April 26 2009 by Darrin.

Sunday night now, after a long week of joinery and finishing.  The bunks are complete, and house the water tanks, storage areas, and the plumbing compartment…

While the bunk panels’ polyurethane topcoats were drying, I ran the drain plumbing from the sink and shower sump behind the cabinets and out under the camper.  (There’s a 45 gallon gray water tank mounted between the frame rails of the big Fuso Class VI chassis, and it will be hooked up to the drain outlet when the camper is mounted to the truck.) I also  managed to get the water fill, water compartment door, and electrical (shore) inlet installed, as well as finally assembling and installing the electrical center…

I’ll start this coming week tomorrow by building the sub-floor between the bunks, and getting everything plumbed up.  That will involve tying both 50 gallon fresh water tanks together, plumbing in the water-to-water heat exchanger, and running hot and cold potable water lines and engine coolant lines to the proper places.  Hopefully, if I can swing some 12-hour days, I’ll get a good start on the electrical, and Kalzb’gon may be running on her own limited internal systems by next Sunday.  I’ll try and post a progress report in a week.

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April 20 2009 by Darrin.

With the basic cabinets in place, the next step involves constructing and installing the bulkhead/partition wall that separates the galley from the bunk area.  Here are a couple shots of that wall now in place…

Now that the bunk area has been created,  I can start building out that section.   The first step is water storage, and the 2 x 50-gallon water tanks are now ready to bolt in.  They are bedded inside wood framing, and will get bolted to the floor with steel straps…

Built inside the living space, the domestic water storage is protected from freezing.  However, every choice in life has alternative cost and in this case it’s a potential for water damage should a tank break.  For a four-seasons camper, it’s a risk we’ll take and limit damage by providing drain holes beneath the tanks.

Around the water tanks, the two couch/bunks will be built.  My goal is to have them finished by next Sunday, stain, polyurethane and all, including the 6″ “joists” for the sub-floor that goes between the bunk.  The subfloor allows for water lines, heating, and other mechanical stuff to be installed and hidden away, yet accessible for easy service.  If all goes well, electrical, plumbing, and heating system construction can start on Monday, April 27th!  Here’s hoping for a good week coming up.

On the ranch, our most recent snow (6″ of heavy, wet stuff) melted off and soaked into the ground.  Looking southeast again, there’s a touch of new green starting here, as the snow on the plains in the distance finishes melting.  (Two hours after this photo was taken, it was gone.)

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April 15 2009 by Darrin.

Nothing sounds better than breakfast when you’re out camping in the wild, the bacon sizzling, the coffee brewing…  That used to happen on a white-gas Coleman stove, but now it happens on a stainless steel Force 10 thermocoupled marine range, built into a set of custom cherry cabinets.  It might not sound as romantic, but it’s pretty refined and it sure tastes as good in the bush.

As of tonight, the galley cabinets are installed.  The long wall cabinet was pre-wired before it was hung.  I like to use a lot of cable clamps to keep everything organized.  That keeps the potential for electrical trouble at a minimum, and facilitates repairs if they’re needed.  Here’s the galley wall cabinet being prepared and a shot of what you’ll typically find underneath the floor panels of the wall cabinets…

This is the same cabinet, in place on the wall and powered up for a simple lighting test…

And the complete set of galley cabinets installed…

One last comment: Rain!  We don’t get it much, but when we do it really changes the landscape.  The road to the shop looked mystical this afternoon, as the precip fell and the clouds sat low on the mountain…

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April 11 2009 by Darrin.

This week, we took an overnight trip down to Denver to pick up a bunch of stuff for the camper.  While there, we…

• Had the ladder project galvanized in Commerce City
• Picked up a bunch of aluminum trim at Alreco in Brighton
• Got a second 11R22.5 Bridgestone M711 mounted on an Accuride wheel for our second spare.  (We’ll carry two on the AATREC for extra safety.)
• Loaded up on American Cherry quarter-round trim and 1×4 lumber for interior trim at Austin Hardwoods in Denver

Yesterday, I bolted the 14 ladder components together and mounted the whole assembly to the bottom of the camper.    Here’s how it looks when stowed under the body…

 And partially deployed (it’s just 2.5″ thick when folded up)…

And finally, fully deployed…

Note that in the above photo, the camper is much lower to the ground than it will be when it’s mounted to the chassis.  In its final state, the ladder lets you comfortably climb 54″ to the camper floor, and at that elevation the stairs yield almost exactly 8.5″ of rise and run per step.

