Shop, Power and the First Night

So as I told you in the previous installment, I have come into the access of a full wood shop.  This past week I confirmed with my friend his offer.   It was good.  I could use his company’s shop after six pm.   This is an amazingly huge bit of good fortune to my project.  I had done some of the initial building in my work parking lot, but the electrical outlets were so weak they couldn’t run my power tools.  The shop is about two thousand square feet.   Heated with a big hanging furnace, it was warm and toasty inside.   It has several 4x8 rolling tables to lay things out on.   It is setup with a Table saw, panel cutter, a *SWEET* Dewalt double bevel sliding compound saw.   (I would have loved to have had something like that through all my various house projects.)  The shop has a rollup door so I can drive right in.  Perfect in every way.

The project is really starting to ramp up.   I can tell this because each Friday I come home to a stack of boxes, all labeled with Amazon Prime.   If Amazon boxes are showing up at your house, it has to mean you have something going on.  This week the pile contains the furnace, main circuit breakers, shore power connector, the inverter and a few other miscellaneous parts.   Our family has been debating springing for Amazon Prime for over a year.   It has been this project that pushed it through.   The shipping on all the parts will easily cover the subscription fee, so we are members.

I also got four batteries purchased.   Sometime this week or next I will show you what I calculated I needed and why I purchased the batteries I did.  But for now let it be said I found two good options for buying the Trojan batteries I had picked out.   First off, they were expensive on Amazon and the shipping was killer.  …Go figure, they didn’t qualify for free shipping with Prime.   So I started looking for local dealers and I found two.  One in the same city, one from sixty miles south.   The one out of town was $25 per battery cheaper.   I figured though, I can’ drive this gas sucking van down there for free.   I ended up buying from the place in the city.

I really went there thinking I would buy six batteries.   As it turned out I walked out with four.   The sales guys really encouraged me to take time to figure out what my real electrical use was and how much I can charge.   They felt like for up to a year after the initial purchase you can add batteries.   According to these guys however there was some limit on this.   They said after about a year, if you add batteries into an existing system, the new batteries you add will suck up the charge easier.   The older batteries will no longer take a full charge.   It will lead to a prematurely short life of the older batteries.  I would think if I go the refrigerator route, my maximum use will be this summer.   I should have a pretty good idea fairly shortly in how my batteries are going to hold up.

So yes, things are being purchased.  But the real news is there has been some more progress.   In fact, here I am…  About to sleep in a cargo van for the first time in my life.   You know, life throws you some crazy-assed shit once in a while.   I have to admit, this was *not* in my five year plan a few years ago.   But you know, I just have to roll with it right?

The other thing I really feel like I must admit, I am cheating.

It is technically true I am sleeping in the van.   But, the van is  sitting inside a heated shop…  I have all the van doors open and it is nice and cozy.  Lets call this a trial run.

You have to kind of picture this.   Here I was, I had a 2-1/8” hole saw all mounted up in my Milwaukee drill.   I am standing there, looking at the spot where I need to drill the hole.   Hovering the bit about two inches away.   I am thinking…  “I just bought a vehicle and I am going to drill a two inch hole into it’s body.   THIS is about the weirdest thing I have ever done.”  But after a few moments, “…yeah, I am doing the right thing.” and “…Yeah, I have already double checked four times, I don’t need to make it five,  this is the spot…”  I finally went for it.

Sadly it didn’t totally work out for me that night.   I asked the hardware store guy when I bought the hole saw if it was “Bi-metal”   The label was a little vague on that specific feature.  Of course he told me “they perform similarly”  <sigh> Ah well.  I think the only way you could really imply it performed similarly is if you are referring to the fact that they both cut round holes.  But by all other performance measures it sucked.

