Check out The Motorhome Modifications We Did

Do you have a motorhome?

Check out the modifications we did on this motorhome!

Today we got a transit motor home and the owner needs a hot water system connected to the gas. The hot water system’s already been installed by someone else. So we just got to connect it. But we came across a couple of things that we found that didn’t look legit.

The Issues

This motorhome was bought at John Hughes RV Center. They’re a legit company. A lot of rental companies, when they finish with the camper vans and stuff, they just dump them there and then they sell them. We found a couple of things with this motorhome.

You can see the gas LPG locker’s vent is next to the air con. It must have been installed later. Back in the day when this was installed, it would’ve been fine. But now this air con’s in there. This is in the source of ignition zone. So we can’t really have that anymore. What we’ve got to try and do is get a vent going through the floor and all the way down and out the bottom of the van, just in case that bottle ever packs up. Now, this has been done by a gas fitter. Here’s a compliance badge. So you really got to look for this when you’re buying a motorhome, that someone who’s got a license has installed it.

The Regulations

There’s a couple of things with the gas department you need to follow because new regulations are coming out all the time.

We’ll just give you example. If your motorhome was installed back in the day and there was no flame failure device of the stoves inside, the government can’t force you to put a stove in with a flame failure device, because it was done to a standard back then. It’s crazy that you want to have a stove in there without a flame failure device. It’s a good idea to replace it, because it’s super dangerous. But they can’t force you to. Same if, say you bought a car without seat belts back in the day, Model T Ford, or whatever. They can’t force you to put the seatbelts in so you can drive it around, because back in the day it met the standard. So you always got to keep that in mind. They’re always trying to improve it and stuff like that.

So even with the new hoses on the bottles now, they’ve got these big black things that screw onto these new bottles that have check valves in it. when you turn the gas on, no gas will come out until that bottle’s installed. So you can’t just have the gas leaking a little bit. it is one of those things they’re trying to improve it all the time.

Solutions

So this van has apparently been done back in the day by a gas fitter and it’s all signed off. But then when you look inside at that regulator, it’s upside down. This is the bottom and this is the top. This is a vent. Everything’s meant to drain out of there, if there’s any moisture or anything like that. Because it’s got LPG, it’s very cold when it comes in there sometimes.

We don’t know when that was ever legit. Because this down here is meant to be higher than the bottle, so we got to change the gas pipe anyway. So we’ll be fixing that up, turning that round, putting a vent down the bottom as well to go out, and then just sealing this off. We’ll get it up to code.

The Heater

Come and have a look at this heater that we’re putting in. If you look inside here, it’s a little suburban hot water system that that’s been installed. It’s been cut on the side. You see all the pipe work’s already been hooked up to it, the hot and cold. You can see down there there’s a gas point down the bottom that we got to try to connect onto.

So we didn’t install this hot water system, it was done by a bloke name Simon, and he’s from Stanner. They do motor modifications and stuff. He’s a Perth guy as well. Good trade. As you can see, he uses all the right stuff. He’s done a beautiful job and it’s always very nerve-wrecking, cutting into the side of your vehicle. What if there’s a beam in the way or something? So he’s done a really good job.

Have a look outside. The vent, everything really, really good. We thoroughly recommend that bloke. If you do want to give him a call, he’s also on Facebook, as well. Chat to Simon if you want to get something cut inside of your van or diesel heater. And he does a whole bunch of stuff, so check him out.

We’re going to put a bayonet in the inside here for a marine gas barbecue with a flame failure device. Very important, because you can’t hook those up anymore.

The Gas Line

We had to get the gas line that goes to the hot water unit. Now, it’s very hard because there’s chassis running this way and chassis bars running this way supporting the floor, and you don’t want to hit them. It’s very hard to say, where’s that chassis line? You’ve got the bumper and it all packs out. So all we do is we grab out our little laser here and that shoots a beam down and we get that perfectly in line running down the van. And also it’s lined up just to the edge of this.

And then when it’s all in place, what it does is shoot a datum point. We’ll show you underneath. It’ll shoot a datum point where it all runs. It’s nice and clear under here. See you got that laser line, that’s exactly where it is. It shoots it underneath so then you can sort of guess where it’s going to be. See how clear it is under here? It’s great. And so that gave us an opportunity there. We could just pump that hole through and it’s just missing this big chassis main, and so the gas main can come through that. We’ll probably put the bayonet at the back here somewhere.

