Water Lines

So all of the water lines are 1/2" PEX tubing.  Jim Bob bought it off of EBay in a ginormous roll along with all of the crimp rings and most of the brass fittings.  The crimping tool was borrowed from a brother from a different mother, Hunter.

Here is the crimping tool in action.  You have to put these little crimp rings on each joint and squeeze them shut and it makes a leak proof connection.  Super cool stuff.  Plus - it doesn't bust wide open like copper tubing when it freezes (we learned that mistake from the previous bus when we had 15 holes from frozen water in our copper water lines - crazy business!)  Although Jim Bob is a huge fan of sweating pipe, we went with the easy, flexible PEX tubing. 

The red tool is the cutter, the blue is the tubing and purple are the 90 degree corners.  PEX is flexible but to make it nice, clean and no crimping where it is not needed they make these nifty corner things.

When he was running the water lines there were these little packages everywhere of brass connectors, toppers, unders and everything else...it all looked the same to me but Jim Bob had the know how. 

We have water on both sides of the bus.  This side has the kitchen sink and shower and the other side has the washing machine and toilet. 

All the water lines do have a slant towards the drain in case of a hard freeze (another lesson we learned from previous bus.)  The slant will allow the water to drain out of the lines and not sit and freeze.  The hole in the floor is for the bathtub.

Hot and cold water lines on each side of the bus too.  You can see the little black crimper thing and then the brass connector here. 

Washing machine hook up.

The PVC line is the drainage for the washer.  It also has a T in it to allow some venting for the washing machine.  The T runs out the side of the bus. 

The blue lines are hot and cold water for the washing machine.  It T's off to the left for the toilet and the continues on to the right for the ice maker.

Here is a nice shot of the 90 degree things in action.  It also shows the PVC protector tubes that Jim Bob put in to protect the PEX from the metal floor.  We didn't want the metal layer to cut the PEX tubing up.  Great idea Salazar!  So smart.

This is what we saw for days and days and days while he was working on all the lines!  Lena Marie would go outside and stand at his feet and talk and talk.  It was sort of like confession in a weird way...

The boiler valve.  Water comes in and we get clean clothes, clean hinies and yummy water to drink!  Life is grand.

Gas Lines

The Gas Lines. We ran 1/2" black pipe for the gas manifold in the bus.

Here is the manifold under the bus.  The piece of 2x4's are bracers so the black pipe won't shift around during transportation and/or normal use.  The pipe running to the left goes to the hot water heater and the T running off to the right (that doesn't have a pipe on it in this photo) goes to the 100 lb propane cyliner. 

Closer view

We put a nice little 20,000 btu blue flame Kozy World heater in the bus to keep us warm on those cold winter days.  Hopefully we will have some in Gonzales.  We got the heater from this site: www.masterdist.net

Here is the heater attached to the wall and connected to the gas manifold. 

We designed the bus so that we would only have to run the gas to one central spot for the heater and for the stove/oven.  So the manifold comes up through the floor and goes left to the stove (which in this photo is not hooked up yet and right to the heater.)  Easy shmeasy.

So that sounded easy but the gas manifold also feeds our on demand hot water heater that is mounted to the outside of the bus.  Here is JB deep in thought...probably thinking "WTF? How did I get myself into this?" 

Here is the two stage pressure regulator.  It drops the propane pressure down to 11 pounds from a 100 pound cylinder. 

Here is our awesome little on demand hot water heater.  The brand name is Takagi T-KJR2-OS.  It has a little heater in it to keep it warm when it freezes...so it is fine to mount outside.  It works really nicely and makes the water HOT fast...lovin' it.

This shows the gas line coming into the hot water heater from the gas manifold underneath the bus.  The valves that do not have lines hooked up are the water lines coming in cold and going out hot.

Electrical

Alright, we are set up with 50 amp service.  The bus is divided into four quardrants - a breaker for each.  Plus, a designated breaker for the two air conditioners.  I think we have 18 or so plugs in the bus.  Now that we are living in it...we could have had some more maybe... 

All of the electrical lines are exposed Liquitight conduit.  It is basically flexible conduit that glues together like PVC.  Jim Bob was a fan.  Although when we built the other bus, we had such a romantic time bending all of that metal conduit together...sigh...   

The left plug is a twist lock plug that twists into the gray box on the outside of the bus.  The right plug is the 50 amp plug that has two hots, a nuetral and a ground.   That is for all you electricians out there.

This is the 50 amp twist lock electrical box that provides the bus with electricity.  Jim Bob is an Ebay FREAK.  He found most of the boxes, switches, conduit, PEX on Ebay. 

This shot is underneath the bus taking a picture of the electrical coming in and running into the breaker box. 

This shows one of the many holes we had to drill in the floor to bring the electric lines inside.  It is kind of scary to see these holes randomly drilled into the floor (I say randomly but JB new EXACTLY were they were going and how far it was going to take to get there!)  It is all about trust baby.

Here is an upclose and personal shot of our inner workings.  This is the breaker box.  As you can see we have 5 breakers - four quardrants and the ACs. 

All closed in and nice and tidy.

We put the breaker box inside the battery box of the bus.  You can sort of see on the right side of this picture where the electrical box is mounted in relation to the breaker box.  Fun stuff!