Our First night in the van (shop camping)

 Our mattress showed up early!!!

So first logical thought is "we're definitely sleeping in the van Friday night!", and I agreed completely. I mean, where and when could you have a better place to test out a new sleeping situation? If it's uncomfortable, go inside the house next door to a real bed. If it's cold, throw some more wood in the shop stove. If it's too hot, turn on the vent fan in the van without worry of the battery dying in the middle of the night (on a battery tender). So I unboxed the mattress to let it breathe, and I've got to say, it fits quite nicely, even on the floor and not up on it's platform where it will live.

 

 

One decent night sleep later and we get to enjoy our first of many sunrises to come, in our van.

We might be taking a short break from the weekly blog for a while as the shop is soon to be full with everyday work for the spring farm fleet service. There will still be new posts, although maybe not every week, so in the mean time, feel free to re-read past blogs and comment away with questions, suggestions or opinions.
~Tim

Flooring & Home Depot (Carries take)

The roller coaster ride…

Work on the van had been going slowly but smoothly.   Then we tackled the floor!  This is the moment I realized we don’t actually know what we are doing.

It started with a trip to Home Depot on Saturday.   First, it must be said that Home Depot is not a lumber store; it is a big box store.  Pro:  They have everything.  Con: Employees are young and know nothing about their products or life in general.   The frustration occurred when we thought Home Depot was a lumber store.  Silly us!

Then came the floor.   As soon as we placed the underlayment, I knew we had made some not-so-great choices.   Plywood should have been thicker; it should have been laid width ways, should have been cut straight (not sure what happened here).  Frustrations were starting to creep up again.  We calmed down, because it will all be covered with vinyl flooring and no one will know.

Vinyl flooring comes next.  We had some hiccups, but once we found a rhythm it went pretty fast.  I placed the vinyl down, took measurements for the next piece, and yelled out random numbers. Tim cut the pieces; I placed them and repeat.  The plywood had discouraged us, but we pulled it together to finish the vinyl flooring around midnight.   It looked beautiful through red eyes from tears of frustration and exhaustion.  We went to bed pleased after a rough day.

Sunday morning we went out to admire our work.   Tim walked to the far side of the van and got real quiet.  Cue Carrie’s anxiety.  There was a massive puddle (aka lake) under the van.   At this point, I am ready to call it quits on the whole thing.  We are clearly clueless and shouldn’t be doing this!  Tim talks me off the ledge, the leak gets fixed, my brother comes to help with the ceiling, and before I know it I am excited about the van again.

#Vanlife is an emotional roller coaster!

~Carrie

Flooring and the shit-show that is Home Depot...

Wiring in place, insulation board trimmed, fitted and secured to the walls of the van, we now needed to get serious about our flooring. Just so happens that a friend Chris, was at the shop when the subject of flooring came up, so I listened intently as he described the flooring projects that he had done in his home, his experiences and findings of what worked best for him. Armed with this new knowledge, Carrie and I searched the Home Depot website, found a few potential flooring choices, and decided to go with the self adhesive vinyl flooring on top of a plywood underlayment. The only problem being that the Yakima Home Depot didn't have the flooring we wanted, so off to Richland for two boxes. Don't know if it's just the Richland store, but there were more dogs at Home Depot than a Petco or Petsmart! Satisfied with our color choice of flooring, we headed back home to plan our next weekend of installation as we still had to purchase our underlayment. Here's where the stress begins... The Yakima Home Depot showed through their app that they had 1/5' plywood underlayment in stock. We searched and searched the lumber aisle to no avail. It was either not labeled or we were just blind, so we asked for help... Standing in front of an unlabeled stack of plywood with four Home Depot employees all of them trying to find or figure out how to scan the product for positive identification, I happen to look up and recognize the bundle up above them matches the SKU# on my app for the lumber I'm searching for. I pointed this out to Carrie and we tried to get the attention of the four employees. We point out the plywood above their heads and are met with resistance, "we can't get you two sheets out of that bundle because we have no where to put it". Stress rises... "well that's the same as the plywood in the bottom of the stack right here, just take some from this stack" the senior most employee states. So without the help of the four employees Carrie and I are left to sort through the stack and fish our two sheets out ourselves after removing the wrong product from on top of the stack. Stress levels rise... 

