Keeping It Cool (Insulation)
Its about that time to start the insulation process. At this point, we were trying to work around the cargo shelves. We started off by insulting the roof of the van using Thermo King duct insulation. This stuff is great in my opinion. It comes 12 inches wide and a run of 15 feet long. It is very easily applied with its self adhesive backing. This duct insulation will help with sound deadening, minamizing the road noise and of course insulate (keeping the heat out).
Starting on the ceiling, working around the astronomical shelves.
First step to applying the duct insulation is to wipe down the surface from any dust, dirt, oils, grease, particles and whatever else would be on the surface with mineral spirits. After the surface was spit shine clean we then started unrolling the insulation and sticking it right to the ceiling of the van. Super easy process. You can instantly hear the difference in the sound when comparing tapping on the bare metal, to tapping on the metal with the insulation applied.
After finding someone to haul away the shelves, and making a couple hundred bucks to be reinvested in the van build, we started on the insulation for the side walls. Oh my was it dirty behind those plastic panels. What else can you imagine from a van that’s 12 years old with 197k miles. Lucky for us, the van was used in Florida its whole life so there was very minimal surface rust to be found. After taking care of the rust issues with some sanding and painting over it, and any areas that looked like it needed some touch up paint it was time to proceed.
A little time lapse of removing the factory plastic paneling, cleaning the metal, applying duct insulation, cutting out the poly iso board and filling the gaps and cracks with spray insulation.
Now it is time to make cutouts of Polyiso board. We used 1” foam boards. We were having trouble figuring out how to hold the foam boards in. It seemed as if the spray adhesive did not want to adhere to the foil that was on the duct insulation. So we found out that using Great Stuff gaps and cracks spray foam worked really well once it dried. What we did was spray a generous amount on the backside of the foam in an S or a zig zag pattern then stuck it in its place, taped it up and/or propped it up with some wood, and then finished spraying the edges of the foam board with the spray foam. Once the Great Stuff dried it seems like it will hold in place forever.
Once finished with the sidewalls it was time to move onto the floor. Drilling out the old rivets that were used to hold down the plywood floor, the floor came right out. The insulation that comes from factory seemed to be a bunch of hair or wool glued together. GROSS! That giant sheet of hairball really left a sticky residue behind. Vacuumed the debris found, swept and blew out what we could really good. Then we scrubbed the floor with mineral spirits. Once clean it was then time to roll out the foam again. Fairly simple process, just make sure that everything is even and no there are no bumps in the foam.
Walls insulted with Poly Iso boards and floor with duct insulation.
We decided to save a few bucks and some time and used the old floor as a subfloor for our build. We put the rivets back in and called it a day!
Bianca cleaning the original floor to be put back in.
Putting in the original floor.
Original flooring, used as a subfloor for our build.
We are now all insulated up and its time to start the ventilation process. Possibly sketchiest part of the build.
Click here to see how we cut two 14”x14” hole in the roof.
