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How to Install A Camper Van Water System Using PEX A Uponor Fittings!
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May 3, 2025
Today at Van Builder HQ, Nick is showing how to install a camper van water system using PEX A Uponor Fittings! Check this one out! Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com
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0:00
[Music]
0:08
hey guys welcome back to the shop in today's video we're going to go over the water system in this van
0:13
show you how i put it together where the lines are plumbed and then what components we're using
0:19
and then halfway through this we're going to actually cut to the gopro and i'm going to take you
0:24
through each one of the cold water lines as well as hot water lines show you how i routed
0:30
them why i rounded them in those uh those certain paths uh some challenges that we had with this
0:37
really tight space that we're working with and then in between that there'll be a breakout
0:44
to where i actually go and talk about the tools that you're going to need to do
0:49
this install so i'll actually show you how to cut and
0:54
join a couple of the pex a or opener fittings we have this tool right here and this
1:01
will all be explained a little bit later on in the video but let's go ahead and talk about just
1:06
kind of like a high level overview of what we have here so we got a 2020
1:12
mid-roof ford transit van we have a 20-gallon over-the-wheel
1:18
water tank something that's really nice about over the wheel well water tanks is that you
1:23
know they're really great for space saving and you don't really compromise on the amount of gallons of water you can bring with you
1:30
20 gallons is pretty average for the industry as far as taking water with you
1:37
it's a good balance between capacity and weight the nice thing about the over the wheel
1:42
well tanks is i mean it's just the name it actually has a
1:48
cut out area that's going to fit most vans wheel well size
1:54
in some vans including this one you can actually repurpose a little bit of storage under there if you don't fully
1:59
insulate underneath the water tank so we have 20 gallon tank over the wheel
2:05
well this tank has a couple of ports on it at the very bottom is going to be your
2:10
intake for your water pump there are two overflow vents on the right hand side
2:16
a breather vent up top and then one more vent one more opening in the back and that's how
2:22
you're going to actually fill the tank up so the tank fill in the rear section of
2:29
this tank where we're going to have our shower kit and the faucet we're going to do that in a separate video that separate video is
2:35
going to talk to you about the special connections that you're going to make for the water faucet
2:42
and then the special connections that you're going to need to make for like a shower wash down hose
2:48
those are pretty specific they're a little bit different than the rest of the plumbing that we're doing in here
2:54
as we make our way to the right we get a bunch of component components in a very tight space
3:00
and took a lot of planning and kind of back and forth to get all of this in here
3:06
because this van we really don't have a lot of storage options in the way that
3:11
we have this configured so we try to take up uh
3:17
we try to put in storage wherever we can revit shelf is an awesome company
3:23
they make really high-end uh kind of diy cabinet components for
3:30
example this one is their five and a half inch pull out soft close
3:36
storage slider and this is typically developed well it's mainly designed for homes that have
3:43
cabinets already you know already built in cabinets in the home and so what they do is they size it specifically for the built-in cabinets
3:50
so you have to do a little bit of reverse engineering to find out how it's actually going to fit in your van the nice thing is they do have they
3:58
do provide all the engineering drawings online so you can simply download it and then just double check your measurements
4:03
to make sure that this is going to fit what i like about it is it's already pre-finished it comes with all the
4:09
shelves all the adjustments this one actually has three stainless steel uh cans and you can put in
4:17
you know spatulas forks knives spoons stuff like that and then you can put some uh canned goods or
4:24
really whatever you think you can put in here now with that said we had to do a lot of
4:31
custom routing with all the plumbing so we'll show you that in just a second i'm actually going to take a
4:37
gopro camera and follow all the lines and show you exactly where they are how
4:42
they connect to the water tank the water pump and the water heater as well as why i decided to locate them
4:48
where they are so this is a revis shelf next component we have is the lk sink
4:56
this is like a composite like a granite composite really resilient the customer was looking for a black
5:03
sink and i think this is a perfect size really the only size that we could
5:09
get in here you'll see here in just a second we got that draining into a food safe
5:15
gray water tank from panther rv what's really nice about this one it
5:20
doesn't have to be food safe since it's you know gray water but what's nice about that is it has
5:26
this top section that's really easy to clean out again i'll show you that in a second
5:32
and then moving on back we have the ao smith
5:37
2.5 gallon hot water heater it is a 120 volt hot water heater so you do need an
5:42
inverter for that uh we'll explain that and then we have our water pump kind of
5:48
the heart of the whole system we went with a c flow has a maximum
5:55
55 psi output it's throttled down a little bit not
6:00
hitting that peak but it is adjustable inside you can take it apart and turn that down what's nice about this pump is
6:08
it is uh it's able to self-prime and self-prime at a
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pipe length of six feet so what's really nice is we needed that in order to
6:22
make all of our runs and turns up to the water pump just because of our tight space so kind of keep that in mind make
6:28
sure you're looking to find out how long of a distance away from your source of your water can the pump
6:34
actually prime itself and last but not least
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this is not part of the water system but this is what has made it a challenge is we have relocated the rear ac of this
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van to underneath the sink so that was really our foundation for
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building everything around we had to cut and make all the
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connection points to mount the ac unit as well as the drain port
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where the electrical connections are and then we had to customize the vents so the way that
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it vents out so we have a four inch vent down here we'll have a four inch vent up here
7:19
and once that was in place then we could actually start building our platform to hold our water heater and then sizing
7:26
everything up appropriately so let's go ahead and get out the gopro camera and we'll cut to that
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and we'll go through this whole entire section of the kitchen and then about halfway through the gopro
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we're going to break into the tools that you need to actually make the connections
7:45
and then we'll come back and end it with uh talking a little bit more about this water system
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all right so we got our gopro here we got the uh uh
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media uh media mod and the max lens so we can get biggest field of view
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possible so see if we can do this so we're gonna move move all the stuff out of the way
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here and let's start with this
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so here is our this is from revit shelf you can actually get this off of amazon
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it is fairly expensive anywhere from 250 to 300 for this unit
