Thomas C2 toy hauler build with too many batteries

[carleeno]

Build update: odds and ends before SPF

After finishing the furring strips, I went along them with my 4' straight edge and checked for straightness...I found that I had to add some spacer blocks on the 3/8" ply strips in between each hat channel to space them properly from the window deletes, and also had to add spacers on the hat channels themselves where the strips had butt joints to keep the screws from sucking them in at an angle since the hat channel isn't square:

There are a few places where it's bowing inwards towards the living area that I need to fix (probably flip the boards) before spray foam, because once that stuff sets there's no fixing it later.




Got the other roof hatch delete installed (I want to wash the roof before cutting holes for the new skylights)...

...and found a creative way to strap the ladder to the bus:

Finished the front light deletes:

Then decided to scrape off the rest of the school bus decals since I'm going to hopefully start driving it a bit soon now that there's no more plastic covering large holes (to the scale, mechanic, etc)

I'll go back with a rubber eraser wheel later to take off the residue...but I'll let it simmer a while in the open air and hope that it dries out a bit.


I happened to have my old driver seat sitting by the side of the bus...so I scraped this one off in comfort

I figured I'd better finish cutting any holes in the walls/roof before SPF, so went ahead and installed the water fill dish. This is one of the few "actual" RV parts I'm going to use, I'm fully expecting it to break in a few years and at that point I'll make a better one myself. This one at least has a check valve built-in for the city connection, which I'll probably never use.

I love it when dimensions happen to work out perfectly, the split-tank design I'm using means the fittings for the fresh water tank will be directly below the sink, so the fill dish, water pump, and accumulator will all be under the kitchen sink and directly above the fittings for the tank...minimizing hose length.

If I'd used long custom tanks then the fittings would have been about 4' away, under the closet (not where I'd want a bunch of plumbing)

I used some dynaflex ultra to put a bead around each of the 8-way light deletes and along the top of the windshield (removing a valley where water would sit)...I didn't get any pics of it as I was precariously standing on the hood, but it's not that pretty, I'm probably going to have to do some cutting/sanding before painting to get it smooth and flat. I tried filleting it with a tool (and my finger) when it was still wet, but it was skinning over within 30 seconds so it was making a mess with the skin. I guess it's because the metal was warm from the sun, and it was also quite windy and dry.





Today I decided to go ahead and install the diesel heater so I have some heat while working in the bus...but also to help pre-heat the shell of the bus before spray foam in case it's too cold out.


I bought a "turrent mount" that keeps the exhaust heat away from the wood and insulation of the subfloor, but this meant drilling a 5" hole...definitely the biggest hole saw I've ever owned.

My timestamps show well over 30 minutes between those pics...it took a lot of patience (and a tight grip) to cut that out. Finding just the right angle that prevented it from chattering or biting felt like a fine art.


Once installed, it looks like the normal mounting plate from above:

But you can see the benefit of it from below:

I did have to modify it to add the hole and slot for the fuel pump wire, and had to put it at an angle to avoid the weld

Everything fitted up before installing to the floor

I removed the fuel level sender to drill it away from the tank, ensuring I don't get shavings inside, and to get the nut onto the back side of the pickup tube fitting...

The fuel pump is mounted under the floor halfway between the tank and heater (as close to the tank as I could get it, more or less above the rear diff)

After mounting it someone commented that they should be at an angle to keep the outlet higher than the inlet...whoops I'll have to move mine...I'm guessing it traps an air bubble inside and might score the pump over time from lack of lube on the top side.


After quite a lot of priming (I used up all of 15' of fuel line thanks to a long run and gratuitous service loops) I finally had heat!

I really need to clean the roof and get the skylights and vent holes cut...but man I'm not looking forward to that...however I've just about run out of reasons to procrastinate so hopefully I don't report back next week with a broken neck from falling off of a soapy bus roof :wink1:

 

[Albatross]

I love the hatch in the floor; I wish more things were done like that.

 

[nikitis]

A lot to unpack here.

Those hole saw bits are costly but make the job clean.

The roof cleaning and sky light prep. I wanna do all of mine before I do a roof raise because it's already high enough as it is, but I'll add 1ft to that so I'll be even higher and I'm a solid guy.
However, I didn't think I can do it all before because I gotta install the solar afterwards anyway and have to be precise with placement as I only have a 25ft roof. No room to spare. With air fans under the panels too. I keep making excuses to not do the roof raise as it's a big task but I've also run out of things to tackle.

I had a thought to reinstall lights and hook them up to the buses original system as before but use LEDs that I plan to use in the final product but just temporarily mount them to the hat channels for now, leave a loop in the wiring long enough to reach my solar batteries when they go in and then switch them from bus batteries to solar batteries when they are ready. This way I have lighting for now in the bus. The swap would be easy because all I have to do is join the wires from the rocker switch together from the bus panel and those lights will be off of the bus battery circuit and then tie the extra loop I had into the solar batteries to switch them to solar. I may even go further and add additional switches to the circuit so I can always use either bus batteries or solar batteries in case one is dead at any point I can still get light. These are the kinds of things I dream up taking my time in the bus lol. Most people just hook their lights to the solar setup. Why limit them to one system?

The diesel heater, did you make sure your feed tube doesn't go down to the bottom of the tank? You didn't want to be stranded because you used up all your diesel keeping warm. I'm sure you know this. Most will keep their tubes 20% above the bottom so they have 20% of their fuel to get to a fueling station. Also to prevent shavings from going into the tank on drill, have a shop vacuum hose fixed on the drill point when drilling. You'll catch like 98% of it For future reference. Otherwise good installation.

 

[carleeno]

I love the hatch in the floor; I wish more things were done like that.

It's nothing special, I just kept the original hole. It's in the garage portion of the bus anyway, so I don't mind a metal hatch in the floor there.

 

[carleeno]

A lot to unpack here.

Those hole saw bits are costly but make the job clean.

Yeah...I bought the cheapest one on amazon, and I'll eventually have a 2nd heater so it ended up being $16 per heater...compared to the cost of everything else it's not bad. But yeah a heck of a lot better than trying to cut a circle with the cutting disk or shears.

