems fully operational and all the various bugs worked out. I’ve received a number of questions about how our DHW system works and what components we have installed and a lot of interest in the in-floor heating system we’ve installed and that’s what Ill do my best to cover here in this week’s update.
Domestic Hot Water System
Our DHW system is pretty straight forward so let me cover that first.
There are just three basic components of the DHW System: Kabola KB45 Ecoline Combi diesel fired water heater/boiler
IsoTemp 75L Calorifier
with 3 internal heat exchangers
Hot Water circulation Loop that runs around the circumference of the boat
The Kabola is the primary heating source for the whole DHW system as it is eXtremely efficient, quiet and very trouble free.
Ours is the “Combi” model which means that it has two separate heating loops inside. The primary loop heats up the water in the IsoTherm Calorifier which holds all the DHW for the boat and the other loop heats up the fluid going to the four air handlers which can heat the air in each cabin if needed. This view of the back of the Kabola shows the primary boiler loop Supply/Return connections at #1 & #2 and then the secondary loop flows in/out of #5 & 6. The Primary loop has a built in circulation pump that constantly circulates the antifreeze/water fluid and a thermostat turns the burner on/off to keep the fluid at whatever temperature you set.
The secondary “Combi” loop has an external circulation pump that is part of the Webasto AirCon/Heating system.
I’ve removed the front of the burner to show you how the internal heat exchangers work. The large black tank you see on the Left contains all the antifreeze/water fluid and the diesel burner is inside the Grey tube on the Right.
The larger diameter tubes/holes on the top are the secondary loop and the larger number on the bottom are the primary heating loop. The Kabola is super simple to operate, just turn it on, set the thermostat to be whatever degrees you want the internal fluid inside the boiler to maintain and then pretty much forget it. When the fluid temp goes down the burner automatically fires up, heats the water a bit past the set temp and then shuts off. Could not be simpler or more efficient. Now let’s follow where the heated fluid as it leaves the Kabola and flows over to the heat exchanger loop inside the Calorifier.
This cutaway view shows how our IsoTherm Calorifier is similarly multi purposed with three different sources of heat to keep our DHW nice and hot. There are two loops of SS pipes on the bottom here, one which has the fluid from the Kabola flowing in/out of it and the other loop a similar antifreeze/water fluid flowing through from the Gardner engine’s “cooling” system. The top most loop is a 240V electric heating element that we can use if needed.
All SS construction and the outside never even gets warm so the heavy insulation has been working very well and the Kabola does not need to fire up very often to keep the water nice and hot all the time.
Turning the Calorifier above around and looking at the outside this sketch shows the three pairs of In/Out connections; one for the hot fluid from the Kabola, one for the hot fluid from the Gardner (when it is running) and then the Cold Fresh Water In and DHW Out. The end of the Calorifier in the illustration above is under my hand and if you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) you can see a Yellow ring labelled “Engine Water” on the far Right and a White ring on the Left labelled “Kabola White” On the top Right the Red Label marks where the Hot Water comes out through the black wrapped insulated pipes which are split into one line going to the DHW loop and the other with the bottom Left Mixing Valve going to the In Floor Heating loops. Closer view of the adjustable Mixing Valve which controls the temperature of the water going out to the In Floor Heating system which wants warm not Hot water, usually about 55C/131F whereas the DHW runs about 65C/150F. To make sure there is always hot water ready to come out of each sink and shower, the DHW flows around the whole boat in a continuous loop of insulated pipe. In this schematic the DHW loop is on the Right hand side and the In/Out to the In Floor Heating is on the Left.
I will get back to the In Floor Heating a bit later below but the key point to keep in mind is that the In Floor Heating is all part of the same DHW system.
To keep the DHW flowing through the hot water loop feeding each tap and shower, this magnetically coupled impeller pump is very small, about the size of your fist and is highly efficiency with very low power consumption and absolutely silent.
We now have very hot water readily available at every tap and shower onboard and we are both eXtremely pleased with how well the whole DHW system has been working.
In-Floor Heating or IFH
Winters here in southern Turkey are rather mild compared to many locations with lows down to 8C/46F a few nights and day time highs as much as 20C/68F but winter is also when we get rainy days and so can get chilly and so the real star of our DHW system the past while has been having nice warm floors throughout the boat to keep us toasty warm.
