The final piece of the modular storage puzzle – water!

I scrapped the initial plan of a chassis mounted water tank & electric pump in favour of a simpler, easier, cheaper and more practical solution – 20L plastic water containers.

As cool as a fixed 100L tank would be, I prefer the versatility of individual containers – they can be moved around inside and out, wherever they are needed, for cooking, washing, showering etc, refilled away from the truck so no need to rely on a hose pipe and finding a suitable tap to top up, they also let me monitor my consumption better, and I can leave the additional ones at home for short trips.

I have 4 containers in total; a 25L stored in the front passenger footwell (it can also be moved to the boot area if carrying a passenger), 20L behind the fridge as you may have seen in the previous post, and 10L in the boot along with a 20L which has a built in tap. I use this latter one for my main water needs – drinking, hand washing, cooking etc.

I needed to build a storage place for the 2 boot mounted containers, along with another handy piece of equipment, my camping stove.

Again this module is sturdily bolted through to module 1, also a couple of existing floorpan mounting holes, and screwed into module 3. The uprights are 2x 12mm plywood glued and screwed together – I wanted to make sure this would be extra strong for the 30kgs of water.

 

Again I failed to take any photos of the contruction, mostly because I forgot as I was powering through to complete the build. But here it is. On left is storage for the 10L container, the middle for the 20L container with a cutout for the tap to be accessible from inside the cab, and on the right for the camping stove.

 

All neatly finished in grey carpet to stop rattles, and grey paint on the base in case of water spills.

 

I wanted the tap to feed into a basin, for hand washing, teeth brushing etc. As part of the module 4 unit, I incorporated a basin, easily accessible from inside the cabin.

Turns out I took one in-progress photo, here it is.

 

I covered in the basin area in orange vinyl to stop water splashes from damaging the plywood. Also orange is my favourite colour and I wanted something different from grey.

 

The tap sits above the basin.

 

I also built a shelf into the design, to hold soap, toothbrush, toiletries etc.

 

The basin is a nice compact stainless steel sink, and I plumbed in drainage with some old hose pipe.

 

The drain runs through the carpet and an exisiting floorpan hole (just needed to remove the rubber bung in there) and then out underneath the truck. Waste water will either be caught in another container, or when using eco soap and products, drained into the wild.