After a busy Christmas period for our business and some great family time, we decided to get back into the swing of van work with a cheeky session between Christmas and the New Year. Thanks to a number of days of hard work from myself, Ben and John, we’ve made another good step forward, managing to tackle one of the bigger jobs that had been looming over us.

Day 1

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We’d hoped to get the heater install finished up this weekend, having ordered the new O-ring some time ago. Unfortunately, the part we needed had still not arrived, thus leaving us with no option but to finish it off another time. Despite having a long list of things to finish, unless you’ve pre-planned and ordered everything, it can be difficult to find tasks to do spontaneously. Looking around we decided to tackle one of the bigger jobs we had remaining, installing the hob exhaust.

Although the hob had previously been installed into the work surface, we hadn’t cut the required holes out through the van floor for the exhaust tubing and the fuel line. It was now time to get cracking on this somewhat daunting task. It took a lot of back and forth from the three of us and a good few trips under the van to figure out where we could possibly cut the hole. The hob is positioned centrally in the van parallel to the bulkhead and the exhaust tube comes straight out the bottom. Ideally we’d want the exhaust to exit the van directly below it. After having a good look and measure of things we realised that this plan was not going to work. Not only did we need to take into account the underside of the van but also the fridge that will reside in the drawer underneath the hob.

This is where we ran into a problem. Initially, when we planned the layout and did a lot of research into the fridge and had decided upon the Dometic CFX 65DZ, hoping to have enough room to route the exhaust down the back of the kitchen unit. Unfortunately, this particular model of fridge was discontinued before we could get our hands on one, leaving us with no option but to buy the next size up the CFX 75DZ, which turned out to be somewhat larger than anticipated. This, unfortunately meant that the space that had previously been reserved to route the exhaust vent out through was no longer available. Space is very tight within the van and looking at our options, it left us with only one: we’d have to encroach on the shower space in order to vent the exhaust.

It’s a less than ideal solution and I expect we’ll run into problems later down the line with regards to shower space. For now we triple checked the measurements and marked up the hole on the inside of the van. Ben prepped himself for probably the most worrisome drilling session we’d had on the van so far. Unfortunately, we have every size hole saw except for the one we needed for this. We had to use one that was 1mm too small and then file the hole after. The drilling, in Ben’s steady hand seemed to take no time at all and soon we were left looking through to the ground outside the van.

In all the excitement, I forgot to take a picture of the hole that was cut, however I do have a picture with a nice cross section of the floor layers!

Ben did an excellent job drilling the hole managing to avoid interfering with the exhaust, handbrake cable and other structural members of the van! All three of us then proceeded to take turns in filing the hole, using a Pepsi can that was actually the same diameter as the out exhaust tube for guidance. Finally after what seemed like a while it was ready.

The hob has an inner silver tube and an outer black tube, and the first order of business was to slip the silver pipe through the hole. Once through, Ben and John took up the fiddly task of securing the silver tube to the underside of the van stabilising it and making sure to vent the hot gases away from the exhaust and fuel tank. Once secured it was time to slip the black tube down over the silver one and secure that in place with heat resistant silicone!

Whew what a task! We are glad that it’s all done, it helps to move us forward and it’s a big sense of progress. In addition to all this hard work we finally got to have a massive clear out of the van and sold our left over insulation, adding money to the pot for other purchases.