It has taken me some time to get it all adjusted and working properly but it is now running flawlessly and silently so let me walk you through how this system works.
As with the DHW system above, the In Floor Heating or IFH is a very simple system with the following main components:
An Azel I-Link controller with three thermostats for each IFH zone on the boat, one in each cabin and one in the SuperSalon. A pair of SS manifolds, top Red one where the Warm water (about 50C/122F coming in at the top and then the Returning slightly cooler water exiting out the bottom Blue manifold. Each of the I-Link thermostats controls one of these Taco 3 speed 1/25HP circulation pumps which circulates the fresh DHW water from the Calorifier through the PEX tubing that runs in loops underneath all our floors as needed to keep our tootsies nice and warm. We worked out these serpentine patterns of PEX tubing in each of the three Zones to provide an even distribution of heat wherever there were bare floors and not under the built in furniture. This is in the Master Cabin; Head/shower lower Left, bed center Right. This is how the PEX tubing was laid down before the 10mm marine plywood floors were installed. Serpentine grooves were cut into the foam with a router. Foil tape was set into the groove in the foam and then the 15mm PEX tubing was press fit into the groove. Here is how it looked in the forward end of the SuperSalon.
Let’s take a minute to walk through a brief explanation of how the In Floor Heating system works.
For our IFH system I decided to use what is called the “Open Direct” style as it is incredibly simple and efficient. OPEN in this case refers to the fact that the IFH system is “open” to the same DHW that we use onboard for sinks and showers. A “closed” system would be like the loops of antifreeze/water that the Kabola uses to heat up the water in the Calorifier.
DIRECT refers to the fact that the fresh warm water flowing through the PEX tubing is heating the floors directly, not through a heat exchanger like those in the Calorifier. This simple schematic adds the details of how the IFH portion of our DHW system works. Warm water coming out of the Calorifier via the mixing valve is pumped on demand through the PEX tubing in the floors by the Taco circulation pumps. Part of the simple brilliance of an Open Direct system is that the DHW always takes precedence so anytime you turn on a hot water tap or the shower, hot water is diverted to them until shut of when the warm water returns to circulate through the floors as needed. Huh? How does THAT work you ask? The following two illustrations should help make sense of this very simple but initially a bit confusing system works.
This is In Floor Heating Mode that happens whenever the thermostat for this IFH Zone turns the circulation pump ON and warm DHW is pumped through the under floor PEX tubing in that zone and then returned back to the Calorifier (Water Heater). Keep in mind that even though the whole DHW system is pressurized to about 4 Bar/60 PSI in this mode the ONLY way water flows is IF the circulation pump is running. Even though it is available, Cold water cannot enter the system when the pump comes on unless someone is taking hot water out of the system by taking a shower, doing dishes, etc..
When a Hot water tap is opened then the pressure drops and the system reverts to this DHW Mode and Hot water flows out of the Calorifier (Water Heater) to the HW tap and Cold water flows into the system to replace it.
The cold water goes through heating tubes within the floor on its way to the water heater. This flow pattern provides limited free cooling and other benefits. Stagnation is prevented and priority is given to the domestic hot water use over the space heating use. A small amount of free cooling is realized in the summer.
Note that NO additional equipment, parts or power is needed to make these two modes work automatically.
Brilliantly simple don’t you think??!!
I found these beautiful SS manifolds on Amazon for a great price and they made the whole plumbing of the system very straightforward to install and control. Red handled ball valve top Left is where the warm water from the Calorifier flows INTO the system and is made available to each of the three Red Flow Control Meters/Valves and into the PEX fittings on the bottom.
Cooler water from each continuous PEX loop flows into the bottom three fittings, each with the White capped control valve and then OUT the Blue ball valve and back to the Calorifier. Each continuous loop of PEX in a zone has one of these Red Flow Meters that you adjust to get the correct flow rate, which is about 1-1.5 L/min for our zones. Each ball valve has a temp gauge so you can check the differential of the water temp coming IN and how much it drops going OUT. Ideal is about 50C/122F coming in and 40C/104 going OUT and you adjust this via the Mixing Valve on the Calorifier. Here is what the whole IFH manifold looks like when assembled and installed with the three Taco circulation pumps.
