Hilariously charged thread on RV/seat belt safety opinions

https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/22838563/print/true.cfm

http://www.grizzlylaw.com/rv-safety-and-dangers/

Back From South Carolina and Beyond

Nothing takes you higher or farther... than ADVENTURE!

I feel like a hobbit! We're finally back in RI after a journey to PA to SC to OH to PA to NYC to back here. It was our first big journey and we were gone over a month. We were able to stay with beloved family down there for much of it, (thank you!) and also had some nights sleeping at rest areas and Walmart parking lots and the like. While it isn't for everyone, me and Brooke really enjoyed roughing it a bit. We slept comfortably enough, avoided dolling out around $100 a night for hotel rooms, and got to drive, rest, and get up whenever we pleased.

For this post, we'll get into a little info about rest areas and staying at Walmart parking lots for travelers.

What are highway rest areas?

Rest areas are spots along highways where you can get off the road, park your car or truck, and go inside to use the bathroom, buy vending machine snacks, (some of them have coffee machines!) and access local info and maps. They often have separate sections for big trucks and RVs and small passenger vehicles.

Some have a service desk that runs during normal business hours, and the people there are usually kind and helpful for directions or asking about local stuff.

The bathrooms were all amazingly well kept in every state we went through, specifically Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the Virginias and Carolinas.

We even have a funny story now about Brooke leaving her ring at an Ohio rest stop and us miraculously circling back over 40 minutes later and still finding it there, just sitting! Either no one noticed it, or anyone who did was nice enough to leave it. What do you think? Either way, boy was she lucky!

Can you sleep in your car, RV or camper in Walmart parking lots?

You can sleep in a lot of Walmart parking lots, but not all of them.

Traditionally, Walmart's policy is to allow overnight stays from travelers even in larger vehicles like Class A campers. With how common Walmarts are in America, this is a big deal for lower income travelers especially, because it provides a lot more rest areas around the country. Usually the parking lots are well lit, and since many of the stores are open 24/7, you can go in to get cheap supplies day and night... and help wreck our economy a little more each time. Yay!

Some Walmarts do not allow overnight stays, and some will indeed enforce this policy. Anytime you're sleeping anywhere in your car there's a chance you'll wake up to a police officer checking on what you're doing, and sometimes you'll be rudely told to move on, but it all depends on where and how you stay.

Don't look sketchy and there's a way higher chance you won't be bothered. If you're parked in a higher crime area, you're more likely to be targeted by cops and robbers, while if you look normal and sleep out of the way for a night in an area where people aren't always looking over their shoulders, you should be good. Whether you're a prim and proper traveler who only stays where they're officially allowed or whether you're a diehard boondocker who will sleep in someone's cupboard unless there is a no trespassing sign up is up to you.

How was the trip?

It was exhilarating and rejuvenating just to get out on our own and leave our troubles behind us. Driving and eating junk food is always hard on the body, but we took steps to maintain a somewhat healthy diet by staying hydrated, eating greens and avoiding carbs as much as we could, etc. (Which was not very much when you're staying in the south for a month. Has anyone else heard of Cook Out? Human biology isn't meant to stand up against these things...)

We got a lot of time to work on personal things like self-education and creative/art projects. And despite the availability of cheaper, way more delicious southern/midwestern food, (did I mention Cracker Barrel?) we kept pretty consistent with our diets, and we got more into workout routines. Brooke is definitely beating me in both departments, working super hard on online schooling and a rigorous workout routine.

Super Bowl LI: How bout them Patriots?

Holy crap man! We had the best Super Bowl party night with some great friends we just met in NYC. Our buddy had a Chinese restaurant rented out for the night, full of his peeps from Hong Kong. They graciously had as guests.

The place was all theirs for the night, and the food and drinks flowed beyond belief, during the craziest Superbowl I have ever seen. It was the almost glamorous New York City experience you only hear about in books and movies. It was really out of this world.

