Meertruck 1124AF

[DiploStrat]

Hi blue, looks fancy.

We have used our diy recirculating shower now for a couple of years .
We have it in both of our buses and it will also be part of our 404 unimog build.

It uses a sump pump that is recessed in the lower section of the shower tub and a heated shower head with an additional coolant heatexchanger. In reality it is easier to run the electric shower head. There are no filters except a course dirt / hair filter to protect the pump. In the large bus we have a big uv filter but sofar never used it.

Procedure is. Allow 3/4 gallon of hot water in the shower tub, turn on pump, turn on electric to shower head, wait 30 seconds to allow water to circulate and get to correct temperature.
Shower with soap . Because the soapy water gets recirculated as well you will end up very clean. If you feel you are done then stop the pump. Pull sump pump up..this opens the drain below the pump and allow water out of the tub to be drained, also the shower head and pump backflushes because of the height difference..
Use another 3/4 gallon and repeat with clean water to rinse off or hang as long as you want.
Normally when we are boondocking with our two kids then the next person uses the rinse water to soap up the next person.

Electric use about 2kw to keep the water hot. We have plenty of solar to support that.

Good luck with your build.

Johan

This is simply brilliant! I have always dismissed recirculating showers as complex cures looking for a disease. Using a bowl, we use about two gallons for a shower, but it is definitely a military/navy shower - no standing under running water. What you describes uses about the same amount of water, but gives you the luxury of continuous water. And even saves water with two or more people.

As I have no space under our shower, I just don't think I could retrofit it, but, as noted, it is a great implementation. Especially if crossed with an engine heat exchanger hot water system. Most of the time your electrical consumption for water heating would be very low.

Best idea I have seen in years!

 

[Neil]

Interesting concept .
Something I know very little about .
We shower in about 3 litres of water.
It's on and off at several stages during the process and we both have short hair.

The water in our calorifier is heated by solar energy for 75% of the time and 25% from engine heat, usually from the previous day.

I am wondering how much of an advantage a recirculating shower would offer me.

I love the idea

Can I ask how the heat in the heat exchanger shower head is generated. Presumably it comes from a tank of hot water. How is that heated.

Neil

 

[DiploStrat]

...

I am wondering how much of an advantage a recirculating shower would offer me.

Just the ability to leave the water running. The net water savings won't be much, if any. Especially if you drain the last rinse water - which you probably should. (That would even out the "wash" fills and the "rinse" fills.)

Gotta admit that I do like the idea of being able to stand under the running shower.

 

[palebluewanders]

You want a shore power option - 110/220v if for international travel.

Our battery to battery charger(s) are misbehaving and it has been pouring with rain, so we are now at a campground doing a nice restorative charge on shore power.
I will find the gremlins and banish them, eventually, but for now, it is nice to have shore power.

And, as noted, as the second charger is 110/220v, I can use it as a backup in the US as well.

FWIW - Atkinson Vos found and fixed the leak. Along with the steering repair, the truck is running better than it ever has. Wonderful service. (N.B. They are terribly short staffed. If you know anyone who is interested, they are hiring and offering internships.)

We will def leave room for a shore power charger even if we don't buy one immediately. Planning to see what our budget looks like after we leave AV and buy all the more critical stuff first.

Glad they've done a good job with your leak! We grumble about the long wait but at the end of the day we're glad they take the time to do things right. Sadly one of the guys who was working on our design left recently leaving them even more short staffed but it should be any day for our box now, really this time... 🤞

 

[palebluewanders]

Can I ask how the heat in the heat exchanger shower head is generated. Presumably it comes from a tank of hot water. How is that heated.

Hm, I presumed differently, he called it a coolant heat exchanger so I figured either hydronic heater or they try to time their showers for shortly after drives when the engine coolant is still hot.

 

[DiploStrat]

We will def leave room for a shore power charger even if we don't buy one immediately. Planning to see what our budget looks like after we leave AV and buy all the more critical stuff first.

Glad they've done a good job with your leak! We grumble about the long wait but at the end of the day we're glad they take the time to do things right. Sadly one of the guys who was working on our design left recently leaving them even more short staffed but it should be any day for our box now, really this time... 🤞

If you use an inverter/charger, as many of us do, then you get a shore power charger at no extra cost.

While lithium batteries are no longer dependent on a "perfect" charge, the way lead acid was, you still need a shore power option.

 

[Geo.Lander]

Seems like we need to start an Atkinson Vos users group!

FWIW, we live in the soggy south of the US and travel in the west. Heat is an issue. We started with a 12v air conditioner for all the usual reasons. Thought we could just plug in the inverter/charger when we did have shore power.