These Taco pumps are pretty much bullet proof and are miserly power consumers as they are very small 1/25HP AC motors. The Taco pumps are absolutely silent and can be run at one of three speed settings to get you the flow you want. They are also dead quiet and you can only tell they are running by watching the flow meters. This Azel I-Link controller is the brains of the IFH system and takes its orders from one of the three thermostats conveniently located in each Zone. Each thermostat is very easy to adjust and provides a full set of information of room temp, floor temp, when the “heating mode” or pumps are on, etc.. Here is what one looks like in operation today. Room temp is 22.3C/72F, Set Point is 24C, floor temp is 49C. Each Zone has one of these little temperature sensors installed which connects to the thermostat of that Zone so it and the controller knows when to turn the circulation pump Off/On. The main control box of the I-Link system is carefully tucked away into a small alcove in the Ship’s Office where it is well protected but easily viewed by opening the cupboard door. Red lights on the far Right indicate when one of the 3 zones is working (pump on).
And that is it! Just like the Kabola boiler, this is a “set it and forget it” system and has been working flawlessly and very easy to adjust as we learned what temps we liked in each zone.
You have to experience it to understand just how fabulous Toasty Tootsies are when the weather turns colder outside!
And that’s a wrap for this week, the first blog and Möbius Update of 2022 is done and dusted!
Hope you enjoyed it and please be sure to tell me if you did or didn’t and add any other questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
I’ll do my best to be back again next weekend with another Möbius Update for you and thanks again for your patience in waiting for this one to go live.
To help with your orientation, this screen shot from my Fusion 360 3D model shows where the Head & Shower are located in the front DS Driver Side of Lance’s Hab/Habitat/Box which is on the far Right of this view. 
Here is what it looked like IRL (In Real Life) from the inside when I got started. That’s the SS Fridge/Freezer on the far Right, Blue DS Galley countertop peeking through on the Left and that’s the DS Front corner of the Hab in the far middle of this photo. The toilet will sit on top of the raised floor section and I’m getting ready to put in the the shower pan on the lower section of the floor that the blue cargo spreaders are resting on.
I started prepping the interior by gluing 1/2” Baltic Birch plywood on the XAL eXtruded Aluminium framing of the two walls you see here on the Left and Rear. I use these adjustable Blue Cargo Spreaders (from Harbor Freight) all the time and here they are helping apply pressure to the freshly glued in BB plywood panels to keep them flat and straight.
For maximum adhesion of the rigid foam Shower Pan I removed all the LVT vinyl floor planking that covers all the floor area inside Lance’s Happytat. 
To help with tiling the shower pan and getting the slope to the center shower drain just right, I bought a Vevor shower pan kit that is specifically made for this purpose and adds even more insulation to the shower floor. 
You can see here how the area for the flange of the PVC drain is already pre-cast into the foam and you’ll also note the large circular recess surrounding it for bedding the drain flange into the floor. 
After checking that it all fit just right, I removed the foam pan, applied a silicone based adhesive with my cordless caulking gun (that I’m enjoying more ever time I use!), spread it out evenly with a notched trowel and pressed the floor pan back into place using my trusty cargo spreaders and some aluminium and plywood cauls to press it even and flat. 
It was difficult to see in the photos above but I also used 1/2” BB plywood to cover the wall between the Shower and the Fridge/Freezer compartment. I caulked all seams and corners with construction adhesive for additional sealing of those.
Next I put in this small bit of XAL framing to extend that exterior cabinet “bump” all the way to the inner edge of the Head raised floor. This will also create a handy storage area. 
Now it was time to completely waterproof every surface inside the Head & Shower to ensure that there are no leaks in the future. I used the ever popular RedGuard and brushed it on all the surfaces.
After the first thin coat of RedGuard was on I went around and used more RedGuard to bed in some reinforcing felt that I cut into strips and pressed into all the corners and seams with more RedGuard. 
The drain area received several more coats of RedGuard as this will get the most traffic and potential for seepage. The pink colour is from the still wet RedGuard which quickly changes to Red as it dries fully. 