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uh the build quality is superb and what's nice is especially if you're
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a di wire you're just bolting in this uh base right here
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and then once you bolt the base in you can easily there's these uh
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snap two snaps under here and then you just uh enable or
8:53
if i let's see here if i do this so we take it
8:59
and all you do is just click it and this whole thing slides off so it's really really nice
9:08
and then what you're left with is this sliding now this whole thing
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uh this whole thing can can come out it's only held in by one bolt in the back on the 80 20
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rail and then two bolts right here and then i did have to drill oversized drill these holes so it would fit
9:27
but that goes right here uh the next component that we're going to take out is
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uh let's see here let me back up there's so many there's so many
9:38
components in here as you guys can see that uh it's gonna be interesting to go step by
9:44
step in here all right let's start with uh i'm trying to do this in order for
9:50
you so you understand so the first thing we'll get out of our way let's start with the gray water tank
9:56
and then we'll move up to the sink before we do that i'll show you
10:01
how everything is fitting in here as you can see we have our sink and we actually
10:07
have it opposite usually the drain is more towards the
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the faucet so you guys can see in this view it's usually more towards the faucet
10:18
um however this one is not
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and we're gonna get some more light
10:29
[Applause] there you go okay perfect
10:38
okay we're back so we have our sink and this sink is a lk sink uh you can
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actually buy this off of amazon as well and it is about
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almost eight inches deep we got a usable area about 13 inches by
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13 inches so pretty good stink for this space as you can see space is tight we have
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our cabinet over here that uh really this is the only sink only
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cabinet this is the only way this is all going to work so starting with the sink we're going to
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come down to the gray water tank so with our gray water tank
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we wanted it to easily be accessible for thomas to take in out because we're not
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doing an undermount tank on this van so it's not installed now but we're
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going to have a quick disconnect right here so that all he has to do is click one button
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and this hose from the grey water tank will pop off but it also has a check valve built in
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so that when he takes this tank out to be drained
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that the water doesn't come out of the line and pour all over into here it keeps
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whatever water is in the line in there until you reconnect it and it reopens the check valve
12:06
the gray water tank that he's using that we've set up for him is a seven gallon uh this is a food safe container
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this uh which is not important for uh great water but
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if you guys were wondering this is from panther rv and this is also pretty expensive it's
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around 300 the reason i like it so much is because you're not gonna find a gray tank
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with a built-in clean out like this to where you can get in and
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scrub make sure this is nice clean and sanitized keep those smells down
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plus it has an integrated brass connection very strong
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same threads as if you want to put like a water hose or something like that that type of hose connection i think it's three quarter
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right there and then it also comes with a handle and so you get this in the kit so it comes with that
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the lid and it also comes with this black hose excellent system
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now this black hose is connected to this drain adapter so this is an rv drain adapter
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what's nice about this rv drain adapter is that this is what allows you i'm going to
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pull this hose off
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this drain adapter right here allows you to connect to a household sink
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so camp co makes this it allows you to connect
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that hose to a household sink thread
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makes it really really easy so all you do is you'll put some thread sealant on there make sure you get food
13:59
safe thread sealant very very important actually let me show you some
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so this is the product i use slow dry 5 soft set by rector seal
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pipe thread sealant and again there's an nsf rating food safe
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lead free all that good stuff very important when you're doing this
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now again you don't have to be that safe on the gray system but
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if you're building diy you can use that for everything and then you never have to worry if you've made a
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full food safe seal uh that's safe for you so just do it to all of it um it's not
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gonna hurt anything okay so we have our sink and for sink design as you guys can see
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we've had to like i just said drains usually here we've moved it to here which doesn't change anything
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um the next thing that we're going to look at is its interaction with a hot water tank
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and as you can see our clearances are extremely tight
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right there now this sink will be raised an inch and a half for the butcher block thickness
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so we will have that inch and a half clearance all right next let's take out
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let's put you over here let's take this sink out
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set it over here i'm going to go to the the next portion of this uh
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build let's see how we're doing on the cameras
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pick this back up okay so we're over here
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at the uh kitchen we've just taken the sink out and we're gonna go top to bottom
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to kind of show you what's going on so in here we have our hot water heater
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this is a two 2.5 gallon hot water heater
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from ao smith got it from lowe's so it's a on the shelf item in case in the future
