Minivan Camper - Sink and Water Pump Faucet

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you all of the products and steps I used to create a sink with running water for my Minivan Camper.

Recently, I converted my minivan into a camper that sleeps two.  I have a three part video series that describes that conversion.  I didn’t have quite enough time in those videos to give all of the specifics on how I put together the sink with running water, so I thought I’d do a separate video on that.

Because the bed occupies so much space in a minivan that sleeps two, my kitchen only uses a little less than two feet in the back of the van, plus some of the great outdoors.  When cooking, I keep my cooler, cabinets, and stove outside the van and use the back part of the van for counter space and access to storage.  The sink hangs off the van and pumps water from a storage container that is stored underneath the bed. First, let’s talk about the

Sink
I knew I wanted the sink to stick out  from the back of the van so that I could drain water directly onto the ground.  This is the sink I bought.  It collapses and pops up for use and has a nice drain in the bottom that you can seal and use just as a basin.  The question was how to secure it without a big, built in solution that wasn’t easy to store.  After about 2 hours of wandering around my local Home Depot and thinking about and rejecting dozens of ideas, I found these curved metal tubes in the shelving section.  I’ll try to provide links to all of these products in the description if I can find them.  My third row seats are folded and stored in the trunk of the van, so I can shove these tubes down in this crevice and the stored seats make it tight enough to hold them in place.  Because they have a tendency to shift from side to side, I cut a piece of plywood to fit into the right side of the van and drilled two holes in it to use as a spacer.  Okay — that works well, now I needed to extend these tubes to give something for the sink to hang on.  I tried a bunch of things, but ended up finding 1/2” PVC pipes that were precut to 24" long that fit nicely onto the ends of these curved pieces.  Because they fit a little loosely, I wrapped a piece of electrical tape around the ends of the curved pieces to make the fit a little tighter.  Then I ordered some 1/2” plugs to cap off the end of each pipe.  Okay — so now I had two sides of the frame for my sink.  For the other two sides, I ended up using 2 pieces of nylon rope tied in a loop.  First I put one loop onto the pipes, then I slide the sink onto the frame, and finally secure with the second rope loop.  The sink is fairly secure on this frame, but for even more stability, one corner of the sink rests on the rear ledge of the van.  The other thing is that the whole sink folds down into almost nothing and stores easily in my 3-drawer cabinet. Okay — now I wanted a solution that didn’t require me to lug out my water storage every time I wanted to wash my hands or rinse off a piece of fruit, so let’s talk about the

Water pump faucet
I learned a TON from YouTuber Todd Parker (a link to his channel is in the description: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo7hxFPDiZ6RRgGwf1W7emQ).  I watched his video where he tested out 4 faucets so that I could choose the right product for my needs.  I also watched and rewatched the portion of his car camping kitchen box video that discussed his faucet to figure out how he got his to work.  As a result, my design is largely based on his with some tweaks. 

First of all, I bought this water pump faucet. It’s designed to be used on top of a water cooler jug to pump water up from the jug and into a cup.  In order to make it work for my purposes, it needed some modifications.  First, I have a  4 gallon water storage container that fits underneath the bed platform.  I didn’t want to bring out the container every time i need water, so I wanted the pump to be separate from the container and pump water over a longer distance.  Second, the original product was meant to stand on top of a water jug, but I wanted the pump faucet to be able to stand on its own.  And third, I needed a way to raise up the pump so that it could act as a faucet for my sink.  Plus it needed to be higher since it works best when the water is at a lower level than the pump.  So first,

Separating the pump from the water jug
First off, the tube that comes with the pump is not good quality and too short.  So I bought this length of food-grade tubing.   Again, many of these products are directly from Todd Parker’s solution.   This gives me enough tube to separate the pump from the water source.  But as he points out, the tubing is a little sticky and prone to pick up dirt, lint, and debris.  I followed his lead and bought this braided tube covering.  Then, in order to access the water source under my 12” bed platform, I bought 2 L joints.  I drilled a hole in the cap to the water storage container.  It was just big enough to shove this L connector into.   Now, you wouldn’t want to turn this container upside down, but short of that, it’s really not going to leak if it’s sitting right side up. I cut another length of tube that extended into the bottom of the water container.  Then, I determined how far away I wanted to operate the pump (for me, that was about 6 feet) and cut my tubing to that length.  Next, I fed the braided covering over the tubing -- or really the tubing through the braiding.  I will warn you that this process was a bit frustrating and took some time.  Once I had the tubing covered, it was time to connect the tube to the L connector.  The braided covering comes with 2 heat shrink tubes that serve to seal the ends.  I used a lighter to provide the heat to shrink that tube sealing it onto the L connector.  Okay — one end finished.  Then I did the same thing for the water pump end by heating up the sleeve to seal the connection to another L connector.  Then  I cut a small piece of tubing to attach that connector to the water pump.  Okay — so that was all fine, but I needed to figure out a way to have this

