organising vans

[Dannypipe]

Oh and it is a lovely cottage. We don't live there any more. After five years of renting it, we moved out and finally bought ourselves a place. Not as nice as the old Stone Lodge but its ours.

Before that we lived in a converted chapel. Which was right in the middle of Tunbridge Wells. So we've lived in some nice places.

Its nice to not have a landlord though, and for the house to be our own to do with what we want. I'm working hard to make sure one day I can afford to buy a nice character property and not just rent them from wealthy, uptight muppets!

 

[Glenwils]

The back of our van was a complete mess and the racking the apprentice 'buil't collapsed on itself. So we spent a few hours tonight after work building this out of old bits of wood we found laying around. Were waiting on some plastic organiser boxes my mates nicking from work.

The long upper shelf above the Van Vault is for ladders and longish off cuts of pipe. We made a little box above the wheel arch which fits the benders perfectly. I can't stand a messy van.

We have 3 Stanley fat max organizers in the van, one for screws, washers, raw plugs etc. Another for 15mm fittings and another for 22mm fittings. All other sizes and everything else is stashed away in the racking.

 

[mcniven]

Whats that big machine mate

 

[Dannypipe]

It's a van. 😉 :icon12:

 

[mcniven]

Haha I meant the lads big yellow thing

 

[Glenwils]

That's our Van Vault. Just for stashing all our drills etc in at night.

 

[mcniven]

That's a great idea m8 anything that's on the nick list bang it in that! Is that screwed down and locked?

 

[mcniven]

Chances of them getting in back or side doors then seeing that screwed down or locked they'd no bother!

 

[Glenwils]

Yeah bolted to the bottom of the van and locked at night. If anyone could get that out, fair play to them!

 

[stevetheplumber]

trouble is once they know youve got a van vault inside they break in your house for the keys

 

[Glenwils]

They would have to get past my big dog first. If she don't scare them away our Labrador will.

 

[SafeGasInstall]

Yeah bolted to the bottom of the van and locked at night. If anyone could get that out, fair play to them!

Hope you don't live in london ......

 

[Dannypipe]

Had a site safe broken into a few years back. God knows how they did it, and they must have made a hell of a racket. Cleared out all the tools. I pulled on site before anyone else, and just saw the door to the house swinging open. I knew straight away all the tools would be gone. Still gutted and it was years back. Been done again since then.

Last time, they even took the basins we were about to fit, and statues from the garden. The even took the lead from the roof!! Why can't we chop theives hands off and have a real deterant?

 

[Destroyer2813]

Had a boiler go walkies off the wall on a site in the middle of the night fortunatly for me not at my loss, but some of my tolls were in a cupboard upstairs but fortunatly they left/missed em

 

[Glenwils]

We had a break in at a school were working on. The thieves obviously weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer as they must have spent a good 20mins trying to bend and break 2x 20mm copper bends under 2 brand new combis we've installed when they could have just simply lifted the combis off the wall as we hadn't piped them up. Muppets.

 

[Barry98]

some countyrs still chop hands off dont they ?

isit a right hand left foot for stealking a car

 

[Leo21]

The problem for me isn't nicked tools any more. It's copper tube, I didn't have a locked tube holder till two years ago. Since then I've been done about six times. B#######s!

 

[SafeGasInstall]

Leo where are you in uk ?

 

[Leo21]

Coventry

 

[Wag]

Drifting away from the topic lads, can I briefly bring you back to van organising. How do you organise tools within the van? ie how do you decide what tools to take into a house for initial inspection. I have two tool cases of the flight case type, one for installing (heavy Duty) and one for servicing (prettier sets of spanners and screwdrivers that haven't been used for prizing old boilers from walls). I then have a tool bag which carries sweating gear and hammers and bigger spanners and heat mats and formers and auger bits and pipe slices and . . . . any way what happens is I take all the gear into a customers house and pretty much empty my van in order to do a simple job, and it drives me nuts, is there a better way?

Maybe I should have tool bags for types of job, ie outside tap, bag contains drill (24v Bosch for wall) drill bits, copper tube, assorted fittings, clips, wallplugs, screws, torch, solder, hammer, spanner (adjustable), Ptfe, phillips screwdriver, pipe cleaner, flux, sleeving, hole saws . . . .er . . I think not !

maybe I need a plumbers mate