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something happens this can be replaced it has
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these fittings up here and we're using pex a so
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pex a allows you to you can undo this with a wrench without
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taking the fitting off you need to undo this with a wrench and it'll spin within the pipe
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if you needed to change this out down here this is a 120 volt
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a water heater so it doesn't uh use the inverter to be able to power this
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so these hot water heaters are not 12 volt they are
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you know domestic uh household hot water heaters um they're more designed for point of
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use the two and a half gallons but they're perfect in the van because
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you know when you're driving down the road you're getting ready to go to your campsite or travel you can turn this on
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a timer say 15 minutes 30 minutes and while your engine is running charging your batteries
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you can get this hot water nice and hot and since you're charging your batteries and powering this when you get to the
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campsite typically you're not you have not drained your batteries all the way down to where
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you can enjoy it you should be able to top off both your batteries and run this wire drive down the road before you get
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to your your campsite or destination hot water heater
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alright uh over to our left we have the sea flow
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12 volt water pump this will go up to 55 psi max
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and you can actually there's an adjustment here i think it goes from anywhere from
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6 to 55 or something like that you can actually throttle the pressure but we're going to leave it
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as factory as it has been delivered we have our strainer
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straining fine particulate before it gets in there it's not a water filter it is just
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it if anything accidentally gets past the filter you're using to fill your
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freshwater tank this will catch it before it damages the water pump
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and it's conveniently underneath here so that when you open the door you can come in
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unscrew this clean it out screw it back on see it's actually on to right now
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super easy now this has an o-ring
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anything has an o-ring don't overly crank down on it just get it just get kind of hand tight
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same goes for here and the back right here
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uh we're going to go through the piping detail in just a minute so hold on
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okay the nice thing about this pump is this is a self-priming pump
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with a maximum pipe uh self-priming pipe length of six feet
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what that means is this thing will self-prime itself six feet of
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pipe with no water in it so
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the calculation here has been uh we have five feet of pipe coming into
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this pump now we wanted to make it less but obviously this is all taken up by that
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pull out cabinet so we had to be really picky on how we actually
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um plumbed everything
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and then the big thing this is the big thing this is what made
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this whole build really interesting so thomas's van is a mid
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uh 2020 mid roof passenger van because it actually has
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all the glass in there but it's a passenger slash cargo so
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came with the passenger windows came with the rear ac unit
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less the interior which is which is in my mind perfect
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now the that ac was mounted at the rear so uh thomas wanted to relocate it
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uh actually it was it was nest he had to relocate it because there is a uh ramp in the back
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and there's no room for it so i had to be removed to put the ramp in the back so we had to relocate it so we relocated
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it we got all the ports underneath the van for the ac specialist to go in
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cut put some new hydraulic crimps on those high pressure low pressure refrigerant
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lines do all their stuff i just wanted to show you how we did this
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in mind we have all these fixed measurements we have the
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bed that's 48 inches we have the cabinet we have the water pump the
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ac duct we have the heater and the fridge and enough space to swivel around the
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driver's chair so all this had to be uh calculated out
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to make sure that it was going to work so the first thing that kind of had to
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anchor and everything had to be built around was the ac unit
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now why because in a ford transit you have all this bracing cross bracing um
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it is a unibody chassis so there's no frame all the structure is within the floor so
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there's all these different components that provide structure to the van
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and you simply just can't put this ac unit wherever you want to it has to be put in pretty much a place
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that says hey this is the only place i fit that is where this is this is the only place that it would fit
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um as far back as possible so now that that became our foundation
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now we can start to build around it see if i put some b-roll in here i designed a custom
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uh little vent so that usually had like a plastic vent
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so i had to redo that and then i created these ducts these are four inch ducts
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uh they're insulated flexible ducts they're actually for uh
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grow rooms which is nice like for growing plants and stuff like that and what's nice about that is uh
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it's good for human environments now the van you don't want to be human however when the ac unit is running
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if it is warm moist inside the van uh that uh air is going to condense