Et Voila!! 
A bit messy but my 11cm/ 4 1/4” hole saw did a nice job of cutting this hole through all the layers of insulation and aluminium in the floor for the PVC drain to set into and exit out the bottom where it will connect to PVC pipe and on to the Gray Water tank. You can also see the 2 inches of insulation that are below the shower floor. 
I had some of this Blue Solid Surface acrylic material left over from doing the Galley countertops so I used this to create a nicely contrasting and durable shelf top on that bump out in the Head. 
I wanted to get this shelf installed before I started putting in the PVC planking that I’m going to use to cover the walls. 
The kit comes with this Orange plastic mesh which the Black heating cable gets attached to.
This is the transition piece where the cable changes from the 220VAC power cable to the heated wire. As it is a larger diameter I routed a groove into the ACM flooring so this thicker diameter would sit flush with the floor surface and be better protected. 
The heated cable is one continuous length and you can not cut this so it took me a bit of planning to get the spacing right but all fit in very nicely and will keep our tootsies warm both when showering and sitting on the Throne! 
With all the heated cable and mesh in place I mixed up the epoxy thinsulate/mortar and spread out about a 13mm / 1/2” thick layer with a steel trowel and smoothed it all out. 
Laying out this type of spiral pattern is a bit tricky and takes some planning to make sure all the corners and joints line up and maintain the pattern. If you look closely you’ll see that you can only get a straight line for butting up against corners or lining up sheets in one place along the larger square formed by each spiral.
Where I needed to cut some of the tiles such as around the drain, my trusty Dremel tool with a diamond cutting wheel worked like a charm to get nice straight cuts and smooth edges and you can maybe see along the bottom edge for this sheet I’m trimming square here. 
It had been a Looooooooong time, think decades, since I last did any tiling so I started with the floor in the Head as it will largely be covered by our Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to cover any learning errors, but it all turned out quite well I thought. 
Then I moved onto the Shower floor and started the dry layup there. 
You can see how I needed to trim the tiles a bit along the edges of the square SS drain which I did so that the outer edges of the regular square spiral patterns would match up with the outer edges. 
And it all slopes down from the edges to the drain. 
I thought it would look better to create a single upper edge surrounding the whole space so I put in some aluminium edging and tiled up to that along all the sides of the Shower and the Head floors and set them in place. 
For the walls I wanted to find the best combination of waterproof, easy to clean and good looking so I ended up going with these White tongue and groove PVC planks that are about 18cm / 7” wide with grooves molded in to look like narrower planks, and started cutting them to size.
I picked up some aluminium edging meant to be used under tiles which you see propped up in the corner on the Right here and used that to make the transitions from tile to PVC planking. I taped off the top and bottom edges of the area for this band………….. 
………. and installed the AL transitions edging all round. 
I had enough left over tile to cut these bands off the sheets and used that size to determine the width of the band. 
Worked out quite well and now time to put up all the PVC wall planks.
It was quite quick and easy to cut the 8ft long PVC planks to a nice fit between the top and bottom edges of the aluminium edging there the tiles start and stop. 
The cargo spreaders and some square aluminium tube cauls helped to hold the PVC planks flat while the silicone adhesive cured overnight.
With the wall planks all done I could now grout all the tiles in this band and on the floors to finish the tiling. 
I did the ceiling with the same vinyl planking with a different pattern on it that I used for the ceilings in the rest of Lance. As with those other ceilings, I put in a strip of dimmable LED’s between each plank but more on that a bit later.
I’m not a big fan of the popular variations of the MaxFans that much of the RV and Van world seem to use and wanted to keep our overall vehicle height to a minimum and we’re at 2.9m / 9’ 5” right now with the solar panels and roof vent. So this Kohree vent unit seemed to check all our boxes.
I had purposely left this space up on the roof in front of the four 450Watt solar panels and their Super Strut rails so now time to cut the only hole in our otherwise seamless one piece roof.
There are three thick aluminium plates in the roof of Lance, one for the top skin, the layer you can see here that forms the internal ceiling of the ambo box and then …… 
……… the final layer of 5mm thick ACM that I installed for the ceiling surface below the additional layer of 20mm IPS foam insulation. 
