hot water tank location?

[JohnEd]

We did this a long time ago.  Wish I knew where the post was.  Sooooo.

Build your tanks on top of one another.  The bottom is the fresh and the gray and black are each half the capacity of the fresh and they both are a foot longer.  The fresh is the only tank you heat and the heat will migrate to the top two siting on top.  You can heat the fresh by simply piping the hot water back to the fresh an using a valve to control the flow.  I will also have a fresh tank return on all hot water faucets to avoid wasting water getting hot to the faucet.  I rigged a thermostat to the hot water line and let the hot dump water when the fresh tank got to 36 F.  I also had separate hot lines that were taped and insulated to the other lines I was protecting.  here again the hot water came on to heat those areas till the thermo cut out.  That still warm water went back to the fresh also.  I had 120V power for this and my propane heater had a elect element and the outside of the tank was well insulated....no propane use possible in that config.

For the temps you are talking about you will need a spray foam insulated coach and that will have to have fir strips in coroperated in the design and a wall thickness of 2 1/2 inches for R17.5.  Roof will be 3 or 4 inches thick with foam and no ceiling ducts.  The interior ceilings of the bays will have to be 3 inches thick foam and the floor in the coach would be another 2 inches foam board topped with ply.  You need to be able to curtain off the entire drivers area with a thermal curtain as that area has so much metal in it that is heat synced to the outside skin.  I have seen pics of a coach in Montana that had little places under the interior walls that touched metal.  He had little "buds" of frost on the inside walls where they touched.  His walls were sprayfoamed.  I think all this would just be a start.  All holes and fluid penetrations would have to thought thru well.  Windows...double pane and rated for R? and even at that covered with shrink film.  It can be done, though.  My Winnie would have the temp raised 30 degrees by a single cube heater and with two I was good to 10 degrees F.  Then the propane kicked on for the score.

Good luck here.  You are thinking thru it at the correct stage and many have great advice to save you a ton.

HTH,

John

[busshawg]

Excellent advice John, you have definitly given this some thought. Thanks for all of your advice. As long as the bus engine is running a heater core in the rear compartment is a good idea also.

Thanks again
Have fun
Grant

[busshawg]

Just you know, I ended up cutting a hole in the drivers side of the bus to install the hot water tank. It is now sitting in our lower kitchen cabinet. Not a popular vote from my wife but this way the tank is vented to the outside as it was designed to be. My concern about this was that I really didn't want to cut through the outer skin and definitly didn't care for cutting the chair rail in the wall as I'm sure it helps with the overall strength of the bus. Oh well it's done and the tank fits well with no risk of these fumes enterning the bus.
Next project will be to ge a wabasto/ proheat installed for heat to the rear comartment etc.

Thanks guys
Have fun

[JohnEd]

We have a Knut on the board that has "some" Webasto's for sale.  I think it was Frank Allen but I am not sure.  Hope someone can help here if only to shut down a fruitless search.

John