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and then it's going to condense on this cold duct when it gets in ac mode
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and it can sweat so what you want to make sure is that it's insulated enough to where it's not going to sweat on the outside
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and then it can actually dry itself on the inside you got to think about
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that and then also when it gets hot let's go ahead and take this apart so
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before i take it apart that is the lower vent there's another one that's going to be all the way up
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there blowing hot and cold air throughout the van so um that's how he is uh heating and
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cooling the back of this man um he also does have max fan vents
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okay let's go ahead and take this off and you'll see that we have
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the foil lining on the inside of this and what we're going to do let's go
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ahead and take this out now keep in mind we had to
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keep this shelf high enough so that this could pass under but low enough to where we could
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actually get a lever to unlock and pull the cabinet open so all that stuff has to be considered
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all right put this in here again this is just temporary
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so i'm going to see if i can move this more out of our way
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uh let me give you a little i'll give you a look here so we got some wiring that we got to put together
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and we're just gonna let that sit right there for right now here's the control wires to the ac unit
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okay let's start with our water system so what i was talking about earlier is if we go all the way underneath here
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we got a couple of things we've got our uh and the furthest point that is our
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water inlet that is bringing our water in to the van
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uh this t is taking it and going up to the water pump so this is the way the
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water is pulling this run right here allows us to come
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over to a shut off valve and it's in the off position right now
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and this goes to a pipe that goes down through the bottom
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of the van to drain the tank so uh when thomas is ready to go to
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uh he's heading back home he's done with his trip his adventure he's going to take the
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valve and he's going to turn it and then this is going to drain all the
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water out of the tank uh and then once it's drained he can you
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know if it's the winter time he can go and put in some [Music]
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antifreeze rv antifreeze and then he can use this flush it some
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through the lines cut it off and let that sit in there over the winter time and then when he's ready he can just
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drain the tank again flush it and then shut it off so
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it's really convenient doors here he can open drain close
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right here is the strainer open drain clean boom it's all it's all
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right here okay the next path as you guys can see we
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have the t coming uh
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you saw it come down here and you're saying what is this what where is it where does this go so that
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is the overflow so right here is the overflow from the
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water tank it comes down through this t i'll explain this red piece in just a minute comes down through this t
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so when you fill the tank up if you're outside and you can't see where the water level is what we've
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designed what i've designed is a way that the water comes up
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and then it'll start to flow through here this pipe is always open to the ground
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down through here so it bypasses this valve and goes straight to the ground
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that way when you're filling the tank up when you start to hear water hit the ground you can shut it off shut the
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water off you know your tank's full now this red line why is a red line
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going into a t what's going on here so what a lot of
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di wires forget um
28:31
is that when you use this uh a hot water tank especially the domestic
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hot water tank uh residential whatever you want to call it
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this is this valve right here this is a pressure relief valve so this is a
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safety valve so what happens is the heating element inside if it fails
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it runs away is another term for it and it doesn't it can't control itself
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and it starts you know boiling that water and just super heating that water
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the superheat of water turns to steam gets super high pressure in here instead of this exploding
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hot water heaters have this integrated valve now most homes you'll just see this with its it's open on one side they
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don't actually drain it anywhere because it is extremely rare that this will ever be used in the life of this
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the element will usually fail before the tank over pressurizes but this is a safety feature but in a van is a van is
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not the same as a garage or a basement where this can just kind of blow out in your basement or garage or
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whatever you're in a van so if this fails then hot water is going to go all over here
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all through your insulation all over the floor so you need to
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you need to make a way for that water to relieve
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so we have i have this pipe go all the way from here
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down to it has two exit paths so it takes the path of the least resistance it's got to
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either go it's going to go maybe a little bit in the tank and then all the way outside so
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you can really exhaust itself and it'll be contained whereas if that
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wasn't connected you have a big problem on your hands
30:33
a little bit added security is this inline check valve so this is a shark
30:38
bite inline check valve this valve will operate anything above 2 psi
30:45