The vent dropped in just right. 
I used this 2×2” square AL ceiling beam for a conduit for the wires to power and control the fan. 
I’m a BIG fan of these WAGO wire connectors and have used them throughout the build. They worked well to connect these 12VDC power wires to the fan and then tuck nicely into that square AL tube. 
Checked everything for a good fit including this trim frame and then …. 
………. bedded the vent into the roof with 3M 5200 sealant and some makeshift weights to let it cure overnight.
Worked out well to provide Goldilocks just right lighting both night and day. 
One last detail for those few times (so far) either of us needs to get up and use the Head in the middle of the night, I wanted also have some indirect low level lighting inside the Head & Shower area. So I installed some of these 45 degree angled aluminium extrusions in hidden areas such as under the door sill into the Shower you can make out below my hand and another under that little Blue shelf in the Head. 
To help keep our night vision and add a bit of “ambiance” I used these Blue LED strips which are also dimmable to whatever level of Blue light you’d like.
Testing out the LED strip tucked in below the door sill into the Shower. 
After some debate and research we decided to go with this retractable shower door that rolls up when OPEN like this 
….. and then rolls out to seal and CLOSE like this. 
The flexible material rolls up on a spring loaded shaft hidden neatly inside this cassette that mounts to the left side of the door. 
The “door” slides on tracks concealed inside the AL extrusions top and bottom and I left a small gap at the top to help with air circulation. 
And then mounted this mirrored Medicine Cabinet on the rear wall to finish things off. 
an’t have much of a shower with no water so along the way I installed this very nice adjustable hand held shower head that has a full shut off valve on the handle and …. 
…… connected it to a thermostatic controlled mixing valve faucet. These are great for maintaining a whatever water temperature you set it to coming out of the shower head. The button allows you to turn the water on and off as you wish to conserve water and have it off when you want to wash your hair, shave, etc. 
The SS cylindrical knob on the top end rotates to set the temperature and the one on the bottom controls the water flow volume.
I drilled and threaded this plate to mount these two brass fittings for the thermostatic valve to attach to on the outside and push-connect fittings on the other side ………… 
…… for the Hot & Cold water 1/2” PEX-A lines to attach to. 
The Yellow handles are shut off ball valves on each PEX water line for servicing or winterizing.
The whole assembly then fits securely into the slots in the XAL framing. 
I cut this rabbet or tongue on the bottom edge that is a snug fit into the groove on the bottom length of XAL framing. 
The way it works is that you first put the bottom tongue into the groove and then …….. 
…………… tip the panel up into place. 
To hold this and likely all the panels in Lance securely in place, I’m trying out using these very strong round “donut” Neodymium magnets. This one is a 40 pounder, meaning it takes about 40 pounds of pull to remove. These magnets are available from less than one pound up to over one hundred. 
All the metal in Lance is aluminium which of course isn’t magnetic so cut a short 5cm/2” length of steel flat bar and drilled a 6mm hole in one end so I can bolt it to a T nut captured in the XAL slot on the back here. Worked out even better than I hoped and the panel snaps into place with a good “thud” and locks the whole panel tightly in place. 
Here is what the panel looks like so far. White thermostat for the heated floors in the Head & Shower in the bottom right (currently turned off) and the Victron Cerbo GX touch display above it and switches for things like water pump, Starlink power and the thermostatic controllers for the heated main cabin floors over to the Left. 
IRL or Real Life does still help sometimes when I can have the real parts in my hands as I’m working out the 3D model for the placement of components such as the brass mixing valve and the black circulation pump which are the key components of the heated floor system we now have in Lance. 
I
Installing the Zephyr involved quite a bit of work as it requires diesel supply and return lines which are going to come up through the two holes on the right here with the Black rubber gromets on them. Then there is an 1.5” steel exhaust pipe which comes out the bottom of the Zephyr (sitting up on its side in this photo) and then a SS muffler under the floor of the compartment. 
I
For those curious, this diagram shows how the heated Glycol flow works such that by shutting off that 3 Way Valve the Glycol basically just makes a out and right back into the boiler and does not run any of it through the floor or Cozies in the summer. Of course the independent DHW circuit still works all the time with fresh cold water coming in from the main water tanks and coming out the DHW lines to the sink and showers. 
