New beginnings - My skoolie build

[Ninjakitty]

Buying a FL bus was a matter of logistics for me.

[PNW_Steve]

I bought my bus, with no rust issues, for a bit over $3800 on www.govdeals.com

Some additional sites:

422 Sales
Www.purplewave.com

[Ninjakitty]

I ended up paying$1750 at the auction.

[consti2tion]

I can sympathize with the heat man.. we aren’t motivated to get out there every weekend lately either. We did coat the roof with Henry’s Tropicool last weekend so hopefully that will help. Ordered some plumbing parts earlier so hopefully will get the black and grey tanks mounted soon, along with toilet and tub.
Also got some cabinets from my dad, going to try to get some of them into the bus.

[jjhwick119]

Originally Posted by consti2tion

I can sympathize with the heat man.. we aren’t motivated to get out there every weekend lately either. We did coat the roof with Henry’s Tropicool last weekend so hopefully that will help. Ordered some plumbing parts earlier so hopefully will get the black and grey tanks mounted soon, along with toilet and tub.
Also got some cabinets from my dad, going to try to get some of them into the bus.

Now that I have my license plates, Insurance is next and them im legal to drive, and I'd love to meet up with ya sometime soon! (waiting on money to get insurance. went broke on vacation)

About to go out to the bus and see it for the first time in 3 weeks. Going to put license plates on and probably remove school bus letting finally. Then going to take a stab at the interior and see if I'm going to be moving stuff around. I'm really wanting to get the bathroom (toilet and shower) at the back but gotta figure out where everything else can go and what to do with the bed.

[Ninjakitty]

Hey, just a quick sketch, but could this work? If your doing a garage in the back you could scoot it forward. I had wanted a van at one point and had thought about this set up for a van. It could work for you maybe? Could even open back door for fresh air..

That's a queen sized bed in the sketch

[jjhwick119]

Originally Posted by Ninjakitty

Hey, just a quick sketch, but could this work? If your doing a garage in the back you could scoot it forward. I had wanted a van at one point and had thought about this set up for a van. It could work for you maybe? Could even open back door for fresh air..Attachment 23336

That's a queen sized bed in the sketch

I think that could actually work...Ill play around with that while im out there. All my frames are secured together, and only attached to the bus with about 2 screws, so they are easy to unbolt and move around for this reason until I was completely sure about location. Have to re do the bed and cabinets slightly, but I'm okay with that. Only thing im not sure about is where the wheel wells will line up if I push everything forward

back door will be for the garage, but I did want an emergency exit window by the toilet for ventilation on nice days

[jjhwick119]

Or I could just put the toilet in the shower....i wanted a seat in the shower anyway because I'm 6'3"...then I'd have the extra room up front without changing anything.

[jjhwick119]

So this is my new rough sketch on some scrap wood. Not completely to scale but close enough

It's not a complete revamp, and most of what I've built already won't need to be altered much for this.

I killed the closet right in front of the bed and pulled the fridge back there to sit on the wheel well across from the pantry. The shoves opposite are very close the edge of bed so you can take one step on the floor and then other leg goes over the bed to get by, so I'm going to make it angled instead of square so there's more room to get to the back. Going to put the toilet in with the shower and make it a few inches longer, nothing significant. That freed up over 4 feet of space on the right side, so I'm moving the oven over and having a small counter space by it, and then pulling the sink and lazy Susan back, gaining me an extra couple feet up front.

This wasn't completely necessary to do honestly, as I didn't gain much, but now I have extra room to play around with where to put a heater.
Since I'm going to keep the bed in the back, I still have to wonder how well the mini split up front will get the air to me, but I assume a fan to circulate the air should help with that

[jjhwick119]

So one of the other builds in our RV lot is close to me in progress, but further along. I flew through the build and actually passed them, but with 3 weeks off they got back ahead of me. He came out the bus last night say hi, and I asked him to hop in the bus to compare heat between the two.

We both have international 11 window buses, mines high headroom his is not. He has plywood on the walls with more windows blocked than I do, and a completed ceiling with pickets from the home depot, where my ceiling is still uncovered. The big difference? He left the original insulation in the roof, and I ripped it all out and put in XPS foam board.