so when your tank goes it will be way higher than that but what this check valve does is
30:53
since you're when you're filling your tank up you don't want
30:58
that water to go up this line and into here now it can't enter the tank because
31:04
this is a safety relief valve it's always closed so water wouldn't be in here but you don't want water sitting in
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that line so what that check valve does is it doesn't allow
31:15
when you fill your tank up and it hits the overflow the water will only go here
31:21
that water can't go up here because of that that check valve the pressure won't let it
31:27
go in so it'll only let the water go out of the hot water heater it won't let water
31:32
go into the hot water heater remember this is a safety valve
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it has nothing to do with this hot water outlet or cold water inlet
31:43
right here this is this is this is your cold and you're hot this is just a safety valve
31:51
so let's talk about hot water here real quick since we're we're right here
31:57
um actually pause on that let's go to the water pump
32:02
so we've explained how the water is taken from the tank
32:09
and it is routed here it can be drained we've talked about how
32:16
the water can be filled up overflow and go straight to the ground and then we've already talked
32:22
about what that red line is the emergency relief or the pressure relief valve coming from the hot water
32:28
tank and going to the ground that's all good all right next how do we get the water
32:35
from the tank into all of these devices and components
32:40
so what we're going to do is we're going to take we're going to take the uh
32:47
give me one second here all right so this next part we're going
32:54
to talk about the water pump so what we're going to do is explain how this water pump takes
33:02
water from the tank all right last but not least we're going to talk about the water pump
33:08
we'll explain uh how it works and how it gets water from this water tank
33:13
so down here we have the pipe that was coming out for
33:21
the drain line but then we have this t right here so this t is going to bring
33:26
the water or allow the pump to suck the water from the bottom of the water tank
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it's going to take it and go up that back line right
33:36
here all the way up and because of our
33:43
sliding cabinet here you see we have to uh have an l shape coming around up and
33:50
around typically for water coming to the pump
33:56
you want the straightest pass possible typically water coming from
34:02
the bottom of the tank up to the pump you want the straightest pass path possible
34:08
so right here we're going up over and down but with our situation this is
34:15
this is the best way to get the water to the water pump
34:20
now the one thing i talked about earlier that you want to make sure that you do right is you want to make sure
34:27
that this is a self priming pump self priming means
34:32
it is allowed to pump a certain amount of air through the pump until it actually picks
34:39
up the water and creates the suction so you want to make sure that you have a pump that can do that two
34:46
you want to know what is the maximum length of the pipe before this inlet of the pump that you
34:53
can have before that self-priming action does not work that's just a technical way of saying
35:00
make sure the water line is not too long so that when
35:06
that's a technical way of saying make sure the water line is not too long to where the pump never gets to
35:12
prime itself so this pump we're okay six feet is the
35:17
uh maximum that it will self prime our line is just a shy under five feet so we're good
35:25
got a foot a foot of play on that but we're already
35:30
plumbed in so we don't got to worry about that so over here we're coming from the tank over
35:36
over down and into our strainer strainer is very important
35:42
especially when you start up the pump for the first time if you haven't cleaned out all these lines or
35:48
blow you haven't blown them out with compressed air whatever little filings or stuff will be
35:55
caught in this little fine mesh filter here so this is your strainer there's a little part number for you
36:02
it'll be caught in this strainer and that way it doesn't damage the pump
36:08
now we get to the fun part we have our 12-volt pump now where does the water go
36:15
we've got a couple places and you need to pre-plan where you're going to go in our
36:22
in this build we have three locations we have this port which is going to go over here
36:29
across the water tank and back here
36:34
to our little platform where we're going to have a washdown shower a control valve
36:41
and an inlet for the fulfilled water into the tank
36:46
this is just temporary this whole thing will be in a separate video
36:53
so that's why this one's not connected yet because we gotta do a little bit more
36:59
technical stuff for example we installed
37:06
for example i installed these two holders to make sure everything in here does not move around
37:13
does not rattle flop around um
37:18
that's another thing you want to do so everywhere in this van you'll see everything is always
37:24
put with a clamp and these are special plastic pex
37:30
holders so they hold it firm but they don't allow it to damage the pecs anyway you would not want to use metal on this
37:37
because the vibration of the van could cut through it you always want to use plastic
37:42
and if you can the plastic that is designed for this type of pex
37:48
um okay so we have our outlet to a t we're going down this goes to the
37:55
uh wash down slash shower outdoor shower one thing we got in the back
38:02
we go up and this next part
38:07
is going over here and then what we will have
38:16
is we will depending on where our sink
38:22
faucet is we will find out where we want to place a t in here
38:29
for the sink it is possible that we plummet
38:34
coming down through here but we got two options so this got installed
38:42
when we did a how to install pex video and so you see
38:48
i did not leave a tee for uh supplying the water to the sink so the nice thing
38:54
about pex is it's so easy we're just gonna snip this we're gonna put our tea in
39:00
and then we will have our pipe going to the sink faucet
39:07
so i'm going to go ahead and this next video is going to show you
39:12
step by step how to install this these two pieces of pex right here this
39:19
piece and this piece so i'm going to cut to that and once that's finished we're
39:24
going to come back right here and we're going to keep going with this video
39:30
okay let's talk about this so we just talked about how it's very tight
39:36
but we are using a product which is pex a or opener pex
39:42
and it's incredible i love using it so much it makes tight places like this in very technical
39:49
areas very very easy to work with
39:54
there's a special tool that i'll talk about in a section as far as uh there's a special tool and then
40:00
there's a some fittings that i'll talk about in just a second so i'll move them over here
40:06
but with pex a specifically it is very easy to work in tight places
40:14
where you got to make complicated runs it looks complex but it really isn't if you're willing to
40:20
take the time and do precise measurements
40:26
anybody can do this what i find is the barrier to entry um
40:31
and just my opinion but i think it's the tool that you need to do this so this is about a 400 tool
40:39
and you need it to expand
40:44
the pecs so the way pex a works or opener pex
40:50
is you have your tube this is your water tube but it is slightly flexible
40:57
but it is extremely rigid but it does have some flex so over and over a distance
41:03
for example i have my water intake line and it's the only
41:08
pipe in here that's actually kind of curved and there's only way that i could do it which is okay
41:15
as long as the joints are not binding you can have a curve going into a joint
41:22
so you have the pipe uh red and blue are the same thing they're just color coded differently
41:28
then you have a compression sleeve and you're gonna take the compression sleeve and pop it over the top
41:35
and it has these uh tabs right here so you are not able to
41:41
push the this uh compression sleeve all the way over it and it has a nice kind of
41:46
