Time for a dance!

The deck is now down and screwed in place with the wheel wells set and we are ready to move on to the next steps. Seeing the trailer with all new sub flooring, but no walls or interior components, it looks like a damn big dance floor.

Before we laid down the plywood, Ryan finished installing the gray water tanks and fabricating a mounting system. Frank and Marcus were very helpful in providing guidance on which tanks fit best in our era of trailer and I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with both of them asking about their mounting systems and plumbing. In the end, the difference between my boxed frame and their c-channel frames required us to come up with a different mounting system pictured below, but I've basically copied their plumbing. Thanks for your help guys.

The piece of steel bolted to the cross member in the foreground is angle iron with the upper leg of the ends cut off. This piece holds a lip of the tank that would have sat inside a c-channel frame for support. At the other end of the tank, Ryan welded in additional angle iron to the cross members to provide strength and then bolted flat iron to the underside of the cross member protruding out under the side lip of the tank.

After the tanks were all set, we added one inch rigid insulation over the spare tire area and both gray tanks. There was exactly one inch of space above each gray tank, so the insulation fits nice and tight. My neighbor who is in the middle of a complete remodel of his house where the we are working on the trailer has a ton of 1 and 1 1/2 inch rigid insulation left over from his project, so we've saved time that would have been spent on trips to the orange box.

I was off Tuesday and we got the first sheet down that afternoon and were all ready to put down the second sheet when we realized we didn't have the sheet of aluminum that goes over the step. Fortunately, Ryan had a roll of aluminum from his project and brought that back after dinner. We were able to move on and get the second sheet down after the kids were in bed.

After that we had to finish rough plumbing for the forward gray tank. The forward tank will act as a galley tank for the Captain and we located the drain entrance in an area located underneath the kitchen cabinet. We plan to plumb the kitchen sink drain with a valve that will allow me to drain the sink to the forward or aft gray tank. That way, if we have full hookups, I don't need to switch the sewer line back and forth between the two outlets - I can just route the sink to the aft tank where we are planning to have the gray tank outlet connected with the black tank outlet. The vent will come up on the curb side in the forward wardrobe and we can either go up through the roof there or plumb it with marine pipe under the curbside beds to link with the rear gray tank and black tank vent that goes through the roof inside the rear wardrobe.

Thursday afternoon, Ryan finished rough plumbing on the aft gray tank and screwed down the last two sheets. He left the screws out in the area around the wheel wells and slipped them in underneath the plywood before screwing them back into place.

One final note for this post. While I hate to let Betsy go, we found a great new truck right before the New Year. Meet Mac! (Eva picked Mac's name). Mac is a 1976 F-250 Ranger SuperCab with a 390 four barrel. He cost about $1,000 less than it was going to cost to get Betsy back on the road, so I couldn't pass him up. Unlike Betsy, Mac has carpet, a headliner, headlights that operate, a functioning heater, and a radio (currently not operational, but I'm on the verge of figuring that out). Plus, we can fit the girls in the back (and did exactly that tonight for a family test drive down at Alki beach). With the costs of the Captain's restoration picking away at our savings and credit rating, we've decided to put off buying a more permanent tow vehicle for at least a year. So, Mac will not only be the new West Seattle utility truck, he will also be our tow vehicle this summer for our first few trips.