Oops, I did it again !!! 1977 Sovereign

[Glenritas]

As you know I ditched the Airstream bathroom in our trailer and replaced the street side toilet & cabinet with a Casita wet bath carved up to fit the Airstream upper shell . This gave us a upper cabinet and an above floor black tank and shower pan that is at floor level .
Unfortunately for others it can't be duplicated because Casita changed the molds , incorporating a molded in sink/cabinet that runs down to the shower pan thus making the carving and fitting impossible without a major amount of fiberglass work to make it work .

My original plan was to have a washer and dryer under a counter across from the kitchen and a 45 gallon grey tank under the belly pan in front of the axels . That plan got dropped after my 1st wife passed away . She was sensitive to detergent so no laundry mats .

With that gone I decided that we would have no grey tank as original .
The kitchen sink drain runs to the street side bathroom closet then down through the floor and belly pan and joins a Y that the shower drain with Hepvo trap then to the outlet for a garden hose to run to the Campground connection .

As luck would have it the Black tank exits in the same place the original black tank did . BUT I made it serviceable in the bumper compartment .

[Glenritas]

Test rotation

It seems I have to rotate the pics 360 when I drag them from the library before posting . This is something new with the last updates .

I used to drag them to mail then to the dasktop I might have to do that or the above . Oh well .

BTW you can see my solution for water getting to the floor in the 3rd pic . I made a flashing that goes behind the trim and is sealed to the trunk sheet with butal tape .

[2002sheds]

Hi Glen, CODB, All,
Glen, thanks for the great pics!!! They help me clarify some of what I am thinking…

David, the grey water will get to the tank via the same path as before. The sanitary tee will simply be lower. The water from the kitchen will still enter on the side of the tank with the angled fitting, the bath sink will drain nearly straight down into the tank, and the lowered bathtub will be outfitted with a Hepvo drain that eliminates the P trap, allowing me to nearly eliminate the platform.

In looking at the “bay” that the tank resides, it occurred to me that the top of the grey water tank originally sat 2 inches below the floor, due to the 1-1/4” tall long-way frame rail that cuts through there.

As you will see from the pictures, there should be room for my proposed setup for the bathtub drain, with an inch or so to spare. Sorry about the orientation of the images…

Thanks,
David

[dbj216]

Okay, your pictures clarified things for me. It appears the gray water tank in the 78 Sovereign is different than the one in the 76 Sovereign I worked on.

Colorado David

[2002sheds]

Hi CODB,
Maybe these will help some more . Once again, I thought they were sent hours ago…

The tank inlets are both to one side of the long frame rail (1-1/4” x 1-1/4”) so I can fit the pipe from the bathtub drain over to the now-lowered sanitary tee … and you can see where the tank was pressed up against that rail…

Thanks,
CADB

[2002sheds]

Hi CODB, All,
Having decided to try to drop the bathtub as low to the floor as possible, I began an adventure that continues to this day

I quickly settled upon the Hepvo drain and, in an effort to keep as low of a profile as possible, I am no longer trying to tie into the sanitary tee that goes into the grey water tank, but instead I’m using a special 90 degree PVC fitting at the end of the Hepvo and a grommet fitting into the tank.

Since the vertical space in this tank bay will be at a premium, I realized that I needed to come up with supports for the tank that could be managed by one person and those supports needed to be adjustable to a very fine degree. I also do not have a flat, stable surface upon which to jack up the tank, as has been recommended.

As you can see in one of the photos, I used a long 3/8” bolt that has been dropped down through a sunken hole in the subfloor (so the finish layer of flooring will go right over it). That bolt goes into a 3/8” tapped hole in some C channel. While the subfloor is exposed, I can lift the tank precisely into position from above. I’ll add slots at the bottoms of the bolts to facilitate turning the bolts from below if the need arises to remove the tank in the future.

This challenge (getting the tanks back in, lowering the tub) has taken up a lot of what little brain power I have left, so it is very satisfying to be so close to moving forward to the next steps…

Thanks,
CADB

[dbj216]

Solving problems to make it work the way you want is most of the great fun in working on these old Airstreams. My friend and I started a list of "genius" checks and "moron" checks under each of our names. Sometimes we come up with a nifty solution, and sometimes we really mess something up. I got more "moron" checks than he did.

David