a little stop the next thing you do is you take your expansion gun now milwaukee makes one
41:55
uh dewalt also makes one but i found milwaukee typically in stock and it's also
42:02
sometimes slightly cheaper plus i had some batteries
42:09
what you're going to do is when this closes fully you're going to take your pipe and your
42:15
fitting slide it on and then you're going to put it on here and then i'm not going to waste this
42:21
because i need it but you're going to put this on here and you're going to expand it
42:27
and this will move closer and closer and you want this to open about
42:33
6 to 10 times and once you do that you want to quickly
42:38
take your expanded sleeve and slip it on your fitting and then just hold it for
42:45
i don't know about 10 seconds then you can let go and that sleeve is going to compress down
42:51
and make an amazing seal i've tried to cut these off and reuse
42:57
these fittings when i made a error and it's almost impossible to get this
43:02
off you have to use a heat gun pliers razor the bond
43:07
the crimp or compression fit this makes is amazing it is very very very very strong
43:15
so what i'm going to show to you show you in this video is i'm going to make a connection
43:21
and i'm going to show you how to measure and make the connection we have a we need to move from
43:28
the this is we need to make a connection from our water pump
43:34
up we need to do a 90 degree fitting and then move all the way down here to
43:39
this 90 degree fitting so we're going to need to measure the height
43:45
for one portion of the tube and then we're going to have to measure the distance from that flange right here
43:51
to this flange and come over so i'll show you how to do that
43:58
the first thing we have to do is find out where this is intersecting
44:04
with this over here and we're always measuring from this
44:10
flange right here so not here but this this flange
44:15
so i'm going to take this tape measure and i look directly down at my pipe
44:20
that i'm coming from and i'm gonna measure from the outside of the pipe to this this flange right here
44:28
and so when i do that it looks like i got
44:33
12 and a half inches you have 12 and a half inches
44:38
so i'm going to cut my tube 12 and a half inches and then i'll be right back
44:45
all right we're back we've cut our piece of pipe 12 and a half inches
44:51
we're going to need a couple of things we're going to need two compression fittings
44:56
and then this back side we're actually going to need
45:02
uh actually i need three compression fittings
45:09
we need a compression fitting for the bottom the top
45:28
all right we've cut our piece 12 and a half inches and this is going to get us from here to
45:33
this bottom location make sure that's in the camera
45:38
right yep right there that bottom location
45:47
from there to there we're gonna need two compression fittings for this this
45:54
line right here and then we're gonna need
46:01
right here we're gonna need a uh half inch by half inch elbow
46:07
and it's very important to make sure it's pex a generally when you go into lowe's or home depot you're gonna see a lot of pex
46:14
b and that is the crimp style not the compression sleeve
46:19
so the crimp style uses a metal band to crimp down on the tube both the tube and the crimp fitting
46:27
are completely different it's a different hose material and it's a different
46:33
fitting so don't get those confused because they are not compatible
46:40
[Music] when you take this out of the bag there's these plastic caps you want to remove them
46:45
be very careful you don't want to drop this on the ground or scratch it with pliers or anything you should be using pliers for any of
46:52
this install because this middle section right here that's really sharp
46:59
that is what actually creates the main seal
47:05
so once we have our tube we're gonna use our expander and
47:11
expand it for this this side slip it on but now when you
47:17
decide to make your pex connections you need to work in a way that's easier for you to put the pipe in so i'm
47:24
actually going to leave this one to be the expanded last so we can just take that off
47:30
and what i'm going to work on first is i'm going to work on
47:37
actually what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put this aside and i'm actually gonna
47:44
work on this back tube i need to make now i need to make sure that
47:50
this back tube
47:57
you're gonna find the height of this uh back tube because what we're doing is the elbow fitting we're not going down
48:03
here we're actually going to come up
48:18
actually going to come up slightly to right here and we want to do that because we don't want to connect
48:24
here to here and bend the tube we want to have the mildest angle possible
48:31
so we're going to put this here so it's not interfering with any of these pieces
48:37
we're going to find out what our height is so we're going to go down and measure
48:43
from the flange and then we'll put our fitting up here in the air
48:50
and we'll see where this lands
48:56
and really this is the hardest part of the whole thing it's just getting this uh
49:02
measurement here so it's looking like
49:07
[Music] four
49:12
i think four and a half inches
49:17
i'm actually gonna do four inches because we don't want to interfere with this uh hot water pipe
49:23
so four inches we're going to go ahead and cut a piece four inches
49:29
so our test piece actually we can cut this
49:34
this bigger way for me to show you guys how to cut this tubing so we're going to take it
49:40
we're going to go to four inches so we can do this with two hands
49:46
there's a special pair of cutters do not cut this with anything other than these special cutters
49:52
this is made by shark bite company there's another one made by milwaukee i think the manufacturer of both of them
49:59
is exactly the same but you need to use a specific pex pipe cutter
50:06
if you don't and you cut this at an angle you cannot guarantee that your seal is
50:11
going to be good so what i do is just kind of rest the blade on here and then i move my tape out of the way
50:17
and then that blade kind of holds it and it's important that you before you
50:23
cut it that you get this nice and perpendicular and then go ahead and just
50:33
squeeze down and it makes a super clean very sharp cut
50:40
okay so the reason i did that again is i need to get my height up here so that this pipe
50:47
when i connect the two with the elbow right here this intersection uh is very very good
50:54
now notice how this pipe is on a coil it has like a natural bend so what i'm
50:59
going to do is i actually want to keep that natural bend so that when i put this pipe down here
51:06
and connect it um it's actually bending down to the other fitting and it's not putting stress on
51:13
the piece of pipe and the fitting itself it's a little ocd technical thing but
51:20
it will make a difference uh trust me all right so what we're going to do is
51:25
we're going to work backwards we're actually going to fit the compression fitting to the bottom we're going to
51:31
use a compression fitting here and we're going to attach it after we use our gun
51:37
our expanding tool to the bottom then we're going to work our way up
51:42
um actually hold on we're first going to put our elbow
51:49
on the top okay we'll do our elbow on the top and we're going to finish that
51:54
then we're going to take our
52:00
bottom piece and we're going to expand it and put it down so that way now we're done we got the bottom tight we got this
52:06
middle tight and now we're ready for this top then we can take our top piece
52:11
expand it and then put it slip it on here and then finally we'll end with backing this up expanding it and putting
52:18
on here and then we'll be complete so just when you're doing this
52:23
think about what step you're going to get into because remember you got to use the expanding tool for each joint it
52:28
makes it very easy however the reason we're planning is if you expand it and then all of a sudden you
52:35
don't know where you're going your this thing is as soon as expanded tool is done it's
52:41
already trying to compress the fitting so you only have about two to three seconds
52:48
before it compresses down to where you can't put it back on you need to re-expand it you
52:54
don't want to be caught in the middle of an expansion
52:59
