Help leveling a parked skoolie....

[jwilcox-SKO]

Hello friends, so my skoolie has been parked and used as storage for two years but now I want to start using it as an office space. It isn't very level though and I really don't know how to fix this! The nose is probably two feet lower than the rear end. How can I get it up onto blocks (if blocks are even safe for that matter) or raise up the nose/lower the rear without having to buy big heavy duty ramps and/or dig a big hole for the rear tires? I've been at a loss for this for two years but now I really need the bus and need to get this figured out. The bus runs fine so moving it is not a problem. Thanks in advance.
Jamie

 

[Sleddgracer]

Hello friends, so my skoolie has been parked and used as storage for two years but now I want to start using it as an office space. It isn't very level though and I really don't know how to fix this! The nose is probably two feet lower than the rear end. How can I get it up onto blocks (if blocks are even safe for that matter) or raise up the nose/lower the rear without having to buy big heavy duty ramps and/or dig a big hole for the rear tires? I've been at a loss for this for two years but now I really need the bus and need to get this figured out. The bus runs fine so moving it is not a problem. Thanks in advance.
Jamie

you only have to lift the front wheels one foot if you put the rear wheels in a one foot deep hole

 

[gs1949]

Here in Southwestern Oregon, we have to watch out that we don't create a sinkhole from doing something like this, but you might be safer from sinkholes in Texas.

 

[HazMatt-SKO]

Hurricane season notwithstanding...
Sinkholes in FL can be a killer, tho!

 

[jwilcox-SKO]

Well I'm out in AZ now and from what I know sinkholes aren't really a problem here....we did dig out a depression for the real wheels and that helped...we just want to make sure we can still drive the bus out so the hole can't get too deep obviously. So this idea is a great start....still working on it though since it is such a big difference in height.

Tomorrow I will rent a heavy duty jack to see what we can do with the front end.

 

[gs1949]

We had quite a few sinkholes around here this spring, including some fairly spectacular holes in state highways causing multiple injury accidents. The weekend after I brought the bus here to the coast, it rained almost 7 inches in less than 48 hours.

The place where the bus is parked was cut into a sidehill, originally starting with an after school project that went on for a while when my brother and I spent a few hours a week for a few weeks digging with shovels and a wheelbarrow to make a spot to turn around after backing out of the garage. I think I was 14 and he was 12, so that's been a while.

After the big rain in early April I went poking around with a crowbar looking for subterranean holes anywhere near where the bus was parked. I didn't find any, so the bus is still there.

Oh, and I should point out that when I was poking crowbar holes in the dirt near the bus, I was very careful not to make any holes near near enough to the dripline that they got the runoff. That would just be inviting trouble.

 

[musigenesis]

Hurricane season notwithstanding...
Sinkholes in FL can be a killer, tho!

We have those in Philly, too. In the 19th century they rerouted many of the creeks into sewers and then filled the beds (poorly) and built gridded neighborhoods over them. Now the old creeks are reappearing on maps in the form of collapsed houses and streets.

 

[Laeka56]

Would something like this be adaptable enough to work?

Always thought this was an interesting idea. Is it adaptable to your situation?

 

[gs1949]

Here on the Oregon Coast these sinkholes happen near the meeting point of sunami flood plains and the slowly uprising coastal plateau that the flood plains slowly and inexorably cut into.

I've long seen it as life in an earthquake zone. That awareness came onto me rather quickly one Saturday morning in the spring of 1964, when my father forced me to get up early and go fishing with him, on a rock sticking out into the Pacific.

Earlier that morning there were 7, as I remember it, people who were drowned in their tents in a state park about 3 miles from where we were fishing. There was no radio in my dad's pickup, so we didn't know any of this.

What we got hit with while we were out there on that rock was a lower intensity wave from an aftershock. If my dad had not been paying attention to the incoming waves we would have been washed off that rock. He told me to run like **** and I did.

 

[jwilcox-SKO]

Oh my, those look amazing! Now to find someone to build them for me ����

 

[jwilcox-SKO]

Looks like we are going to go the route of digging out a depression for the rear wheels. Plan is to create something gradual so that we can still drive the bus in and out of the driveway. Skips the hassle of having to buy a big jack and/or make tall ramps. So now to hire a laborer who doesn't mind a good big of digging

 

[HazMatt-SKO]

May be easier to install a VTOL system...

 

[Mudhutwarrior]

I cut 3/4 ply and doubled it up wider and longer than the tires to distribute the load.
you can carve out ramps for the back wheels add in the ply to support both front and rear. It will stay put after that. Issue is being able to move it in or out and jacking is a hassle. If its rolled into the slots you make in the back it can be driven or pulled out easily

 

[rumroller]

Have you considered heavy duty swivel jack stands connected to the frame on 4 corners?

 

[david.dgeorge07]

I did jenga style cribbing out of 4x4 lumber closely spaced. Seems strong and sturdy. Each layer is 3.5” of height.

 

[gs1949]

A word of caution for people thinking of something like this. Wood will eventually break down under compression. The spacing for something like this would have to be very close to spread out the load as widely as possible. And all wood is not created equally when it comes to strength. Obviously, the harder the wood the more compression it can stand.

 

[musigenesis]

A word of caution for people thinking of something like this. Wood will eventually break down under compression. The spacing for something like this would have to be very close to spread out the load as widely as possible. And all wood is not created equally when it comes to strength. Obviously, the harder the wood the more compression it can stand.

Worst-case scenario here: Wood Beams - Strength of Material is wet pine at 223 psi, which is 32,000 pounds per square foot. So I'd need to rest my 16,000-pound bus on half a square foot of wood to have a compression problem, and I imagine pressure-treated wood is quite a bit more resistant to pressure than is wet pine. It's true that after some years it would eventually become a problem.

 

[gs1949]

Pine tends to be fairly strong with rot resistance I suppose you could probably you might call moderate or close. Here in the PNW where trees grow fast there are a number of species that are much weaker than pine and much more rot prone. I tend to be overcautious about things like this.

 

[david.dgeorge07]

Wood doesn’t last forever, but using lumber like this is extremely strong. If you don’t do anything obviously stupid this will support a huge amount of weight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_crib

 

[gs1949]

Well, doing "stupid" things is exactly my point. Over the years I've seen several people who I did not think were unintelligent do things related to crawling under vehicles that I personally considered highly unsafe.