Follow Our Progress
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September 8th 2003
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We started insulating from the rear of the bus
forward. I plan to start construction from the back of the bus,
and to make it so that I can start building as soon as possible I
thought that finishing the insulation on the back of the bus first would
allow me to work on the next step while Becky continues on with the
insulation installation.
I had wanted to find insulation board the exact thickness of the
metal supports for the wall. IThe foam board only came in 1 inch
thickness, but as it turned out, this was perfect, because I could shove
the foam board all the way up into the channels below the windows.
That happened to be one of the places that I had been dreading
insulating.
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Once Becky and I had the bus insulated up to about the
middle of the bus, I went back and filled in the remaining gaps with
strips of foam board and sealed them in place with a foam gap filler
called "Good Stuff". I wasn't sure if the Good Stuff
would melt the foam or even stick to it, but after testing a bit of it
on a few pieces of scrap foam I felt it would do the job OK.
The sheeting fit up against the wall and was only recessed in
slightly. I am thinking of putting a sheet of foil backed
insulation (1/4 inch thick) over the foam board and exposed metal
supports, but the price of a roll of the foil backed material is pretty
high, so I may have to do without.
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I chose to fill in with the gap filling foam for several
reasons. I was concerned that the foam sheets would shift around
and/or rub on each other and make noise. There were a few areas
(like over the arch of the wheel well) that I wanted to fill in as best
I could, and I knew that I wouldn't get a perfect fit from my freehand
cuts around the wheel wells.
By the afternoon, the gap filling foam was firm and had expanded out
of a lot of the cracks in the foam. I am pleased with the
results. The gap filling foam not only closed up any gaps, but it
also makes the foam sheeting much more stable.
I had thought about tacking the foam to the wall of the bus with the
foam (it is very sticky), but I had concerns that the expanding foam
might push the foam insulation board away from the wall too much.
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Another potential floor plan...
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I had done a lot of thinking about the floor plan over the
weekend and I wanted to see how it looked, so we switched gears and put
the remaining pieces of foam insulation to good use while they were still
around...
The scraps from the wheel wells worked well to follow the curve of the
ceiling.
After we were finished putting up the last of the walls, we decided to
swap the hallway from the right to left along with everything else.
Instead of taking everything back down I just flipped the images here on
the web site to match the current plan, so you may notice that things are
a little backwards (like the writing on the foam board).
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Here's a shot from the beginning of the hallway. The
wall at the end of the hallway is not the correct width. The yellow
chalk mark on the floor (just barely visible in the picture) indicates the
approximate width the wall will be when finished. We shortened the
hallway a couple of times. It's 6 feet long in the picture |
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I don't claim to have the scale of things drawn on the
on the floor correct <grin>. I was just looking at relative
locations. I measured the shower enclosure out at 32 inches.
We found a supplier of mini-tub/shower combinations, but I can't remember
how large they are now. I will modify my designs a little once I
have the specs for them later... |
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