What's your electrical/water/heating/etc. layout????

[Chaz]

Well, I have obviously been asking my fair share of questions  and been researching and collecting parts. (ouch )
  So now it's time to layout and start mounting my utilities. I have a plan in mind, but I would like to know what you guys did, what works and what doesn't.
  Here's what I thought:
      My bus is a 4108. The back bay is what I planned on using for most of this stuff,  ie. the aux. heater, the holding tanks, the 4024 inverter, the water pump and the wvo tank (when I get that set up).  I'm planning od using Pex for the water lines. Should I insulate them? How heavy of wiring should I use? The heat I am figuring on will be hydronic running down the center of the coach and a couple other strategicly placed areas. Any suggestions there?
      The middle bay is for storage/guest bedroom/harley garage/wine cellar/chamber of horrors, etc.    That is why I want to keep all the utilities in the back bay. A previous owner made a trap door to the middle bay from above for the kids room. It's spray foam insulated, TV in the wall and paneled.
      Then, in the little front bay-  leave my generator in there on the drivers side and put the house batteries on the other side. My coach has never had house batteries so I will have to figure out a set up there, but Jerry has given me a pretty decent idea of what to do. But I'm always up for suggestions and neat trick ideas.
 
    I know this is a rather LARGE amount of questions in one thread, but my main goal is just finding out what's the best layout. I'm up for any and all ideas and suggestions.
   
      So.......... that said, what do ya think?? Good idea?? Bad idea?? Better idea?? What did you do??  You guys really helped me on the layout of the interior (things I hadn't thought of) so now what about my basement??
   
       The ever question prone,
                Chaz

[TomC]

Chaz- fresh water- I have my 130gal water tank under my bed in the back along with the 2-10gal electric water heaters (straight from Home Depot).  One heater feeds into the next with the final water heater wired through the inverter so I can have hot water going down the road.  Hot water lines are wrapped.  With the water system above floor, there is much less chance of freezing.  Black and gray tanks won't freeze as easy with the waste products naturally present in the tanks.  I have a manifold system with a ball valve for each water faucet on both cold and hot side. One thing I didn't install that I wish I did have is a warm up valve in the shower.  This is a teed off line on the hot side just before the valve of the shower with another valve that you can turn on that would allow the pipes to get hot and the water would return to the tank.  Then you don't have any wasting of water waiting for the water to heat up the pipes.  I used Qest, which is similar to Pex. Just don't over tighten.

Electrical. Suggest you only bury in the walls or ceiling what is absolutely necessary.  For instance, I have the three roof A/C's, the two fantastic fans, antenna lead (in conduit to be able to change wire), and overhead halogen lights buried.  All else runs along the lower left wall where I can access it anytime easily. All my 120v is in plastic conduit with stranded wire pulled through.  Then even with the wires buried, you can replace them.

My heating is the original heat exchanger mounted fore and aft under my closets in the hall with 2 14" radiator fans to push it out-tremendous amount of heat.  Propane furnace (35,000btu) for stopped heat, and electric heat strips in the A/C's-which work if you give it time.  Simple, easy to install, easy to service and replace if necessary.  Good Luck, TomC

[Chaz]

Thanx Tom!!!!!!! I got some good ideas from you right off the bat!! I appreciate it!!!

    Gettin smarter,   
       Chaz

[Sean]

Chaz,

Our bay layout and design is documented here:
http://www.ourodyssey.us/bus-bays.html

Here's a plan view:
http://odyssey.smugmug.com/photos/2619266-O.gif

And here's the layout of the "wet bay" showing tankage, etc.:
http://odyssey.smugmug.com/photos/2228276-O.gif

The actual water system flows are shown in this schematic:
http://odyssey.smugmug.com/gallery/63883#2228284-O-LB

However, not shown is the fact that we do have a hot-water recirculating system such as Tom describes.  At each fixture (shower, bathroom sink, and kitchen sink), there is a tee in the hot water line just before the fixture valve (the faucet itself for the sinks, and the mixing valve for the shower).  The "extra" leg of the tee connects to a line that runs over to an electric solenoid valve -- we used lawn irrigation valves, since they are inexpensive and work fine for our use.  From the solenoid, the line continues on back to the fresh water tank.  A pushbutton located at each fixture supplies the solenoid with 24VDC from our house system as long as the button is held down.  It takes about 12 seconds to pre-fill our hot water lines with hot water, and about half a gallon of fresh water that would otherwise be wasted (and taking up unnecessary room in the gray tank) is instead preserved by being returned to the fresh water supply.  Saves us 2-3 gallons per day.