All we can usually do about going through NYC is crying about it, but this time it was worth the soulcrushing $15 Washington Bridge toll and $4 NJ tolls before that. I couldn't do NYC, with all the parking, traffic, tolls, too many people, not enough privacy or space. But some people like the city life. And they're getting free tuition in New York I hear.

In closing

It was a wonderful trip, although we're anxious to get the van finished and try long term living out of it. The cold is frustrating each step of the project by making our adhesives fail. But van or no van, we're going to have plenty of fun outdoors this summer with our tent and sleeping bags, and whatever friends want to come along!

What are you doing this summer?

King's Mountain, NC

Plan for Walls / Insulation

 [We changed how we were going to do the walls a bit in a newer post ("Cheap-O DIY Camper Van: Reflectix On Walls... What Else?") and affix the Reflectix right to the spray foamed walls. Check it out.]

Last week, we applied a single layer of spray foam ("Is Great Stuff good?") over all the walls and doors (besides up front, which we will insulate without spray foam, or spray later).

Brooke then wrote down our next steps to insulate and finish the walls.

1. Take measurements of the walls/windows, The van, like many vehicles, has a lot of many irregular shapes and sizes, curves and measurements that taper, so getting it right is harder than it seems.

2. Put Reflectix loosely over all the spray foamed walls, generating a dead airspace on either side of most of the Reflectix, which is what it needs to insulate well.

On dead air spaces & too much fiberglass insulation

We may or may not put some pink insulation in that airspace, but I tend to think that the empty airspace will work better with the Reflectix because of its radiant insulation properties, while pink insulation may actually do more harm than good, by having heat pass through it and the Reflectix to the walls. A friend with decades of engineering experience advised that dead air was the best insulator in a conversion van, so we are trying to keep that in mind as we test what works best. If in doubt, we will either return the pink insulation or use it elsewhere, but keep in mind that it's the dead air that makes insulation effective too, so stuffing as much as you can into a tight space will only lower your R values.)

3. Use the Reflectix as a template for the panels. The panels must be larger than the Reflectix cuts because they will be coming out more (more 3d formed) and must closely follow bends. We are using thin, white PVC-faced boards cut 2'x4' for convenience. We could have used larger pieces to keep sections more whole, but we're going to have a lot of work making the joints look good between walls/floors/windows etc anyway, so we're not worried about it. We are much more worried about the walls actually sealing in the air/dust/fiberglass than looking good. Some or a lot of the walls may be covered with material or tapestry to help hold heat anyway, like they did in ancient castles.

4. Glue the Reflectix to the spray foamed walls. We want it only as tight to the wall as it has to be to insure it isn't making noise. The unevenness of the spray foam wall should be perfect, because the Reflectix will adhere the high points while everywhere else will have a gap of dead airspace, which is how Reflectix achieves high insulation values (insulation against radiant energy, not conductive energy so much.) Reflectix without a dead airspace around it only has an R-value of 1 because the only radiation insulation happening is in the thin bubblewrap layer sandwiched between the reflective layers.

5. Put in braces for the walls. Forgot the proper construction term, but we screw 1x4's into the walls through the Reflectix and spray foam so that we can screw the walls into those and give them a little more shape and strength.

6. Screw in the walls.

7. Make joints, prime, sand, finish.

Cheap-O DIY Camper Van: Reflectix On Walls... What Else?

I say! What are you doing in that thing!

Once again bouncing back and forth between ideas for the walls, a friend suggested what I think is the best solution, and then we found another trick that I'm excited we'll be able to use.

Flatter Walls, No Dead Airspace

Heron styling it up in the gas mask

A buddy advised just gluing carpet against the spray foam (since it is an adherable surface, especially if you choose to sand it down to a nice flat surface- which we did not.)

Metal walls with cured spray foam & Reflectix

.

We decided to go further than just carpet over sprayfoam, but we liked that idea. Our old plan was cutting new paneling out of PVC-faced board, which you can see in the picture to the right, and installing those fairly flexible panels against wood braces, screwed into the metal body of the van that lies behind the sprayfoam.