His bus gets hot as hell and when he comes out to it he turns on the vent fans to air it out before working, but I can get out to the bus and open a couple windows and just start going. SIGNIFICANT NOTICEABLE difference in heat just by spending the extra 3-400ish dollars for foam board insulation. If you've got the money, spray foam would be an even bigger difference I'm sure, with noise as well.

We talked about it for a minute and he is now kicking himself for not doing it.

tl;dr - Insulating the bus pays off. don't skip this step!

[jjhwick119]

Worked on bus a very tiny bit, just framed in the angled shelves for my clothes. You can the edge of the bed and how tight it was before, the angle helps out a bit.

Spent most of my though on a different project. I'm making some crib mattress porch swings for my mom and her neighbor. My fabrication skills primarily was building customer enclosures and trunk builds for sound systems in cars, so furniture is a but different. Been a fun project. Got 1 basically done, just gotta mount 2x4 rails on the top

[RevyRev]

Originally Posted by jjhwick119

So one of the other builds in our RV lot is close to me in progress, but further along. I flew through the build and actually passed them, but with 3 weeks off they got back ahead of me. He came out the bus last night say hi, and I asked him to hop in the bus to compare heat between the two.

We both have international 11 window buses, mines high headroom his is not. He has plywood on the walls with more windows blocked than I do, and a completed ceiling with pickets from the home depot, where my ceiling is still uncovered. The big difference? He left the original insulation in the roof, and I ripped it all out and put in XPS foam board.

His bus gets hot as hell and when he comes out to it he turns on the vent fans to air it out before working, but I can get out to the bus and open a couple windows and just start going. SIGNIFICANT NOTICEABLE difference in heat just by spending the extra 3-400ish dollars for foam board insulation. If you've got the money, spray foam would be an even bigger difference I'm sure, with noise as well.

We talked about it for a minute and he is now kicking himself for not doing it.

tl;dr - Insulating the bus pays off. don't skip this step!

Do you know if he used Henry’s Tropicool on the roof? Did you?

[jjhwick119]

He has original white roof, I have original yellow roof

[cycle61]

Nice to get a direct A-B comparison like that, thanks!

[jjhwick119]

Yea it is. I haven't been in his in awhile but it's not the first time he's commented avout the heat differences.

Finished up my porch swings too, just need to be sanded, painted, and hung.

Going back to the bus tonight to try and do some work. Not sure what, but I'll find something to do. Maybe finish framing in the shower and some cleaning is probably necessary too, haven't done that in awhile

[jjhwick119]

I just read on another thread that a solid wood platform for the bed isn't a good idea due to possible condensation buildup under the mattress.

Any second opinions on this? First time ever seeing this stated, one other person agreed to it, but I don't ever recall reading that before and thought I had seen a lot of people have a solid piece of wood as their platform

[Ninjakitty]

If you use a piece of plywood, you need to drill vent holes in it so that the underside can breath. Or you can use a waterproof mattress cover and not worry about the holes as the cover will prevent the mattress from collecting moisture

[PNW_Steve]

A few years ago I put a memory foam mattress on a solid wood platform. After about 18 months I moved the mattress and found the bottom had big mold spots. It was nasty.

I replaced the solid platform with a slatted base built from 1x4s spaced 4" apart.

No more problems.

In all fairness, this was in the Seattle area and moisture issues are not uncommon.

[jjhwick119]

Alright, well good to know! I will keep this mind now.

Good to get some work done on the bus after so long. Got the back wall separating living space and garage put in and built in the small closet above the bed that pokes back into the garage. Underneath that is where I will build my electrical cabinet. Also got the main wall of the bathroom up and cleaned up a bit! I'll hopefully start having regular updates again soon

[consti2tion]

Originally Posted by jjhwick119

Now that I have my license plates, Insurance is next and them im legal to drive, and I'd love to meet up with ya sometime soon! (waiting on money to get insurance. went broke on vacation)

About to go out to the bus and see it for the first time in 3 weeks. Going to put license plates on and probably remove school bus letting finally. Then going to take a stab at the interior and see if I'm going to be moving stuff around. I'm really wanting to get the bathroom (toilet and shower) at the back but gotta figure out where everything else can go and what to do with the bed.

For sure man, that would be awesome. I am going to finally get some time to get back out there and work on the bus, unfortunately there just isn't enough time and when it's this hot it is extremely hard to motivate myself with it when I'm out in the heat most days.