The roof cleaning and sky light prep. I wanna do all of mine before I do a roof raise because it's already high enough as it is, but I'll add 1ft to that so I'll be even higher and I'm a solid guy.
However, I didn't think I can do it all before because I gotta install the solar afterwards anyway and have to be precise with placement as I only have a 25ft roof. No room to spare. With air fans under the panels too. I keep making excuses to not do the roof raise as it's a big task but I've also run out of things to tackle.

The biggest tip I can give you is start solar shopping now. Prices are going to go up Jan 1st, and you'll see deals come and go...there are many different sized panels, the ones I bought are 74 x 41 which work perfect for me, but maybe not for you. As soon as you find the perfect size for you at a good price, order them (I didn't the first time and they were gone the next day).


Then once you have your panels, your measurements can get locked in and you can start cutting holes etc.

I had a thought to reinstall lights and hook them up to the buses original system as before ... Why limit them to one system?

For now I'm just using a magnetic work light I can stick anywhere...but I'm also tempted to install temporary lighting.

In the end I'll have all my 12v stuff running to the power hub in the garage...but I'll have a feed from the coach battery running back there as well, so I can flip a switch and power all of the house 12v from the coach battery if needed. At least then I'll have lights and vents for while I fix whatever went wrong with the house system.

The diesel heater, did you make sure your feed tube doesn't go down to the bottom of the tank? You didn't want to be stranded because you used up all your diesel keeping warm. I'm sure you know this. Most will keep their tubes 20% above the bottom so they have 20% of their fuel to get to a fueling station. Also to prevent shavings from going into the tank on drill, have a shop vacuum hose fixed on the drill point when drilling. You'll catch like 98% of it For future reference. Otherwise good installation.

I put it just below the fuel level sensor zero point even though I know most people put it at 1/4 tank or so (and my big rig had it at 1/4 tank). It's high enough not to pick up crap from the bottom of the tank, but low enough to hopefully never see air...


The reason: priming. I don't want it to loose prime every time I drive the bus below 1/4 tank. And the heater uses such little fuel compared to the massive 100 gal tank I have, I'd have to be parked using the heater for a month to worry about running it out of fuel.

Rather than it suddenly stop working when low, and loosing prime often, I'd rather tap into the fuel level sender and integrate it into my monitoring/automation system to alert me when the fuel reaches a certain level, and command the heaters to turn off at another level. That's definitely a later phase project...but for now I'll just be conscious that I'm not parked for a long period with a low tank.

 

[nikitis]

There's gotta be some sort of one way check valve that you can use to prevent having to prime it over and over.

 

[carleeno]

There's gotta be some sort of one way check valve that you can use to prevent having to prime it over and over.

Technically the pump is a check valve. However any small air leak between the pickup and the pump (or a bad/cheap pump that has a leaky check valve) will allow it to loose it's prime over time, accelerated when the end of the tube is exposed to air.

In my bigrig it never seemed to loose prime, but that was an espar made for heavy usage.


I imagine if I'm lucky it won't loose prime occasionally driving the fuel level below the pickup tube...but again I'd rather minimize the chances....plus if I'm camping for a few days at 1/4 tank and need heat, I'd definitely loose prime when it starts sucking in air and runs dry.


But yes I'd still recommend most people leave some fuel in the bottom of the tank below the pickup tube...I'm just different

 

[carleeno]

Build update, cleaning shop and cleaning roof


I kept finding creative ways to put off cleaning the roof, including about 8 hours across 2 days of reorganizing all my tools, materials, and cleaning out the bus so I can drive it without stuff going everywhere...

I really need to go ahead and get a proper tool cart and cabinets which will eventually install in the bus's workshop...so I can stop using plastic shelves and camping tables lol.


I don't have a before pic, but it was downright embarrassing as it was getting impossible to even walk through the bus without tripping over something.




Then after I ran out of "reasonable" things to procrastinate with, it was 3pm, warm, and the shade was starting to cast so I figured I'd finally climb up on the roof and see if I can get any of the crud off...

I started scrubbing with about 3:1 water/simple-green mix...and it wasn't looking good. I was using a very stiff deck scrubber, and having to put as much weight into it as I could to get it to dislodge the big black spots. But it was still a dark mucky mess...


...until I hosed away the first section

I couldn't believe how good the paint looked, and that it wasn't getting scratched up by the deck scrubber!


But man it was back breaking work scrubbing each 30" section for about 10 minutes each...I was wishing I had a pressure washer already.


At this point I was wondering if I'd be done before sunset

By the time I got to the back I was getting legitimately worried I'd loose my balance and fall from exhaustion...but in the end it was one of the most rewarding/satisfying sights to behold

(I didn't mean for that last pic to look like an ad, complete coincidence that the bucket and bottle are perfectly facing the camera lol)




Last but not least, in celebration of a clean bus and roof, I decided to drive it (for the first time since buying it 2 months ago) to the scale 10 miles away to weigh it.

At about 16k lbs it's a bit heavier than I thought it would be, but still tons of headroom till the 31k lbs gvwr.




This is including the window deletes, subfloor (and floor insulation), and furring strips. A quick calculation estimates 500 lbs of lumber and insulation, another 200 lbs for me and misc, that means the bus would have been about 15,400 lbs at it's lightest (assuming the window deletes weigh the same as the windows...but I think the windows are a bit heavier). I removed 1200 to 1500 pounds of seats and interior metal panels, so the bus is still lighter than it was from the factory.



My ratings are 10k/21k steer/drive axles...so I think this does confirm that I want my water tanks as far forward as possible, and my steers still shouldn't be overweight when it's all finished, and leaves maximum payload capacity for the garage in the back.




Anyway, that's it for now...next up: cutting new holes in the roof and then eating way too much food :biggrin:

 

[nikitis]

A pressure washer helps but you still need a scrubber. I even managed to take paint off of mine with the pressure washer. Had to primer spray those spots.

I do like a shiny roof over a silocone'd roof. You'll want to install solar panels soon after cleaning because it will get dirty fast just from dirt floating in the wind. When you do solar panels be sure to leave you enough room for a brush to go under them or you'll have to unmount the panels everytime you wash. Something to consider.

