Album:Plumbing System

Plumbing consists of:
  • Toilet
  • Shower
  • Sink
I am using an Incinolet toilet. It's essentially a stainless steel incineration chamber with a toilet on top. After using the toilet, it drops the waste into the chamber and incinerates it into about 1 T of sterile ash. The only smell inside the bus is one similar to that of hot metal, certainly not of waste, and I can't smell anything outside of the bus. It's energy intensive, but I have a beefy electrical system.

Since the toilet and shower are the only 'rooms' on the bus, it seemed like it would be nice to easily relocate them. The incinolet needs only a roof vent, and the shower needs only a floor drain, so that's only two holes that need to move.

Hot water for sink & shower will come off of a heat exchanger on the diesel furnace used in the heating system. The furnace is 30 kBTU/hr. That's 1°/hr change for 30,000 pounds of water, or 3750 gallons for 1°/hr, or 1.5GPM by 40° change, which should be enough to handle a continuous shower, once the heat exchanger gets hot (presuming I divert all the energy from the furnace to hot water, which isn't a problem).

After some use, I'll figure out if I just need a switch to automatically turn on the furnace, or if I'll preheat before use, or if I want a small hot water tank to get 'instant' hot water while the exchanger catches up. Another possibility is to just use a small electric heater for the sink (which generally needs very small amounts of hot water quickly), versus turning on the furnace a minute or two before showering.

The toilet plumbed.
Since it's an incinerating toilet, I only need to 'plumb' a vent and run electrical. I did a double 90° in the vent to not only move the vent in away from the edge of the bus but to also give the ability to move the toilet around a bit in the future. 		I cut a hole in the roof
for the vent. Cost: $30 for a hole saw. 		The vent
installed, painted, and silicon caulked to avoid water. 		Oops. I cut a hole for the shower,
and hit a diagonal support beam. Lots of unnecessary (and undesirable) cutting of the floor is required.
My bathroom 'walls'
- the screen hides the toilet for now, and the shower curtain is, of course, for the shower. 		View of toilet
near shower 		And the rudimentary
shower setup 		My 'yellow' tank.
The incinerating toilet takes care of my black tank needs perfectly, but it's expensive to run, so I rigged up this homemade urinal with a small tube (with a loop in it for a literal 'P-trap') that goes into this old gas tank, with a tee for an air vent (via a charcoal filter, which removes all odor) and a quick release so I can take it out and empty it. Piece of cake!
Grey water pump.
My grey water comes out behind the rear axles, and the grey tank is in front of the axles. So I need to pump. I dump the water into this homemade enclosed bilge pump.. 		..just a simple scre.. it in series. Ugh. The yellow tank and grey staging tank
in the back compartment of the bus. 		And my new grey tank
(it's too low and takes up too much floor space, but it was supercheap. The mess of hoses isn't exactly to code, but it gives me great flexibility in moving things around.
Album created by album generator a MarginalHack written by David Madison on Thu Aug 26 04:12:04 2010