Putts

[AbuelaLoca]

Oh Geebus, I can see where this is going. If'n you think it's proper, would a mod please move this thread over to "Builds,Modifications and Restorations?" It's going to be that kind of thread here shortly.

I think I got it moved?!?!

[Putts]

Yupper! 



Thanks!

[rvpopeye]

That GIF looks like one of those vids you posted earlier today on another thread.......

[Putts]

Mmmmm...where was I? Oh yeah, unsupported time.

Wait a minute...I just showed you the outside of the throne.  I'm very proud of my crapper, let's take a little tour.

A composting toilet have three required features:

• You MUST separate the pee from the poo. Otherwise it'll stink. All commercial nautical and RV composting toilets have separate holding tanks for each.
  
  
• All composting toilets have ventilation systems. Everything I've read or seen says they don't stink, so it's not for the smell. The good aerobic bacteria that break down the poo to compost need a lot of fresh air and oxygen to live and thrive; they also have significant heat and moisture that must be vented out. An outside, closed loop air ventilation system to provide oxygen and evacuate moisture is required to work properly.
  
  
• You must stir the poo daily. Commercial systems have a mixer with an outside handle to agitate. I'll have a stick. 
  

I bought the Separett Privy 500. The important bit looks like this...



Pee in the front; poo in the back. Yes boys, you gotta learn to pee sitting down. I'm pathologically lazy so I do it that way anyway. It's got a styrofoam seat made for cold weather, which was all they had when I had done my initial research. Had I looked into again I would have gone for their new Privy 501, which has a more normal seat. I'll probably eventually buy the seat for that one and remount it as I think the styrofoam may trap crud in it's pores. Ah well, live and learn. This isn't the first time, and most likely not the last, that I'll spend money unwisely.

At any rate, here's the first mock up.



The PVC is just a fake spacer. There will be a fair dinkum hose to whatever the final bottle choice is.

Then, somehow, I had to figure out how to make a relatively air-tight seal the very odd shape of the toilet into the five gallon bucket below. Got out the saber saw and started hacking away at a five gallon bucket and came up with this.



The hose is just here for cogitative purposes. In the hole is a piece of 5/8 plywood cut to just fit within---you can see it's shadow on the side of the bucket bit---and then the bucket piece is screwed in from the sides. 

Closed in the box and installed hinges.



And now, the big reveal: Welcome to the shit snorkel.



The top bit of bucket is cut from a 5 gallon bucket just below the ridges near the handle, making it seal fairly air tight. 

You can see the intake and exhaust snorkels going from the rim job up on top that seals into the load bucket,  and on down to the stench plenum below.



Note the virtually explosion-proof 37/64" marine grade plywood used.



Here you can see the intake and exhaust chambers---they're symmetrical because a good evacuation should have balance.

Fiber too. You'll see the stack of about 6 fiber vent pads under a metal mesh. 

There's another metal mesh on the bottom stapled to some spacers to make a void on the bottom where the pooterpipes exit.
The two interior walls have holes in them to mount 40mm computer box fans. 



Pooter pipes and holes in the floor.

[Baloo]

What’s your plan for the motorcycle mount on the rear bumper? I have the need for one on the ambo for my KLR 250. I really need something that pivots for I can still open the back doors.

Baloo


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Putts]

Yeah, well, that's why I got a roll-up door. It'll go on sideways, front towards the left, with a narrow walkway between it and the door.

[Putts]

I gotta tell ya, I've reached a milestone this weekend. But I feel like I've got to repost my entire build here for continuity. You can read the entire thread on CRVL, but I hate to direct people over there, and I do so much want to show my friends here what's going on. So...I've decided to repost the whole damned thing here for your easy viewing pleasure. 

Edit: Um...I'm just copy and pasting from the CRVL thread and kinda screwed up by not pasting to match style. So the next five or six posts have forced black lettering. If' you're in the Sternwak theme you'll have to switch to another theme to see the text. I'll fix it from now on, but I really can't fix the next few posts without a lot of trouble....sorry.

Here we go!

Okie dokie, this is the post that will give you a good vision of what Putt's going to look like indside.

