Creature Comfort???

One of the biggest pains in the paddock is the lack of hot water in the bus, so next up is the kitchen. We mainly live on BBQ's, slow cooker meals and bacon sarnys during a race weekend, so although we have an oven and a grill ready to fit, we decided that we should only fit what we will actually use, so the kitchen unit will house a hob, sink (with hot water), fridge (3way) and a microwave. This area will also be the control center of the bus, housing the gas bottle, water heater and electricity/charging unit.

A rough layout of the 3 main items,based on where the main box section structure of the bus is allowing holes to be cut through the skin without hitting any of these:-

It was pretty scarey attacking the body of the bus with an angle grinder, creating large holes!!

 The holes where squared up after the initial attack.....

 Water heater fitted, internal view

 Water heater fitted external view, oh and a whacking great hole for the gas bottle access door. As we are tight on space we decided to go for the smallest bottle, a 4.5kg butane item, but will ensure the pipe is long enough to allow us to use a larger bottle on the floor outside the bus if we run out while away for the weekend and no one has a small bottle available locally.

 The nasty 80's caravan thetford toilet door taken at the same time as the cushions:-

And now painted and the panel cut out from the bus side inserted in place of the beige panel above. Must admit we are very happy with how this came out!!

I think there is some kind of law that says the gas bottle must be completely sealed from the inside of the vehicle (or in a separate external box), weather this is true or not i thought it was best for our own safety, especially after smelling Bobs leak from his gas bottle in the motorhome last year. I was initially going to make a mold from MDF and cast a GRP box from it, but decided to make an the MDF box and cover it internally in GRP to ensure it was airtight.

Yet again it has turned out immensely over engineered, but i actually think that if the gas bottle exploded the box would stay intact!!! A bit like a flight recorder in reverse.......

Gas box fitted above the water heater:-

Gas bottle in the "blast chamber"