Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Wobbly Wheels wrote:droid, "chugging" is from air: a vent will fix that. Run a piece of (1/8"+) tubing from the highest point in the system out of the trailer. The tank needs to replace volume with air that you remove as you use up the water.
If you used a check valve in your fill line because it's an overhead tank, you would still need a vent to let the escaping air go somewhere. Once water comes out the vent, your tank is full.

Thanks Wobbly I figured as much I'm thinking I want to see about a purifier and would be nice to get a UV sterilizer that could run on a 12 volt system but if not then an inverter may be the solution just need to find another excuse to use an inverter (like that will be hard) and then have it pass through a couple of removable filters and everything should be good

As a side not I use to manage 2 motels and you could never get me to use a hot tub or sleep in one of the beds even if you paid me(just saying)
I once applied too much chlorine to our hot-tub and guest were complaining on how clean it was but we had a new product and I didn't realize that it was concentrated stuff and used about 8 times too much.....

UV is ok but it doesn't work on turbid water, where the bugs can 'hide' among the suspended particles.
Canadian Tire sells the Xantrex-branded MSW inverters pretty cheap now: the 1000kW regularly goes on sale for a hundred bucks. That's what I've got and it'll serve just fine for anything I 'need' to run while camping. They state the efficiency at about 98%, which isn't too shabby even when you allow for marketing 'exaggeration'.
Filtration is another topic altogether, as I'm sure you're aware.

Hehe...still...an outdoor hot tub is a pretty sweet place to be on a cold snowy night...
In the event of a natural disaster, I would drink the water out of the first I think !

my parents have a hot-tub that uses a Hot water on demand system and they drag it up to the cabin behind the snowmobiles fill it with lots of snow and wait and in a few hours it's too hot but then they know who has been in it..I'm thinking that for my water system since I'll be emptying it when I'm moving that all the shaking should move the remaining water to the lower storage tank and I should be pretty safe from it building up bacteria Still clean it when I get home

Another thing that you see on boats and RV's is to have a schraeder (tire) valve plumbed in. When the system is full of water, you hook pressure air to it and blow out a slug of water.
As long as your whole system slopes down to the drain fitting with no traps, it'll drain just fine. 1/4" drop per foot is the rule of thumb (as a minimum) to get water to drain off decks, etc.
That second set of lines on a bubble level ?
That's what they're for.


I was with some buddies outside Williams Lk for May long a few years ago and one of them had an extra heat exchanger in his Suburban. We built a hot tub from logs and a tarp and used his truck to heat it. I was going to go with a solar shower until I get the solar collector built, but I'm thinking along that route instead....one project at a time, though !

Wobbly Wheels wrote:Another thing that you see on boats and RV's is to have a schraeder (tire) valve plumbed in. When the system is full of water, you hook pressure air to it and blow out a slug of water.
As long as your whole system slopes down to the drain fitting with no traps, it'll drain just fine. 1/4" drop per foot is the rule of thumb (as a minimum) to get water to drain off decks, etc.
That second set of lines on a bubble level ?
That's what they're for.


I was with some buddies outside Williams Lk for May long a few years ago and one of them had an extra heat exchanger in his Suburban. We built a hot tub from logs and a tarp and used his truck to heat it. I was going to go with a solar shower until I get the solar collector built, but I'm thinking along that route instead....one project at a time, though !

My build is too I have to build everything back wards as I'll never get it through the door so I have been working on a shelf and today I have been doing my porch light as well as figuring out how much PVC pipe I'm going to have so far it's looking to be around 110 feet of 4inch pipe...not sure how much water it's going to hold but I have planed on some extra bracing just to be safe..I like the radiator idea I think I might do that as well as long as the weight stays low I can't have too much stuff inside...Williams lake my aunt used to live there I'd go there almost every weekend when I was a kid I know a few people there....good tip about the pressure valve for clearing out the pipes not sure how it would work with a trap valve but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it...How much pressure can PVC hold as in its own weight with water as I don't want to have saggy pipes and then have them burst on me and destroy all my hard work.

Wobbly Wheels wrote: 1/4" drop per foot is the rule of thumb (as a minimum) to get water to drain off decks, etc.