Also did you get any leaks after washing the top inside the bus?

 

[carleeno]

A pressure washer helps but you still need a scrubber. I even managed to take paint off of mine with the pressure washer. Had to primer spray those spots.

I do like a shiny roof over a silocone'd roof. You'll want to install solar panels soon after cleaning because it will get dirty fast just from dirt floating in the wind. When you do solar panels be sure to leave you enough room for a brush to go under them or you'll have to unmount the panels everytime you wash. Something to consider.

Also did you get any leaks after washing the top inside the bus?

No leaks except from the windows which arent fully installed/sealed.


I don't think I'm going to paint...or bother cleaning it under the panels, I'd rather they be low profile, and if I can't see it it doesn't bother me that it's dirty lol.



I just cleaned it this time for the purposes of sealing it up cleanly. The dust that blows on it can just be wiped off wherever I apply sealant.

 

[carleeno]

Build update, cuttin holes

Tuesday I started out with the plan to cut out all the new holes in the roof for vents and skylight, but it took me half the day just confirming exactly where some of the walls would meet the ceiling to get the location of the skylight exact.


It turns out this is a lot harder on a C2 because the walls are curved...so everything has to be dimensioned at the floor then projected up. Luckily the bus was sitting level left/right so I could use a plumb bob for that...and I could use the hat channels for fore/aft measurements.


I also then needed to trim back some of the furring strips that I left long just in case, and came up with a full game plan of how I'd frame in the skylight. Once that was done I finally knew exactly where the hole should go. I triple checked my measurements then got started...


First up, had to cut away the minor supports with an angle grinder (too thick for the electric shears, ugh). These have a dab of epoxy in the middle, and it's just to keep the roof panel from flopping in the wind. I'll replace the panel with 1/4" pc, so no need for these supports anymore.

At this point I'm starting to realize just how big this skylight will be, and I decided to make it continuous and cross between the shower and the hallway. I may do a frameless plexiglass shower door and this way the space will feel a lot bigger.

I drilled holes at the corners and halfway points from inside using my lines, then went up top to tape out the outline of the cut (using the tape as the marker, but also to protect the paint)

I was about to start cutting from the top, then realized it's so big that I'd be much more comfortable cutting from below, however I couldn't get the shears right up to the hat channel where I needed to cut, so I started with a rough undersized hole.

Then I could pop up through the hole on a step ladder and trim it to the line

I think it took me 15 minutes to make all the cuts, plus a bit of time for drilling. Also I learned that my 7/8" step bit is WAYY faster at creating a starting hole for the shears than a hole saw...but it sends metal shavings absolutely everywhere.

Man I'm loving how big this is, did I say that? :biggrin:


For now I just taped some plastic over it until I get the PC sheet in. But finally the bus no longer feels dark inside from only having 7 windows.

The next day I went straight at cutting again...the locations for the vents were easier to get right (well the bathroom vent has to fit under one of the solar panels, so had to double check the panel placement).


The main vent fan will go up front where the old passive vent is.
More of the same, tape it off, drill holes, and nibble the panel out.

I had to modify the vent flange to accommodate some rivet heads.

Why put it so close to the rivets? Well I needed it to be as far forward as possible so that my solar panels will fit without overlapping the skylight...and I'm literally dealing with fractions of an inch.


Fan installed with butyl tape underneath, screws, and eternabond. I have to say, I'm liking this eternabond for simple straight edges to seal.

For the bathroom vent fan, I'm using the maxxfan dome, it's a 6" round radial fan...only because I just don't have room for a 14" cutout since the skylight takes up most of the bathroom ceiling. Plus the dome fan fits under a solar panel easily (it needs 4" above the roof to open, and blows air out sideways, not upwards)




Btw, based on my past experience with MaxxAir, these 2 vent fans are "RV parts" that I don't expect to crumble or fail in a few years... They're still a lot of plastic, but everything is UV coated and just plain quality.

I'd say this is about the smallest circle you could cut with these shears, I was having to twist pretty hard.


Fan installed with just butyl tape...I'll go back later with some dicor, I just don't have any on hand yet.

I also went ahead and spray painted the hatch deletes since I decided not the paint the whole roof. I only masked enough to ensure the eternabond bonds eternally...I don't care about the rest of the overspray since it's all covered in panels eventually...if I wanted the roof to look good I'd paint the whole thing anyway :wink1:

I still need to seal up the rest of the seams on the roof, but decided to let the paint fully cure on the hatch panels first. I still have the grey tank vent to do, but still not fully sure of it's location or how I'll cover it. I want it to be sleek, and it'll likely run up the wall behind the fridge, but that means it'll pop out on the roof at the tightest curve on the side of the roof. Or I might run it out the wall just below the gutter since there are no windows nearby.


The other thing I realized while installing the vents is that my solar panel installation is going to be a little tricky. Basically to get the panels to fit, the unistrut will need to extend a bit over the skylight sheet (not over the viewable area, just the overlap). This means I need something like the s-5 solarfoot to space the strut above the roof by at least 1/2" (but those are pricey).


I also need the middle of the panels to be 1.5" above the roof, so that the dome vent has enough room at the side to open underneath the panel. If I put the strut channel in 10-12" in from the outside edge of the panels, it needs to be about 3 1/4" above the roof. I could do this with the s-5 feet and 2 7/16" deep channel strut, or normal depth strut and spacers below the panels themselves.


Then lastly I need to minimize the distance the panels take up fore/aft along the bus. This means that the typical mid-clamps used for panels are adding 5/8" gap between each panel and that's costing me several inches along the bus. I feel like I could bottom-clamp the panels...actually as I'm writing this I took another look at the spec sheet and manual for the panels, they have mounting slots on the bottom flange in the perfect position! It's going to be tricky to reach in there to tighten the bolts, but not impossible. I could potentially pre-thread the hardware and slide the panels onto the strut from the gap at the skylight, then only need to reach in the gap to tighten it the last bit with a box wrench.




Lastly if anybody knows of a good place near Charlotte NC to buy some 1/4" (nominal) polycarbonate sheets I'm open to recommendations...shipping a 60x30 sheet is expensive as heck.



