Covering the Line Set and Installing all the Vents Part 1

Last weekend we got the line set routed, but it wasn't fastened to the trailer underneath, and it definitely wasn't protected from anything that may jump up at it when going down the road. So this week we had to take care of that. Drew gleaned inspiration from this video on YouTube and decided that he could bend some thin galvanized steel to form a cover and something that held the line set up at the same time.

Below is the back corner piece being bent to fit into place. This piece was the only piece that was cut first and then bent.

The rest of the pieces were straight runs and it was easier to bend them and then cut them with the electric sheet metal shear that Drew's dad left when we worked on the metal roof. Below is what the piece looked like right as it was ready to be cut.

In the next picture, Drew had already worked his way up from the back of the trailer (working back to front so the overlap is favorable to the direction we will be going down the road) to in between the axles. The picture attempts to show how the metal is bent and installed. To the right of the white insulated line set in the picture is a 6 inch steel beam and above it are 4 inch beams with a sheet metal bottom. This makes roughly a 2 inch corner (since the beams are flush on the top of the trailer) that we used to hide the line set in, and only needed to bend the sheet metal to create the other two sides instead of three.

Some action shots of Drew putting in the last piece (photographs courtesy of Abbie).

There is a break in the sheet metal covering where the scissor jack juts out. That's why the corner piece was the last piece.

The finished product!

Now onto some vents! First up was the LUNOS e2. If you look at the linked brochure you'll notice that they come as pairs. So we had two ~6 1/4 inch diameter tubes that needed to be placed. One in the living room and the other in the sleeping loft. We made a frame inside the wall for each LUNOS e2 unit and transferred the center of the frame on the outside using a drill through the wall. Then used a jigsaw to cut the hole for the tube.

The outside of the LUNOS is supposed to be flush with the outside of the siding, so we used a sample piece of the cedar lap and gap to measure how far the tube needed to come out and then sealed it up in place.

Below is the finished product from the outside after it has been properly flashed and sealed.

And here is what it looks like from the inside. We will just put finish trim up around the part of the tube that protrudes inside the house.

Next up was the vent for the composting toilet. We are using a Nature's Head composting toilet and it has a fan that runs 24/7 to expel the smells from the toilet. So it needed a way to vent to the outside. The easiest way to do that was with 1 1/4 inch PVC pipe that the hose, supplied with the toilet, can connect to and that will vent to the back of the house. So we used a hole saw to make the correct sized hole for the PVC pipe and then used some 2x4s to hold it in place.

This is what the toilet vent looks like from the outside once it was sealed up.

Next up is plumbing, more vents, and exterior electrical boxes!