Winterising the Motorhome further.

Well not updated my blog since coming back from holiday. Seems like months ago we went and then I realise it is!!

The only way in was through that filler hole. 

Been away a couple of times, have been off to local places really for some R&R, also we went to Congleton for the weekend with a couple of friends in vans. The purpose of this was for me to run the Congleton half marathon. A truly enjoyable weekend a great race, great company and one of those you hope to replicate some time soon.

Anyhow, I digress. The purpose of this post was to give some updates that I have made to the van. First of all I needed to try again to get through a skiing holiday. Last year, despite my best efforts, the water froze then the waste water froze. Never a problem because at the time we are only 10 mins from a leisure club to utilize a pool and showers, etc and on top of that bottle water to wash teeth etc and jobs a goodun.

Note the access problems. 

So the first job was to install an anti frost element in to the fresh water tank. This proved extremely complicated, however only because the position and shape of my fresh tank. It sits between two floors, I initially planned to drop the floor and install the element that way. When I got underneath the van, clearly that was not possible. The chassis was preventing this from happening. I tried and tried ot find a way to complete the job. The issue here is that the element needed to go side in and be at the bottom of the tank and therefore nearly always covered. It appeared impossible to do this. Eventually I opted to have to put it up half way up the tank. This would mean that I had to get the water in the fresh tank at 50% full before it would work. I installed it this way and then went to bed. In the morning I thought I could not live with it like this and it needed changing. I thought about using mini drills through the access of the large filler, although I could get my hand in there I could not get a drill in there. Removing the floor remained a non starter, Im a nurse not an engineer. Alas at this point I had a brain wave. The tank being plastic would simply mean that I could use a hot soldering iron to create a hole. So with my hand buried deep in the tank, pushing and turning I eventually managed to make a hole at the bottom of the tank but sideways on. I then had to patch up the hole I had made previously using some specialist putty.

The wiring for the heating element was quite simple, well much more simple than the hole drilling…..

You can just see the element sticking out in its correct position 

work in progress. 

With this done, I then set off to cure problem number two. In this van when the temps really really fell, we ended up with frozen waste pipes. Despite my previous effort at making them all insulated they still froze. It got me thinking. It cant be that difficult? All that happens is water runs down the pipe, in to the  waste tank and straight out in to a bucket. However, my van has waste traps for all the sinks and shower. This would mean that when the water ran down it would sit in the waste trap, freeze and before you know it, the pipes would be frozen. Therefore I planned to actually remove the waste trap, replace the hose, and pretty much make it a simple downward journey to the waste bucket. This part of the process turned out to be quite simple, Im hopeful that now the water can just fall away without issue.

The trap removed.

The finished job

The only problem with all this stuff is that I have to wait until at least February when Im high up in the mountains with tempretures in the -20s to test it all. Then if it doesn’t work, I have to retest it the following year. I am as said quietly confident.

Next outing is a couple of meets we have set up, one in Chester and  one at the new year races.