Today started with work. I want to start doing van build stuff first thing in the morning while it’s cool, then do my day job work when it gets too hot to keep working on the van. But it’s the last day of the month, and I had to get things done early in the day so editors could get them and do what they need to do by the end of the day, so I couldn’t wait until the afternoon to do it. I got all that done, though, and moved on to van stuff.
The next step is insulation. Since it goes right on the metal walls of the van, it’s the first thing I need to do in this build. Insulation in the previous van was minimal, though it did have an inch of fiberglass insulation in the roof, plus the wool and Reflectix combination along the walls. I’m doing the insulation better this time, starting with one-inch polyiso foam on the roof and parts of the walls, plus Havelock wool for the bits I can’t stuff foam board into. In fact, I’ll probably do two layers of polyiso on the roof. That’s where most heat escapes and/or comes in, and I have the headroom to spare for it.
I took a bunch of measurements, then cut pieces to fit between the ribs of the roof. Everyone I know highly recommended 3M Super 77 spray-on adhesive to stick the insulation to the roof. It didn’t work at all. I think the problem is that the roof isn’t flat, but has lots of ribs and contours, so the actual contact area is quite small. So I tried my uncle’s suggestion of Liquid Nails, figuring that it would squeeze into the small gaps between ribs. It kind of works, but is taking hours to dry. The four panels you see in the photo up top are all I got accomplished today. It would be faster if I had more devices to hold and press the foam into the ceiling, but I have trouble justifying buying specialized tools that I’m only going to use once. We have some ideas of how to try and make this stuff dry more quickly, as well as a way to secure the insulation to the roof without adhesive at all, but it took all day to get this far, so I haven’t tried any of it yet.
The heat is one problem, but another is that every day this week I’m getting an air show over the house. I’m not kidding. The Blue Angels perform at 4:00 pm daily, and we seem to be directly under the pattern they fly between stunts over the airport. Oh darn, force me to watch a free air show that I don’t have to fight traffic or even go anywhere to see.
The distractions continue throughout the day, actually. In the morning I often see a group of four red prop planes in a close diamond formation. In the early afternoon, we got rattled by an F-35 whose afterburner I could see lit up as it blasted over us in a tight turn. I might complain more if I was able to actually accomplish anything more than gluing four panels of insulation to the roof today, but probably not, because airplanes are cool.
As it is, the free air show more than makes up for the boredom of watching glue dry. It’s a close relative of watching paint dry, and just as boring.
Smokey Da Van 