Anyway, that's it for now, have a happy Thanksgiving y'all!

 

[carleeno]

Build update, Odds and Ends before spray foam

Howdy! It's been a long week since the last update, but honestly not too much has happened (aside from buying a new-to-me truck!). It's definitely a case of making sure all the little things are ready before spray foam, and it's getting down to the minor details which seem to take the longest.




First thing I did was play with...um I mean test fit my new cameras to figure out where they should mount so I can finish making holes before SPF.


I decided to use the existing hole for the stop sign wires, as it was a great position for the camera anyway, and meant I didn't have to figure out how to fill/patch that hole later.

This meant for the right side I needed to remove the Thomas logo.
First I cut away the chrome logo using windshield cutting wire. Then the ol' rubber eraser wheel made quick work of the adhesive foam behind the chrome.

The included grommets were handy, but I don't expect it to be that weatherproof, so after painting I'll reinstall the cams with sealant as well

Rear and front cams mounted rather easily

I went ahead and replaced the marker lights with the new low-profile ones I bought so they wouldn't be in the way of the cams.


The front cam is roof mounted so it has the highest vantage point of the front as possible, allowing me to see obstacles directly in front of the hood that I might not see from the driver's seat. It's still not perfect visibility, but is good enough for dash-cam + security.

Here's a nighttime shot, the low-light + IR works fantastic, even in the distance on the front cam

The camera quality looks excellent during the day as well, but the phone was refusing to get a representative picture of it.






While mounting the roof cam I realized this bulkhead in the upper storage bin was easily removable with some screws, no epoxy for a change!


Before:

After:

Now there's considerably more space up here, and easier to get to the front panel to insulate it. You can see the line where the bulkhead used to sit.

Next up was to rough-in a bit of plumbing and electrical that had to be embedded in the spray foam.




First up, grey tank vent. There's not really room to pass it through to the roof, so I'm sending it out the wall as high as possible (while leaving room for an awning if I eventually do that). It's not near any windows, and it's grey, not black tank, so I think it'll be adequate.

A 3" elbow will attach to this and plumb down through the floor behind the fridge. My composting toilet is on the other side of the bathroom wall from the fridge, so it will also Y into the vent in a way that the powered air flow of the toilet should create a venturi and help promote air flow out the tank vent.


For now it's good enough to mask it for SPF




I had a tiny bit of pex to run across the ceiling from one side to the other. If you recall back to my floorplan, I couldn't make a layout work that kept all the water on one side, so the shower (and water heater) is on the passenger side, everything else on the driver side.


I ran 2 hot lines in case I decided to add a recirc pump for instant hot water at the kitchen sink.

Clamping the pex to keep it away from the (potentially freezing) outer metal skin was challenging. Down low it was easy to use the hangers as intended, but up high there was nothing substantial to screw them to in any accessible orientation. So I came up with a way to use them just as spacers, one on each side of the radius, and it worked perfectly

The zip ties are just to keep them from splaying open from the force of the pex trying to migrate to the metal skin.


For now it's just poking out of the bottom of the wall, as the lower portion of the plumbing can run over top of the insulation.


All in all I'm pretty happy with how much gap there is between the outside and the pex, I was worried about running it through the ceiling for a potential freezing risk, but I think as long as the bus is a decent temperature inside, the pex being so close to the inside edge of the insulation will keep it above freezing.




Electrical was fairly simple, I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't lock myself into a mistake by running any wire before insulation, so I just went with a few boxes and conduits where it was absolutely necessary to embed an outlet/switch box in the SPF on an outer wall.

All DC circuits will run up top along the original electrical raceway. All AC will run along the bottom of the wall. In the above pic is a lightswitch box (left) and AC outlet (right).




Where the high voltage conduit runs behind thin furring strips I added a nail plate to make sure I don't send a screw or nail into 120v in the future

That's just scrap metal from the skylight cutout :biggrin:





Here are the kitchen outlets:

The left outlet will be GFCI, and supply the right outlet which will be a USB combo outlet. The junction box below will be accessible after insulation, and will just serve to adapt the romex to thhn to run up to (and back from) the GFCI outlet.




Another minor thing was to put down some of the interior framework around the wheel wells so I don't have to trim bunch of spray foam back to add these later.

Lastly, though not strictly necessary before insulation, I wanted to finally seal up the roof now that the polycarbonate arrived for the skylight.


I went with 1/4 spectra glass polycarbonate, I found a heck of a deal on some from a FL supplier thanks to an error on their website. I called them because I couldn't check out (the price was too good for the cut-to-size calculator so I couldn't check out) and they gave me a decent discount on the sheet and shipping to try to get close to the price I saw online. Turns out they knew about the issue, disabled the cut-to-size pages online, but missed a page that I found by chance, so I wasn't supposed to see that broken pricing lol.




To start I pre-drilled through-holes in the sheet itself after carefully measuring for exactly where I wanted the screws to go (through the hat channels on both sides)


Then I positioned it on top and dry-fitted it with Teks so I could clean out the metal shavings before adding sealant.

Then I pulled it back off, cleaned up the panel and roof, and added butyl tape

Reinstalled with the tape, peeled off the upper film so it doesn't rot in the UV and permastick to the skylight, I left the inner film as it won't see much UV, and it will make masking for spray foam a bit easier.


Finished up just in time for a dusk shot with the light from inside making it glow

The next day I set out to finish the roof (minus solar) by installing a couple of cable entry glands, one above the electrical closet for solar, and one up front for starlink and possible future light bar, then sealed everything up with either dicor or eternabond.

I may come to greatly regret using eternabond. I thought it'd be easier/cleaner than squirting dicor everywhere...but it actually was time consuming to install it cleanly, and the screws will create wrinkles no matter how hard you try to smooth/stretch it out. That said, I found a trick to greatly minimize wrinkles by the last strip I put on the skylight, but I sure as heck wasn't peeling up the others to redo them


Is eternabond overkill for this?
Yeah.


Am I going to hate myself in the future when having to replace something under it?
Probably.


