Sprinter van: Plumbing
Wow, was the plumbing for our conversion easy. Particularly when comparing it to the electrical system. Or the walls. Or the flooring. Or the cabinets. Or pretty much every other aspect of our build. Yeah, the plumbing was easy.
Essentially, it involved:
- A sink
- A faucet
- A pump
- A drain
- A switch for the pump (so we could turn it on and off and not have it cycle randomly in the middle of the night)
- A fresh water container
- A grey water container
Yep, that was it. Oh, and some connectors to get it all hooked up. We bought a ten-foot length of 3/4” nylon braided supply line (for the intake side of the pump) along with a steel compression line (for the delivery side of the pump). We fit the nylon line with a brass fitting and hose clamp. About the pump: I did end up rewiring it from 16-gauge wire to 12-gauge. The sink and cold-water faucet we found on Amazon.
Somewhat annoyingly, the instructions for the pump mentioned installing a required strainer. Although said pump did not just come with the strainer. So we had to order it.
In order to fit everything under the sink, we found a 6-gallon tall and skinny container we’d use for fresh water along with a 5-gallon short and stout container for grey.
We wanted the grey water container to be clear so we could monitor the level without having it overflow. Since it’s low pressure, the intake supply line just goes straight into the fresh water container. The drain just goes straight into the grey water container. Both have screw caps on them to keep them from spilling as we drive down gravel BLM roads.
One catch we’ve already made: The strainer has to be threaded just right. We had mis-threaded it, causing air to get into the supply and so the pump sputtered more than it delivered water to the faucet. Once we caught our mistake, everything worked as it should.
Since we know things will get wet, we added some shelf liner stuck to the bottom of the cabinet under the sink with silicone caulk. And to accent as well as keep the plywood countertop from getting destroyed, we bought a $7 roll of contact paper.
Eventually, we'll replace that with a scrap of laminate we hope to pick up somewhere. In black. For now, the contact paper does the trick.
