Most of my day was spent looking up electrical information online and planning our electrical cabinet. There is quite a bit to fit in there and I want to optimize space. It is going to sit right behind the driver’s seat and with the seat swiveled I don’t want to completely hit a wall. For a good hour I just measured the batteries and other devices; sat and looked at them; sat in the van and thought about how to arrange them. Not terribly productive in some ways, but very necessary if I am going to figure out and understand how it all needs to go together.
Here are some sketches of the electrical plan. I drew this up so I could share it with an online forum so they could tell me everything I’m doing wrong! I know I need a few more fuses and breakers in there.
While I was pondering all of this my part arrived from Ford to finish off the heater system so I went and picked that up. Kenai came along.
As long as I was out, I picked up a few pieces to solve one more issue I had been contemplating. Our water tank has a front bottom hole that will run to the sink. In the back there is hole at the top with no threads that will be used to fill the tank. That hole is just plugged with an expanding test plug. There is also a hole at the bottom that I will plumb to allow the tank to be drained. Finally, there is a hole at the top that many people use for venting. After all, as the water draws down the tank needs to pull in air or a vacuum would form and we could no longer draw water out the front.
The only “vent” I have seen is a small tube that is pulled up high so air can come in but water won’t go out. My concern is that with a partially full tank sloshing around it could pretty easily blast out a vent tube even if it is long enough. After a little Google Fu I found my answer – an Air Admittance Valve. They are typically used in a plumbing system to allow air to get pulled in when water goes through a pipe because, as with my tank, if no air is let in a vacuum forms and the liquid doesn’t go down the pipe. They are supposed to seal in the other direction to keep pipe gases from leaking out. I am pretty confident it will also work to keep water from leaking out. We shall see!