No Access

Another thing that we did find, which is a bit of a pain. You can see that where the hot plate is. The gas main comes down. This is the gas main here, and then it runs underneath and just goes in between the flooring, the wooden plywood floor and the metal floor of the van.

So it’s underneath that flooring, so there’s no access or anything like that. And that runs all the way along towards the other side of where that box is, and then comes up and over. So even if we wanted to cut a T in it, there’s no way doing it. Because that just comes up in on the edge of this box behind the cupboard and comes out of here.

This is the 40 mil waste that we got through and that goes all the way down on onto the ground. And then we’ll need to run the gas pipe up here and then it’ll go through the cupboard a little bit and then down. Obviously, it has to be one piece, no flare joints or anything like that. They don’t like any of that stuff.

Pipe Sleeving

Another quick thing we’ve found that’s not too cool either. The sleeving that they use on the pipe, that has to be sleeved. It’s for protection for rock damage as there’s got a bit of a layer. So if rocks hit it, it just sort of bounces off. But also when you’re running through cupboards or through floors or anything, if you’ve got that sleeving around, it never gets the opportunity to wear through, because it vibrates all the time and it just wears stuff out. Because we had to rerun this gas pipe here, we’ve pulled the sleeving off. This split sleeving so you can see the pipe inside there. We pulled it off and it just came off like that. And you can see when it goes under the floor here, there’s no sleeving on it.

You can see it’s just hard. It’s jammed right in between. There probably wasn’t enough room. So that copper pipe has been resting on this floor the whole time, vibrating underneath it. We don’t know what the condition is all the way to the other side there. It’s meant to have this sleeving around it just to protect it if it does get squashed or vibrating.

So that’s getting deleted now, because we’re going out the bottom of the box and it has to be a new line. But we thought it would’ve been sleeved. So we don’t know how much longer that would’ve lasted before it was a slight gas leak under the floor. That’d be terrible.

All Done

The van is all finished. So before, we found the gas main sort of went underneath and in between the flooring of the van and the timber flooring. So the whole lot had to be replaced. And because there was a vent here that we’ve covered over with one of our badges. There’s a gap about this much that we had no access to. So we had to figure out a way to get the vent up. We’ll show you inside here. We put a new sticker on here, because that was a bit faded. New strap as well.

So you can see there, the gas now goes down and then up and then through the hole and then into the cupboard. That’s all got to be one piece. All fully sealed. It’s very important you have your stickers on. It’s got the new gas bottle connector on there. So that’s in there, and you can see just there the vent that goes in there. We’ll take you underneath and show you where it comes out down the bottom here.

See that? That’s where you see the vent that comes out the bottom there into the gas. So there wasn’t hardly any room. We couldn’t get it here because of the water tank. So there’s only this small section there that we could get it in. So luckily it fitted in there. That worked out really well.

Inside

So this is where you come through from the side there of the box that’s fully sealed. And this is just one continuous piece and then goes on into the floor. And then it runs under here. There’s a T here and then another one comes up here, and this is for the hot plate. Because obviously, the hot plate was running under the floor before, so we had to rerun that. That goes round there. It’s got the gas valve up here. This was installed by someone else.

Here’s the hot water system. It’s got the easy access gas valves to shut that off. And that goes down into the floor there as well. All has been gas tested and all being commissioned. So it’s all come out good.

Vent and Bayonet

This is where the gas pipe used to go onto the floor just here. So we’ve rerun it into the cupboard there. Also, there was vent and it just had a 40 mil hole, tiny. So when we did the calculations to work out how big the hot plate is, how many people are sleeping, it tells you how big the vents have to be. And this vent was half the size it should be. So we made a bigger hole here to the correct size. It’s about 120 by 60, and that gives us enough surface area. And so when the cooker’s on inside and you’ve got the doors shut, the air is always getting replaced.

We’ve got the bayonet under the back here. We got that little badge there. Bayonet tucked up under there. And then all the gas piping. It’s all teed up there. Runs across, kept all the way across there to the other side there.

Interested?

It’s very difficult. These ones take a lot of time. But anyway, nice and safe now. All vented and ready to go. So he’s coming to pick it up later this afternoon. If you’ve got a motor home and gas regulators turned upside down and stuff like this, some dodgy stuff, then give us a call. We’ll sort it out for you.