Drivers seat/ area

[OJjourns]

Hey, my girlfriend and I are trying to decide what to do about the floor where the drivers seat and that whole front area is. We plan on framing the floor only from the stair line to the back and maybe just putting some plywood down and not insulating? What did everyone do for the front area of their build? Does it matter if we insulate that part?? Would love some ideas!

[BarnYardCamp]

you should consider insulating that area, or at least install some sound deadening material. Buses are noisy, I've got mine where I think we will be able to have a normal conversation while driving.

[musigenesis]

The front of your bus by its very nature will already allow a large amount of heat transfer (and road noise, for that matter) such that it will not make much of a difference whether you insulate under the seat or not. I built an insulated bulkhead wall with its own insulated door 2' behind my driver's seat, and then just used plywood without insulation on the cab floor forward of this wall.

[Oldyeller]

I plan to use commercial grade, closed cell foam floor matting on the floor of the entire interior. It came out of my martial arts school. Each piece is 40" square. It should provide insulation, padding and sound deadening, I just don't know to what extent. If I don't like the look, blue, I may look into some kind of natural fiber rug, jute or sisal, to throw down on it. Given my situation this seems like the best approach with the triple whammy, fast, cheap and easy.

[TheHubbardBus]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

The front of your bus by its very nature will already allow a large amount of heat transfer (and road noise, for that matter) such that it will not make much of a difference whether you insulate under the seat or not. I built an insulated bulkhead wall with its own insulated door 2' behind my driver's seat, and then just used plywood without insulation on the cab floor forward of this wall.

Agree on the red, but not on the blue.
We're going to great lengths to insulate (sound + thermal) the front of our bus specifically because it's so poorly insulated in stock form. Far from done but I believe this is going to be one of the best things we did in terms of reducing noise / heat. We've already achieved excellent results with noise reduction elsewhere.

Here's what we did with our driver seat base. I would not have gone through this trouble if we weren't doing anything else to insulate the cab area, but since we are it's important.

https://www.skoolie.net/forums/f27/m...tml#post464272

[Mat7783]

I left the rubber matting in place and framed with 3/4 plywood and decorative tin sheeting on the sides to give some contrast.