One of the problems with having ADD is that I rarely do things in the order I should. Several years ago I built a large set of shelves in my home office to hold all my videogames. I really hate painting, so I decided to do all the other steps first. I designed the shelves, bought the wood, assembled the shelves, and filled them from floor to ceiling with videogames and old consoles. By then it was too late to paint them, and the shelves remained unpainted for the remainder of the time we owned that house.
And so it was with the van. Putting up walls and insulation seemed difficult and boring, so instead I built a bed and a desk and hot the road. “What’s the worst that could happen without walls or insulation?” I asked myself. I discovered the answer to that question while lying on that bed and looking up at my metal ceiling which was covered in icicles. Camping in the van was bearable in the spring and fall, but without any insulation it was essentially unusable in the heat of summer and cold of winter. When the first bed I built broke and the desk I was using fell apart, I had to pull everything out of the van anyway and used that opportunity to do things the right way and put up walls and insulation like I should have in the first place.
The video I linked to above was a real pain in the butt to put assemble. Most of the clips were recorded prior to our trip to West Virginia. When I pulled all the video clips into a single folder, something weird happened — the filenames were all mixed up, and the dates and times had all been reset. I had a problem with a cheap GoPro battery, which I think is what caused the problem. The end result was approximately 70 videos that had to be sorted and put back in order. Worse, I found a day’s worth of video clips were missing. I considered trashing the entire thing more than once, but as I mentioned in the video itself, the knowledge I’ve acquired for essentially every single project I’ve attempted to date has come from YouTube, and it didn’t seem right to take so much knowledge from YouTube and not give anything back. I did my best to make a cohesive video, and I hope the footage helps somebody someday.
If you’re looking for exacts facts and justification as to why I used the materials I did, this probably isn’t the video or post for you. I used sound deadening on the walls because I had some laying around the workshop, and I’ve seen other people use it. I used Reflectix because I had a large roll of it. The effective of Reflectix is highly contested. It requires an air gap or barrier to work most efficiently. Opinions range from “it’s a mandatory layer” to “it’s a complete waste of time.” As I already had a large roll, my opinion falls directly in the “couldn’t hurt” category. I’l stop short of recommending it and just say your mileage may vary. On top of the Reflectix I put sheets of Styrofoam insulation that I purchased from Lowe’s. Finally, to hold this insulation sandwich to the wall, I added 1/8″ wood panels. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand all the ins and outs of insulating a van. My approach was similar to how my mom used to dress me before I would go out to play int he snow as a child. If multiple layers worked in that instance, I figured it couldn’t hurt inside a van. The only thing I’ll add is that there are proven better forms of insulation including sheep wool and fiberglass rolls. If you are a fulltime vandweller, you should look more seriously into better insulation. I’m a fair-weather weekender and won’t been camping in extreme weather conditions.
The key to my installation was the use of furring strips, which I continually mispronounced as “furrowing” strips throughout the video. Furring strips are pieces of wood used to level a surface, so that approach made sense when adding walls to the van. Based on measurements provided by my wife (who really got this project off the ground), we attached the furrow strips to the thicker parts of the van’s wall (making sure screws would would not go through the wood and the metal and pop out through the wall). So, the sound deadening and Reflectix went up against the outer wall, the foam insulation filled the space in between the furrow strips, and the sheets of wood attached to the furrow strips (and in some cases, into the metal).
While editing this video I was reminded how much better everything looks through a camera lens. When inside the van all I see are all the little seams that don’t exactly line up, the screws I tried to hide, and the parts of the van that, for now, remain exposed. The camera is very forgiving, so if all the cuts I made with the jigsaw look completely straight and all the pieces of wood appear to exactly line up, you can think GoPro for much of that.
the elephant in the room is that the van’s ceiling is still unfinished. I have enough wood and insulation to finish the ceiling, or at least get started, so I’ll probably tackle that in the near future (and definitely before winter arrives).
Like many projects, it seemed impossible before beginning, difficult while getting started, and in retrospect, seemed totally simple. I have been working on my van for a couple of years now and I feel like I could build a second one from beginning to end in about a month. Or two.