The AC electrical layouts are extensively documented here:
http://www.ourodyssey.us/bus-e-ac.html

whereas the DC house system is detailed here:
http://www.ourodyssey.us/bus-e-house.html

Note that we tried to pay careful attention to issues of weight and balance when designing our system layout.  Consider that one of the big variables in how much your rig will weigh at any given time, and how that weight is distributed, will be your tankage.  In our case, variation from an empty fuel tank to a full one is a full ton, and from empty water tanks to "normal" water tanks (either fresh or waste full, but not both) is another full ton.

We tried to get the tanks as close to the CG of the coach as possible (the approximate center of gravity, lengthwise, is marked on my drawings).  Also, our tanks are fully centered laterally in the bay, so that we experience no side-to-side change of weight distribution as tanks either empty or fill.  Just something to consider.

-Sean

[tekebird]

I would not recommend putting anything electrical near anything water.......my dad's coach spring a water leak and toasted his inverter......big $$ for a small problem.

For hot water I suggest geting an RV or marine style alot of them have stainless tanks and have heat exchangers so you can plumb in your engine coolant for free hot water everytime you drive.

I have not seen anyone insulate waterlines that I can recall

[Stan]

Most of  your heat loss is through the walls and windows so your source of heat should be close to the wall and low down. Look at how the bus was heated and cooled.

[Chaz]

Sean,
  Thanx for the info. I looked at all of it, but I need to somehow make the pix bigger so I can tell what it is. I'm not real computer savvy. But I'll get it.
     Thanx a bunch,
             Chaz

[Sean]

Chaz,

The "direct" links I posted should bring up a full-size drawing in your browser.  The images are too big to fit on the screen.  If you are seeing the whole image at once, then your browser is set to "resize" images to fit.

To fix this in Internet Explorer, go to the "Tools" menu and select "Internet Options."  In the pop-up, select the "Advanced" tab.  Scroll down to the "Multimedia" settings, and uncheck the first box, "Enable Automatic Image Resizing."  Click "OK."  Then reload the page, and you should see the drawing full size.  If you print it from your browser, it should completely fill an 8-1/2 by 11 page.  Directions for other browsers will differ, but the gist is the same -- find the auto-image-resizing feature and turn it off.

On the SmugMug site where all our drawings are located, when you select any given image, it will generally come up in a small size.  At the top of the page you'll see some controls where it says "sizes: S M L O" -- you want to choose "O" which stands for "Original" size.  On the drawings (as opposed to other photos), they will not be readable except in Original size.  Once you've loaded the original size drawing, you can get rid of the extraneous SmugMug garbage by right-clicking and selecting either View Image (to see it in the broswer) or Save Image As to save it to your hard disk.  The Original-size images on the drawings should come up as .GIF files (photos, on the other hand, come up as .JPG files).

HTH,

-Sean

[Lee Bradley]

Thanx Tom!!!!!!! I got some good ideas from you right off the bat!! I appreciate it!!!

    Gettin smarter,   
       Chaz

Sorry Chaz but you are not getting smarter; you are becoming better informed.
You showed your smarts when you started asking questions here.

Lee 

[Chaz]

Good point Lee. Even my grasp of the english language sucks!!! 

   Chaz

[Don4107]

I second Tekebirds's suggestion to use a hot water tank with auxiliary heating coil.  Free heat when the engine has been running.  Also ready to hook up to a Webasto or other source.  Our boat and old coach have these and I would not be without them.  10 or 12 gallons of engine temp water goes a long way.  Be careful if you have kids!  Water can be VERY hot.  If you insulate the tank you can take a shower the next morning without reheating the water.

[belfert]

Some of the marine water heaters with coolant loops also have tempering valves so the water can't get too hot.

Brian

[JimC]

Chaz
One thing that has not been mentioned yet would be to bring your water up into the bus from the bay with the tanks and the water heater. If you do that you only have to worry about heating the one bay and the inside of the coach against freezing when traveling in cold temps. I have a heater core and blower in my mechanical bay tied into the main heat loop for the bus, it keeps the bay warm, and the inside of the bus will  be warm from your other sources of heat. If you were to go into the other bay with the plumbing, you would have to heat 2 bays.
JimCallaghan