As Nick noted, the inverter/charger zooms up to over 150F when pushing a big load. It has now been relocated to one of the aluminum boxes outside of the camper. Never bothered to actually boost the air flow, we simply leave the door open.
Inverting loads, e.g,. the induction cooktop or microwave, never seem to generate any appreciable heat, probably because they are not on hour after hour.

There are lots of ways to tackle the 110/220v issue. We simply added a Victon battery charger. The model sold in the US is 110/220v so we can even used it as a back up in the US. Granted, this spring was very sunny in the UK and thus we only used shore power twice, mostly as a precaution, in three months, but the 50A Victron worked perfectly. It too is in the lower box, next to the inverter/charger. In fact, it is simply wired to the terminals of the inverter charger and piggy backs on the rest of the wiring.

So all of our internal 110v loads are always fed off of the inverter. Again, FWIW, with good sun, we are leaving the inverter on most of the time to keep a bit of load on the batteries.

Back to Atkinson Vos next week to chase a fuel leak near the lift pump. Grrr!

OR an AV support group?

 

[palebluewanders]

If you use an inverter/charger, as many of us do, then you get a shore power charger at no extra cost.

While lithium batteries are no longer dependent on a "perfect" charge, the way lead acid was, you still need a shore power option.

What model is your second 110/220v charger btw? It's also a Victron right?

 

[palebluewanders]

OR an AV support group?

If more than one person DMs me their WhatsApp # I'll start a group.

 

[DiploStrat]

What model is your second 110/220v charger btw? It's also a Victron right?

Our primary shore charger is a 110v Magnum Energy 2000w inverter/charger. This will not work when fed 220v. If memory serves, the one time it was fed 208v it opened a breaker. And, of course you would not want it to feed 220v to all of your 110v appliances.

The 220v charger is a Victron Phoenix (https://www.victronenergy.com/chargers/phoenix-smart-ip43-charger). The model sold in the US is 110/220v auto sensing. It is a pure charger, so, in EU/UK, all of our 110v comes from the batteries through the Magnum.

The Phoenix is relatively small and has worked well the times we have used it.

All of this reverses if you are building a 220v camper to work in a 110v world. But the concept is the same.

Finally, the other way to do this is to simply use an inverter that outputs the desired voltage and pair it with a 110/220v charger.

Because I love to beat dead horses, ( ) do note that the shorter distances in EU/UK can mean less engine charging time.

 

[palebluewanders]

Our primary shore charger is a 110v Magnum Energy 2000w inverter/charger. This will not work when fed 220v. If memory serves, the one time it was fed 208v it opened a breaker. And, of course you would not want it to feed 220v to all of your 110v appliances.

The 220v charger is a Victron Phoenix (https://www.victronenergy.com/chargers/phoenix-smart-ip43-charger). The model sold in the US is 110/220v auto sensing. It is a pure charger, so, in EU/UK, all of our 110v comes from the batteries through the Magnum.

The Phoenix is relatively small and has worked well the times we have used it.

All of this reverses if you are building a 220v camper to work in a 110v world. But the concept is the same.

Finally, the other way to do this is to simply use an inverter that outputs the desired voltage and pair it with a 110/220v charger.

Because I love to beat dead horses, ( ) do note that the shorter distances in EU/UK can mean less engine charging time.

We originally had separate/dedicated Phoenix inverter and 110/220v Skylla charger. The Skylla is quite large and we later started wondering if maybe we could do without it. But you've sold us on this smaller Phoenix charger. So the new plan is: Multiplus II which we'll try to only use as an inverter, but it'll provide fast 220v charging in a pinch. Most charging (and all North America charging) will be done with the 110/220v Phoenix charger which is not as powerful, but I think we won't need to charge often anyway. Replacing the Skylla with the Phoenix and rearranging some things has given us a lot of empty space in our electrical compartment:



No, we haven't RTFM yet regarding minimum installation distances around each device; we will definitely do that later but just wanted to add the volumes into the model for now to make sure everything fits. And we have tons of free space to spread things out! Even enough to build out a custom PC tower later if we want to. Might stand the Multiplus upright too, we know that's ideal but not sure yet how unwise it is to have it on its side.

Might also decide to clear out most of the stuff mounted above the middle two batteries to make them easier to remove, since it sounds like shipping companies are starting to ban lithium batteries even in motorhomes and there's a chance they'll have to be shipped separately as hazardous materials.

Anyway, thanks for prompting our rethink of this!

 

[DiploStrat]

In your case, I would use the Multiplus in Europe and only use the Phoenix in the US or as an emergency backup in EU.

Another benefit of the Phoenix - balancing. I have three batteries and one has a cell that tends to lag a bit. It is around 0.03v low while of the other cells are typically within 0.005v of each other. The exception is deep discharge and full charge.

