What's this condiut

[SimonB73]

Hi

I'm fixing damage from damp at the rear of my van and the damaged wood extends around a conduit.

It looks to me like this conduit carries the plumbing and waste water. It enters the van under the sink in the end bathroom.

See attached pics

Just wanted to ask if anyone has removed this kind of thing and if that's the best way to go about this? I was thinking if I disconnect the plumbing and the electricity in under the sink there I should be able to pull it all out through the hole where conduit enters. I feel like that would make the job easier cause I can use a hole saw to cut the hole into the patch without too much of a faff.

It looks like those pipes for the plumbing have some sort of hep20 like connector that might be easily separated but I've not really done much plumbing in a caravan before. Any advice on how to separate those would be good.

Whats the view on here? Remove the conduit, or work round it?

Cheers

 

[Hutch]

I certainly don't know your van, but I would certainly say it's a drainage pipe. .

 

[woodsieboy]

By conduit do you mean the grey ridged pipe? If so that will be the drain pipe from the sink the red and blue pipes normally have a push fit connector with a collar that you can push in towards the tap and the pipe will then pull free,have a look on you tube, there are several videos of how to remove the connectors
If it were me I would take the whole sink out, which should give you much better access

 

[SimonB73]

Hi
Sorry I thought I'd attached the outside picture. It's the conduit I was talking about. The pic of the stuff under the sink was just to show what I thought was going into the conduit. I've attached the pic from under the van.

 

[Hutch]

As you can see the Screw from the leg stabiliser, where does the other end of the piping go to. ie. The waste connections.?

Edit, after reading Woodsies, comment. The second pipe is a heating pipe.

 

[Woodentop]

The pipe carries the warm air heating usually across a doorway. The commonest is where the heat source is at the front and the caravan has a back end bathroom with an outlet vent. The outer cover is insulation so even if your heating is on the pipe will not get warm.

 

[woodsieboy]

I think you have 2 different pipes , as woodentop says the one in #4 is for the blown air heating,if you work backwards from the water drain outlet on the outside of the van, the pipe will hopefully trace to the one you have inside your bathroom, the outlet will usually be at the side of the van, although some vans, notably Coachman did have the drainage pipe at the back. If going back to your original question, you plan to replace the flooring around the heating pipe, then you should be able to disconnect the heating pipe,replace the wood in the floor and cut a hole for the heating pipe in the new floor, not a job for the faint hearted, but certainly do able .
Also you need to bear in mind the floor is uually a layer of foam sandwiched between two layers of plywood and covered inside in a laminate, so you will need to check the overall floor thickness to obtain like for like replacement

 

[SimonB73]

Hi all. It looks like it comes from under where the heater is so that makes sense. It must go to the outlet at the back of the bathroom.

I'll have to see if I can get easy access to the back side of the outlet.

Thank for all the comments. Very much appreciated.

 

[trevormonty]

There are varies plumbing connections, crimp, screw up hose clamp and press fit ie John Guest. If you have lot of crimp fittings, worth buying crimper instead of using hose clamps to replace them. Upgrading to John Guest can get very expensive as need new pipe and lots of fittings including elbows as pipe isn't very flexible, don't forget C clip to fit in connector so it doesn't work loose. Good thing about John Guest is easy to disconnect and fit a plug to isolate a section in the field, no special tools needed.

Whatever you do make sure to inspect join carefully, I place a bit of tissue paper underneath and leave for hour with system pressurised.

 

[SimonB73]

I think you have 2 different pipes , as woodentop says the one in #4 is for the blown air heating,if you work backwards from the water drain outlet on the outside of the van, the pipe will hopefully trace to the one you have inside your bathroom, the outlet will usually be at the side of the van, although some vans, notably Coachman did have the drainage pipe at the back. If going back to your original question, you plan to replace the flooring around the heating pipe, then you should be able to disconnect the heating pipe,replace the wood in the floor and cut a hole for the heating pipe in the new floor, not a job for the faint hearted, but certainly do able .
Also you need to bear in mind the floor is uually a layer of foam sandwiched between two layers of plywood and covered inside in a laminate, so you will need to check the overall floor thickness to obtain like for like replacement

Hi

Thanks for the info. I've done a few floor repairs over the years so I'm pretty comfortable doing it now. I did the roof straps before trying to dry out the van and fix the damage and I found that a mega struggle! I'm still a bit uneasy about whether I've done it to a decent standard but I guess I'll find out soon enough!

As far as the pipe goes, I'm wondering if the kickboards along the bottom of the units at the back and side of the bathroom are easy to get off. You wouldn't happen to know if they work like your typical kitchen kick boards where they pop onto a fitting? That would make it a whole lot easier to access the pipe.

If I can't do that then I'm leaning towards cutting a board a few cm bigger than the patch size and then using my hole saw to make the hole for the pipe. And then sawing it in half down the centre of the hole so that I can fit it around the pipe. Then I can trim the edges to fit.

Cheers.