Hole saw, sawzall and many other types of cutting blades come marked “Bi-Metal” or un marked.   (Except now I find this Hardware Hank grey area) The unmarked ones are fine to cut a few dozen holes in wood for a weekend project in new lumber.  It’s like they are disposable.  They are a lot cheaper but get dull fast and are only made for cutting wood and plastic.   The bi-metal blades can cut steel, like the body of my van.  They also last a lot longer when cutting wood.   If you are doing rehab construction you can cut through nails.   So the money you spend on a bi-metal blade won’t go waste.

What happened the first night was my bit cut in for a few revolutions but got dull very fast.   I tried to switch to the inside and drill out to see if I could sort of burn my way through.   What happened is in fairly short order my hole saw didn’t have any teeth left and I wasn’t half way thru the van body.   This project got put off to the next night.   Once a new bi-mental bit was purchased it was about a fifteen second drilling job to complete it.  

All of this hole cutting was for mounting the shore power port.  Shore power is a take off of a nautical term, where you pull your boat up to dock and can plug in.   The same thing happens with my van.   I will be able to pull into a camp site, pull out a power cord and plug the van in to charge it.  I mounted the power port with four, 3/4” self tapping sheet metal screws.  The port itself is a 30amp twist lock connection.   I could buy a 30 amp heavy gauge cord to plug straight into the port and most campgrounds offer 15 and 30.  Maybe someday if I have too much money I will buy one.   I don’t need that much juice but with the twist lock feature no-one will trip over it in the night and accidentally unplug me.   For now though I purchased a 15 amp (what y’all would consider a normal sized three prong) adapter cord.  This will allow me to use a heavy gauge 50ft power cord I already own.

The finished shore
power port mounted on
the back drivers corner.

I don’t really need that much power in the van.   About 90% of the time the only thing I will have running is the charger/inverter.  It’s job is charging the deep cycle batteries.   From time to time there will be some heavier gauge appliances such as a waffle maker or The Wife’s flat iron.    Fifteen amps will be plenty of power.

Last week when I was over at Craigie’s house he was saying to me “Hey what you should do is stud this out, wire it, then just spray foam the whole thing.”   I told him that doesn’t seem to be what people are doing but I had to be honest and confess I didn’t really know why.   When I had some time to kill the next day I did a little looking around on Google.   Here is the answer.  I am going to have about an inch and a quarter of insulation on the side walls.  The spray foam, like “Great Stuff” has an R value of 3 per inch.   So I would have just over that.   The rigid pink (or sometimes blue depending on who makes it) foam insulation has an R value of 5.  The real winner is Poly-Iso (polyisocyanurate) foam.   It is foil lined on both sides.   The foam has a R value of 7.   Plus the foil, if you have an air gap (it isn’t touching the van’s outer skin) will add a couple of more.   I think I will have a gap because of how I will apply the foam.   I will do more checking into that later and get back to you.   Where expanding foam really excels is in old houses.   So for Craig’s work, expanding foam is perfect. The foam absolutely stops air infiltration.   I don’t have to worry much about drafts when I am living in a steel box…

My body has been trying to decide if I am coming down with another cold again or not.   So I was taking it fairly easy tonight.   I got the van unloaded and some stuff stashed in a back corner of the shop.   That was almost an hour long job right there.   The past couple of weeks of working while at the same time having all the building materials in the van was very difficult. It felt great to get everything out and get the van cleaned up.

Earlier tonight I cut up some of the 1-1/2” poly-iso foam.   Just to make it easy on myself I cut a small chunk that I measured to fit into the floor of the under-bed storage area.   Then two four foot by four foot chunks I was able to easily handle.   I first brought in one of the 4x4 Poly-Iso 1-1/2” foam boards and put it down on the floor as far back as it would slide.  It butts up to the bed frame.   I pushed it against the drivers side wall.   In my van, about every twenty inches, I have a metal strut coming down from ceiling to floor.    What you want to do is cut out the pattern of the struts in the foam.   Allowing the foam to conform to the wall profile.  You don’t have to be exact.  When I get the floor all laid down I will go all around the edges with expanding foam.

