Back in the heady days of sprint-distance triathlon training (hopefully we’ll have more heady days), sometimes it got a little difficult to keep up with the training and keep out of the burnout shed. Somewhere along the line, either from a blog or a book, someone suggested that when deep in those near-burnout feelings, sometimes buying a new little gadget or toy helps reignite the energy to keep strapping on those running shoes, jumping on the bike, or face-flopping in the water. For me, then, it was a new Cat-Eye, a nifty little thing that recorded cadence, distance, time, mph, etc., on my bike. That got me going again. For Steph, it was a set of aero bars, that helped her lean into the slipstream.
This is our new watering hole, a Thetford 94255 water inlet.
Building a minibus skoolie can be the same way. I started getting really frustrated with the angles, curves, and lack of anything plumb, level, or square, when we were building the bathroom (post to follow). I made a curved template to account for the curve in the ceiling. We needed to build five wall panels, all within about 3 feet of either other, and the one template I made, did not match any other ceiling feature. Five templates. I had to make five templates. Five.
Here’s the inside of this bad boy. Contains the fresh water inlet, non-pressurized, pressurized from city/house hookup, caps for each, and a little vent hole to boot.
After that, well, I got a little toasted. So we started working on a different part of the bus, the shower drain. We ran into problems with that as well, since the coach-side AC condenser was mounted directly under the bathroom, we only had about 4 inches of drain room, which was also blocked by the condenser and condenser-mounting plate. We were intent on keeping that AC, as it worked fine, but it proved really difficult to work around. So we decided to drop the condenser, a rusty clump, so we had room to drill out the drain a little more, which came with its own burnout-causing research.
All of this to find out that the coach AC actually no longer blew cold air and the interior unit actually had significant mouse splatter (like mouse frat house levels) inside of the outer casing. After looking up the cost of replacement parts and discovering that the coach AC is actually run off the same compressor as the cab AC (we think), we discovered that we had no AC at all. Anywhere. None. Except in the house — which is where I went.
Ughs.
Then, seemingly in the middle of all of this, our Amazon driver rolled up and dropped off a fun little gadget – a brand-new watering hole. In this case, it’s the city water/fresh water inlet from Thetford. After reading a bazillion reviews on other, cheaper, breaking-plastic versions, Steph found this gem and ordered it straight away. We paid more, some might say too much, for sure, but we got more as well. The plastic was thick and stout, the connections seemed sturdier with brass fittings, the vent tube was a nice feature, and the outside door locked (only supplied with one key though), closing up all the connections in a nifty little black box, which will match our paint scheme once we’re done.
Now, this doesn’t seem like much, but this was the new ‘toy’ that did it for me. Nothing says ‘camper’ like onboard, multipurpose (shore and boondock) connections. Especially ones that you have to figure out how to put in and make work. This one came with it’s own strip of butyl tape, which we are now intimately familiar with after re-sealing approximately 7,000 windows. Thank the Bus Gods we didn’t go with a full-size skoolie. I like doing all sorts of crazy things, but once those things become repetitive, that’s when my interest goes straight out the Emergency Exit window.
This fun new thing will be the first thing that we cut into the side of the bus for too, so that should be full of clenched relaxation. The good news though, these buses are so industrial looking, if we got really loose with the cutting, we could always slap a flat sheet-metal patch on it, rivet it in, and be done with it. It’ll just make it look even more like a B-17 after a jaunt over Germany.
Here’s the back of the Thetford 94255, showing the brass hose connection and the inlet hose window in the door, so you can connect and lock at the same time. Wish it had another key though.
Here’s a closeup view, highlighting all the fascinating details of water flow.
So look for the future post when we do some exterior surgery on the bus that let’s us get fresh water onboard!
