Kingham 2016 - Under the Bed

My 2019 Kingham has the Truma at the back of the bed area, and had a wooden panel across the back of the van with a silly little access door.

I removed the panel and put it in the shed. It just unscrews. The wooden cover over the boiler itself remains in place to keep flammable items away from the boiler.

One of the prompts for this job was that on our first trip out one of the heating air hose joints parted and the hot air melted the adjacent water pipes. Typical AS rubbish installation! So I took the panel out, repaired the hoses and rerouted them across the back through a protective plastic trunking. I was also able to shorten and rationalise the hose runs, which originally made an almost complete loop around the boiler for no apparent reason and took up useful space on the floor. They now run outboard of the boiler. I was also able to re-route the heating air hoses more logically and so that they were not draping all over the place and taking up good floor space, or at risk of overheating something.

The result is that I can now slide in a couple of plastic storage boxes for hoses, adaptors, EHU lead etc. etc. The access is indeed very much better, particularly if somebody is still in bed and the bed cannot be raised at the back.

I also fitted some coat hooks on the back face of the “pelmet” panel above the bed head, and plan to fit a curtain running on that pelmet so that the blind in the door does not have to be used, to reduce draughts from the doors and to keep rain off the bed when the back doors have to be opened.

If or when the boiler needs to come out I will probably re-install it further forward under the foot of the bed to make even better use of the now more accessible space aft. I find lifting and propping the main part of the bed a bit of a back breaker so much prefer to access from the rear. More recent Kinghams have the Whale boiler fitted further forward, which seems much neater.