It's been interesting reading the comments about which way the door should open. Allan is right, the air flow down the side of the van will probably want to suck the door open especially towards the back of the van. I also used to fly & agree with Allan that a light aircraft door tends to be sucked open when the big fan on the front is keeping the pilot from sweating.

Two of the downsides of Monopan are the translucency & the relatively bad insulation factor. All the external walls & roof have to be covered to keep the light in & the light out. In my case, with gloss white ply in the main part of the van & with Lamilux in the bathroom. Lamilux is a gel coat sheet 1.6mm thick from the same company as Monopan. In the bathroom, I have glued & riveted aluminiun flat to the Monopan & then filled in between with Silverwrap which would normally be found behind the brick veneer in a house.



The almost finished product looks like the photo below. I need to run a bead of silicone around the joints to tidy up. You will have to tip your screen to view as I could not figure how to rotate the picture.

It is a couple of months since I last posted & I have been busy building.

Had to fashion a bathroom cabinet to enclose the water heater. Here is the beginning of the process. The shelf on top of the heater is there to stop the heater bouncing up out of it's wedges. It is beyond me that these things are made without any mounting points on the rear of the unit & only a few screws into tin at the front. Access to the gas connection id also challenging so I have designed the cabinet so that it can be dismantled to get at the heater.



Panels are of monopan & will be skinned with ply.


The finished cabinet:I am using piano or continuous hinge where possible as I believe that it will not come loose as easily in the corrugations. Also enables me to use 30mm long screws into the door. In the bathroom cabinet, the hinge is pop riveted to an aluminium door frame which edges the monopan. If I did this again, I would use ply - less fiddling. The catches/latches are from EBay. Press the button in to lock, press to release & pull to open. Cheapest, best quality I could find so no complaints.

Using monopan comes with challenges when fixing to the walls or floor. There are no studs or noggins to drive a screw into so till now, it has been a combination of Load Spreading Rivets, aluminium angles & glue for fixings. While this method is undoubtedly strong, it is permanent - you can't undo it & move it 5mm without a lot of effort. I happened to be collecting some supplies from Lavender when one of the guys showed me a Plus Nut. This is like a pop rivet on steroids & you can screw a 6 mm bolt into it when set. They have a grip range down to 0.6 mm.

On the left is a Plus Nut that I ripped out of a piece of monopan. In the middle is the Plus Nut before being set. So far, I have used almost 200 of these things.



In order to keep the panel weight down & the strength up, I am making my own panels using a 12 mm marine ply frame, stapled together & skinned both sides with 3 mm ply. Marine ply has more layers than normal ply & is not allowed to have any cavities in the layers. The panels end up being 17.5 mm thick. The glue I am using is waterproof Titebond which is American made & is cheaper than PVA but far superior in my opinion. After an hour of pressing, the panels can be machined.



I have 4, 57L water tanks fitted & have decided to pipe them separately & fill them by means of a pressure fill. Tank gauging is by means of 4 separate Topargee flow meters that give you the remaining liters in each tank. The van can also be connected to the mains, which is also the fill point & pressure is reduces to 50 psi. Below is the beginnings of the valve arrangement located behind the shower & accessible via a hatch at the back left hand side of the van. The shower waste can be seen poking out underneath the shower. This will go through the floor & into the grey water tanks underneath.

The grid in the picture is something I have carried from country to country for the last 25 years & have now finally found a use for. Captive nuts are clipped into the grid & then equipment attached with 5 or 6 mm fixings. If you need to move things, undo & move the nuts & re-attach.



I have been a bit busy. All the wiring from the draw bar comes to here & the 240VAC distribution starts here also. In case anyone is wondering about 240 & water, the DB is IP66 rated. Still alot of tidying to do.



Can someone tell me how to rotate a picture!

What I would do is rotate the photo using the built in software on the computer first.
If your photos are in "Pictures" on your computer you will see some very basic editing tools, one of which is "rotating"; I think that is what it is called. I use an old Microsoft programme.
glanyard

The aircon required some steel sections in the roof to support the 40kg weight. I made up a steel frame & secured it to the walls using Plus Nuts & adhesive. This has forced me to have a ceiling void of 40 mm into which I have put insulation. It has made a big difference to the temperature in the van having an air gap between the roof & ceiling. Till now, I had been avoiding cutting holes in the body - all in the interests of "leaving it as long as possible for as long as possible" Must have measured 20 times before cutting.



Time to cut out the windows. We had looked at all the windows available & were underwhelmed by the quality & overwhelmed by the price. The camper van we hired earlier in the year had sliding windows that worked well & were secure with few moving parts. By chance, I came across a post somewhere about locally manufactured sliding windows. The company, https://www.ajpm.com.au/ is not far from me so we had a look. Ordered 5 windows at $200 each. On the right hand side of the van I will install small window awnings to take care of the elements that would normally be covered by a "normal" caravan window.
Made up a jig for my 1/2 inch router, screwed the jig to the inside of the window opening & went for it. Discovered after 100mm that monopan eats HSS router bits so had to re-make the jig to suit a tungsten cutter.



