VanDweller's stepvan conversion part 2

PART 2

PLANNING

PICS ARE BEING ADDED WITH EVERY UPDATE
(And as I have time I'm filling in the words...)

The object of a small housetruck is to efficiently equip it with basic living systems. Beneath the funkified trim and tapestries, it must be a house. Small space and stripped-down systems, but systems and space. These are the molecules and ether of a place to live, be it a mansion in Beverly Hills or a home on wheels. To me, this means a place to sleep, a place to cook, a place to poop. Anything else subfiles in under those headings. Someplace to cook will have fire and water, for example. So washing up can be done via the sink and via other adaptations to the on-board water system. It's impractical to build a full shower into a rig this size, you've got limited floor space. For the amount of time you'd spend using that space, it's better given to counter, storage and a table or something. You can wash up just fine without one and it'll use a lot less water to boot...

A place to cook will have a counter or table for prep & eating, some type of cooktop, storage for food & utensils, a cooler or fridge of some type, and a comfy place to eat. A place to poop, well a portable toilet goes a long way towards making a rolling box a home, I can tell you that! Storage for toiletries & needed accessories, place to stow the toilet. In a bigger rig, I'd build a shower stall and put one of these in there rather than build in a fixed toilet & "black water" tank. The emptying rital is so much more convenient with the smaller portable camping job.

Placing the spacial non-negotiables:
The bed must be a "three quarter" at least (four feet wide, as opposed to a "single") per order of SheDweller. A bunk two and a half feet wide you have options - longways up against a wall or across the back sideways. At a bigger "real bed" size, across the back sideways is the only realistic place. But it does give you a cavernous storage space for tools, spare tire, tanks, etc. underneath. In your application it may be the shower that only fits around the wheelwells one way or what have you that puts the first non-negotiable in place, or the space needed to carry craft work or motorcycle etc.
Arranging the rest around these:
With that in place given the space we have, forward along the passenger wall will be a seat nook, the table, and a swiveling seat that will double as the co-pilot chair. Going forward on the driver's side wall from the bed will be a long counter with sink & cook top, room under for some kind of ice box as well as storage for a crate of kitchen supplies. For best use of vertical space, the van will have overhead cabinets.
Arranging the systems around all of this:
Well dirty sink water gets to its tank by gravity, so that means the gray water tank is under the floor on the driver's side; fresh is pumped, so it can be anywhere it can be piped to reasonably. So it's going under the passenger's side. Propane tank will be one you can swap out at any grocery store, mounted in the back under the bed in a sealed off (except for access from the outside at the back of the van and plenty of through-the-floor and out-side-wall ventilation) compartment. House battery will be up front somewhere, plug-in 110 cord will be in back. It will actually be hard-wired to where I get the 25 or 50' cable out, plug one end into an outlet and plug the other into the van. Or more correctly, the van into it.

So as you see it's a puzzle you put together piece by piece and the picture reveals itself. It's like playing a Jazz tune. You've got the beginning and you pretty much know where you'll end up. In-between, you improvise in layers as it goes but still within the key, the plan, the big picture.

	General cleanup / cleanout Some of you don't know just how clean and unbattered this is for a 27 year old commercial truck... but it'll get even cleaner before the surfaces get covered & built over. Now's the time for de-nastification. Ok, kids, let's hear another chorus of "Scrapin' boogers off the bus"... ready?"
	Remove what won't be used In this case, misc. hardware riveted & bolted in (some of these aluminum angles will come in handy later on), scary old wiring (won't), ceiling lights, aluminum panel over passenger door. That's it. This is the beauty in starting with a basic shell
	Watch those wires from leftover stereos, alarms, etc. Strip them out from their source. Especially watch for hot wires run through holes in metal with no grommets... these are troubles waiting to happen you don't want to have. And don't reuse this wire - it's old, brittle, been exposed to heat & elements... this isn't the place to shave pennies, trust me.
	Hmmm... how many places could this have shorted out?
	A step van is a noisy place - the three noisiest things in here right now are the rear doors (they'll be going), the sliding door enclosures, and the walls themselves. I'll have an insulated rear wall and the walls will be insulated & finished over. I could remove these enclosures, but that exposes the interior to the unsealed areas around the sliding door. Questions of moisture / water entry, etc. I bet with use of rubber flashing I could get it to seal...
	...but then there's the issue of how to finish out a wall that has a quarter inch clearance behind the sliding door AND will catch a little moisture. If I remove one, it'll be the passenger side. I'd sure like to have a window there! Hey, maybe I can use the windows out of the rear doors - they flat mount into rubber gaskets and are basically mounted in the doors the same way they'd be through a wall. Some nast, nothing I can't handle; I can seal that door when it's closed. It's close as it is. And there's a bit more room back here than it looked like. Space-wise, there's room for a 30 by 42" bay window! The bigger the window, the less I have to figure out how to trim out. Hmmm...
	More of the creepy screws (so many convert-able vehicles are held together with weird screws; I was lucky a small standard flathead fit in & loosened these up.)
	One part of this was held in by rivets; a second each and they were drilled out. This will make great material for protecting the genset behind the rear wheel, heat shields, etc. Buffalo method - it all gets used.
	Handy pieces riveted (and now removed) from its former lives. These are heavy duty aluminum; they'll come in handy somewhere in all of this. When drilling out rivets, step on these, don't hold them 'cause when that bit goes through the last one the shits start wanting to spin really fast with much torque, and major fleshular damage could ensue. This is one of those things age sees coming before the drill is even chucked.
	Ok! Ready to start. Here's the "save for future use" pile...
	...and the trash pile (including all the weird screws). This is hilarious - you should see the size of a pile out of a school bus! It'd fill this van twice. Anyone converting a bus or an old motorhome wants to smack me upside the head about now. The junk pile from the attempted motorhome fixup filled my pickup truck twice!
	I'm marking with tape where wires need to end up. Masking is 110, blue is 12-volt. On it I'm writing what will be there. This will help me group & run the wires. (Black is speaker wire.) I know what will go where because I've given it much thought - the van has its own notebook for ideas, plans, interesting links, and related scratchings of the pen. Beats the shit out of trying to keep it in my head! And you can evolve it from page to page.


	I'm doing a compartmentalized approach - cab, living, and bed (rear) areas. In the living area, I'm doing a dropped ceiling to fit more insulation up there. I labeled & pull out the sheets; labeled so the overlapping panels' screw holes will realign. I framed it out, and using 3M super strong spray adhesive (green can, expensive but works!) the inside of the roof between the braces was lined with heat reflective material. You can also see the basic subflooring & insulation. Inch thick foam board on the floor.
	By itself this stuff is way better than the thin sheets of insulation that were up here.
	During this I ran the "house" wiring - I have color coded the systems and am writing it all in the van's own notebook. I knew all the accessories I wanted on this DC (12-volt run off the auxiliary "house" battery to come) part of the system, grouped them accordingly, ran ground wires to the braces and hots to the locations. Also ran speaker wires at this time.

Gathering the parts
Gathered parts saved from previous projects, eBay, Blue Moon, etc. I knew having a rig like this would be an eventuality so I didn't wait to need everything before I began collecting what I'd need. There's something to be said for having what you need already there when you need it! Being ill-prepared is rarely the right answer.

Measured my under floor and under bed spaces
Bought: 30 gallon fresh water tank, 29-gallon waste water tank
Bidding to win on: Microlite 2800 generator.
Have: CB, stereos, speakers, interior lights, sink, water pump, house battery isolator, fuse block, piping, table post & receivers, overhead vent with fan, ...

Part three: the interior!