Heads Up! Lance XRV progress update; 7 June, 2026
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 c
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.
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.
Living the nomadic and remote life that we always have, we are big fans having solar power be the primary source for all our daily electrical needs, which are quite extensive. On our boat Mobius we had factored solar panels into the design from the beginning and were able to have 16 large panels on three different roof surfaces on that boat such as these eight panels on the upper Pilot House roof. 
And here on Road Runner Ranch we have 18 solar panels in two banks, this one just set against one of our 40 foot shipping containers and the others you can see Razz laying on above. These keep our big EG4 Wall Mount 15kW battery charged up every day and running this through our EG4 6000XP Inverter/Charger provides all our electrical power for day to day life here. 
This is where the time I spent meticulously building Lance in a 3D model using Fusion 360 pays off. I could create a model for each of the different solar panels that I was considering and see how they would fit onto Lance’s roof and on the framing. 
After much deliberation and testing in the model, I decided to go with four SilFab 420 Watt QD panels which I purchased from Current Connected almost a year ago now. I was able to get these all installed this past May in time to help power us on our marathon maiden voyage with Lance driving out to Portland Maine and back this summer. For those interested you can see all the specs of these panels here and of course with the march of time since there would now be even higher output panels but we’ve still ended up with 1680 Watts of solar power and it has been more then enough to keep us fully powered all the time. 
I
I added additional 4 foot lengths of Super Strut so that I would have a mounting system for the whole 14 foot length of Lance’s roof for mounting any additional items in the future. 
I kept the mounting very simple as well by cutting pieces off a length of 2” aluminium L bar, 
drilling two holes in each one for the mounting bolts, 
and using the very handy Super Strut M8 threaded inserts to bolt them solidly to the lengths of Super Strut. 
Quick, strong, simple; what’s not to like?!! 
I then made up the cables using extra UV rated cables, Red for the positive and Black for negative and crimping the MC4 twist lock connectors that are the most commonly used for solar panel wiring and which I’ve used a lot in previous projects so I have all the specialty tools, crimpers, etc. some of which you see here in the photo. 
To fasten the brackets to the solar panel frames themselves I inserted aluminium M6 threaded Riv-Nuts into holes I drilled into the vertical AL frame on the solar panel and then used this tool which compresses the threaded inserts and locks them to the frame. 
End result looks like this. 
For those wondering, I fastened the lengths of Super Strut to the roof using Loctite 8X PL Premium Fast Grab which is supposed to be 8 times stronger than traditional construction adhesives which I’ve used before. Probably overkill but you certainly don’t want solar panels flying off the roof when running down the highway at 70 miles an hour! To prevent any pooling of rainwater between the surfaces of the roof and the Super Strut I caulked all the edges with 3M marine sealant which I have LOTS of experience with on our previous boats. So everything fully sealed and eXtremely well fastened to the roof. 
Solar panel output drops off significantly with the rise in temperature of the panels, the irony of which isn’t lost on me, so I left this 4” gap where the two panels down each side meet up. This along with the 2+ inch space between the panels and the roof keeps them as well ventilated as possible and the efficiency of their output was very good even in the 40C/105F days we had several times on the trip AND while I was installing these panels! Talk about a cat on a hot tin roof! Ouch! 
To make it a bit easier to run the cables AND give me a wee bit of shade, I was able to remove the inner brackets and use the outer ones like a hinge and prop up one lengthwise pair of panels while I ran the cables. 
I ran the eight cables for all four solar panels to converge at this point on the front DS corner as this puts it directly overtop of the Electrical Cabinet below where they need to go and thus provides the shortest cable run for least voltage drop. I drilled the only hole in the roof for this but it was a BIG one as you can see and then I used more 3M 5200 to seal a short length of 2” PVC pipe as a safe conduit through the roof for these and all other cables in the future. The red square you see on the bottom is 3M VHB Very High Bond two sided tape which is a fabulous product for gluing almost anything to anything and it never comes off. 
PVC
Each
This is what it looked like inside the Electrical Compartment where the cables pass through. 
The output of solar panels is a much higher voltage than the batteries and needs to be regulated to different charging stages to properly charge the big LiFePO4 Lithium EG4 batteries in Lance so the output of the solar panels goes through a MPPT controller which looks after all of this. Although it isn’t common, the most efficient setup is to have a dedicated MPPT controller for each panel and so that’s how I’ve always built our solar systems. Those are the four Victron Blue boxes you see on the upper Right here. 
It’s a bit of electrical spaghetti and took a bit of time to route and connect all these cables but keeps all the wiring very well contained in the wire ducts like the one running vertically up the far Right side and will have a cap that snaps onto those fingers you see here. 
Final
The extra length of Super Strut has already come in handy for my temporary for now mounting of our Starlink dish and the 4” PVC tube running down the middle for storing long lengths of material I like to have for ongoing projects while we’re on the road. Go ahead and tell me you’re surprised?!?!
and “Sunny Boy” as he tells me he now likes to be called.
Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. 
However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. 
We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. 
I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna. 
We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. 
It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. 
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