Like I said, I'm a bit of a geek, and have in the past done some mechanical design work. So I know how to run a 3D computer aided design program called Solidworks. It's one of the two main 3D CAD programs out there, the other well known one is AutoCAD. These programs cost in the neighborhood of $1500 to purchase, and technically you need to pay a $500/year seat fee or something. Anyway, Solid works is crazy expensive. But, bless their ever lovin' hearts, they offer a program for veterans where you can buy if for personal use for $25. Woot!

So I drew up Putt. Mostly it's a sketch to work from, I don't take any measurements from the drawings. Hell, I hardly ever look at them any more. But it was great in the planning stages to be able to shuffle things around to consider different layouts.

Here's what I settled on, and I say settled because when doing something like this it's all about where you're willing to compromise. If the shitter's an inch wider, then the counter and drawers have an inch less.  Here's the top view of the basic layout with the upper cabinets not shown so you can see the floor plan better. 



The first thing to notice is that the rear door opens to a storage area that will be completely separate from the cabin. I don't want to live with the smell of a chainsaw in my space. That back area will store all the chairs, tables, firewood, fire ring, buckets, shovels, spare parts, tools, blah, blah, blah.

The bed runs crossways above the wheel wells. That's a standard single mattress you see there; there will be just enough room for a little headboard shelf with reading light, book holder, glasses storage, iPad charging, etc.

At the top is the kitchen cabinet that contains, from left to right: a composting toilet; propane range (mine will actually be just one burner), sink and faucet, and then the top-loading refrigerator under a hinged counter top.

The bottom side shows the dinette. The forward seat will be a car seat bolted to the top of the battery box.  The rear seat will be a compact RV swivel recliner.

Here's a side view.


Here you can see all the storage compartments. Under and above bed is all my personal stuff. Above the kitchen will be for food. Above the dinette will be all the electronics. The bed, over bed, and kitchen cabinet will have a single door that flips up on hydraulic lifters. The kitchen counter unit will have drawers for all the dishes and pans etc. The garbage will be under the range accessed through a flappy panel. 

Here's a quick look inside the kitchen counter unit.



The turquoise box is the 60 gallon water tank. I eventually plan to put two more tanks between the wheel wells for a total of about 120 gallons. The dark blue box is a water cube for the gray water under the sink.  I had planned to just manually empy this but have changed my mind and will be installing a small 10 gallon tank that can be drained with a valve. The orange box is the fridge. I bought a Dometic CFX-50W that runs on 12VDC or 110AC.

[Putts]

The Start

Thing is, I had those drawings but for a 2' longer vehicle than Putt, so as soon as I got it, I knew what I was on about. I bought it in October 2015, and it's cold and getting colder that time of year, so it was mostly intensive planning and doing stuff that didn't need adhesives. 

Here's what she looked like in the driveway once home.



Rigged up some stairs.



And went to work. My table rassa. (some hippy East Indian word for blank slate.)



Basically, job one was removing and prepping the walls, and fabbing up the conduits to pull wires in the future.



Found a stack of Chicago Tribune papers in one of the walls and a sweet little whisk broom.

Since I have the luxury, I'm not going to post this in time sequence. I'll put each part of the project in it's own set of posts. 

Where to start?  

[Putts]

The walls and conduits are kinda complicated; I spent a lot of time thinking about how, exactly, I was going to do stuff. While I was doing that, I kept having to open and close the rear door and it was the one place on the vehicle that had a significant amount of rust. 







It was worst at the bottom of the door. When I got Putt, it had a lot of rock salt I had to sweep out of the back. Remember, it was used by a Culligan Man. I think the salt really corroded the back door. I've looked around underneath and things look pretty good; some rust, but not much. 

Anyhow, I decided, "Screw that door, I'm not going to lift that damned thing up and down for the next 15 years." So I bought a new one.

Out with the old...



In with the new!



Well, there was a lot of scrubbing with a wire brush and Ospho applications, but those are boring pics.

[Putts]

The fun pics were removing the hardware; painting it in my livingroom ('cuz it's 0 degrees outside sometimes around here in winter); installing the new door; and remounting the hardware.














Tensioning the springs was a bit tricky, but all in all a pretty straight forward job...kind of a wallet crusher at about $1600 though.