Frame Welding

[Kenn-TC]

more vents

andyg I have cut the vent holes in the outside skin. In the earlier pictures you can see them. I think they are about 23 x 13 and I covered them with cardboard boxes in an attempt to keep the outside cold air out. In Oregon we have been below freezing for almost a week with 4" of snow on Friday. My electric heater keeps the inside about 20 to 30 degrees above the outside temp. More snow for tomorrow night.

 

[Kenn-TC]

refrigerator

Today we got the refrigerator in and it was a tight squeeze for sure. I now have the furnace in and the lower refrigerator vent in. I installed the new fan on the back of the frig and did the wiring. In one of the pictures you can see the temp switch mounted to the cooling fin. I may be done with pictures as my HP camera took a crap. I have been able to keep the shop above 50 with electric heaters so I have been painting the plywood for the walls.

 

[Kenn-TC]

waterheater

Been busy putting in the new waterheater. I went with a tankless from Precision Temp in Ohio. It seems to be well made. The intake air and the exhaust vent both go through the floor and nothing goes through the sidewall. One picture is from under the truck looking up. The square hole is intake and the round is exhaust and will have a tailpipe added. The picture of the floor shoes the holes from above. I got the LPG line in and the wires done I will do the water lines tomorrow. I also got the furnace in and the water lines and kitchen sink drain line in. The picture of the wall has a wire chase (white) the kitchen sink drain (center) and the holding vent that goes through the roof. The large hole is for a heater duct that will be into the bathroom. The weather has warmed up a bit so I have been painting the plywood walls and ceiling. I also got the upper refrigerator vent installed. I hope to be done with the bath except the cabinets in the next week.

 

[Kenn-TC]

more pics

The one picture of the fridge is with the back of it shimmed up about 1/4" in order to make the front plumb. I checked my deck and it is level I also set the fridge on the flat level floor and the front is out 1/4".

 

[Kenn-TC]

pictures

It would help if I uploaded the pictures.

 

[andyg-TC]

Nice job on the refer. I should follow up on a thread when I ask a question. Like hotrod I was going to suggest venting through the roof to get better air movement via the chimney effect. My refer is an under the counter model vented through the wall only. As you can guess, the upper and lower vents are pretty close together and air does not move well in and out. Your vents are much farther apart than mine so it may work fine. I put a fan on mine last summer but I could not find a thermostat switch that I like. Right now it has a manual switch. What did you use for a thermostat switch? BTW I used an old fan from a PC also.

 

[andyg-TC]

How do the exhaust gasses from the water heater get out from under the truck? This makes me a little worried about carbon monoxide.

 

[Kenn-TC]

refrigerator

Andyg the fan I used was in a kit from Norcold. The kit is for the N600 series (6.3 cu. ft.) It came with the temp switch and all the wiring. I think it was around $90. I also followed the installation instructions and added two sheet alum baffles to control the air flow around the coils. The other pictures are of the bath wall just aft of the fridge. You can see a test piece of plywood to make sure I will be able to use 4" duct from the furnace . I trimmed the black plastic collar on the duct outlet in an effort to smooth the bend. It seemed to work fine and should provide lots of warm air in the bathroom. I will also need to attach the hose to the outlet before I screw the plywood to the wall. The water-heater exhaust will go out a 2" tail pipe. I can have it dump out behind the back of the rig. With the tankless water-heater the burner will only burn when hot water is flowing.

 

[Kenn-TC]

refrigerator and bath wall

I finished the refrigerator cabinet and screwed in the first of many oak pieces. I used screws through the plywood form inside the bath wall in an effort to keep a nice tight seam. The fridge fits in the cabinet with 3/8" on each side and the top. We were able to get the 4" duct install in the wall and it should work fine. I have been installing the pocket door leading to the bath and it has taken a bit of head scratching but I think it will be fine. The last pictures of the door are from inside the bath room so not much room for fine camera work.

 

[Kenn-TC]

more pictures

The bath from outside and inside.

 

[Kenn-TC]

Long Leggs is exhausted

Today my brother helped me with the last of the generator and water heater exhaust. I have always like doing things a little different. I used a piece of 6 1/2" pellet stove pipe. It has a 4" tube surrounded by the 6 1/2" outer pipe. I am running a 2" generator exhaust pipe up the center and using the space between the 4" & 6 1/2" pipes to carry the water heater exhaust. Lots of parts on this one. The top is covered with an upside down stainless mixing bowel.

 

[Kenn-TC]

exhaust

These pictures are from inside the generator compartment. The flex hose is from the water heater. The last picture is of the mixing bowel.

