Storage Space

Despite Jim being considerably bigger than most European motorhomes, the space inside is still fairly small, especially when compared to some of the huge trucks and coaches you see at Teknivals and on traveller sites. I have so far managed to squeeze in seating for five people, a full size double bed, a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet, and will soon have a kitchen with a fridge, oven, hob, and sink; however one thing that I can foresee a shortage of is storage space.

The garage/boot area under the bed is pretty sizable, but it's only really suitable for items like chairs, spare parts, recovery gear, tools and other general items which are rarely used, or only used outside. I don't think that Naomi would appreciate having to jump out of the truck, walk around the back, drop the taillift, and unlock and open the doors, to be able to get a change of underwear each morning, or get a teabag. I therefore need to find space inside the main body of Jim for all the items we'll use day-to-day.

With the bedroom largely finished, I was left with a space approximately 50cm wide, between the back wall of the bathroom, and the front wall of the bedroom on the offside of the truck. It's not a very wide space, but at 75cm deep, and the full 1.83m height inside Jim, the volume is fairly sizable.

As with all space in Jim, it would be too simple to use it for one purpose. To make my life slightly more difficult, I decided to fit an air conditioner in the bottom of the space. The air conditioner is a Dometic HB2500 and is designed to be floor mounted, discharging heat and condensate through holes cut in the floor. The first job was to cut the necessary holes, giving me another opportunity to play with the plasma cutter.

I then fitted the retaining straps which hold the air conditioning unit to the floor, and ran a mains AC power feed to the back of the space. The air conditioner uses about 900w at full power in cooling mode (more when heating); this means that most of the time it can only be used when plugged into the mains, or running off the generator. The inverter is just about powerful enough to keep up with air conditioner, so in extreme weather, I should be able to run this unit off the inverter whilst we are driving to assist the cab air conditioner in cooling the space down.

I could then install the air conditioner, and run the ducting up the back of the storage space. I had originally planned to use the space as a wardrobe with fixed drawers in part of the space, but the depth would have made it difficult to use, and so I ended up deciding on drawers. This had the advantage of not needing the pipes to be boxed in, as they wouldn't be exposed.

I screwed together a box for the air conditioner; it can be taken apart in a few seconds if I ever need to get to the unit for repairs. The grill at the front is for the intake air and is just a piece of stainless punched sheet fixed to the back of the laminated plywood.

I had originally ordered some 90 degree elbows to help fit the unit in the tight space that I had, but I ended up not needing them. One of the ducts kinked slightly so I may end up using them in the future, but as you can see it worked fine without them.

I forgot to order any clips for the ducting. Not wanting to waste time ordering and waiting for them, I cut something suitable out of plywood offcuts, they work very well and are probably more rigid than anything I could have bought off the shelf.

After carefully measuring the space, I designed and built 5 drawers to help make best use of the space available. I made one deep drawer, two medium drawers, and two shallow drawers. The laminated surface on the plywood does no take most glues well, and so I rebated all joints to give a plywood surface for the glue. The rebates would have been much quicker on a router table as I had to clamp and reclamp each piece of wood for each rebate using the handheld router.

The rebates are all 5mm deep, and all the drawers are made from 18mm material.

Not wishing the drill through the front of the drawer to fix them, I fitted a frame behind the front of each drawer, to allow the front to be screwed in from behind.

It's was probably gratuitous and unnecessary but I then finished the exposed plywood at the top of each drawer with a teak capping.

I did lessen the financial impact by using all of my offcuts.

I didn't take any photos whilst doing it, but I then fitted 10 Accuride 3832-HDSC drawer runners. The runners have a self closing mechanism which closes the drawers when they are a few centimetres from being shut, and hold them closed with a noticeable force. Unfortunately the top of the space that I'd made was 3mm narrower than the bottom, and I only realised when I had made all of the drawers. The runners still work, but the self close mechanism is not very effective. At any rate, the hold-back force is probably not strong enough to keep the drawers shut when I am doing laps at the local race track, and so I'll fit mechanical retainers anyway.

Below is how the drawers look, fitted in position. Fitting a drawer at the top would have required the use of a surgical mirror and tongs to remove the contents, and so I left this area for use as a general cubby hole.

The drawer runners fully extend and allow easy access to the full contents of all drawers

The drawer runners are rated at 45kg per pair. This should be plenty for all of the drawers, but the height of the bottom drawer allows some play and flexibility when opening the drawer, and so I may consider fitting another pair of runners further up the drawer.

I then fitted quarter turn retainers to each drawer.

 My measuring tape was having an off day, and so the drawer fronts are not flush with the surrounding panels. I made the fasteners work using teak spacers.

I fitted an air outlet, and the remote receiver for the air conditioner in a fixed panel above the drawers, and left the remainder of the space as a hinged access door.

Finally, I fitted drawer handles to each of the drawers. My apologies on behalf of the ghost which got in front of the camera for the photo below.