Sunday, August 26, 2012

Flooring 1/3 Complete

To my great personal suprise and delight I was able to get a bit done on the van this weekend. I did most of it on Saturday, with only a bit today. Today required a trip to Lowes (they were sold out), followed by a trip to Menards to get a few more panels of Dricore. They also had rolls of Reflectix for $9 off normal price, until September 9th. I bought two for now.

So yes, in the end I went with a Dricore subfloor. It's 2' x 2' tongue and groove OSB with a hard plastic underside to act as a moisture barrier. Intended for concrete basements. Compared to the alternatives it was a pretty expensive route to go but it went down pretty easily and I have to hope that it will have benefits down the road. If not, who cares. I went a slightly different route than normal and I'm happy with that. I used 20 of those for my 11' x 6' space.

That's the first third done. I consider putting a 1/4" underlayment on top of that to be another third. And then the final third will be when everything else is laid out and I put down vinyl planks in areas still visible at that point.

I suppose I should mention that before I laid down the Dricore I removed all the original wall panels and old insulation. The old insulation was often piled up at the bottom and useless. I also removed the AC ducts that were in the walls and put sheet metal over the associated AC holes in the floor. The metal walls with no insulation or panels to cover them really radiate heat in the sun. It was a real lesson for me and now I'm thinking about beefing up my insulation plans.

My van is a 15 passenger so had real wall panels. It's amazing how much taking those off changed the van. It changed it from an old 15 passenger van to a blank canvas. And then to have the subflooring installed. Very inspiring and I can start picturing the rest.

I really wish I had some pictures to show of the work done so far but I don't. Instead I will leave you with some long overdue pictures of what the interior originally looked like when I bought it.


 
 

Sunday, August 19, 2012

A Slow Start

Van things continue to go slowly, if not entirely non-existant.

Yesterday I was able to get most of the items being stored in the back of the van out of there. Sadly, this means my travel trailer now has more junk in it. I still need to find somewhere to put the two bench seats I'm removing. I should probably just get rid of them. Craigslist or free or whatever. I guess there's still enough doubt in my plans that I feel like I should keep them around.

That's basically all I've done. I went around to some self serve junkyards yesterday looking for power window switches for my sister's car. One of them had a bunch of old vans, and even a class B motorhome. It was an old Transvan and it was nasty and scary inside. I poked around but didn't see anything too worthwhile.

Right now I'm researching flooring and wall insulation options.

Oh, I guess I did rip out all the back carpet yesterday. It's been kind of rolled up towards the front for a while but I finally cut it out. I left the carpet up in the cab area.

Anyway, back when I used to own a house the basement would leak when it rained. Basically the slope away from the house wasn't there and the water would pool in the window well and then leak in the window. This caused the entire finished basement to be ripped out. I researched a lot on subfloors for basements back then because I planned to eventually refinish everything. Never did.

I'm toying with the idea of the basement subflooring systems in the van. Simply, they're a layer of dimpled or designed plastic to create air pockets for moisture to evaporate in, and also act as a moisture barrier from the actual plywood on top. I've seen no mention of this on any van sites or groups. I like the idea, especially since I've already been putting  sheet metal down over rusted through holes in the metal floor of the van. My main hold up is not knowing the insulation situation in that setup.

Research continues.