Once I got the driver side done I pulled it back out and then did the same on the passenger side.   This side is more complex as well.   There is the cutout for the side door step.   Here I pushed the limits of “you don’t have to be exact”.   I got sort of off at the wrong angle cutting the round part for the step.  The expanding foam will have to pull its weight in this mistake area.   It should be just a matter of filling in the gaps and then having another go at cutting it to the radius.  Putting both of these sheets in place left me a gap of about a foot in the middle.  I cut another strip and wedged it into place.

That was it for work on this night.   I cleaned up the shop and called it a night work-wise.   Another night I will glue the insulation panels down.

Wire for the solar panels also arrived this week!

Right now though I am sitting where I am going to be sitting at the end of my day.   Actually I guess, now that I think about it, doing what I am going to be doing at the end of my day.   It is interesting being here.   Thinking about how this is playing out.   Imagining how I am going to use this limited space.   Sitting here  right now, here are some of the things I am thinking about:

We have always been thinking in terms of pillows.   I should consider how this wall I am leaning against could be contoured just a bit.   Maybe have some built in padding so fewer pillows would be required.   Just a thought anyway.   It can’t really cut headroom of the sleeper so maybe it wouldn’t work out.

Today I got a idea about how to build the table and how to support it’s legs.  When I am installing the final flooring, I will build some square holes into the floor.    The holes will have a rare earth magnet glued into the sub-floor.  I will have a couple of square blocks with either magnets or metal washers glued into them.   On the tops I will find some brass pull fittings.   Something that will just sit flush with the floor when they are closed.   But, open them somehow and you will have a handle to pull the block out of the floor.   Blocks should have some storage area in the table.   They would have a tendency toward lossage in a lived in van unless they have a home.  

Pull the blocks out of the floor, raise the folded table up and the table legs drop down into the holes.  The legs need a brace a floor level.    They need another brace at top.   Legs are drilled through at the top, and a sturdy brass rod passes through them.  The legs should fold against the tabletop and the whole thing drop into the down position.   I would like there to be a base built into the wall that would have a cup holder in the top.   It will have enough room against the wall to hold a folding chair.

The tabletop will be red stained maple like the end tables we have in our office.   For me, this is my kitchen table.   It has to be sturdy.  It is going to have crap piled on it.  It could have heavy pans on it some day.   It will have me typing from it.    I see it being built out of one inch lumber.   The hinge on the end of it needs to be sturdy as well.   Not a barn hinge exactly but maybe a very heavy duty music wire?   It would need to have screws that went in an inch or more.

The remote attached to the table will mimic these LED
display and switch functions on the inverter.  

Some thing I am wondering about, do I want to have the DC fuse panel inside this area?   I need to place this panel someplace accessible.   What really needs to be in this area though is the remote panel for the power inverter.   This panel shows the battery voltage and if the batteries are charging or not.   It allows me to turn off the inverter, so all voltage is applied to charging the batteries.   Or, to a “DC Off” setting, meaning the inverter will run when I am plugged in, but will turn off when I unplug and head down the road.   These are read-outs and switches I will use often.   I think mounting them in the table base will be a great idea.

Tomorrow I need to text my furniture builder neighbor, Tim about a table design.

Sitting here and looking around I realize I have one other job coming up I am really not looking forward to at all.   The wiring harness for all the brake lights, tail lights turn signals etc is inside the cabin.   I need to move it to inside the unibody frame.   I know that is going to be an ugly job with a chance of failure.   I will have to cut the wires and make sure I have them labelled up well enough I can hook it all back up again.  I don’t foresee fun.

And a final though as I am packing up for tonight, I wonder if we shouldn’t have wall paper on the back side of the bed.   A while back The Wife sent me a photo or Pinterest link to a van that used lath strips inside for wall design.  Maybe this would be the spot for that?   Kind of like a headboard?   Painted (pink?) underneath white slats?

Good night fair readers.   I turn off my shop light and bed down for this big night dreaming of a project being complete.