Will I ever worry about water ingress through the roof?
Definitely not




I'm hoping I can chill a bit next week before SPF, all that's left to do is remove some of the old 12v wiring that's in the way of the custom window frames, mask out holes for the marker light wiring using cut paper towel rolls and rock wool, and clean up the bus again (it's shocking how quickly it gets to a state of complete disarray).


Assuming that only takes me a few days, I'll have time to do something relaxing, like, idk, maybe replacing the timing belt on my new beater truck :biggrin:

 

[DanFrazoo]

I like the camera set up!
I used eternabond on a pop up remodel earlier this year. Your application of it looks much better than mine and that is some impressive smooth application you achieved.

 

[carleeno]

I like the camera set up!
I used eternabond on a pop up remodel earlier this year. Your application of it looks much better than mine and that is some impressive smooth application you achieved.

Thanks! But I think it's just a case of the camera making it look better than it is by hiding wrinkles from a distance. Notice the lack of closeup pics lol.

However it's waterproof everywhere, as there are no "open" wrinkles that would let in water, so it's "certified good enough" :wink1:

 

[carleeno]

Build Update and Happy Holidays!

Hope y'all are having a swell time for the holidays and eating plenty of delicious food!


It's been a few weeks to catch up on, it had been both chaotic and frustrating thanks to the spray foam guys, but finally back into the swing of things.




Back to the week of Dec 9th: I was mostly ready for spray foam. I had decided not to do any masking ahead of time as I wanted to defer to the installer's expertise on masking specifically for closed cell spray foam, I figured he had all kinds of tricks and I didn't want to have to redo a bunch of it.


So I decided to start on the custom window frames so I could figure out if the masking would need to account much for the new frames and potentially mounting the windows higher to improve the sight line.


I've had a Shaper Origin (a handheld CNC router) since the very first preorders shipped, and hadn't had a project for it in a couple of years, so I was eager to break it back out for this. A CNC would be ideal for the job given how oddly shaped and precise these frames need to be.


I started by jotting down every single dimension I could possibly measure from the old frames, which wasn't easy given that everything is based on not a straight line, but a very subtle arc of about 1/4" bulge over 35" span. Then given the new frames would be part of the interior frame, I bulked it up a lot for strength.

I decided to cut them out of cedar boards, but to start with I'd do some test cuts on some scrap OSB I had leftover, as I figured things weren't going to fit right on the first try.

First assembly went together surprisingly well

This was a 2 sided operation so I had to cut a negative to locate the flipped piece into and cut the other side.

I ended up ditching the curved inside surface and went for a flat surface later so I could just probe the piece directly after flipping it and not need to cut a negative to place it in.




The next day I woke up to return to the windows and realized I totally forgot about raising them up higher, so back to CAD to tweak the design slightly, and back to my electric shears to cut down the aluminum header of the frame so it can slide further up into the wall cavity without binding against the curve of the roof.

Then I took a piece of 2" aluminum angle to fill in the bottom of the window opening. Although it's only filling in about 1", it actually raises the window nearly 1 3/4" because of the way the lower frame sets on the wide ledge instead of hanging over the original thin metal wall.

Then I decided to cut the next piece out of cedar, I felt I was mostly done tweaking the design and wanted to see if I had any issues with the cedar itself. The tricky part is getting the top of the workspace with shaper tape on the same plane as the board. I ended up using this white paneling as a spacer to bring the 3/4 osb up to 7/8 to match the cedar board, plus the tape sticks to smooth surfaces much better. Normally the shaper would be cutting large pieces of plywood etc where the tape is placed on the pieces it's cutting, so doing it this way requires lots of care that nothing moves/flexes while cutting or it's accuracy drops a bit.

At this point I'm starting to get pretty excited about how good these will look.

The exterior surfaces will be painted black, and I'll probably leave the inside surfaces raw or a minimal finish that keeps it fairly light.




Here you can see how it sits on the aluminum angle, it perfectly straddles the aluminum and has a bit of overhang on the outside

There's an overhang on the inside as well, and the interior gap in the bottom frame matches the 2" angle so perfectly that it doesn't move/rattle at all.

You can see the top of the window glass is much closer to the metal chasing instead of having several inches of aluminum window frame at the top getting in the way of seeing the horizon when standing.




I also tweaked the window stop holes positions slightly so that it would perfectly fit a window fan, as this is the fan I'll use in the workshop when I'm not using the A/C

With 1 window frame prototype finished, I took a couple of days off before spray foam, which had been delayed yet again to start Tuesday the 17th.




The Spray Foam Frustrations:


I'll do a quick flashback to when the owner of Koala in Hickory came out to quote insulating my bus. He said something along the lines of "we've done buses before, this is no problem" and "we'll do 2" all the way down and it won't require much trimming".

The wall cavities were about 2 3/8" to the surface of the framing at the thinnest spots, so I figured that gave them +/- 3/8" of tolerance to work with to achieve an average of 2". Also the quote specifically said "...an average of 2"..." (emphasis mine), so I'm sure you can imagine where this is going.




The installer arrives, and to break the ice, the first thing I ask him is "let me guess, buses suck don't they?". He smiled and nodded, then I asked him why they suck and what I can do to make it suck less. He said that he's only done 1 bus before "and it was a disaster" (his exactly wording).


Ok at this point I should have just cancelled it and bought a tiger foam kit...but I stuck it through, I figured with my problem solving and his experience that we could make this work. Also when asking him more about why the first one was a disaster, he said it was one of his first jobs ever and he just didn't know what he was doing. That was 3-4 years ago though so that helped regain my confidence in him.




So then I asked him if it would help him greatly if I quickly removed the left/right furring strips in the ceiling and just left the fore/aft strips so he had more room to spray. The strips I would remove were all below the trim line anyway so no extra trimming should have been required to put them back. He said it would be a much more even spray if they were removed, so that took me all of 10 minutes to number them and take them down.




Then as it came to masking I asked him if he had any advice on how to mask where the wires come through the walls, and he was just blank, this was clearly beyond his experience of homes/warehouses where any wires would be in conduit that just gets locked into the foam. So I went with my idea of taping up rock wool in those spots to create a mask as well as a cushion-y insulated area for the wires to tuck into.

