Planning the Water System
Having chosen and installed the Truma heater and hot water system it was time to turn our attention to the storage and supply side of things.
Heating Water
Over the past few months we’ve been debating our options for water storage. We are at a point where this would now be a good task to get ticked off the list. We intend to travel for a while and are hoping to stay off grid for the most part, with that in mind we’ll need a robust water storage solution. Ideally we’ll want to be able to store a reasonable amount of water for drinking, cooking, cleaning and showering, without adding a huge amount of weight to the van. The solution would also need to work harmoniously with our Truma water heater.
Previously we explored how the heating works on the Truma, but did not go into detail on how this applies to the hot water. To help us along here is my latest freshly prepared diagram explaining it all, hopefully as simply as possible.
The Truma is capable of storing and heating around 11 litres of water at a time. After depleting the stored warm water it then takes around twenty minutes to heat the next 11 litres of water.
Tanks Galore
Following on from our work installing the Truma, we turned our attention to finding suitable tanks to store our fresh and grey water in. Taking into account the considerations we mentioned above and in our build guide on the subject, we sat down to figure out where to go with the water storage.
Fresh water Tank
In the first instance, we’d considered going with a typical 70 litre water tank designed to be mounted inside the van. During the design stage of the van we’d carved out a small space within the ‘garage’ area, in which to store the tank. We had wanted to do it this way in order to prevent the water from freezing when visiting colder climates. This solution whilst helpful in that regard could mean we are in for a slightly trickier install. We’d need to be quite particular about where the tank would be mounted. Obviously we’d want it as close as possible to the van wall but we’d also need to make sure that there were no struts or ribs of the van in the intended area. It would be quite difficult to discern where the most suitable place to start cutting holes would be, now that walls are up and the plywood in place. We found this to be a problem when installing both the Truma and shore power sockets.
Waste Water Tank
The waste water tank comes with its own issues, it was always our intention to mount it underneath the van. Finding a tank that would fit between the structural and mechanical components of the van would be the first step, securing the tank so that it doesn’t roll off down the road is quite another. Additionally, we’d hoped to find a solution that had easy emptying and a sensible way of cleaning the tank out. The last thing we want is to have smells coming up from the drains and into the van. As with the fresh water how often we’d need to stop off and in this case, dispose of the waste water would be determined by the size of the tank.
I delved back into the research we’d done, revisiting the available solutions. I wanted to find real world experiences with the various types of tanks. It seemed that in a bid to claw back precious space most people mounted the tanks underneath the van. This seemed the optional choice even if they frequented colder climates, some had even rigged up electric heating blankets to wrap around the tanks. This is something we may well look into in the future.
After deciding to mount both the tanks under the van, I looked into our options. There seemed to be two companies supplying custom made water tanks, out of the two CAK Tanks seemed the easiest to order from. It helped that they also happened to supply a full kit, which included both the fresh and grey tanks. The tanks came with the relevant mounting brackets, hose and taps for easy emptying, water level sensors and a choice of colour for the filler cap, meaning it will blend in better with the outside of the van.
We decided to go ahead an order, feeling that this was overall an elegant solution, despite being a little more than we wanted to spend on this part of the build. After ordering, we discovered that there seemed to be a three week lead time attached to the tanks. This was less than ideal as we had hoped to get this task completed next week, but as always we have lots of other tasks to keep us busy in the meantime.
Interesting! xxx