On the rear side of this compartment I mounted the water pump that pulls water out of the two potable fresh water tanks and then pumps that through the three stage water filtration system beside it. 
…… to supply the various DCW and DHW components. 
We take the “belt & suspenders” approach when it comes to our drinking water also added the grey Acuva box and white cylindrical filter you see up top here. This uses a UV-LED light which disinfects microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, cysts) using UV‑C light, and then the Advanced Pre‑Filter also removes chemicals, metals, chlorine, VOCs, odors, and turbidity. 
The
You can see better in this labelled screenshot of the 3D model. Glycol exits this first front cozy and flows back to the Rear Cozy and then is returned back to the Zephyr as I hope you can see in the 3D model. 
To get the best fit for the return line out of the Front Cozy I needed to modify it with this 90 degree copper elbow. 
and
All the wiring connects into the main Zephyr control box which may look a bit confusing here but is very well designed and easy to work with. 
All very simple with braided SS lines for the incoming DCW and DHW and then ………
…….. the third line wraps around and feeds the quick connect fitting. 
and this is the overhead cabinet above the DS Galley countertop.
You can see a bit of the detail of the way I am connecting all the various lengths of XAL which are all 1 inch square with either 2, 3 or 4 T slots. 
You can also see some additional XAL framing above the Entry Door into Lance’s “Happy tat” which I’ll explain a bit more in a few minutes. 
Peering into the Fusion 360 3D model of the Happytat might help to give you some perspective of the overall layout. L-shaped Settee in the Rear (far left) with the Queen Bed (not shown) raised up into the ceiling and the two Galley countertops on the PS and DS in the middle and then the Fridge/Freezer PS front with the shower in between that and the Head/Bathroom on the DS front (upper Right here) 
The last bit of XAL framing when pretty quick and easy to put the last piece of the L-shaped Settee into place for the seat that goes across the back in front of the two rear doors of the Happytat “box”. 
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but thankfully my Beautiful Bride has been taking some time away from her writing to create these drawings for the Settee cushions with the help from some AI of course to create these sketches a bit faster. She is now working with a local upholstery guy up in Vegas as we simply don’t have the time to sew these ourselves. 
This is a sample swatch of the upholstery fabric that Christine has found and we both really love. 
….. and this is the beautiful (we think) glass and stone tile that she found and should be here in a few days. 
We found this Blue Lagoon pure acrylic at Solid Surface.com (where else?!?) and got a great price at $639 for this 1/2 inch thick 144 inch x 30 inch slab. They did a great job of packaging it all up and it arrived in perfect condition. 
Would have been a bit of a challenge to bring this 12 foot slab the 75 miles back to RoadRunner Ranch but I needed two pieces that were just under 6ft each so I brought my handy cordless circular saw with me and cut it in half and loaded it into Totu our 2006 Toyota Tundra, and we were off. 
Well, I did make a quick stop while I was up in Henderson (south part of Vegas) at our favorite Home Depot to pick up four sheets of 1/4” and 1/2 thick Baltic Birch plywood and these two other boxes which you’ll just have to wait for a bit to discover what’s inside them. 
This 1/2” solid acrylic material was very nice to work with using my regular carbide tipped saw blades and router bits and after some careful “measure twice, cut once” checks between the model and the actual interior I quick had the larger DS Galley countertop cut out. 
With the cutouts to go around the intersecting XAL parts and the bed lift linear actuators on the far Left here, it was a nice close fit.
We like the look of thicker exposed edges around all the countertops so my next step was to cut 1” and 2” strips of the acrylic sheet and glue them along all the edges and overtop of where the countertop attaches to all of the XAL framing underneath. Pretty simple process using a purpose made epoxy glue and matching gun you can see in the middle Right and then clamping the two mating surfaces together. 
Now for the FUN part! Cleaning up all the now 1” thick edges where the two pieces had been glued together. The clamp on strait edge was a bit help to quickly have a straight guiding surface for me to hold the base of the router to and shave off the edges.