and contraction and miss the timing and then get it halfway on not sealed and then have to real and
53:05
re-cut all this out that is probably the scary part if you expand this the correct number of
53:10
times so six to ten times you give yourself about two to three seconds to one to pop it on you're going
53:18
to be okay so that's why we're doing this first and then we're folded up by this one so just
53:24
think about where you're going and it may sound silly but practice how you're going to put the tube in
53:32
as if it's been crimped so you practice so you're not running into pipes and stuff like that and then
53:38
losing the two to three seconds you have for this thing to compress so you're expanding it one two
53:44
hold it done hope that makes sense so let's go ahead and get this piece
53:51
created
53:56
first step is we're going to put our compression or expansion sleeve on
54:02
so now you get to see how this works make sure this is in the camera okay
54:08
so now watch this now i'm going to plan how i'm doing this right so i need to
54:13
when i'm done i need a place to set my my gun and i need a place to grab my fitting so
54:18
i'm going to put my fitting on the table right here so that when i'm done when this stunts
54:23
move i can put this down two seconds two three seconds i'm i'm in
54:31
so let's watch this in real time
54:36
oh by the way when i told you six to ten expansions um i've just found that
54:43
whatever bag of these that you get some are loose and then some are tight they all make a great seal however
54:51
depending on the ambient temperature of your room whether it's cold or hot is going to change how many times you need
54:57
to expand it with the gun to get a nice clean install so as you notice right now there's no
55:03
way this is going in so watch how this works so you take this all right
55:09
put the compression sleeve all the way in until it stops
55:16
also it has these little tabs so it's not it won't allow you to
55:22
put it all the way through and it also won't allow you put to put it in backwards it'll only let you put
55:28
it in one way so you put it in here don't force it
55:33
just lay them there easy these little knurls here are going to pull it onto
55:40
the shaft itself so here we go i'm just lightly holding this
55:45
two three four five six
55:51
seven eight put it eight see it slipped in there really easy
55:59
so that's how quick you need to do it because watch see it's already compressing that quick
56:07
um that's why you have to do it that fast it's it's already done the joint is
56:13
finished see how fast that is that's why it's really easy to do this however if you take your time
56:19
measure counter expansions and uh
56:26
practice putting the pipe in its location you're gonna be fine
56:33
all right so next step let's go ahead and do this bottom piece
56:39
now this is what we need to practice so let's take this fitting let's put it on here or let's act like we have the fitting on here
56:45
okay got her fitting we got her gun a place to put her gun so it's not just
56:52
fall on the floor when we get excited and i'm expanded so one two
56:59
boom so i know the path i'm coming through here and i'm putting it down
57:05
and it's gonna seat i'm not you know fumbling around here and moving over here and losing time
57:12
i've got it one two three and it's in place
57:18
so three two to three seconds just don't stress out about it just it's just
57:23
the way it is you gotta pre-plan where you're gonna put this
57:31
so there's an uh expansion sleeve let's go ahead and do this
57:37
um that one felt really good about eight doing it about eight times
57:42
so here we go one two three
57:48
four five six seven eight 9
57:55
10. 10 just for some insurance and that's good i did because
58:04
i'm talking on the camera so i'm not completely focused
58:11
ten times as good if you feel like it's going to take you longer than three seconds two to three seconds
58:18
so 10 will probably get you on the edge of maybe three or four but it's it is very quick see it's already it's done
58:24
that's it all right so we got this down
58:29
push make sure it goes all the way down don't let it get halfway and then close or you're
58:35
your sol and i really mean that as easy as this is that is where you can mess up
58:40
as if you don't get it seated properly and it crimps down because you're either going to have to
58:47
uh if you made a joint that's really tight like this you're literally gonna have to take uh
58:52
[Music] you'll have to take the whole thing apart um okay
58:58
since i'm teaching you guys here let me show you the worst case scenario say i messed that up well luckily
59:05
i installed a uh almost like a water hose fitting down
59:11
here in the bottom of the water pump so i can actually untwist
59:16
this the reason i made this is so that if i needed to remove the water pump i can undo both
59:23
this just like a water hose and since the pex is flexible i mean
59:28
it's rigid because i have it both it's has a hose connector there
59:34
but it's flexible to where i can kick this out of the way and i can replace my water pump and then bolt it back screw
59:40
it back on so let's look at this fitting so this is the beauty of pix
59:47
it is it's very neat uh
59:53
it's kind of whole steve jobs thing about you know the inside of the computer is as neat as the outside so
59:58
that's that's kind of how i work i make sure that if this whole butcher block was taken off everything in here looks
1:00:04
really really nice very professional there's no way that any of this stuff
1:00:10
is going to rattle like if thomas is going off-road and going crazy nothing in here is gonna
1:00:16
rattle it's gonna be safe and with pecs you get this just really
1:00:21
really really nice uh professional result
1:00:29
here is a video i was talking about so i personally uh the plastic fittings are okay but i
1:00:36
personally don't like them using them in the van i just uh i want everything to be as bulletproof
1:00:42
as possible so if it's within the budget and you can do it the brass fittings
1:00:48
are more expensive um about a dollar two
1:00:53
or three more expensive but it's worth it i mean this is here forever
1:00:58
um you don't have to worry about anything breaking it's extremely strong um so that's why i do it
1:01:05
all right so here we go we got this fitting let's say worst case scenario this is so this is exactly what we just did we just
1:01:11
put this together let's say i screwed this up and then i didn't push it all the way down
1:01:17
unfortunately because these distances are so short and by the way this is the shortest run that you
1:01:24
can make of a fitting so the shortest run you can make
1:01:30
is about two and a half inches but say we messed up
1:01:36
unfortunately anything this small we're not going to be able to cut
1:01:41
it and put a union in it to to mend our problem and redo it
1:01:47
we'd have to remake this whole entire piece so
1:01:53
if we had to remake this piece um this would be anywhere from
1:02:02
uh probably 20 bucks to remake this so it gets expensive if you're making a
1:02:08
mistake because these fittings are anywhere from three to four bucks
1:02:14
and then same as with this and then the bag of compression fittings so maybe like 20 bucks or something like that so
1:02:20
you're like man that's 20 bucks uh but remember you don't want a water leak in your van
1:02:27
and because if you do forget to turn your water pump off you're gonna make sure that
1:02:34
you want to uh know that these things can hold pressure and you're not having to babysit them
1:02:40
especially something like this where it's complicated where the sink's gonna be here this uh
1:02:46
cabinet drawer is going to be here and it's it's you can't see behind here
1:02:52
all right so back to what we're doing um so actually since we had this off
1:02:59
let's make it easier on ourselves and let's keep this disconnected and let's go ahead and connect uh this top piece
1:03:07
now remember see how we have this natural bend so we're going to want to have that natural bend go like that
1:03:14
okay just like that
1:03:23
um let's see let's go ahead and get our compression fitting on not there there we go
1:03:30
so for here i'm going to place my part right here so when i'm done compressing this i can just set it down
1:03:38
take my piece and quickly pop it in here let's do this we're gonna do 10 times
1:03:46
2 3 4 5 6
1:03:52
7 8 9 10.