The BMS have a limited balancing capacity and I have found that letting the Phoenix do a few extra full charges seems to be helping the low cell to catch up. Of course, it could simply be a bad connection, either to the cell or to the BMS. i do these at night, so there is no interaction with the solar charger - the Phoenix is the only charger and it runs to the end of its cycle. Actually, each of the batteries will pop off a cell due to over voltage first.

But I do love to polish bricks!

I am a great fan of REDARC products, but I would make one observation, borne out of now a year to so with a large lithium battery bank. Various chargers don't play as well together with lithium as they do with lead acid.

There is a lot of chatter about this, but according to the gurus that I tend to trust, the ideal charging system would have the battery (specifically the BMS) turning the chargers on and off. Instead, we have the reverse; each charger turns on and off according to its own algorithm of voltage and amperage flow. (In my case, the problem is that the REDARCS drop to float too soon.)
I am trouble shooting and I have a few idea, but the news you can use is this; Assuming that you have both engine charging, through a B2B and solar charging (and you should), then try to get your B2B and your solar controller from the same company. And, with Victron, pay the money for the "Smart" model that is blue tooth compatible. A lot of this stuff needs to be monitored while you are driving. (Don't ask how I learned this lesson!)

Best wishes!

 

[joeblack5]

Hm, I presumed differently, he called it a coolant heat exchanger so I figured either hydronic heater or they try to time their showers for shortly after drives when the engine coolant is still hot.

Sorry took some time to excavate a pic.

This is a construction image inside our larger bus Dory.
I had to lift it from another website so the quality is poor and on its side.
Stainless tub with recessed deeper area where the drain is and also where the blue 24v sump pump lays. Then from there it goes in a modified uv filter tube. I modified that with another stainless tube inside. Hot coolant water flows thru the outer stainless shell. Then the tube inside that flows the shower water while illuminated by the uv tube inside. Basically a tube in tube heat exchanger.
At the top the hot water exits and goes to the showerhead. The showerhead has an electric heating element in it.

The hole in the bottom of the picture is a hatch to the area in front of the rear wheel is a hatch to the webasto tsl17 heater that also supplies the floor heat in the bus.

In practical use we only use the electric heating element.. the showerhead comes from fleabay..

Sorry for breaking in your thread,
Johan

 

[Geo.Lander]

First pass of electrical diagram. To avoid clutter at this stage, each line represents both positive and negative, and we haven't included fuses, breakers, switches, or any of the BMS and Cerbo GX connections yet.

View attachment 756707

We see most Victron setup folks these days using Quattros or Multipluses, but neither of those have universal input so I'm surprised they're so popular? We've gone for the Skylla-TG universal input charger instead and added a separate Phoenix inverter.

A couple of things we haven't fully decided yet:
1) Getting 3 smaller MPPTs instead of the one 250/100 solar charger
2) External alternator regulator like the Wakespeed instead of the Orions since the Orions don't have an alternator temperature sensor? Or are these only for dual alternator systems? (We plan to just upgrade the vehicle alternator to 100A.) Ideally we would like the draw on the alternator to be dynamically adjusted to its temperature.

We are pretty new to this so any feedback would be appreciated!

Some notes,

• do you really need 110v charging with a 2kw solar array, DCDC and a generator? Almost everywhere is 220-240v...
• I suppose you have a good plan for a rather large alternator for 3*17@24v DCDC charging?
• Do not wire in your MPPT DC chargers into the starter batteries, they are very differnet charging profiles, you can use a battery connect device to set a trickle charge if needed
• You will need separate cables for MPPT and DCDC chargers, there is a potenial current of almost 150amps at 29 volts there

 

[palebluewanders]

There is a lot of chatter about this, but according to the gurus that I tend to trust, the ideal charging system would have the battery (specifically the BMS) turning the chargers on and off. Instead, we have the reverse; each charger turns on and off according to its own algorithm of voltage and amperage flow. (In my case, the problem is that the REDARCS drop to float too soon.)
I am trouble shooting and I have a few idea, but the news you can use is this; Assuming that you have both engine charging, through a B2B and solar charging (and you should), then try to get your B2B and your solar controller from the same company. And, with Victron, pay the money for the "Smart" model that is blue tooth compatible. A lot of this stuff needs to be monitored while you are driving. (Don't ask how I learned this lesson!)

Best wishes!

Thanks. We will probably stick with Victron for everything, and def spring for the bluetooth versions of the devices that have them. Although we're under the impression that engine and solar charging wouldn't happen at the same time, since the voltage will be high during engine charging and that will make the MPPT think the batteries are full. Is there some way around this that you know of?