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2014/11/05 By John Leave a Comment

Trips and Progress

When we last left off, we still had water flowing uninterrupted into our precious living quarters. Well, maybe it was only a trickle, but it was still entirely too much. With the bus stripped back down to bare metal, we tried to figure out a solution. But the bus still had obligations to meet.

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Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in Oak Hill, NY. The bus was profoundly missed last year, and this summer was a welcome change of pace. The deck added a fun perspective to the weekend, and held a few brief jams. We’ve been nothing but impressed with its strength.

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We spent Grey Fox without a splinter of wood inside the bus, and when we returned home we went back to stopping the leaks. It was Nishi who discovered how to properly seal the windows. It doesn’t take too much caulk, but it does take a lot of time and patience – her prop skills continue to be valuable. After dealing with the worst windows, we reached a place where we were no longer concerned with water ruining our hard work, and resumed construction. In early October, some friends of ours were getting married, and we made that our deadline for a presentable interior of the bus.

We used new insulation on the walls, thinner than what we had before. Though the insulation I had scored off craigslist had been the right price, the fiberglass paper sides were a tremendous nuisance, and they protruded past the ribs making it impossible to square anything. These thinner, foil covered boards are a breath of fresh air, and will still keep us plenty warm.

Our old insulation fit easily in place on the floor, and we covered it with 1/2″ plywood this time instead of 1/4″. This does give us a more smooth and even subfloor to build on. We skipped the rosin paper entirely this time, as it seemed to provide no benefit.

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We insulated the wheel wells, and began the process of reinstalling everything we’d taken out. We were able to get the counter and the 13′ port bench installed by the wedding, and the two starboard benches were installed shortly after returning home.

We did run into one mechanical issue – the lift pump in our engine stopped working. In brief, the lift pump is what supplies fuel from the tank to the high pressure pump on the engine. Luckily, it was a relatively easy fix, and we were on the road in no time.

Charlie came along to the wedding, and it turns out he’s quite the bus-dog. Though he doesn’t much care for the highway, he’s pretty happy lounging around on the benches and looking out the windows.

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Passive solar heating continues to impress me. We have the entire port side of the bus facing South, so sunny days heat it up nicely. 40 degree differences are common so far, and it’ll be interesting to see how that holds up as the outside temperature drops.

And one last note, we’ve officially changed the domain of this site to bus.life (much better).

Filed Under: Adventures, Updates Tagged With: Festivals, Flooring, Insulation, Leaks, Roof deck

2013/08/26 By John 2 Comments

Subfloor is finished

Found and caulked the leak. It was in a corner of a window. I had appeared to be coming through the Great Stuff, but I now realize it was only coming over it.
With that scare behind us, we finished laying the insulation.

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We covered our 1″ polyiso insulation with 3/8″ plywood.

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The plywood is attached to the bus with 2″ sheet metal screws. We staggered the sheets of plywood and insulation so the seams are not on top of one another.

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And of course, more Great Stuff in the gaps.

Next up is the roof deck. It’s not clear what we’ll be able to do with the weather this week, but we’re waiting until the deck is done before we begin the interior.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Construction, Flooring, Insulation

2013/08/21 By John 1 Comment

Great Stuff

We used canned spray foam called Great Stuff to seal the gaps in our wall insulation. It’s awesome and fun, and works really well.

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We trimmed it with a razor, and touched up the paint on the floor before beginning to lay down insulation.

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We first cut sheets of Red Rosin Paper to try and mitigate any moisture that should get in the floor. We’re covering that with R6.5 polyiso foam board. The foil on the foam board should also act as a vapor barrier of sorts. We’ll have the subfloor finished by tomorrow.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Construction, Flooring, Insulation

2013/06/22 By John Leave a Comment

Prepped Floors

After a long battle with the floors, they’re prepped and ready to go.  Getting the plywood and rubber up wasn’t so hard. Neither was grinding down the nails and bolts that poked out from the sheet metal. The hard part was grinding down the rust spots and removing the oil sludge.

Yes, as much as I love the old veggie system for its scrappy DIY aesthetic, it leaked like hell and was prone to spills. What we wound up with was a rubber floor covered in sticky oil and dead mice, a plywood subfloor soaked through with old oil, and a sheet metal floor coated in dark, sticky, dried oil. This last bit is the worst kind. I’ve been elbow deep in veggie before, and it’s not so bad. It’ll even wipe off! This stuff though, sticks to you and won’t let go. We had to use an angle grinder to get it off the floor. Our shoes were not salvageable when we were finished.

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The only way to get the stuff off our skin was liberal use of brillo pads. But lets not dwell on that, we don’t have to deal with that again. Once the oil was up, we had to take care of the rust. We used a product called Ospho, which converts the rust from Iron Oxide to Iron Phosphate. This stuff is awesome, and though we nearly used a gallon of it on a few coats of the floor, it looked a whole lot better afterwards. All of the dark spots used to be rust.

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Lastly, we hit it with some Rustoleum paint to further stop the advances made by oxidation. There is no reason in particular why we used brown.

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So far the angle grinder has been the MVP in this conversion, and it’s been fun getting acquainted with a new tool. Now that the floors are done, we’re moving on to taking off the walls. More on that later.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Demolition, Flooring, Rust

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Categories

  • Adventures
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  • Updates

Tags

Anxiety Bed Brick Ceiling Chimney Clearance lights Compost Construction Cooktop Counter Demolition Desk Festivals Flooring floorplan Fridge Hearth Inspiration Insulation Kitchen Leaks Lights Performance Port Bench Roof Roof deck Rust Sink Snow Toilet Tour Upholstery Video Walls Water Heater Woodstove
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