…….. and then switched to a 1/4” radius bit for the bottom edge as we thought this combination looked and felt the best.
…… provided Christine with some chuckles and entertainment courtesy of her very own Frosty the Snowman. 
Now on to the details starting with the cutout for the nice big and deep SS sink. 
Once I had the large opening cut out with the circular saw I cleaned up the inside edges same as I did with the outer edges using the router and a 1/2” radius round over bit to provide what we thought was the best look and feel for the undermount sink. 
Gee, actually starting to see a Galley in here! 
With the sink test fitted and approved, next detail was to use this flush bottom router bit to cut a shallow recess in the XAL where the edges of the SS sink would sit down flush with the rest of the XAL surfaces. 
This was necessary so that the countertop would sit perfectly flush on top of all the XAL and sink edges. 
The final result was well worth the eXtra effort to get this clean fit between the undermount sink and the countertop material. 
One more job checked off the list! 
Moving over to the PS Galley, next job was to fit this lovely 2 burner induction cooktop into the countertop using the same process as the sink…… 
………. layout the opening with masking tape and pen, cut out the opening with the circular saw and Japanese flush cut hand saw……. 
….. a little bit of filing to put in some small grooves for the screws in the side edges of the cooktop and it slid into place just right.
If you peer through the mess you just might be able to see quite a large and lovely two sided Galley?! 
Final bit of kit to finish off the Galley for now was to install this marvelous dual kitchen faucet that we can’t wait to try out. 
Quick and simple install, just drill the 1 1/4” hole in the countertop, assemble the braided SS Hot & Cold hoses into the base of the faucet and insert through the hole. A brass nut then slides up from below and threads onto the base of the faucet with washers sealing both sides and it is ready to be connected to the hot and cold PEX hoses when they go in on the upcoming plumbing phase of Lance’s transformation. 
All the potable water we put into the two 170L/45 USG water tanks will go through a set of three filters but to clean it up to the next level I installed this Acuva UV water filter with its own faucet. 
Then make the 2 mile drive into the booming metropolis of Searchlight (pop 245) to this “secret” water tap carefully tucked away on this abandoned lot courtesy of one of our neighbors “Amber”. This is fresh out of the ground from the large wellhead that provides all the “city water” to the homes of residents of Searchlight and has incredible pressure and volume so only takes me less than 20 minutes to completely fill the IBC Tote. 
Then drive back home to RoadRunner Ranch, connect the hose to the large valve on the bottom of the IBC Tote which leads into ……. 
…… here and use an electric pump to transfer the water into our four IBC Totes stacked up inside the end of one of our two 40ft shipping containers.
Yup! This awemazing 9000 BTU Pioneer mini split ductless inverter heat pump.
I’ve been quite blown away by how much these units have increased their efficiency in cooling/heating/dehumidifying and even more so with their power efficiency. 
Do you recall me pointing out the additional XAL framing I installed above the Entry Door into Lance’s Happytat? Well here is what that was for. I put in two vertical XAL supports in the framing above the door and so all I needed to do was bolt in the mounting plate that Pioneer includes with all their Mini-Splits and then you simply lower the unit onto this plate and click it in place! 
One of the benefits of doing a custom build is that you get to make everything a Goldilocks (just right) fit and this is a good example.
Looks may be a bit deceiving here in terms of the headroom when going up/down the entry way stairs but we had calculated this all out and even our taller friends well over 6ft won’t have to duck or have any limitations getting in or out. 
Well that was pretty quick and easy but not so fast Wayne!!
Whatta ya think?Is it going to fit? 
Well I did say this was going to be a shoe horn fit, and for a change this was NOT hyperbole as you can see! 
With a little help from my friends; Misters Crowbar, floor jack and ……….. 
……… tie down ratchet strap, guess what? 
Once I knew for sure it would actually fit, however closely, my next challenge was how to hold this 24kg/52lb unit solidly in place? 
Here is how it was looking underneath around this time. 
See that spot at the rear between the Pioneer unit and that black leaf spring holder on the frame of the Kenworth chassis?