Stand Alone
Right now, there is a bunch of stuff sticking out of the end of this pump, but I wanted to be able to set it down independently on a counter or table.  So, I needed to enclose it.  I’m not going to tell you how many things I tried out for this purpose, but it was A LOT.  In the end, the best fit was this top to an aerosol paint can.  It was still a little loose, so I applied some layers of tape to the inside of the top until the fit was snug enough to stay put.  Then I drilled a hole in the side, fed the tube and L connector through it and attached it to the pump.  And voila — it can now stand on its own.  The last thing I needed was some kind of a pedestal so that the pump would be in the right position to be a

Faucet for the Sink
As it was — it was too low and too unstable.  Again, I tried magnets, Velcro, and some other things, but what is working for me now is this small plastic trash can from Dollar Tree.  It was easy to cut with scissors to fit exactly over the bumps and irregularities of the back of my van.  In addition, I could cut out a little hole on top that the pump could sit in and a channel in the back to accommodate the tubing.  Now it sits above the sink, is fairly stable, and went I put everything away, doubles as a storage container for the faucet pump and cord.

This works great.  I like using it with my sink so that I can wash dishes and vegetables with two hands.  I also like to use it even when we haven’t set up the sink to rinse off things, brush our teeth, and fill up our water bottles.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching. 

Links to purchases:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pros and Cons of the Headway App

Image
Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my thoughts on the non-fiction book summary app -- Headway. I'm read a lot of non-fiction books and yet -- there will always books I never get to -- my eyes are always bigger than my stomach when it comes to reading.  And here is the thing -- some books are worth reading every single word of, but some books I can live with just an overall summary.  I would say probably most books fall into the latter category.  So, that's where non-fiction book summary apps come in.  They give you about a 15 minute summary of a book.  This can help you determine whether you want to read more or whether that bare bones synopsis was enough.  A while back, I had a subscription to Blinkist, but recently I was approached by Headway to take a look at their app, so I'm going to give you my thoughts.  First off,  I love the concept.  Take a 300 to 500 page book, boil...
Read more

Review of Toshl Personal Finance and Budgeting App

Image
Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I will review the Toshl personal finance and budget app.  This is part of a series where I give you my thoughts on a variety of budgeting apps. Toshl is a European app — it appears to be based in Slovenia.  It’s free version has limited the number of accounts and budget items that you can add. The pro version for two dollars a month has unlimited accounts and budget items, but does not include linked banking accounts. For five dollars per month, you can upgrade to the Medici level which allows for linked financial accounts. Toshl is available for iOS, android, and has a Web app. It syncs across all of the platforms by pulling data from the cloud. Linking accounts was quite easy. It even asked whether I wanted to import past transactions or for importing to start today. After having reviewed a number of these apps, I’m always interested in how the developers have chosen to set up the screens. T...
Read more

The Subtle Differences Between Sweet, Nice, & Kind

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll talk about the distinction that I often make about three words: Sweet, Nice, and Kind.  And why it's important to know the difference. Here are three words that are often used interchangeably: sweet, nice, and kind.  But I think there are important distinctions between them that can help to decide how we want to be in the world.  In my family -- based on the distinctions I will discuss in a bit -- my husband is sweet, nice, and kind; my daughter is sweet and kind, I'm only kind, and my son used to be none of the above, but is growing into himself as an adult who is both sweet and kind. So, let's go through them: Sweet - I think of sweet as more of a temperament.  It describes someone who is pleasant and easy to be around.  Generally this temperament is not dominant or pushy, but is gentle and lovable.  This disposition is shared by most of the early Disney princ...
Read more