Tub & Toilet Installation
Once the subfloor is in and I feel good about the wood and frame being solidly interconnected, the next step is installing the gray tank. The Icon HT500SD has the drain and sensors built in, but I have to figure out exactly where the main drain from the sink and shower is going to go, as well as where the hole for the vent needs to be placed.
The original black tank was simply set into a pan made of thin sheet metal, and a piece of metal was placed across the bottom of the frame to hold the pan in place. The sheet metal pan had mostly rusted through and had no use anyway… the new tank is made of a much tougher ABS plastic then was available in 1965 and it has a 1.5 lip going around the top that will let me put wood screws through it and the subfloor -9/16 screws with a wide head have a lot of holding strength but won’t go all the way through the subfloor. Ultimately I would put a screw in every 5 inches around the lip, but for the time being I put one in each corner, then traced the outline on the subfloor so I could match it back up if needed.
Once the tank was secured into place I moved back inside the camper, taking the base of the bathtub in with me. Once I had the bathtub in place I realized my first problem…. the tub drain had been designed to go past the old black tank, then down to a Y connection at the black tank drain. Remember it just released straight to the ground, not into the tank itself, so the Y connection was past the black tank drain valve. Because it didn’t drain into a tank, the 90 degree bend could just go through a hole in the floor, easy peasy.
But because I needed the the pipe to drain into the tank, that meant the pipe had to be raised up enough to accommodate the pipe and the 90 degree bend- nearly two inches! I racked my brain on this one but the only solution I could come up with was to raise the entire tub up high enough for the pipe to fit in and drain properly. So I built a platform to raise up the tub. This worked but we did lose the height in the shower itself- anyone over 5’8″ will have to bend to wash their hair.
Once I had the tub raised on it’s platform I figured out where to drill the hole in the subfloor and tank, and with much caution (measure twice, cut once) and just a little fear, I drilled it out and it worked!
Remember the tank also needs to vent, or else it will gurgle and not drain properly. I wanted to use the original vent hole located on the streetside (driver side) of the camper but had a lot more flexibility there, since air will escape as long as the pipe goes up at an angle at all times. So I found a good place to put that hole and drilled it out as well. Then a removed the tank, installed the fittings and attached it, as noted above, with a lot of screws to hold it to the subfloor.
The Separett Villa composting toilet also needs to vent- that’s one of the reasons we chose it over a Nature’s Head. The Separett has a 12VDC fan that pulls air from the camper and then exhausts it out the roof vent. It basically eliminates any odors AND helps dry the waste. The pipe is pretty large and I do force it into a 2″ pipe near the top of the camper but at that point it is unrestricted going out. The vent pipe from the gray tank connects to the toilet vent pipe and all the gases flow up and out, so the system works pretty well. Remember though, all exhaust pipes need to have a slight upward incline so the gas (air) can flow freely.
Now that the shower drain is in place (the kitchen sink just ties into the shower drain pipe) and the gray tank/toilet venting has been worked out I have to finish the installation of the tub. It goes into place easily enough, but because I raised the tub up on a platform the piece of fiberglass that forms the front has a gap the same height as the platform- about 2″. After some debate about how to handle this I remembered the previous owner had replaced the Airstream plate logo and had left the original one with us. So I cut a piece of aluminum to match the width of the logo plate and I’m please with how it turned out- we get a lot of people asking if it was an option from Airstream.
The toilet installs easily, with the urine diverter going into a (supplied) hose that just ties into the shower drain pipe. And just like that, we have a functioning bathroom!
Other Items Used:
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Holding tank fittings– I didn’t need all of them, but good to have extra parts