We would have then filled the joints (somehow) and created a semi-even surface over the white PVC board wall, and either painted that or even put carpet over it.

While that plan might have worked, I liked what my friend suggested after I had mentioned putting carpet on the walls to him. He said how a can of spray glue could get a tight bond to the new sprayfoam surface- no need for bracing or worrying about smashing through a part of the wall with no "stud" behind it while living in it later.

I mourned the lost of the dead air space, because it is good insulation itself, and it is what makes the Reflectix work its insulating magic (we went through some of this in a post from December, ("Is Great Stuff good? DIY Polyurethane Sprayfoam Pros/Cons") but I was convinced we would end up with enough insulation even following this route... and a sturdier wall with a slimmer profile.

After all, all that the van came with was the normal grey plastic paneling with nothing but air in between it and the metal body, and it did a pretty good job insulating.

I admit, some of the plastic panels did had a meager one inch of pink insulation glued on them, but its doubtful they did very much, especially versus what we are doing. More on those plastic panels we saved in a moment.

Maybe A Little Dead Airspace: Floor Underlayment!

And its not that there would be no dead airspace. A little bit of very thin underlayment between the Reflectix and the carpet will provide another small pocket of air, increasing insulation. The underlayment only cost $20 for enough for the walls. I believe it is normally used for carpeted floors. Because it is a plastic or foam type material, it should act as a moisture barrier if tightly installed too.

Getting To It

Reflectix looks snug in most spots. But will it hold??!

The main thing with the Reflectix was getting a really tight fit. Because we chose not to grind the sprayfoam down (because I wanted to chance leaving the naturally uneven sprayfoam pattern surface than to deal with all the toxic dust particles going everywhere) and because it's cold as heck here in Rhode Island, (we just had our first blizzard today even,) the spray glue did not stick well at all, and required repeated applications over small areas while being held tightly to the sprayfoam.

But after heating the van up more and going at it a few more times, we had a pretty snug fit all around.

Glue as snug as possible, lest it come off later!
And cut holes for your locks and stuff!

We will have to see whether this holds up over time though. If it doesn't, the Reflectix will peel from the sprayfoamed walls, (and take the underlayment and carpet with it,) and creature ugly bubbles or sags in the wall. Hopefully this won't be the case, but I had serious concerns about dealing with the containment and cleanup of grinding down the whole van interior worth of sprayfoam.

Once again, that delicious sandwich is:

1. Body of the van (metal)
2. 2" or so of spray foam laid as evenly as possible, all allowed to cure of course
3. Reflectix, spray glued on
4. Thin carpet floor underlayment, spray glued on (to be done)
5. Carpet! probably spray glued on (to be done)

And that should be everything that makes up the walls of our camper van. Sounds good, right? But stick around and read on to see how it works out. Our potential disasters are your amusement!

We left a hole open for the heater to blow out. We will have to vent this later.

Holes left for the door handles, locks, & speakers too. Missed a speaker slot here though. Oops!

Now, about that secret trick we get to use

What secret trick? Did I say that? Well, we kept the plastic panels around to see if we could use them before we tossed them out. It seemed unlikely with any design that involved sprayfoam that we'd be able to get them back on, though, especially all of them. Some of them interlocked trickily too, and an extra puzzle was not what we were looking for with this project.

Turns out the plastic panels should solve an extremely important issue that we hadn't even gotten into yet, which is making the walls reach the windows well. How we were going to frame the windows was always a daunting question, and ideas like a new wooden window sill were tossed around, but would take some work to implement.

Fortunately, we tried fit the plastic panels back to where they went, and they still mostly fit despite the sprayfoam. We also left uncovered most of the metal brackets the inserts clip into, so they will go in as snug as a bug in a rug, and tuck the carpet walls in around the windows nicely. Who knew that the easiest design approach was to use what you already have???

The newly finished Cave of Perpetual Darkness

Welp, we'll leave it at that, and have an update on the trip we just got back from too.

See you on the road!