He masked the windows, cab, and vent fan while I worked on masking all the little fiddly stuff, and I noticed his masking wasn't nearly as thorough as I would have expected (lots of untaped gaps around the edge of the plastic) so I went back and added more tape where I could...but this gave me the impression that indirect overspray must not be that bad (lol)

All ready to spray, by this point having worked together on prep, and having talked about related experience of working on high pressure polyurethane foam machines at a previous job of mine, he was comfortable letting me be in there with him to take a couple of pictures (myself wearing a proper respirator of course)

I think it took him 2-3 hours to spray in total (with a couple of breaks included) and at the end I popped back in to see how it looked, and man the disappointment was setting in big time.


The first thing I noticed is the foam was clearly not up to the 2" mark of the backside of the furring strips for many/most of the sections sprayed. I asked for his depth gauge and started poking around to find 1 1/4", 1 1/2", and a few 1 3/4". But on average it was less than 1.5". I talked to him about it and he agreed he sprayed short, he was super scared of going over.


I also started looking closely around the furring strips themselves, because I noticed when he was spraying that he wasn't spraying behind the strips before closing them in. So after a bit more poking I discovered that most of the furring strips had massive voids behind them, usually inaccessible to spraying in more foam. But with lots of metal exposed to condensation, with a small gap allowing a drip path down through the wall, this was definitely a major issue that needed fixed.


We talked about potential solutions to both of these issues, he also called the owner who said "do whatever it takes to make it right".


Their first suggestion was to try to fill all the voids with canned foam. That I quickly refuted, as canned foam is not an insulator, also not made for filling closed cavities (single component foam needs exposure to air to cure) and also it would be impossible to properly fill the cavities with canned foam through a straw while blind to the void.


His 2nd suggestion was to just seal off the gaps. I reminded him that some of the metal is unpainted and would rust if left uncovered, even if sealed off.


So what we decided is that (the next day) we'd have to trim back the foam next to the voids to expose them, and spray them properly. And that'd he'd also bring the thickness overall to 2" if I could go around with spray paint and mark the panels that were thin.


So the next morning before he arrived I took the depth gauge and marked each panel with it's current thickness so as he was spraying he'd know how much to add.




The next morning we break out oscillating tools to start cutting away the voids and he quickly decides that he actually can spray in many of the existing gaps to fill the voids. So, after only cutting away just a few, he gets started spraying again. Now my gut feeling is that all he did was seal them off and not actually fill them, but at this point was getting tired of arguing over this issue and just want it to be done. Boy I had no idea of just how far from "done" we were (foreshadowing)

After spraying a 2nd time, it looked decent at first glance, but then when we started scraping we saw the problem...

Look closely at the foam next to the board I'm scraping, it's not just a little over, it's significantly over.


It went from being less than 1.5" on average to almost 3" on average. Now it needed a ton of trimming so that I could fit the ceiling and wall panels in the future.


At the end of the day we had only scraped the boards and tore down all the masking, but all the trimming still had to be done. He called the owner again who told him to go on to his next job, and the owner would come out the next day to trim.


As a side note on the above, I learned that the company wasn't doing well financially, in fact not doing well at all...so at this point I realized he couldn't afford to pay his employee holiday overtime to get behind which is why the owner was coming to do the trimming.


I also quickly learned that this crew doesn't have the big saw that's normally used to trim closed cell spray foam, and that their M.O. is to spray short so they don't have to trim. I get that when spraying a house with 2x4 walls going .5" short is not a significant loss of r value, but when filling a 2" cavity, .5" is 25% less, and I wasn't asking for a 25% discount, remember the quote said "...an average of 2"..." rather than "...up to 2"..." which would have been more accurate.


I'm going to greatly condense the rest of this story...basically it took a week of several revisits from the owner, each time he'd spend a few hours trimming the foam with a disc sander, say he's done, and then I have to call him back because it was nowhere near done! Like still .5" past many of the furring strips. I realized he was either blind, stupid, or malicious; I couldn't figure out which, because whenever we talked he was super nice and kept saying "no problem we'll take care of it and make it right" but then when I wasn't there he'd stop well short of finished and call it done.


After a full week had passed I just had enough, and just wanted it to be done. So I put about 20 hours into scraping, edge trimming, and eventually bought a power hand planer to trim down the bulk (that worked so much better than his stupid disc sander) and cleaned up.


This whole thing was a nightmare, and I definitely feel stupid for not deducting pay for all of my hours from their payment, but again I just wanted to be done and not have to deal with them ever again.


In the end, it's insulated...

The door

After the insulation was done I started carving out more window frames, but at about 2 hours per window I was finding myself needing breaks to keep from killing my back (pushing around that router is not easy)...so one of my breaks was to finally figure out what's going on with the sagging entrance door.


The thing that baffled me was that there were no screws/bolts that I could see anywhere to remove the door, just rivets. So finally I deduced that one of the metal plates I was looking at must just be a trim piece and not structural, so I drilled out it's rivets and voila, mounting blocks lie beneath!

I took down the door with the help of a jack...

The door hangs from this block via a thrust bearing and bolt:

You can see why it's sagging, the pin is slowly slipping out of the door

I thought I'd be drilling out a broken set screw, but no, it's epoxy?!?!?!

Yep, at the factory they insert the pin then pot it with epoxy to hold it in place...I think they must be high from all the epoxy fumes they're sniffing because this just makes no sense.

The hole was below the pin, and just a place for them to squeeze in the epoxy.


I drilled a new hole through the pin itself and added a screw (just something I had lying around) to keep it from sliding.

I did the same to the other door and now the doors finally are hanging at the right height and can close all the way now!




Meanwhile, I finished cutting out all the window frames:

Now just to clean them up, mask and paint them, and I'll be ready to rebuild my windows and finally install them with sealant and have a watertight bus for the first time ever

 

[nikitis]

"Bruh, I'm just here to spray bruh. I don't care about all of your "Calculations"".

lol. This is what the sprayer was thinking.

In all seriousness though, and to be blunt. There isn't any spraying company who is going to spray your bus correctly to the specifications you were expecting. I know you did specify you needed 2 inches, but they can never guarantee that their sprayers will be accurate enough or that the foam mixture is mixed well enough to be that accurate.

