Here is where some actual work starts to happen on the new van.

I know what y'all been thinkin'.   I am going to spend month after month writing about this and never actually get any work done....  Wrong!   

Look at the problem.   Here are a couple of propane tanks sitting in place.   To this height, add some bed frame.   Some bed.   Some insulation on the ceiling.   Pretty soon there isn’t much space left.  The first version of my plan set the bed height at twenty-one inches above the floor.  At that time I thought I needed to build a frame for the bed as well so I was taking three and a half inches out for that.  (Later I was able to take these inches back out, just using 3/4” plywood instead) if I had an eight inch mattress, and two inches of ceiling lost to insulation, from the top of my mattress to the ceiling was going to be twenty three inches.   Not like totally coffin-like but I knew this was less space than my wife would entertain.

The trouble with the low cost propane tanks is they have to remain vertical.  So even though they are twenty inches tall and only thirteen inches wide, you can’t use/store them on their sides due to the way they have to vent.  You can buy special ones, built specifically to lay on their side.  But, they are way more money and I am back into that business of having to get my tanks refilled, instead of doing a propane tank exchange at the Menards/Super America/Kwik Trip across the street.

As a side note I pass this information on just so you can someday win a trivia contest…  Propane tanks have to vent.   They might be cold when they are filled and then a few days later they are sitting in the sun.   The pressure inside them will increase.   If they don’t have a way to release that extra pressure….   Well…   Boom!   They explode.   The reason propane tanks can’t sit on their side is because you only want to be venting propane gas.  The tank has to be built so on a vertical tank, the vent is at the top where the light weight gas is. Not below the surface of the liquid.   On a horizontal tank they are “keyed”, so even though they can sit on their side, they can only sit on one side, so the vent is again on the top side of the tank.  The reason for this is liquid propane gas is only liquid because it is under a great deal of pressure.   If by chance you leak some liquid propane, that pressure goes away.   Well, with no pressure propane expands to it’s various state.  It increases in size by 277 times its original size.  It wouldn’t take much of something expanding at that rate to blow out the windows of a cargo van.  …That’s even before you introduce something like a spark.

To give me more ceiling height what I have decided is I am going to have a hole cut in the floor of the van.

The idea I came up with was to drop the propane tanks through the floor under the bed.   I knew I wasn’t qualified to do this job, I talked to my local auto body shop.   It’s owned by a pretty open minded guy who I have had build me a couple of custom jobs before.   This one wasn’t really in his area though.   Talking to him more I realized the bid he gave me was him subbing out the actual fabrication.   I wanted it built out of heavier grade steel than he was really tooled for.  He was just turning around and hiring that part out.   All done, painted and under coated, he wanted eight hundred and forty five dollars for the job.   Way more than I had in the budget for this task.   He understood when I told him that.   He was contracting out fabrication and marking it up.   He gave me the names of a couple of fab shops he might work with.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of what I was thinking about, I was also considering by lowering the tanks I was placing them inline of the bumper.   In engineering parlance, the “crush zone” of the vehicle.   To counter that, I wanted the enclosure to be built out of a heavy grade steel.   In the event of getting rear ended, the steel should offer considerable protection to the tanks.   Other people mount them higher but they are seldom contained in anything other than plywood and would likely go flying in a crash.   Basically, I don’t think the dropping through the floor design is any worse.  If I am wrong about this, I want it to be said my final words were: “‘Hol my beer and watch this”  

It was really, thinking about that old joke that led to the solution.   Back a number of years ago my oldest son was living at his mother’s house in a gated community of a big city.  Following an argument about a lost TV remote control that descended into violence he escaped to my house.  In the big city he had a couple of friends.  But when he moved out here to the sticks he met his people.  The rednecks.   He never really had fit into the city kid crowd.  The guys with trucks who went mud’n, and had a shop out back, those people he got along with just fine.  So I called upon number one son for his network and because really it was his, “sending me some conversion van photos” that had lead me down this path.

Number one son did not disappoint.  Within a couple of weeks I had a kid with a torch under my van.   I worked this whole deal through my son.  Never actually met the kid who did the building but (small town) I had helped his older brother out a number of times.   He was a great guy!  That’s the way small towns work.  

I marked the rough area I thought the hole should go in sharpie and wrote up the following instructions:

The floor is marked with the assumption that we shouldn’t be cutting through the horizontal frame members.

What I am looking for is to have a basket built to hold the propane tanks.   No reason to sink them more than eight inches through the floor because I won’t be able to lower the bed down more than the width of a propane tank on its side anyway.

I would like the hole cut as far over to the passenger side as possible.   I think that is where I have it marked, but if it can go a little more, that is great.

If it can be moved closer to the back door by cutting the rear frame member and strengthening it somehow to make up for that loss, that would be great too.

I need the hole to be wide enough to turn the tank somewhat on its side to lift it out of the hole.

I would like it to be built strong enough so I might be able to survive a minor rear end collision.  I don’t want the floor or frame to scissor into tank and cut it open.

A couple of vent holes will be required in the floor of the basket.  Propane is heavier than air so any pressure release would just vent out through those holes.

In addition to that, I drew up one possible idea on paper and sent along.   I suggested angling the top rim backward.   He didn’t do that.   I think that is just as well.   It would have been more complex to build and what I have seems to work really great.   He gave me a bill for $48.17 for the steel, I paid him $300 for his work.

