I took eight days off for a trip to Wisconsin to visit family and attend a wedding. While there, I spent some time organizing my thoughts on the next steps for the van build. I also listed items that I wanted to research further before making a purchase (e.g., solar panels). Yesterday, I was home, but it was a very rainy day. So, I worked hard on performing that research and purchasing items for the van. I bought the L-Track for the floor, a Starlink Mini dish and all the associated equipment to install it, and a wire gland to pass the Starlink and solar panel wires through the roof of the van. I did a lot of research on solar panels, and feel like I know the ones that I want, but I have few questions for the manufacturer before I make that purchase (I called and left a couple of messages and am waiting for a call back). So, even though I didn’t work on the van yesterday, I feel like I made some good progress and filled the pipeline with materials for the coming days.
Today, it was rainy in the morning again. I played around with some cardboard material that I had saved to use for the sub-floor template, but I found it hard to use because it was too thick and heavy. After a couple of morning meetings, I drove the van to Lowes and picked up some Ram Board. Ram Board is basically thick brown paper (36mm) and is typically used to protect flooring at construction sites. It was the perfect thickness for creating the subfloor template, as it was thick enough to be sturdy, but thin enough to be able to cut with a pair of scissors. Not sure why none of the YouTube videos mentioned using Ram Board for the templates instead of cardboard, but it is definately an easier way.
While I was at Lowes with the van, I also picked up four sheets of 1″ thick polystyrene insulation board. This is the material that I’ll use to insulate under my subfloor in the van.
After Lowes, I continued south to Rock Hill, SC to the CR Lawrence warehouse to pick up the window that I will put in the van behind the driver’s door. More on the window in the coming days. It was nice driving the van. It was much quieter on the road after installing all that sound deadening and insulation in the back. I really enjoy driving it.
When I got home and unloaded the van, I went to work on creating the template for the subfloor using the Ram Board. I rolled out the Ram Board into eight foot lengths and then used a compass and a ruler to mark up the areas that needed to be cut out. It was an iterative process of cutting, checking, and re-cutting until I got the template close. I did this for four different pices of Ram Board and used painters tape to attach them together. Where I cut too much Ram Board away, I came back and cut another piece to fill those gaps. It was pretty easy once I got the hang of it. After two hours of working by myself, I had the template finished.
Then I got Artie to help me lay out the four sheets of 3/4″ plywood (that make up my subfloor) on the driveway. We then folded the template like a taco and moved it out of the van an onto the sheets of plywood. One of the four sheets of Ram Board came loose, but it was easy to fix. I probably should have used duct tape instead of painter’s tape to secure the Ram Board together (should have listened to those Red Green episodes!)
Once we had the template placed onto the plywood sheets, utilizing the edges of the plywood to minimize the number of cuts we would have to make, Artie and I traced out the template onto the plywood using a sharpie marker. We stopped work for the day, and will get around to cutting out the plywood subfloor pieces tomorrow or the next day.
Overall, I spent under three hours working on the van and Artie helped me for about 45 minutes. So, it wasn’t a lot of work. But it was something that could be done before the van goes into the shop to have the alarm installed.
Seems like you got a good start!
Glad the work wasn’t too hard today.