Walls and flooring help wanted

[Davidl13]

Hi all, new to forum.

I just purchased a 2002 e350 extended with a v10... Working on a build design right now.. It is currently a bare metal empty shell..

I plan on a fiberine 20" fixed top

I have chosen 3m sm600L and low E for my wall and ceiling insulation...

I am not sure what to cover the walls with after that and I am considering mini cell for the floor insulation...and not sure how the floor should be structured and topped.

Anyone have some good suggestions for floor and walls?

Sounds deadening and insulation are important to me... And looks, well wood is great as far as aesthetics....

Thanks in advance...

D

[86Scotty]

David, welcome! You'll find a LOT of builds and info on this in the homebuild section. I've used 1/4 birch ply for walls, with Reflectix behind, but there are many ways to do it. I wanted the stained birch look. I'll update this as I think of a few of the specific builds I think might help you. I have 2 builds there and my first build might help with some flooring ideas.

http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...-new-8851.html

Here's a couple I remember that have a lot of crafty ideas:

http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...hale-4242.html

http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...vida-9188.html

http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...d-up-8636.html

[Davidl13]

Thanks amigo!

[accrete]

Greetings David and enjoy the process : )

As stated the DIY area is full of ideas and insights.

On our rig we have a 24" fiberine bubble top and soft insulation (thinking of your thinsulate as soft). We decided to go with marine hull liner fabric and it has held up wonderfully since we installed it in late fall 2010. It both insulates and is a sound deadener to some degree. Once we crawl inside near a river we don't hear anything, so much so we often turn on the Bose system and play a river recording for pink/white noise.

Here are a couple shots showing the hull liner on walls (there are more at the build thread as examples at the page linked to) Anyway the hull liner is great to work with and you have to get right up to the fabric and really search for seams to notice them if at all.





: ) Thom

[Davidl13]

Ok, the fake river noise is funny...

I can't use any kind of rug, my two dogs will have their hair embedded in ways that will never come out,

So I need a floor and wall that is easy cleanable and doesn't catch dog hair...

I like wood, but I certainly don't want anything that has expansion/contraction issues based on temperature and humidity...

D

[JohnandMandi]

For the walls we used 1/4" birch, marine batting, and marine vinyl. It's softer to the touch than raw wood and easy to clean. You obviously don't need to make the same color choices we did. On the floor we used 3/4" plywood and commercial grade linoleum, we found a great remnant.



Our build is documented on our website: John and Mandi - The JaMvan

[Davidl13]

you put birch with no insulation, then batting then vinyl?

And wood straight to the floor? Also no insulation?...

And thanks to all I'll check our all the build threads, I really appreciate the sharing of your experience.

David

[JohnandMandi]

That's just how we built our wall panels, birch wrapped with a thin layer of batting then covered with marine vinyl. We have two layers of EZ-Cool between the panels and the sheet metal of the van. We also placed 100s of small pieces of fatmat on the sheet metal to help with sound. There are a ton of threads on how to do the floor. We were convinced to only use 3/4" plywood after 86Scotty showed us the immaculate condition of the floor in his 92 Sportsmobile, straight plywood.

We've lived in our van for the past 15 months in below freezing and over 100 degree weather. There is no perfect way to insulate a van body, any standard vehicle body for that matter. The best rigs we have come across are box type with 3-4 inch thick walls, they too suffer under the extreme heat but have a much better time in the colder climates. Since the van body is barreled, spraying a sufficient amount of foam evenly on the walls would reduce the available foot print by too much in our opinion. Blocking off the cab has had the most significant impact when it is cold due to the amount of glass, even with our EZ-Cool inserts for the windows. Our poptop has been the savior in the extreme heat and humidity with it's five huge windows. Our down sleeping bags when its really cold, reserving the propane heater for only the worst of times. Diesel heating is king. We've even seen it installed in non diesel rigs with a separate small tank for fuel. It's one of the things we regret not doing.

[86Scotty]

For a bulletproof (and pet proof) floor I would recommend going with one of the Lonseal products. Boywonder used a unique one (deco-dot?) for his upholstery but many SMBs come with Lincoin black flooring, has a coin pattern. You can see where I used an off brand of it in my latest iteration of Rusty. I got it off Ebay and I love it. Easy to cut and lay and no seams for anything to get in. It was less than $200 shipped.
It comes in many colors.

8'6" Coin Rubber Flooring Black Cargo Trailer Garage Flooring by The Foot | eBay

There are also the Bedrug products. They'll send you a sample if you request it.

Bedrug Bedliners, Truck Bedliners, Bedrugs, Truck Bed Liners, Cargo Van Mats BedRug - Next Generation Bedliner

They make this for vans and it's pretty cheap. The regular Bedrug is sort of a carpet, probably not what you want, but they have a solid black rubber liner type, can't remember what it's called.

[expeditionnw]

We just finished our insulation. Its somewhat involved, So I will just post a link to my van build(on a local forum)

http://gitout.com/showthread.php?232...ll=1#post47209