Years ago I built an addition on the back of my home. The easiest way (but it wasn't that easy) to provide for the bathroom drainage was to dig a 100 foot (or more) trench around the house to connect to the main sewer line in front of the house. Code here is 1/8"/foot. In twenty five years I've never had a problem with "stuff" flowing downhill.

Just a thought.

Cheers,

Gus

Here is your burst strength you were worried about.......

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pvc-cpvc-pipes-pressures-d_796.html

I am surprised no one has mentioned bleach. Good old cheap clorine bleach. Used in the restaurant industry for years as a final dish rinse when hand washing was the norm. Now super heated dishwashers have made it unnecessary but it worked back then and still works now. I hate a grodey nasty cooler and the first thing upon arriving home from camping is unpacking the coolers and rinsing them out. The final step before putting them back in storage is to glug in a 1/2 cup or so of bleach. There it stays till the next camping outing when it is dumped out and the spotless cooler is rinsed again just before packing. I am always surprised that the ENTIRE cooler is clean it is as if the clorine gas is sanatizing the lid and all. There is no reason the pvc style storage tanks could not be filled with a strong bleach solution out of season ( except below freezing) to keep the tanks sparkling clean. simply fill and empty then rinse and refill for the trip.

I am certain I found on previous posts that an 18" length of 4" PVC holds one gallon.

Also support of vital My pull out privacy curtain pc tubes drooped in the intense summer heat and that is 2 tubes one inside the other and a 5 foot span. So I am sure you will need some support every couple of feet you may want to design in a bit of a bow so the water will drain to the ends.

bobhenry wrote:Here is your burst strength you were worried about.......

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pvc-cpvc-pipes-pressures-d_796.html

I am surprised no one has mentioned bleach. Good old cheap clorine bleach. Used in the restaurant industry for years as a final dish rinse when hand washing was the norm. Now super heated dishwashers have made it unnecessary but it worked back then and still works now. I hate a grodey nasty cooler and the first thing upon arriving home from camping is unpacking the coolers and rinsing them out. The final step before putting them back in storage is to glug in a 1/2 cup or so of bleach. There it stays till the next camping outing when it is dumped out and the spotless cooler is rinsed again just before packing. I am always surprised that the ENTIRE cooler is clean it is as if the clorine gas is sanatizing the lid and all. There is no reason the pvc style storage tanks could not be filled with a strong bleach solution out of season ( except below freezing) to keep the tanks sparkling clean. simply fill and empty to rinse and refill for the trip.

I am certain I found on previous posts that an 18" length of 4" PVC holds one gallon.

Also support of vital My pull out privacy curtain pc tubes drooped in the intense summer heat and that is 2 tubes one inside the other and a 5 foot span. So I am sure you will need some support every couple of feet you may want to design in a bit of a bow so the water will drain to the ends.

Thanks Bob Henry that was real informative I am thinking vardo shaped so yes the design will incorporate a bow to and I originally had it designed that there would be 3 pieces of pvc two on bottom and one on the top going across all the cross posts of the trailer ..(if I have enough clearance that is) They would take place of the purlins and get boxed in with some 1x6 to dress up the pipes..but I'm still in the designing phase of it all still so I'm sure it will change again at some point

found a good chart for anyone that may be interested in using PVC pipe on their next project

http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-PVC-Pi ... -a-Project

And as for weight bearing properties of it here is a greenhouse that uses 1 1/4 piping


Here is the inside..sure it is bending but it hasn't broken and there is over a ton of snow on it


Here is what happens when you use 1 1/2 piping a lot stronger

it was very inexpensive and easy to build. The lumber was under $100, the poly was just over $200, and the pvc pipes were under $100. By the time I got all the misc. stuff, I was still under $500 total. Not bad, eh?

from the site I got the pictures



and a link to how to instructions
http://www.albertahomegardening.com/how ... reenhouse/

Pipe lengths per gallon.
3"x33" = 1 gallon.
4"x18.5" = 1 gallon.
5"x11.8" = 1 gallon.
6"x8.5" = 1 gallon.

A 4"x36" pipe holds 1.95 gallons.
A 6"x36" pipe holds 4.4 gallons.

If you can find short turn street and regular elbows or short turn traps, the pipes will be closer together. Otherwise you burn up allot of room between pipes. Also the fittings will burn up allot of $ fast.