It simply cannot be done.

The expectation should be that if you care about the specific width of foam to have them do 2 in minimum with overspray, and simply expect to have to shave it out after the fact. They won't want to shave because they want to do the smallest amount possible.

Also with today's work ethic from most people the owner probably has an impossible time keeping employees that have to breath through a breather for 2-3 hours at a time in a hot hazmat suite. Nobody wants to do that job much less be yelled at for things that will be out of their control regarding accuracy. The employee likely told his boss I'm done with this job, you handle it or I'm done working here.

I'm not saying you were in the wrong in ANY way other than your expectations of what would happen. I don't know how to spray foam fully personally, but I WILL be doing my own foam when I get to it because I want 2.5 Inches minimum, not 1.5 or 1.25. And I fully expect to be shaving the whole thing as a result as well.

I'm glad you got it done, but when I read your post, I see 2 things wrong. Your expectations of the lengths a spray company will go through to the job right, which is minimal to null, And the spray companies expectation of how serious you were about the thickness of the spray foam because most spray jobs as you said do underspray. They do this to save on material costs, it's not about safety. They don't want to have to go buy another tank for 1/8'th of it's use as that eats into their profits and it's very easy for a company like that to go over budget with material cost and they don't make any money when they do. The job is practically breaking even or losing money if they go over. Not your problem, but it is reality and exactly why you observed what went down the way it went down.

Can you tell me more about what tool you used to shave it because I'm going to be there soon

 

[carleeno]

Build Update: catching up


I've been slacking on posts...but also I'm realizing it's probably better to do smaller bite-size posts than long novels, so I'll try to get back to small posts twice a week, and I'll just keep each post to 1 topic (even though in reality I'm constantly bouncing around doing different things)




Windows are finished!

This definitely took longer than I realized it would take, but after probably 2 cumulative weeks of making window frames, cleaning up the original window parts I'd reuse, painting, sealing, installing, more sealing...it's finally done!




The frames I cut earlier with the Shaper Origin got a coat of exterior paint (just on the exterior surfaces)

First test fit after painting:

Notice the left and right sides of the bottom glass have light shining through...this is from where the glass used to be sealed to the plastic frame and I needed to fully scrape the old sealant off and paint a black border before re-sealing it to the wood (the paint is just to give it a clean line)


From inside the frame is mostly wood, in the near future there will be top and bottom pieces to match the cedar, and maybe even a cedar vinyl wrap on the middle bar, but not sure about that yet.

Then it was time to disassemble all of the old windows so I can take inventory of each part's condition, to use the best parts I have from 14 windows (20 total, but the other 6 were different styles) to make up the 7 windows I'm keeping.


You can see how eager the plastic frames are to break... and piling up the glass and aluminum bits to sort through

I went with the Krylon fusion that's supposed to adhere to anything, including glass. I cleaned everything with mineral spirits first to remove any oil/grease

I didn't paint the inside as I want to cover these bits with wood and vinyl, but you can see the sides of the glass have a nice clean edge from the paint on the other side.

Painted parts staged and ready to assemble

Used brand new weatherstripping on the windows, found really nice flocked glass slider stripping from Steele Rubber that's only about an hour from me, and added some small rubber weatherstripping where the slider glass meets the fixed glass when closed to augment the original felt stripping (which I also replaced)

And the same piece of rubber weatherstripping added to the top bar where the slider window inserts to when closed

The windows definitely take some force to open and close now, but it feels nice, and should hopefully wear in nicely.


I added a bead of dynaflex ultra between the fixed glass and wooden frame, it cured fully black eventually, this picture was taken when it was still wet...

Then installed the windows, adding aluminum spacers under the windows to raise them higher so that it's easier to see the horizon while standing up. Holding the windows in place while going outside to position the spacer was interesting...

I don't have a good picture of this, but the bottoms of the windows lock perfectly against the aluminum angle spacers, preventing the bottom from moving in or out, and the top of the window is also in a channel between the outer skin and the inner longitudinal support channel...so once installed, the only direction the window can move is upward (with a little bit of in/out play at the top).


So to secure the windows to keep them from bouncing up, or rattling around, I used screws through the support channel and pressed into the upper window frame like a set screw, 2 on each window.

As the screws dig in, not only does it prevent the slight in/out movement at the top, it prevents the window from moving upwards (which is the only way to remove it).


The screws are easily accessible from inside the channel, just have to move some wires out of the way...and I plan to keep all of the channel accessible behind removable trim as I close it in.

Yes it's unorthodox, but all of the loads are minimal, and using screws acting in compression (as a set screw) is not unheard of.





Finally, I sealed between the frames and the bus body using more dynaflex ultra on one of the few warm days we had recently, and it should be plenty cured before the rain coming this weekend



I also took this time to seal the edges of the window deletes as well.


By the time I got halfway through my tooled beads of sealant were looking super clean...

But I didn't bother to tool the upper bead, I just squeezed as much as I could up there as it was a bit hard to get under the gutter. This bead will only see indirect water from road splashes etc, or if it's extremely windy, as it's up underneath the gutter.

And wow what a different it made to finally have the big gaps sealed up...along with some improvements to the door seal the bus is starting to become air tight (the maxxair fan doesn't move any air if I close all the windows and door now). Now it stays very cozy inside while working with minimal heat needed.

 

[carleeno]

Build update: solar panels!

I was getting tired of the solar panels taking up space in a storage unit, so even though I don't really need to use them yet, and ideally you keep them out of the sun until you do need them, I was ready to get them mounted. Plus there's not much direct sunlight in the winter here so a few weeks probably won't cause any degradation.




I used S-5! SolarFoot to mount the unistrut to the roof. The screw spacing of the solarfoots (solarfeet?) perfectly spanned the flanges of the hat channel, so I could mount everything directly to the hat channels and not risk the thin sheet metal.

They are a bit pricey at $5 - $6 per mount plus shipping etc, so I figured 2 mounts per panel would be good.

Once I did the install I wished I had ordered enough to just install at every hat channel location. In the end it seems solid enough though, but this is something where overkill is good, and I didn't overkill it.




