Do you own a Jayco Silverline or something similar?
How hard is it to put a Truma Vario Heat into a Jayco Silverline? Well, part of it is quite easy, and part of it is quite difficult.
So we have just installed a Truma Varioheat into Jayco Silverline.
The Caravan and Vent
The van has got the beautiful slider out here. Now that’s where the bed is that slides out. So it gives you a bit more room so you can walk around. The owner wanted the heater installed under the bed.
We got the vent coming out the side. And that goes through inside which we’ll show you in a second. Now the owner got the black vent, while the caravan is white. The reason he got the black one is to annoy us a little bit. Nah, not really. He got it because it was like 500-600 bucks cheaper. So we were thinking maybe we should get our customer who had the black caravan with the white vent and ring him up and maybe they can just swap the vents, so they both have matching colours. Then everybody’s happy again and we’ll be a bit happier as well. But anyway, it looks all right because there is a bit of black on the caravan. We do like the look of them.
Here’s the inside the van. Beautiful leather couches, top-notch and everything. Now Mark, the owner, is a great bloke, because he took the mattress out for us, which was great. We didn’t have to deal with that going up in the air while we’re trying to work underneath. One thing we didn’t realise was, by taking the mattress out, that bed stayed up all the time, ’cause there was no weight on it. And another thing is all the light coming through. See it just shines beautifully, the perfect amount of light for Ben and Glenn to work in. So really appreciate it, Mark, you did a great job. We’ve got great customers.
The Easy Part
Anyway, here’s a setup. As you can see, that’s where we just snuck it through, through there, underneath the side here. So sort of goes on a bit of an angle and we’ve used this black silicon and we reckon it looks amazing and it heads out there. And so that’s where the cowl is. So it comes through like this. And now Glen’s got all his wiring in there somewhere. So this is Glen’s wiring going to this box down here and stuff like that. You can’t even see really what’s done and what’s not ’cause he’s used that weaving machine and stuff. So it sucks all the cool air from outside and then pushes the fumes out that way.
That’s the gas line we were going to run through down into here, but underneath the suspension, there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on. And so we ended up bringing over here, which is in between the two wheels and the suspension. And that just missed the water tank and all the rest of the stuff. But very difficult to get it under there because it’s a road van.
And this is where the hot air comes out after it’s heated and it pops off down this way. So we just managed to stick it in here between the safe and everything. The owner wanted to sort of push out that way, because you can understand if it comes out straight out the front, it’s just gonna go into the cupboard and stuff. So that’s a really good option.
You can see where it’s come down there, that’s where it’s coming out. So yeah, beautiful, neat finish. And that’s the isolation, obviously turn it off when you need to. And then, Glenn usually follows our wiring along and he’s ducted into the cupboard there somehow. We don’t know how he’s done that, but this is where the controller has ended up, which is super easy.
The Hard Part
Why was there a hard part? It’s because the Silverline is top of the range Jayco van. And so it’s got all the bells and whistles inside and also outside and mostly underneath. They got gray water tanks and lines running everywhere. It’s a road van, so it’s got that trailing arm suspension and stuff like that. We’ll show you underneath, one of the water tanks and all the suspensions and all the Ts and copper and everything.
This is where where the existing line was. So we had to weld this T in next to the plastic water tank and all this cabling here. All that had to be protected. And so we had to weld a T in there, which is super hard. You don’t want the van to catch on fire and everything. And then there’s all the gas valves and everything. It’s all sealed up. So we had to weld the T in there and that one goes all the way down and then we had to get it through. We didn’t really want to bring it underneath this because it could cope rocks.
It would’ve been fine to do that because there’s the suspension in here. So we managed to get it up the top there and it came through. We checked it with a finger before to see if we could get our fingers through. And we could, so we put it through that one as well and then have to go all the way around that way. And that’s where it goes up under the bed there. So totally protected. You can see there was another tank out the back and so many other things, and very tight down there so quite difficult to move around.
The Gas Leak
And the other thing was when we put it on test, ’cause as gasfitters, you have to test it before you start any gas work, it was leaking somewhere. And so we were going back and forth trying to find this leak. Turning off all the valves in it. This is the little gas locker, so very hard to work in there. And it had a regulator up in there and you can slide this out and everything. So one of these joints somewhere in this whole contraption here was leaking slightly, just tiny. You wouldn’t even be able to smell it over here. And another thing he had was these on the bottles as well. They’re the flow stop ones that tells you how much thing you got in it. So one of those could have been leaking slightly as well.
So we took all that stuff off, took the whole regulator off, and then we’ve got a special fitting that we put on to test just the main without the regulator. It was all sweet. So then we ran the new line from the tremor all the way to the front, welded it in, tested it again, all sweet. We put the new regulator on there, put it up, tested it, it was all fine. And then when we turned it on and we were commissioning it, we could smell gas and then we went round to have a look inside. We walked past the box and we could smell a bit of gas there, sprayed some soap on it. It’s never happened to us before, but it was leaking from the edge of the radio that’s been clamps. So something’s gone wrong there. So we took it off, had another one. Luckily put that on. Now that’s all fine. It was very hard to work inside the box as well. When they’re out the front of the van, they’re heaps easier to work on.
All Sorted
Once we got all that sorted, it was all fine. Clipped it all up and got it commissioned. Glenn from next door ran all the wires. It heats up so quickly. These things are amazing. You don’t have to carry any diesel with you or anything like that. So anyway, that is the install of the Truma Varioheat in the Jayco Silverline. We’d like to thank Mark for giving us a crack at this. It was a great job. We haven’t damaged anything, which is always great. And we’re looking forward to hearing from Mark how it goes when he’s out looking at wildflowers. In the desert when it’s freezing cold, he’ll be snug as a bug in a rug in the van.
If you are interested in putting in a Truma Varioheat in your van, give us a call. We’ll be happy to help.
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