 

[Kenn-TC]

wiring

I have been busy working on wiring. I am building a cabinet above the entry door to house the Progressive Dynamics "inteli=power 4000" AC/DC distribution panel. I will also mount other items like the tank monitoring system, generator hour meter and switches for the water pump and the water heater. I have run most of the wires but still need to run the #4 battery wires. I bought four 6 volt golf cart batteries last week and built the upper hold down frame and then took the complete frame to the powder coating guy. I am not a cabinet maker, I knew this going in and have confirmed it several time in the past week. I am using the Kreg pocket screw system to join oak plywood,1 x 2 and 1 x 3 oak from Home Depot and Lowes. I am trying to keep it simple in design. The power center cabinet has 3/4 plywood for the sides and bottom. I made a face frame and door with the oak. The door will have 1/4 plywood in the center that all of the parts mentioned above will mount through. On the wall you can seen many pieces of yellow masking tape holding and identifying most of the wires. When I started I was planning to keep the number of wires to a minimum, but they just seem to add up fast. I should have the cabinet finished and install this week and then the fun of hooking up a few wires.

 

[Kenn-TC]

electrical

I have been fighting a cold for a week and we had three days of snow. The temperature has been around 20 for a week. Today it got up to 40 and the snow is melting and my cold is easing up. I am grateful to have the motorhome under the carport, I just had to clear a walkway from the shop to the carport about 30'. Each trip into the shop I had melting snow drip on my head or down the neck. Tomorrow will bring rain with temps near 50. I have managed to get the power cabinet installed and the main electrical system in. I added a ground buss that you can see on the right side in the cabinet. I also put in a master switch. I am waiting for a remote on/off switch for the inverter that will be mounted on the cabinet. I will now be hooking up all the wires. I know the weather hear in Oregon is mild compared to other parts of our country, and every once in a while when we get show I think of how difficult it must be to live in real could. Stay warm Kenn

 

[Dragonslayer140]

And think we were going to find some time to come down and see your progress...Thinking now maybe spring..hate so stand around and watch you shovel snow lol. We have gotten off light so far with no snow up here in the northern territory of Washington. The progress on the rig is looking great though, keep up the good work.

Dave

 

[Kenn-TC]

batteries

I got my coach batteries mounted and all of the cables hooked up. The battery rack just fits in the door. The two small 4 gauge wires go to the power center and the large 00 welding wires go to a 300 amp T fuse and on to the inverter. I can slid the battery rack out just over half way if I need to remove them but a total weight near 300# makes me grunt.

 

[RLPRACING]

Looking good. Are the coach batteries tied to the alternator or how are you recharging them? I'm still only using the truck batteries and haven't decided to add coach batteries or not. I know the main problem with me doing that but with the convertor charging the batteries when the generator is running, I don't have a huge concern. At the track there are times we have to run the generator for larger items like the air compressor.

 

[bushpilot-TC]

if you need a relay to tie the coach batteries to the chassis/engine battery circuit, i highly recommend a BLUESEA Automatic Mag Latch they're not cheap but the control you get is phenomenal.

 

[Kenn-TC]

house batteries

The batteries are charged by the built in three stage charger on the AC/DC distribution panel. I do plan to use some type of isolator so the coach batteries can be charged while driving. Don thanks for the link, I had not seen that Bluesea model in my internet searching. It has some nice features like being able to get a boost from the coach batteries to start the truck in cold weather. I need to do a bit more research. One issue is the distance between the truck batteries and coach batteries vs the size of the required cables. My old Itaska had a spring loaded switch on the dash that you could hold and get a boost from the house batteries. I once had low, ok dead house batteries and I used a broom to push the dash switch and was able to reach the generator switch and get it started with the truck battery.

 

[bushpilot-TC]

I have a blue sea (like the one in the link) - on my f350, linking in a 3rd battery (mounted under the truck on the frame rail (for the stereo system).

the blue sea has an over ride (dash switch) that allows you to join all batteries to the (starting) circuit...if the dash switch is too easy for ya...you can MANUALLY over ride the relay by turning a switch ON the relay itself...

over rides only last for 1 minute or so (to prevent killing ALL the batteries).

nice thing about the blue sea - if CHARGE output is below 13.4v then it WILL NOT link in the 3rd (or house) batteries.....if the 3rd (house) battery is below 12v, it will also NOT join the battery to the mains.

pretty cool set up, not cheap, but its smart enough to prevent a bad alternator or bad battery from pulling the rest down with it and killing EVERY battery in the configuration.