Sunday 21 February 2010

Half A Shower Room

Yesterday was a bright crisp sunny winters day.  The original plan for the day was do some welding in the boat. But a thick layer of night frost was slowly melting and making the inside wet, so that was out.

Frost melting as the sun moved round

I have been a bit neglectful of the motorhome project due to the boat project so decided to use the time do some bathroom fitting instead.

Much of the preperation for the bathroom has been done in small chunks over recent weeks.   Now it was time to fit the wall lining to 2 of the walls, the toilet, and some plumbing.


The wall cladding was from good ol' B&Q.  Once cut to size it was simply a case of sticking it to the wall with silicone sealant.  I say simple, I don't know about anyone else but when I use the stuff it ends up everywhere no matter how careful I am. 


The tap connections that came with the mixer fitting were absolutely useless.  I just can't figure out how you could use them to fit the unit to anything, in any way, ever.  So I got a 150mm length of brass threaded tube 3/4 BSP, cut it in half to make 2 x 75mm.  I used 2 sturdy brass tank nuts, one either side to clamp the tube to the wall, adjusted the projection out of the wall to accommodate the decorative bezels, and allow the unit to be tightened so the none of the brass thread was showing.

Before sealing and bezels put on

On the other side of the wall are the connections to the water supply.  I was limited to space in the wall to fit the shower room in the space available even after trimming the shower tray down.  My solution was to use washing machine tails.  This was the tightest way I could find of turning 90 degrees, and the thread is the same as the threaded pipe so no converters were needed.  All I needed to do was trim the ends of the threaded tube to the minimum length required and screw the tails on.

All fitted in a 35mm cavity

I have also plumbed the water supply in to the toilet which is now all screwed down and awaiting final sealing.  The gasket that came with the toilet was  pretty ugly so I decided to discard it and go with my messy friend silicone sealant.  That's for another day.  I might invest in one of those silicone finishing tools if I get back good reports form a forum question about to be asked.