Now I have two tanks in place.   I started looking into some way to switch between them.   Initially I was looking at manual control.   The way that works is: “Honey, does it seem kinda cold in here?”   Ah… I have to turn the gas valve switch.   Three way gas valves are kind of expensive.   Maybe around $90 and I couldn’t figure out how to easily and safely place it inside the cabin.   I wanted to avoid having to go outside and open up the back door to manually change it.   Not after I wake up cold to discover this.   No, that wouldn’t be fun at all.

I also looked at just dual tank gas hoses.   I would run both tanks at the same time, I could run twice as long as a single tank but when they are empty they are both empty.   This would never happen at noon on a sunny day.   It would happen in the middle of the night on the coldest day.   I would have to immediately go do two tank exchanges.   I don't know if Seven-11 does them at 3am.   No, I had to have a primary-secondary setup.   

What I am going to do is have a propane valve switch.   I bought mine from a big box lumber yard.  Here is a link to the same thing from Amazon:  Mr Heater Changeover Stage Regulator If you are a Prime member, it qualifies. I could have saved about eight bucks.   ...If I would have known what I was looking for.   Browsing a brick and mortar store, I found it.   The way this works is you hook two full propane tanks to it.   You make the switch point at one of the two tanks and the indicator on the top turns green.   Check back a week later, or two weeks or however long it turns out being (I guess I will let you know) and if the indicator is red, and the switch is pointing half way to the other tank, you know it has switched over to the backup.   There is no interruption in service.   It should be interesting to notice if I hear it switching.  I am a pretty lite sleeper for close sounds.   Anyway, when the indicator goes red, sometime in the next couple of days it is time to walk the empty down the street to the Seven-11 and get a tank exchange.   When I get back with the fresh tank, I will drop it into the basket and hook up the hose.   Switch the switch the rest of the way over to the backup tank.   It is now the primary and the indicator goes green again.   Should be pretty slick.

We are done talking about propane for a little bit.   Lets talk about the bed.

The base of the bed I wanted to be 3/4” plywood.   For this job I wanted to spend the extra money and go for the marine grade plywood.   It is heavier and stronger than just regular plywood.   Made from higher quality wood.   Since I really want minimal support under the bed I thought buying this stronger plywood would keep it from flexing.  Now that the propane tanks are sunk through the floor this was the next height to establish.   

The weather has been, as I described before “warm”.   Upper 30’s.  I let the security guard know I was going to cut a piece of wood in the back parking lot.   Then pulled the van into a spot where they charge the electric cars.   I was able to plug-in there and run some power tools.   It was really a great night for the hearty to be working outside.   I started in a couple of heavy sweatshirts and ended up in a t-shirt.  

What was really strange was I was parked in one of the spots where they charge the electric cars.  I was really expecting the power supply to be much little better than it was.  First off of course, I should admit I picked the outlet the furthest away from the building (and the guard). I don’t know who cut this particular corner when construction was happening, but the voltage/amperage drop at this plugin was horrible.  I had had a fluorescent trouble/work-light and every time I started my jig-saw the light would blink out for a few seconds.  The saw ran slow and had little power.   When I started the circular saw the light would go completely out.   I was sawing by street lamp.   I felt like saying “Quartermaster’s on the take” from the movie _Scent of a Woman_.

Oh look!   An Amazon box!

To get the bed top cut, the first step is to make a template.   I used a cardboard box that I cut on one of the corners to make it flat.   Then, taking this flat strip of cardboard I cut it out so its profile matched the side of the van.   Marking where the support members come down so the bed perfectly fits close to the wall.  When I say close, I mean a tolerance of 1/2” on each side.   You don’t want the plywood to actually touch the metal sidewall or struts.   If it does, it will squeak each time it moves and you don’t want that.  Once you have this template cut for both sides,  then measure between the struts from side to side.  Use this measurement minus one inch (for that 1/2” per side) and place the templates on the plywood.   Mark the template onto the plywood.

Cutting this out I used a combination of a circular saw to cut the longer straight areas.   Then came in with a jigsaw to cut out the struts.   In very short order I had my bed top cutout and ready to place.  I thought the hard work was over.   …It wasn’t.   As a matter of fact that was the dead easy part.  The van tapers top and bottom with it’s widest point about twenty inches off the floor.   It is considerably narrower at the top.   Now I have this plywood cutout.   It is almost as wide as the *widest* part of the van.  The measurement from outside wall to outside wall.   The struts that come down inside that wall, combined, cut three inches off that width.      The plywood is too wide to get in the back door and I can’t put it in and rotate it.   The only solution was to bring it in the side door, then if it was angled 45 degrees.  I had about an inch of play.   It took me, working alone, maybe two hours of struggle getting that plywood worked back the length of the van.   Thirty degrees in a t-shirt felt just fine.

Why do I have a level on the bed?   Because I have been a
house project builder.  It took me a bit to realize I am in
a wheeled vehicle on a sloped parking lot.  You make
things square, not level.   Throw away your level.

Lesson learned, have a friend around for this step.

The other lesson I learned…. Sometimes I really don’t think things through very well.   The insulation I bought is called Poly-iso foam.   It’s a sandwich of two pieces of aluminum foil with an inch and a half of foam as the meat in the middle.  When I was setting up I pulled all the materials out of the van to start work on it.   I leaned all the sheets of insulation against the side of the van.     Then proceeded to climb back in and work for the evening.   While I was working in there, walking back and forth.   Lifting things in and out.   The van was going up and down on its shocks.   Regular foam like I have used before, this wouldn’t have been a problem.  But this, with its metal skin was scraping the paint.   It put an eight foot long burnish mark down the side of the van.   It might buff out.   I will sure try once spring arrives