Do you have toys that you’d like to take camping? Well, then you’ll need a Toy Hauler.
But we tell you, when this Toy Hauler arrived at workshop, we wouldn’t want to be camping anywhere near this, because of the gas installation.
Why?
Watch below to see how we fixed up this amazing Toy Hauler.
The Trailer
This Toy Hauler is totally awesome. Just about the whole thing is made out of aluminium, even the chassis. It’s got a rooftop tent to sleep in, a batwing awning, water tanks, and MAXTRAX mounted on the front. It’s got room for your motorbikes and all your stuff that you want to take along with you. And there are just about lockers everywhere.
The Issues
But the only thing that’s really a let down was the gas installation. The gas main more or less consisted of all these flexible hoses that ran throughout, inside the trailer, inside all these lockers and everything, hooking up the hot water system and the hot plates. The gas regulator was laying down horizontally on the drawbar, connecting up the gas bottles and everything.
And the hot water system – the gas and everything was connected inside a locker. And as you can see at the top there, there’s like a solar vent right up the top that’s all melted. It could have caused a fire as hot water system was connected to the gas. And you could even shut the door while the thing was working. Imagine all those flexible fittings inside it. Any of it could have leaked into any of these lockers. We’ve even got batteries and all the rest of this stuff in there as well.
Same with the kitchen. Awesome kitchen. The beautiful hot plate was connected and you could just pull it out and start using it. But again, you got all these flexible joints with pipes all joined, so any of them could have been leaking under or inside the lockers. Also, imagine just pushing it back into the locker, and there’s a slight leak on one of the flared joints or something. It would just fill the whole thing up. So, very dangerous. That’s probably why he didn’t get a compliance plate and couldn’t get it over the pits.
The Solution
Once we ripped out all the illegal hoses, we made up a new aluminium bracket, rock solid. That’s there to support the new gas regulator, so you can hook up both bottles. We ran a new gas line, all the way down to the back, and installed three gas bayonets, connected them all up. Whenever we can, instead of using these flared joints, we try and weld all the pipes together, because rocks and vibrations can sometimes cause those flared joints to come loose a bit and start to leak. Where it’s less of a chance of that happening when it’s a welded joint. And if you can get them on the jobs, not all the time you can, but if you can, the welded joints just look beautiful.
The Barbecue
If you’ve got big kids with big toys, then you may have to get them off the deck before you start cooking. But since I’ve got little kids with little toys, I can leave them here. Still stacks of room on this Toy Hauler. How easy is it to hook up the Weber barbecue when Beautiful Plumbing does the gas work?
- Just open your barbecue up, flick open the pedals on the side.
- Remove the dust plug on your gas bayonet
- Plug in your gas hose. Remember, there’s no gas that’s going to come out of here. It’s very safe, even with the dust plug out, because it’s got a quick release fitting.
- Put the hose through the ring and click it onto the barbecue, and now she’s connected up like that.
- Open the cover up and turn on the electronic ignition
And you can start cooking and get your sausages happen.
The Hot Plate
Now for the hot plate and the kitchen. It’s very important that the hot plate can be connected without tools. It just makes it so much easier. You don’t want to be stuffing around with spanners and that when you’re camping. You’ve got enough to do.
The only thing I was really worried about is, what if when you slide the kitchen out and hook the gas up, then slide it back in, forgetting that the gas was connected. And the the fitting gets a bit of a knock or snaps off and causes a leak. And you’re out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no way to repair it. That’s the last thing we want to happen.
That’s when we came up with what we call a safety flap.
How easy is it to hook up the hotplate without tools when you’re out on the road?
- Grab your gas hose
- Remove the dust plug of the gas bayonet
- Plug the gas hose in. Again, there’s going to be no gas coming out of this, even with the dust plug removed, because it’s a quick connect fitting.
- We’ve installed the quick connect fitting underneath this safety flap. So all that needs doing is pull the magnetic cover down then plug the other end of the hose in there.
Now the hot plate is connected to gas, ready to use.
The reason that safety flap hangs down is so that whey they start pushing the kitchen in, that safety flap will hit and they’ll realise something’s going on, but it’s not touching the hose. It’s not going to damage that. And then, all they’ve got to do is unplug the gas, close the safety flap, and then they keep going and shut the kitchen.
The Hot Water System
The other gas bayonet that we installed is for the future hot water system. We’re going to have to sort something out so it’s not dangerous, but at least, there’s no gas connected to it at the moment.
So this has been a really great trailer to work on, solving all these problems. And we think he’s going to have a great time out there, because we’ve reduced the pain points and made the trailer a whole lot safer.
Are you interested?
So we’ve got a large workshop.
Now many years ago, Ben worked as a plumber at a company called Heeshen Shipyards over in Holland. Now they build these luxury aluminium super yachts. It was there he was taught how to tig weld because he had to make up brackets sometimes where there weren’t any support for the pipes that he was putting in. So it’s very easy for him to fabricate brackets to hold bayonets or water connectors or something for your caravan or camper, to protect them from branches, bushes, or just to support them.
So if you, like us, live in the best city in Australia, and you would like an extra gas bayonet put in your caravan or need to fix a gas leak. Or you just need the gas certified on your camper or caravan. You might even be thinking, “Oh, I wouldn’t mind having a little hot water system plumbed in, or an extra water tank!” Give Beautiful Plumbing a call. We’ll be happy to help.