1:03:59
there you go i'm just going to hold it
1:04:12
and don't get confused i could have put it here accidentally
1:04:24
because this one's a little bit bigger and this is a little bit shorter
1:04:36
i tell you guys not to mess up but i just had to double check myself
1:04:41
it's okay everybody's not perfect all right so that's going to go in here just like this
1:04:47
and then now we get that pre-bend and the reason we want to do that is we're going to come up like that and then now so we still get that taper
1:04:54
going down um so you can't don't put a lot of pressure on here but
1:04:59
like if you have to rise up like that much um you're going to be okay so that's exactly what you have to do
1:05:05
so now we'll take our part and we're going to kind of feed it in here
1:05:15
and we're actually not going to connect this on here and i'll show you what let's see now have it free right here
1:05:21
and that way i can just put it on and then we'll connect that later so if you have connections like this that come apart
1:05:26
you know use that to your advantage in the moment so here we go we got got our pipe
1:05:33
looking good let's go ahead and take this and we'll do our final
1:05:38
uh sleeve here and then we'll pop it on on here
1:05:44
and just always quick quick check on this make sure looks good and we'll do just 10 times as
1:05:51
well one two three four
1:05:56
five six seven eight nine
1:06:02
ten right after that click make sure you pop it on
1:06:11
now it's not hard to put it on here i just do it that way so i make sure that i'm getting a good seat i'm not lazy
1:06:16
about it you only get one shot that's that's it
1:06:21
um obviously you can practice on something else before you [Music] start doing it where it counts
1:06:29
but really at the end of the day it's just pieces of plastic if you mess up
1:06:34
just unscrew it or cut it off and just redo it again i cut you a couple bucks but
1:06:40
you know it's just plastic a van's just metal so this isn't just
1:06:47
metal so don't don't get too stressed out if you
1:06:54
don't do it perfect all right and there we go it's done so
1:06:59
let's go ahead and take this let's move this back in and let's go ahead and screw this on
1:07:22
okay we got good we want to double check our clearances
1:07:29
[Music]
1:07:37
[Music] and i'm already pre-planning the next
1:07:43
route and so that's it guys i hope this helped you
1:07:48
um with installing pex a or opener pex all right so you just learned how to
1:07:55
install pex and because i was teaching you guys in this video like i just said i didn't
1:08:02
leave a spot for me to tap into for the faucet
1:08:07
but pex is very easy to work with so all i have to do is take this insert a t and
1:08:14
boom i have my line for my cold water side of my faucet
1:08:21
so let's continue we're following our water this water like i said it's supplying
1:08:27
the rear shower it's going to come up we'll have a tea come out that's going to supply the water faucet
1:08:33
for the sink and it's going to come down and fill up our hot water tank
1:08:39
once the hot water tank is filled it'll be hot and the water coming out of the tank is
1:08:44
going to be hot this hot water that comes out is going to go into two places
1:08:50
it's going to go up here and join right along this pipe which is going to supply
1:08:55
our faucet right here for the sink so you'll have hot and cold and then it's going to have its own tea
1:09:02
come down follow that line and right beside there it's gonna
1:09:07
share that path that i was just showing you so right here you see these two fittings
1:09:13
so one line is gonna be hot coming out and one line is gonna be cold coming out
1:09:18
they're going to join a third line which is this this
1:09:24
is the vent port i was telling you about so we're going to put a brass fitting in here pex a
1:09:30
and then we're going to go up and all the way out and that vent line is going to come all the way over here
1:09:40
to vent the tank that way
1:09:45
it's all hidden under the murphy bed and it will not disrupt the uh the
1:09:51
sleeping platform that we put on it it's nice and low profile and we designed that gap
1:09:57
ahead of time that's something you cannot design in later it will not work
1:10:04
all right that's a water pump that's how it's supplying everything going all the way over and out the back
1:10:12
the back will be in a separate video
1:10:17
but let's get one more last look at this there you guys go
1:10:24
you can see our our water system
1:10:30
all right guys that was a pretty in-depth review of our overview of how this whole entire
1:10:36
water system works on this van if you have any questions on how to
1:10:42
actually put this together more questions on how
1:10:47
to do the pex a or opener fitting connections the tools involved put those questions
1:10:53
in the comments below and i will be happy to make a future video containing that information
1:11:00
also anything about uh like the water pump or the selection
1:11:05
of the hot water heater there's many different options there's there's different water pumps there's different water
1:11:11
heaters it's really you know what you're comfortable buying and installing this video didn't cover any of the
1:11:17
electronics because that's going to be in a separate video but you will need 12 volt power for your
1:11:23
water pump 120 volts for a hot water heater like the one we put in
1:11:30
this van however they do make 12 volt hot water heater 12 versions of a hot water heater
1:11:37
they take much longer to heat up they're not as fast but they do make 12 volt options
1:11:44
uh yeah that's going to do it hope this video helped you guys out i helped you learn a little bit more about
1:11:51
what it takes to put in a water system in a van and how it works and i will see you guys in the next
1:11:58
video
1:12:03
[Music]
1:12:16
you
#Plumbing
#Trucks
# Vans & SUVs