Winter is fast upon us and I expect today to be the last workday on the HomeBox until spring of 2021. There will be plenty of thinking and designing and such between now and then, but probably no building. What about those drawers? They may just sit and wait. Maybe if there’s a day of nice weather, I might move them along a little. But really, we’re done. That said, there were a few major milestones today!
First, THE TUB IS IN! It turns out I did not need significant shenanigans to get that drain hooked up, either. The foot board was able to hold the tub perfectly in position, close enough to the final spot, that I could actually attach the drain the “easy” way.
I could leave the gray water pump side of things right where it wanted to be (rather than having to make it loose and fit it with great difficulty later, with the tub in place). There’s no slack, but that’s fine. There was in fact precisely enough hose to get it done and that’s precisely as much as I needed.
Sadly, I am now in possession of 2 feet of $20-per-foot hose (offcut from the drain line) for which I have no use. While I cringed at the price originally, I knew that super supple, extra-chemical-resistant hose was the right answer for something that was going to in service for decades and would be a real pain to replace should it fail, so I didn’t mind the price too much. What I did mind was having to buy it in 5 foot increments. So my $60 drain line cost $100. And now I have a $40 runt. Sure, in the scope of the price of the whole project, it’s a tiny drop in a big bucket. Still, I don’t like tossing out $40 worth of “perfectly good” anything if I can help it. Of course, whether 2 feet of hose is “perfectly good” for anything is another story.
But it’s in and my little magic hump-trap is perfect.
The astute observer will notice that the foot board doesn’t actually come all the way out to the edge of the tub body. That is indeed an error but it also doesn’t matter. The tub’s own weight-bearing feet do rest on the board. Just the skirt doesn’t. You’ll note the skirt is about 1/8″ above the board anyhow – no difference with it being 1/8″ above wood or 1/8″ above air 🙂 This is the back, too, where nobody but you will ever see it.
Well alright, the tub is in! What next? The wash sink! Before I can install the wash sink, I need to fit the drain (easy) and the faucet (not as easy). The clamp plate for the faucet was too big for the space in this tiny sink.
It was fairly close, and certainly pretty small as such things go, but it was still too big to fit flush inside the sink. There was about 3/4″ of gap below it once it was as snug as it could go. Three of four corners hit the sink body. This is no way to fasten a faucet!
At first, I thought I’d just trim the clamp plate — hence the black lines drawn — but then realized that would reduce its holding power meaningfully and that concerned me. Then I thought that the problem wasn’t the clamp plate, but where the clamp plate had to go. There was airspace for it a little distance from the underside of the sink, just not flush up against it. Okay, then, what I need here is a couple of spacers.
By now you have surely learned (or at least watched me learn) that building for a tiny house requires a fair bit of problem solving for things that would have been done easily in 5 minutes for a conventional house. Good thing I’m resourceful 🙂
The spacer blocks did the trick perfectly, the first time (yay). I could tighten the clamp plate good and tight against them, and happily I had a deep socket driver that could get around that long hex nut and a foot-long extension to get the ratchet tool out of the confines of the sink body. Any other way of tightening that nut was gonna really suck.
Here they are: tub and sink, installed for real and for final.
I will probably put a leg under that sink to support it further. Right now, it’s held to the wall with a pair of beefy hanger bolts but the wood that the hanger bolts are screwed to is only 1/2″ thick or so and flexes a little when I push on the sink. I’d rather that not be the case. I’ll drop a leg or two under the sink for extra support – or maybe an angled bracket to the wall. Something. I do plan to put some kind of tiny surface nearby – a vanity top of sorts – which may wind up integrated into this whole concept. That’s a job for the spring! For now, I’ll just shove a brace under there to take some of the weight off — mostly to take it off my mind; the wall is probably fine to hold it.
Final view of the tub installed, with its foot board, everything in place. This is what the T.H.R.O.N.E. Room looks like from the T.H.R.O.N.E. itself. It’s cozy, but honestly, it’s easy enough to move around in there. And hey, check this out… my tiny house has a major bathtub. Bigger than most you’ll find in ordinary homes. Ha.
One doesn’t always want a full bath experience, though. Sometimes just a quick shower is the thing. The tub filler came with a hand shower attachment for just such an occasion.
What defies explanation is why, when a plastic sleeve was sufficient for everything else in the kit, was the hand shower head itself presented in a velveteen drawstring bag?
This is the thing. A plastic sleeve would have been perfectly sufficient. Now I have a velveteen drawstring bag for which I have no particular need nor use.
I will say this hand shower is more of a wand than a “shower head” per se. Maybe that’s why the fancy bag. Wands should come in fancy bags.
When I gave it a test, it had decent enough flow, but is more of a rinsing tool than anything else. Not a lot of pressure. It’s kind of odd, really. I may swap it out for some more conventional hand shower head, depending on whether the fitting on the hose matches anything standard (some do, some don’t…) but I think I’ll at least try to use this one first, just to see how well or poorly it does what it does.
As long as I’m talking tub – what about that hump-trap? It worked like a dream. The last little bit of drainage from the tub was pretty slow, but it went, and that’s all that matters.
Here’s video proof of the tub in service.
The only thing that’s left to close up for the season is to drain all the water out, replace it with antifreeze, and put it to bed. I couldn’t get absolutely all the fresh water out, so I made sure to use an excess of AF so it wouldn’t be too diluted (this AF is supposed to be used full strength). Six gallon jugs seemed to be about right for the job.
Then open all the faucets (one at a time) til they run pink, proving the AF is everywhere I wanted it to be.
Conveniently, this also fills the drain lines with AF, as well, after I drain the vessels. A quick check to see that the tub drain got loaded with AF, too (I was sure it did, but wanted to look anyway because I can get obsessive sometimes).
I do actually have an electric space heater in there as well, because the battery bank would rather stay above freezing, too. It won’t suffer too badly if it does get that cold, but it will live a longer, happier life if it stays warmer. I am happy to oblige. In this case, why did I bother filling the water system with antifreeze? Well, if the power goes out longer than the batteries can run the heater (heaters take a lot of energy), I can’t keep the batteries warm but I can keep the plumbing from cracking. Better safe than soggy! Truth be told, almost all the plumbing is PEX, which can take a bit of freezing as I understand it, but why take chances? Exactly.
So there it is. Power, cold and cold running water, tub, wash sink, drains. The GW lift pump did exactly what it was supposed to do, too. No problems there. All that AF into the drains also meant AF in the GW lift pump, so that’s nice and protected, too.
Tomorrow, some cleanup, that temporary leg for the sink, and then to take a break for a while. I’ll be back thinking about the kitchen, the BeDeLiA, the stairway, the ceiling, the cozy loft (see, there’s plenty more to do) after that.