Follow Our Progress
|
|
September 15th 2003
 |
Today was not as productive as I had hoped that it would be. We
spent the entire day trying to insulate and make the ceiling a little
more attractive using the existing ceiling panels...
We took down a few of the sections of ceiling from the back of the
bus and removed all of the insulation that was there. It was in
pretty good shape, so I'm still not sure how much benefit we will get
from the switch from fiberglass to foam insulation, but for some reason,
I was convinced by all of the on-line "must insulate to the Nth
degree" crud... To me I don't see how it could make THAT much
of a difference, but it appears to be popular consensus and I don't
claim to be any kind of expert on insulating materials...
|
 |
After we filled the ceiling in with foam insulation and sealed it
with expanding foam, we went shopping for something better than the ugly
metal strips that came with the bus to hold it in place. After looking in just about every department, the cheapest thing that
we could find was some plastic joining strips that were made for joining
sheets of wood paneling together. Everything else was $100.00 +
dollars for the amount we needed.
|
 |
We bought $20.00 worth of the plastic strips, some foam padding for
extra insulation (and for the ceiling panels to sit against),
new sheet metal screws and another can of "Good Stuff".After trying to get the plastic strip to hold the roof for over 2
hours, we finally gave up on it. The ceiling sections were so far
apart that we couldn't get the plastic strips to stay on both sections
long enough to screw them in place. The ceiling panels are just
too sloppy to fit right with the panel strips.
We ended up starting over and put back all of the old metal strips
that originally held the ceiling in place. It was quite a let
down, but we'll work around the existing strips until we come up with a
better solution. In the mean time, we'll return the plastic
stripping that we didn't use and move ahead with insulating the rest of
the roof. We don't have time to goof around all day trying out all
sorts of possible solutions, so we'll come back to it later on. |
The bus is getting so messy. I think that tomorrow I'll spend the
morning cleaning up a bit. It's getting hard to walk around in there with
all of the tools & supplies and appliances. I'm going to need some
room to maneuver the shower in there at some point. We are having a heck
of a time finding a 32"x32" corner shower. We may have enough
room for a 36" shower, but it would be tight and I have no idea how we
would get it through the doors of the bus. Maybe we should stop at the RV
supply store again and see if they have something that might work in place of
the corner shower unit.
|