Plan of attack for the flooring: 

1. Cut and lay foam board in grooves of floor and attach with adhesive spray. 

2.  Measure, cut and screw down plywood underlayment.

3. Get the shop nice and toasty warm, then start laying our vinyl flooring.

Foam board cut and glued down in place, check!

   Precision cutting

First strips going in 

Glue!

   All glued and level   

Plywood underlayment cut and screwed down, check!

 

  

I get a fire going in the stove and we run into our first hiccup. When placing our underlayment we decided to run lengthwise with a full sheet so we wouldn't have to cut both. This and the width of our flooring just so happened to work out with a flooring seam right on the seam of our plywood, and we didn't want that. As a solution, we amended our plan and decided to place our flooring running transversely instead of our original plan of longitudinally (stress levels and some tears). 

Shop all warmed up, we set to measuring, cutting and laying our flooring.

I decided to warm up our flooring by sticking a piece in the upper barrel (heat exchanger) of our shop stove to make it easier for Carrie to lay. Note for future reference: Do not under any circumstances turn your back to measure another piece. Smelling smoke, I turn around to see the end of our vinyl flooring piece melted off in a smoldering pool inside the heat exchanger, belching smoke into the shop at an alarming rate! I quickly pull the remains of the flooring plank out and scrape the burnt mess out from the stove. Current crisis averted. Stress level rises once again....

Carrie is absolutely knocking out the measurements, I'm cutting pieces and handing them off to her, she's laying them down with precision and skill like a pro. We work 'till midnight and decide to call it quits before cutting and laying our last two 3" wide end pieces (front and back). It's a good thing, too, because I was having problems forming coherent sentences and Carrie was beginning to question her own measurements. This was alright though, because we had reinforcements showing up Sunday morning to help!

     Ending the night tired and happy

Beautifully done!  

Hiccup number two... Sunday morning, while looking at the shop camera, I notice a dark colored spot under the van. I pay little attention and chalk it up to a shadow on the camera. We head over to the shop to inspect last night's work only to discover a massive puddle under the van.... Oh crap! Carrie instantly has flashbacks to leaking transmission fluid and the corresponding cost... I think fuel system at first then remembered the rear HVAC...! I had dead-centered our heater line with one of the flooring screws! just coolant and fixable. More stress then relief and tears from both of us...

 

The cavalry has arrived!

    Nick & Wiley

 

Always awesome to have help! Carrie's brother Nick and his son Wiley showed up bright and early to help out with our project. Nick and Carrie knocked out the reflectix insulation on the ceiling while Wiley and I cleaned out a vehicle that was in the impound and look for treasures. Nick also saved us a huge headache by remembering to mark the centers of our over head ribs, so we wouldn't have to search for them when installing our ceiling later. Wow they did an amazing job!

The crew!

 

 

~Tim

Wires, switches and more insulation

Just 12 Volts, +positive and -negative. Twisted four wire, untwisted 5 wire, 14awg & 12awg, 8awg fuse block feed, 1x30A, 1x20A, 2x10A & 2x5A circuits, 500A magnetic combining/isolating relay, and a 100A fused secondary battery feed. Simple, right?

I started with shooting a pull string for each run of wires, which is a trick in and of its own. Both pull strings in place, I set up my spools of wire, taped the ends together, attached them to one end of the pull string and began pulling my runs. Pulled about 5 feet extra for each run just to be sure I wouldn't short myself later when branching off the individual circuits. Next was time to run my main feed for the fuse block. This was done outside of the overhead support ribs and attached with P-clips because of the fear of cutting the wire sheathing on the sharp metal edges. 

Feed wire in place; next I installed the fuse block, switching solenoid and the main 100A fuse.

Next to wire the fuse block according to my wire map and color codes.

... Yes, chicken scratch.

And we Spray foamed all the voids with more insulation!

Mess of extra wires and my pull string

Pull string and neat wire bundle inside overhead

Protect them wires!

One of the feeds and twisted bundle

Always pull extra!

Loop for the power buss bar and relay for lights

Extra wire! (5 wire bundle)

Fuse panel

Isolating/combining relay, 100A fused feed & secondary battery. 

Oh and that extra insulation...

~Tim