Do you own a food truck?
Check out the modifications we did for one of our customers’ food truck.
The Issue
Marlis has got this food truck pretty new. She’s just obtained a permit for the council and stuff, which has been great. So she’ll be up to Kalamunda Markets and stuff.
But unfortunately the food truck has some burst pipes. And it was actually hot water all the time. They’ve got a little storage hot water system in there and the pipes that they’ve used weren’t really suitable to have really hot water, like 65-70 degree water. So the pipes just got so soft and started popping. And there were about 6-7 leaking joints.
The line that was leaking the most was the one that went to a little hand basin. As part of the regulations, you need to have a hand basin to wash your hands with warm water. You should come and see inside it. It’s super clean – German clean. She kept it all up nicely.
And so what we were going to do was take that old pipe out and put a temp valve in. We can then put it to be 42 degree water at the tap. So it’s a lot safer. We’d also put a new pipe in that’s a bit better to cop the heat.
The Back Story
The food truck was called Oma and Opa 1900 and it had a great story about it.
It had a beautiful photo of a building in her hometown, Essen. Essen means eating. And the building was her grandparents’ pub that got recently sold. 1900 means it was family owned early 1900s.
They’re on Facebook and Instagram: omaandopa1900. Check them out because they post where they are on the weekends and stuff like that.
They made schnitzel with a mushroom sauce called Hunter Schnitzel, and then a typical German curry sausage, and some sauerkraut in a bun, and also some goulash, and loaded fries with mushroom sauce and speck.
The Fix
She’s only got like 100 liters of water in there. So you imagine if it pops and it’s super hot water, it was pretty dangerous.
We show you in the video the little sink where you’re meant to wash your hands. You don’t want super hot water there just enough to keep it all nice.
It’s got a little electric hot water system and you see that it’s got flexible hoses connected onto it. So this heats the water up to probably about 60-70 degrees. The Australian Standards said you need to heat that up about 60-70 degrees to kill all the legionnaires and stuff. And that’s connected directly to that basin on the other side and also to the kitchen sink.
So what we’re going to do is have hot water going to the kitchen sink to wash your dishes and stuff like that. But we’re going to put it through a temp valve to go to the water underneath.
The Pipes
If you look underneath it, see all these joints were all leaking. They’ve tried to have a crack, but they just kept popping. There were so many joints on this thing. You’ve got super hot water coming through these John Guest fittings and pipes. And that’s why it’s been playing up and leaking. So we’re going to replace all that and put a temp valve on.
We also show you the John Guest pipe that we use for hot water. They have it in a lot of caravans like MDC for the showers and stuff. And they have their own fittings. You get those from Camec. And they match up.
Also, inside, you have these little sleeves and when you’ve cut it to the right size, you push that in there and it makes it really stiff. So when you push the fitting on, if it does heat up enough, it can’t crush it and start to leak.
The Temp Valve
So we’ll be putting a new temp valve in, high performance one, in the cupboard. We’ll have it coming out of the hot pipe, coming out of the hot water system as a T, go copper line, straight up to the mixer for the kitchen sink, so it’s nice hot water. Then I’ll go into the temp valve. Another cold goes on the other side that mixes it together, brings it out at 40 degrees, or whatever we set it to, for washing your hands. So it’d be a lot safer.
We show you the temp valve we use. From the outlet to the hot water system, there’s 60-70 degrees water can come up and then will go to the mixer in the sink. Then it will travel into this temp valve. We like the Tomson temp valves. This is a high performance one with the orange lid. You use them for instantaneous hot water systems and also solar. So they can cop a lot more temperature. And also the flow’s a bit better, especially, for the instantaneous hot water systems.
Because you’ve got a 12 volt pump, these are probably the better ones to use. And then there’s the cold line. We’ve got to cut a T into it under the sink. The cold will go in here. 70 degrees in here mixes at 70 and the cold water drops it down about 50 degrees or whatever you set it to and it’ll come out and then it’ll join onto the new white hot pipe. And that’ll go all the way to the basin.
The Results
We’ve cut all the pipes out under the hot water system. Now we’ve just got a separate line that goes from the hot water system into the kitchen sink. So nice hot water for getting off grease and stuff. And then the other bit goes into the temp valve where it mixes the water, takes about 20 degrees off it. And then we’ve just adjusted it, so we can go down to 45 degrees when you’re washing your hands up there.
Then we’ve got all nice white pipe with the matching fittings and stuff. They’re meant for hot pipe, because there’s a couple of layers in those, so it make it quite good, especially with the inserts that go in. Now she’s going to have no problems with that anymore. Even the one at the end there, we’ve taken the plastic one out and put brass in. So it’s brass to that good white pipe now.
We just got a little temp gauge for the basin. So turn that on. The water in the tank is going to be 65 degrees or something. So now it’s only at 45 degrees at the basin. You can still put your hands under it, but it still gets all the fats and everything out. So that’s a success.
If you are out and about, and you see Oma and Opa at the markets or something, give it a try, great German food. Especially coming into winter, you’ll love it.
And if you need any help with your food truck, give us a call. We’ll be happy to help.