Windows are installed using Fixseal & a couple of rivets although the Fixseal would be more than enough on its own as I discovered when I later needed to remove a window.

Hi Rory,
That bathroom cupboard very nice and also the plumbing.

I usually rotate the photo simply by right clicking on the closed photo and the menu that opens has an option rotate clockwise or rotate counterclockwise.

JR

Another job I have been wrestling with/avoiding is the trim around the outside edge of the van. While the inside is plastic welded & watertight, the outside is exposed & I wanted to strengthen the join between the panels by fixing on both sides. The obvious choice is some sort of angle around the edge. Problem is, bending angle around a curve is unattainable unless you have lots of money or the right equipment. I am watching costs so cost comes before cosmetics. Decided to use 50x50x1.5 aluminium angle & cut out 1 face of the angle around the bends like this:



The above is the "Nose" of the caravan. I have screwed a couple of 100 mm screws into the monopan so that the glue has added surface to adhere to. Then I scribed & fitted a filler piece.



A quick whizz round with the router & a flush trim bit & the end result is this.



Not pretty but I am on a budget. Might explore how to polish aluminium down the line a bit.

Add some propeller plate to match the Camec hatches from the scratch & dent area of the Camec shop.

Another job being avoided was the grey water tanks. I begrudge paying mega bucks for purpose made tanks to store dirty water so came up with a plan of sorts. Got my local steel supplier to bend up some "U" sections of 2 mm aluminium. 1 full 2400 x 1200 sheet was enough for 2 tanks - cost $180 including bending & cutting. I then bent the channels using my Ebay 600 mm bench bender to form the shape of the tank.



Glued & screwed the bottom on & plated the join then applied a bitumen sealer I had lying around.



Added some 25 mm bulkhead fittings from the irrigation isle of my local Mitre10



Then stopped taking photos
Installed, filled, no leaks but forgot the breather so drilled a hole through the floor in the bathroom into each tank to let the air out/in. This will be my only leak but I figured that 1 8 mm hole in the top of each tank is not going to leak that much. There is a 25 mm gap between the top of the tank & the underside of the floor so no water inside the van. I have about 90L of grey water capacity but as they are at the very back of the van, will not be travelling too far with them full.

Total cost excluding my labour - about $250. Not pretty but functional. Apart from the valved drain, I installed a flange with a 1/2 inch plug in each tank to drain the tanks completely. In hindsight, I should probably have installed a support inside the tank to stop the bottom from bulging slightly when full. Might just run a steel strap underneath to stop this & add support to the ally angle supports.



Gas is all installed, tested & certified. Had problems finding the right person who would test & certify pipework I had installed when the chassis was still on the rotisserie. I was unaware that I was not allowed to install gas pipe.
Safety chains are welded on - not bolted, new law apparently.
The box on the draw bar is where the multicore cable to the brakes, lighting & the 12v from the tug terminate.

The kitchen: Turns out this is Mk 1 as I intend completely rebuilding the kitchen cabinet at a later stage. I'm just not happy that it works properly & needs to be 20mm deeper. It all bolts into place so can be removed in 20 minutes. The fridge enclosure is made of Monopan & is bolted to the walls & floor to give the side of the van stability.



The kitchen cabinet carcass parts are made from 12mm marine ply skinned with 3mm decorative ply & joined together with various mechanical fixings such as director screws, pocket hole screws & other furniture screws with hex heads. Fronts are the same construction but with a 9mm marine ply frame. No cupboards here - just drawers running on full extension 40kg soft close runners. Latches are $10 off ebay & are a much better quality than I could find at any of the caravan parts suppliers.

I have landed a project near Proston in Qld so it would be preferable to have the caravan as digs to save travelling 100km each day to the nearest decent motel. Self imposed pressure is now on for a December 1 deadline.

Standard to this layout of caravan are the front cupboards. Our requirements are that you need to be able to put a glass & glasses, CPAP machine, contents of pockets etc on the bedside cabinet next to the head of the bed, not half way down the bed as dictated by the front boot arrangement.



Take 1 sheet of 3mm ply & try to bend it into the raduis of the nose. SNAP!. Take another sheet of ply, thoroughly wet the rear of the ply for a couple of hours & install. No snap.




Install some cupboards: A drawer will be added below the cupboards but I will leave a gap between the bottom of the cupboard & the top of the drawer. Once the mattress is in, the height of the drawers will be finalised. There is some thought about a pull out dressing table so that my better half can sit on the edge of the bed to do what girls do in the morning.