Oh, one last thing!  We have a new addition to the PC family.  It’s a “netbook”and I’m writing with it now.  It’s an Asus EeePC, is amazingly compact yet comfortable to use, and offers some great features for the sub-$350 price…

•  Intel Atom N280 processor
• LED backlighting for the LCD display
• 9.5 hour battery life (task-dependent, of course)
• 160GB HDD
• built in web-camera and mic array
• Bluetooth and 802.11 (b, g, and n)
• 2GB RAM (okay, I bought a 2GB module - standard was 1GB)
• WinXP Home

I have been looking at netbooks for over a year now, and finally decided to take the plunge because I wanted XP and MS says they’re no longer going to support it after April 14th.  I chose Asus because great reviews and the fact that I’ve used their motherboards in my last three desktop builds, and ALL THREE PCs are still running perfectly - the first build for almost nine years now (and three power supplies)!

 Today, Saturday, I met my cabinet builder in Wheatland and picked up the replacement stove cabinet.  That means I can get back to installing the galley cabinets, hang the partition wall, and then get to working on the two 50 gallon fresh water tanks and bunks which house them.  Gonna be a good week next week!

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April 5 2009 by Darrin.

This weekend, I almost finished the electrical center that localizes all electrical control to one panel.  In the photo below, you can see how it’s laid out.  Clockwise from the top right you’ll find:

• the large AC/DC distribution panel with breakers for all circuits
• an AC source selector, to choose what feeds the AC circuits
• the remote start panel for the 7500W diesel genset
• a control panel for the MagnaSine 2000W power inverter
• solar charge control (40 amps)
• a digital DC multimeter to monitor battery condition and current flow

 I also got a good start on the rear dinette bench seat. Inside the bench, the Inverter sits in its own compartment and attaches to the House Battery Bank through a master switch and 200A fuse.  This compartment will also house an isolation relay to allow the chassis alternator to charge the house batteries.  The empty area to the left of the Inverter will be partitioned off and offer about three cubic feet of storage space.

 This bench seat compartment sits almost directly above the external chassis-mounted House Battery Bank, which is comprised of three 200 amp-hour absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries.  Here are a couple shots of the 4D Penn-Deka marine batteries in between the chassis rails…

 There’s quite a bit of woodwork to be done while waiting for the replacement stove cabinet.  I’ll be busy with that this coming week, and also (wx-permitting) will get the entry stairs galvanized and installed.  A week from today, I hope have the galley cabinets installed and be about ready to hang the bulkhead/partition wall that separates the bunks from the galley.

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April 1 2009 by Darrin.

Wow, what progress!  Most of the interior is finished!  Check it out…

 Ha!  April Fool I am.  No chance.  That’s the last one, about a year ago now!

In all reality, the progress is slow but steady.  The base cabinets are being fitted, after being prepped for plumbing and electrical.  There’s a hole in the set of base cabinets because there was an error with the width of the stove cabinet.  It was an inch too narrow and would have been a fire hazard whenever baking!  Here they are, laid out and ready to glue in with Sikaflex 252…

I have to admit, I get a warm feeling when looking in a window and seeing stained cherry in place.  It means things are happening, and in another month, she WILL look like the photo at the top of this post.  But for now, you get your inspiration where you can.  This is the fifth camper I’ve built since 2003 and I can’t get enough of seeing them come together.  This may not mean much to anyone else, but I know that soon she’ll have some nice halogen and LED lights set into a wall cabinet in this location, and will be running on internal power…

Once the joinery is done, there will be a month of wiring and plumbing to do, so I’m getting a head start.  The electrical center is being cut now, to hold the main breaker panel, multimeter, solar charge controller, inverter control, generator control, and AC source selector.  Oh, and the cassette toilet’s in and its access door installed…

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