[giftedk]

hi all, am making my own 2 man van mounted system but am not quite sure how to go about it.
This is what im thinking;
gonna put a 1000 litre tank in and attach two 100 psi pumps, will make my pure water at home and transfer from 1000 litre tank in garden to 1000 litre tank in van.
Would this be the best way or should i buy an ro unit to fit in the van?
What else will i need and how will i get the power to run the two pumps.?

[russ_clark]

what vehicle are you putting 1000ltr tank into ??

[giftedk]

its an ldv pilot 2.2

[Paul Coleman]

its an ldv pilot 2.2

Checked on www.whatvan.co.uk .
Maximum payload for that van is 789 kg.
1,000 litres of water is 1,000kg (1 tonne).
Even if you only half filled 500kg, that would give 289kg for your body weight, diesel, other equipment (including tank).  As you want a two man system, I assume there will be two people in the vehicle?
500 litres might be a bit tight for two guys to use in one day.

I think you need to check your numbers very carefully in order to stay legal or think about investing in a van with larger payload.

[giftedk]

thanks for that the shiner, but would 500 litres be enough for two men to earn a decent days money ?

[Chris Cottrell]

I can use 300l a day on my own

Chris

[cleantech.co.uk]

i could not stress enough how bad an idea it is fitting a 1000ltr tank into a van, reguardless of the payload.

the main problem is that the tanks are not baffled, although one inspired way round this i have seen is to fill the tank with the field drainage pipe.

also, as stated despite the size and power of these vans, the payload is not large enough.

a far better idea would be a 650ltr in a transit, which has a better payload, cheap to buy and chaep to run.

also it is always a good idea to use a larger tank for your storage tank than the one in your van, as if you fill your tank, set off for work and 10 mins later your RO developes some gremlins, then you stuffed for working the next day as by the time you notice there is not enough time to fix it then produce the water you need, whereas if your storage tank holds more, then you already have the next days water ready, and it'll have at least 24 hours to produce so you can continue ininterupted.

What sort of work do you do, as 1,000 ltr is a lot for 2 men to use in a day, and i would say its fairly uncommon (tho not unheard of) to need this much.

[Paul Coleman]

thanks for that the shiner, but would 500 litres be enough for two men to earn a decent days money ?

On a reasonable day of maintenance cleans, I can use 350 litres on my own.  If I had an elecronic flow controller I'm sure I could get this down though. With a couple of first cleans or a conservatory roof thrown in, the usage goes way up as I like to use plenty on first cleans.  Also, on larger jobs where there is wall to wall glass (such as some types of office buildings) the usage is quite high.
I think my record is about 700 litres in a day on my own - but that was very exceptional.
If you are on maintenance cleans, and if you are prepared to squeegee the ground floor windows, you may get away with 500 litres between two of you if you have a good flow controller fitted.  However, even with 500 litres in the tank, there could be van payload issues.  If things are very tight with payload, you may want to consider things like keeping the extra equipment to a very bare minimum, keeping the diesel tank lowish and having a dump before you get in the van   .

One good idea is to have everything in the van that you will normally carry, fill up the diesel tank, sit both yourself and your co-worker in the van, then take yourselves to a local weighbridge with the water tank empty.  After you have got the vehicle weighed (with yourselves in it), subtract the figure from the gross vehicle weight (2,175 kg according to the website).  The number you are left with (in kilos) will tell you how many litres of pure water you can put in the tank (water weighs exactly 1 kilo per litre).  Of course it is probably better to allow a bit of a margin for error too IMO.  That's one reason I suggest having a full diesel tank at the weigh-in but not afterwards.
Personally, if you can afford it, I think you would be better off getting a much larger van and carrying enough water for both of you to WFP ALL the windows.

Your other questions about RO in the van can depend on your situation.  I prefer to have my RO on a static tank and do a fast transfer into the van after the water has been filtered.  This is because a van RO can tie the vehicle up for too long and my van is my only vehicle.  If you have a car as well, a van mounted RO may be an option.

The power for the pumps:-  I have a leisure battery installed in my van.  It runs off the van battery via a split charge relay.  This enables the van battery to charge the leisure battery while the engine is turning and ensures that the leisure battery does not drain the van battery.  I wouldn't be able to say if one leisure battery would be enough for one pump as I only have one pump installed and have never tried it.  Even if you did have a power problem supplying two pumps from one leisure battery, running the engine for a while should resolve that.  If I am on larger jobs in very close proximity to each other, I sometimes have to turn the engine over later in the day to get enough power to get finished.  If you do want to do it from one leisure battery, it might help if you went for a 110 amp instead of the more normal 85 amp.  However, with electrical stuff I'm a bit out of my depth.  I reckon that Jeff Brimble is the guy for that one.

[cleantech.co.uk]

on the leisure battry bit, a 100 P.S.I. sureflo pump draws 7.5 amps

therefore a 75aH leisure battery would run 2x pumps constantly for 5 hours, and remember it is recharged every time you move, so yes 1 leisure battery will be more than enough.

TBH unless your sitting in the one job with both pumps switched on for hours on end, i wouldn't even bother with a leisure battery and just run it off the van battery.

[U.S. wfp USER]

How does the pump 'recharge' every time you move?

[cybersye]

How does the pump 'recharge' every time you move?

pumps dont, leisure batteries get recharged when you move from the vehicles battery by means of a split charge relay.

[Spruce]

Or what about carrying any extra daily needs in the back of a trailer?

[Easyclean Windows]

1000ltrs ? you will never use that amount of water in a day ever.

I have tuned my van with pump,varistream,and microbore to use minimum water for cleaning windows.

I have a 400ltr tank and that will clean 40 flats (200 windows ) easily.

or 20 3/4 mixed bed houses