In
OK, so it was now all mounted and bolted very solidly in place, now I needed to fabricate a new stair riser to replace what I’d cut out and cover this corner of the Mini-Split. I built a frame out of some of the 10 Series 1” XAL left over from the cabinetry framing and bolted that to the AL diamond plate of the steps to create a solid frame that could be stood on. 
Added 2” of PolyIso rigid foam insulation for acoustic and thermal isolation and then started to fabricate rectangles of AL diamond plate that slid just perfectly into the slots in the XAL framing. 
This simple little new step turned out to be quite the challenge of its own as I always consider future access for maintenance and repair into my designs and knew what I’d need to be able to access the forward side of the Pioneer unit for connecting the electrical cables and copper lines for this initial install and any future work that might be required. 
I used to love making little wooden puzzle boxes that had a specific pattern of sliding intricate pieces to open it up and this experience came in eXtremely handy here as this step box turned into an origami puzzle of its own. That side facing plate you see above slides down, then the top frame and its encapsulated plate slide out ……… 
…….. and now you can slide the front facing plate up and out…….. 
…. to reach the end goal of accessing the electrical panel. 
I fabricated this new cover plate and glued the wiring diagram from the original cover to the inside. 
Connected the 240VAC power in wires ….. 
….. and screwed the new cover plate in place. 
Lastly I reversed the puzzle box “secret” sequence est Voila! The new step was done and the new Pioneer Mini-Split
When I am all done, I will be sliding lengths of this rubber channel into the exposed slots of the XAL for a nice finishing touch and a bit of aesthetics.
these two boxes, back home from one of her most recent drives up to Henderson for her fitness workouts and shopping’ 
Holy 3Dimensions Batwoman, boys and girls,
Inside is the Oasis Zephyr diesel hydronic heater that will look after all the hot water supply in Lance which includes all our DHW or Domestic Hot Water for showers and sinks as well as supplying all the heat for the floors and the interior air. You’ll get all the details on that once I start installing it in the coming weeks. 
Next set of boxes that arrived were these four cartons of the LVP “Click-Lock” Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. 
These are 221mm/8.7” wide planks of eXtremely tough vinyl flooring that I will soon be installing on top of the ACM Aluminium Composite Material that you’ve seen me installing in previous updates. 
This was a special order via Home Depot as it has 30mil thick wear layer on top whereas more typical flooring has 6mil. We used a very similar material for the flooring on our previous project building Mobiüs as some of you may remember and it worked eXtremely well so we’re going with what we know works again here on Lance.
Three of these Bad Boys which are 400 Amp 12 Volt 5.12kWatt EG4 LL v2 batteries that will form the House Battery bank in Lance which will provide ALL the electrical power from 12VDC up through 120VAC.
Two of these Victron MultiPlus II inverter/chargers that will look after those EG4 batteries above by both converting their 12VDC into 120VAC current as well as charging the batteries from either the four solar panels up on the roof, the 320A alternator on Lance’s Cummins/Paccar engine or when we might have it, 30A shore power.
And four of these 420W SilFab solar panels that I will be building a custom rack for on the roof of Lance to keep those batteries all charged up. 
And most recently including this weekend, I’ve been working with Progressive Automation to build some customized versions of their PA-18 Track Actuators, four of which I will be using to lift the Queen bed frame up on and and down. It is taking some time to work out the Hall Effect sensors and controllers to manage the four PA-18 bed lift system and …… 
One of these 3 stage telescoping lift columns for the large table at our L shaped settee. I am hoping to finish up working with the engineers at Progressive Automation early next week and get the order in so they can start building these parts which takes several months. 
I
And I started building with my adult version Erector set of XAL eXtruded ALuminium. First up is the rack that will house those three EG4 batteries you saw above, each of which weighs 45kg/98lbs. 
This battery rack will be going in here, the front external Driver Side compartment and I’ll cover all this in a future post once the batteries arrive and I start to install them in these racks. 
To put the icing on this well baked cake, it came with these two brand new (single use) 40ft x 9’6” containers which turned out to have 15 new solar panels and five 330 USG potable water tanks inside! 
Most recent update is that we were finally able to get them to the groomer after they had all their shots and as you can see in this “Before” shot of Razz, not a minute too soon! 
Here’s the After shot of Razz 
and his sister Zoe. 
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