Solarfoot has butyl tape already applied underneath, in a nice little channel to ensure its not over-compressed. Most of these mounts ended up going over some eternabond I had already used to seal the seams in the roof panels, so that added to the sealing a bit...then I used spots of Dicor over the screws.

The mounts have a m8 stud and are supplied with serrated flange nuts. I added a washer to bridge the gap of the slotted channel, which partially or mostly negates the effect of the serrated flange nuts, so I added locktite to the threads as well, as used my small impact to really tighten down so that the slot edges would dig into the washer preventing it from spinning, which helps the serrated flange nuts do their job again.

Here you can see the absurdity of what's about to happen, in order to fit >= 3kw of solar panels, and still leave room for 1 skylight (for headroom in the shower) and 1 vent fan up front, I had to have half of a panel overhang the rear...

The next morning I swept the roof, pre-installed the nylon cone nuts, and was ready to start hoisting panels up...

My dad had a few hours to help in the morning, and since the forecast was for no winds, the goal was to just get all the panels up and sat roughly in place while I had help.


The first 7 panels went like this: I had a table made from sawhorses, 2x3s, and OSB set up behind the bus. We'd set a panel on that table leaned up against the bus...then my dad would stand on the table to help lift it up to me. Each panel was 50 lbs so not bad to lift, but still awkward.

However the last panel had to be set in place without any room to stand on the roof, so this was pretty awkward. There probably would have been a better way to do this if we had more suitable ladders, or moved the bus, or weren't in a rush because my dad had to leave in 10 minutes, etc etc. But in the end I knew my safety limits of what I could handle, and this was within that limit, just barely haha.


Here's the full ordeal if you want to see the struggle:

Once it was up in place and I was solo, I threw some clamps on the end so that there was no chance of it sliding off the edge while I reposition everything.

Bolting them down was going to be an ordeal, so first things first was to wire them all up and check that the voltage was as expected (I tested each panels voltage before hoisting them up)


Yes that's 325 volts, my EG4 inverter/charger/mppt combo unit is rated for up to 480 VOC, and it's efficiency sweet spot is 320v. Bonus is that running all the panels in series meant that I had less resistive losses and could use smaller gauge wire.

Now, I had ordered these panels when they came on sale because of their dimensions, they offered enough wattage without sticking too far out the sides (they're 74" long, but the tapered walls on the bus makes the panels seem like they're sticking out further than they are) and with a width that allowed me to fit exactly 3 panels between the skylight and the forward vent fan (which was positioned as far forward as possible)


What this meant is that I couldn't have a gap between the panels to use T-clamps. So, I had installed the unistrut at the exact width to catch the mounting slots provided on the bottom of the panels. Not a fun job, especially not in sub-freezing temps.

Here I used the normal stack of bolt, split lock washer, and flat washer. I could only get an open end wrench on the these bolts, and could only get 1/6 of a turn at a time. I think I spent 3 hours bolting down all the panels, partially due to spending the first hour getting all of the panels aligned with each other as well as with the slots and unistrut.




The next day I took some pictures in the sunlight, you might be able to see that the panels took a slight curvature from clamping down to the angled unistrut. It's not enough to worry me, but a bonus is that water won't pool in the middle

I left the front channels long to provide a mounting option for starlink and who knows what else in the future.




The bathroom vent fan is a maxxair dome, and it opens up under the panel, also pre-calculated :biggrin:

And the rear overhang makes for a nice bit of extra shade. The total length of the bus is 39' now, it didn't really add as much as it appeared to, also because the rear wall is slanted forward as well.

At one point I intended to mount the rear 5 panels on a slider system so that while in transit, they'd slide forward covering the skylight to avoid the overhang, then slide back when parked to open up the skylight or provide shade on the rear porch. However for now I'm just keeping it simple and solid, I could potentially still add a slider system in the future if I really felt like it.

 

[nikitis]

I like those struts used for the panels. If I wasn't planning on building a deck with solar slides I'd have considered using what you are using. It's light weight but sturdy enough.

Rather than having the final panel hang off the back, why don't you build a slide out panel so it slides out when parked, but when driving it slides over the top of another one? I'm worried you're gonna back that thing up and your panel hit something.

The Maxxair in the rear on the side is what I need. This is what I was talking about earlier how the maxxair fan you have in the front gets in the way of the panels. I have less room than you do on the roof. I want two fans, but I may go maxxair domes. Can those dome versions vent in either direction? I need one intake and one output.

 

[carleeno]

I like those struts used for the panels. If I wasn't planning on building a deck with solar slides I'd have considered using what you are using. It's light weight but sturdy enough.

Rather than having the final panel hang off the back, why don't you build a slide out panel so it slides out when parked, but when driving it slides over the top of another one? I'm worried you're gonna back that thing up and your panel hit something.

The Maxxair in the rear on the side is what I need. This is what I was talking about earlier how the maxxair fan you have in the front gets in the way of the panels. I have less room than you do on the roof. I want two fans, but I may go maxxair domes. Can those dome versions vent in either direction? I need one intake and one output.

In my last paragraph I touched on the slider idea a bit...but I'll elaborate more here...
I'd need to slide all 5 panels over the skylight because I can't cover just 1 panel since they're all wired in series, it'd really hurt production and possibly overheat the covered panel. It'd also add unnecessary height. I was going to have all 5 panels slide, but the overhang is only 12" past the rear bumper, and less wide than the bus, so the risk of it hitting anything is extremely low with a basic sense of situational awareness (which yes I'm aware not everybody has that)...so to save time, complexity, and cost, I decided to leave it fixed for now. Engineering a system to allow them to move yet be stable and lock into place at each end is not trivial.




Maxxair domes can only vent out, not in, its a radial fan. They also don't move much air, enough for a bathroom, not enough to cool half of a bus.


For my rear shop fan I'm using a window fan as needed (the shop/garage also has it's own small minisplit going in), not sure if I posted about it but it's this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D7KBHJY2

I wouldn't leave it in while driving, but by drilling new stop holes in your sashes you can get it to secure pretty well in place between the upper window and top frame. And it moves a lot of air and is quiet...downside is it needs A/C power.