The windows have been replaced.
The floor plan of the bus interferes with about half of the windows, and while I’m trying to keep the bus still looking like a school bus rather than an RV or a rape van, having windows in the back of our closets isn’t the best idea. I bought some 18 gauge hot-rolled steel cut to size from a supplier in town to cover the window frames in batches. After removing the rain gutters,
and prepping the steel by cleaning with vinegar to remove the surface oils before priming,
I clamped the metal to the hat channels that support the roof and screwed the sheet through the holes that had previously held the window trim.
I overlapped the metal by moving from the back to the front so that rain while we’re driving rolls off rather than seeping into the walls. I kept the first and last window trim pieces for that reason as well. I’m ultimately going to replace the screws with rivets so they don’t vibrate back out when we travel, but I’m waiting to do so until the framing is in just in case I need to make any adjustments. I’m pretty pleased with how it came out though.
We still haven’t decided on the exterior paint scheme, so primer grey it will stay for a while. The inside is MUCH darker now,
but we have three skylights/exhaust fans to install, so we should still get enough natural light. For now, I need to get the floor rust-proofed. That’s next.
The rivets are gone at last
The recovery from wisdom tooth surgery turned into recovery from a broken jaw through a stroke of incredibly bad luck eating bread. No, that’s not a typo. I broke my jaw on a Peace Bomb. Killer bread indeed. The three weeks of Percocet turned into four months, and I’m just now starting to eat solid food without pain. Work on the bus was stalled for a while until our friend Amir
volunteered to help out for a couple of days. It was immensely helpful, and yesterday I was able to remove the final ceiling panel.
She needs a good vacuuming to remove the last shreds of insulation, but it’s so good to be done with rivet removal for a while.
Next step: Install the metal panels that are replacing some of the windows.
The Tile is Here!
So the rivet removal is coming along,
but I’ve still got a long way to go. I have the metal waiting to replace the windows that are being removed. Alas. I’ve also needed to weld metal into the bottom “window” in the back door since about a month ago, but it hasn’t happened yet, so it rains inside for now. Not my favorite situation, but I had my last wisdom tooth removed three weeks ago, and welding under the influence of Percoset isn’t going to happen. So it waits. I had some rust damage in that area to repair already; a little more is not a big deal.
What IS a big deal is that I picked up the tile today! For all the things that have been difficult to find for this project, I have been incredibly fortunate with respect to the tile for the bathroom. I found the fabric for the shower curtain two years ago, and I knew I wanted hexagonal tiles to coordinate with it, but they are almost impossible to find, especially if you want something other than white or black. Enter Clayhaus Ceramics. Not only are their tiles hand made with 20% recycled glass content in the shape and colors I wanted, they happen to be in my neighborhood. Seriously, they are sixteen blocks away door to door, and Megan and Jason have been so great to work with.
I got it home and immediately laid a section out on the floor.
So exciting! Here’s (roughly) how the bathroom is going to look when it’s finished.
The canister on the back wall is for the bulking materials for the composting toilet. It’s pretty much peat moss and wood shavings, but we need to add a cup of it every time we use the toilet, so it needs to be readily available. I found a cereal dispenser from a company that makes them in Rhode Island that should work well. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory.
I’m really pleased that we’ll have a full ceramic-tiled shower on the bus. It’s definitely a luxury, and not just in terms of the space it occupies - water storage and the energy and space used by the water heater are hugely problematic considerations - but it’s an enormous step up in terms of quality of life over the cramped plastic cubby holes you find in most RVs.
If the weather cooperates, I’ll finish removing the wall rivets this week. There will still be plenty in the ceiling to remove, but I’m looking forward to having a significant portion completed. If we actually get some time without rain, I may be able to get the windows replaced this week as well, but that’s a bit ambitious and, if the weather forecast is right, pretty unlikely. I’ll take it as it comes and update when I can.
Rivets
A bus is mainly held together with rivets.
They come in two sizes, and there are about 1500 of them in the interior of the bus, all of which need to be removed.
The smaller of the two varieties have an indentation in the center and are relatively easy to remove by simply drilling them out. The larger ones are a different story. They have a raised and rounded center which must be ground flat,
then center punched and drilled out.
Then the heads need to be knocked off with a hammer and cold chisel.
Hundreds upon hundreds of times.
Silly me, I had thought that when I finished removing these damned things that the wall panels would pull right off. Not so much.
First you have to remove the windows. (Thankfully, these are held in place with screws.)
Then there are more rivets.
Finally, I can remove the wall panel.
Oh, dear.
Well, let’s pull out the old insulation and see what we’ve got.
Better, but still problematic. I’ve got a little moisture, which is not good, but no rust, so I think it’s just condensation. I also have nineteen more panels to remove, so I’m going to hold off on concern until I can get a look at the whole picture.
I should know more in a few days.
So it’s been a year
I finally received my welding equipment, and it started raining the next day. This is Portland, so that’s not entirely unexpected. The problem is that it didn’t stop for ten months. So Ethan and I went out of town (as often as possible),
made snowpeople,
competed in the US National Beard and Moustache Championships,
went to some music festivals,
and started taking circus classes,
and my work on the bus was primarily research.
A lot of research.
Because people don’t really DO stuff like this. Sure, they convert school buses occasionally, but those usually fall into one of two groups: those designed for living in full time
and those designed for traveling.
We need ours to do both. What’s more, we need ours to rely as little as possible on outside inputs - ideally we’ll be able to go two full weeks away from civilization without significantly changing our living habits - so no propane appliances, no shore power, no water hook-ups.
We’re pretty much out of RV territory here. And as the whole thing has to move whenever we want to go elsewhere, we’re excluded from the off-grid homesteader camp as well.
Additionally, a school bus inherently has different dimensions than other vehicles that make adapting existing products difficult, if not impossible. My most frustrating experience on this front is the huge ground clearance, which is awesome for working underfloor, but terrible for leveling the bus.
Because you can’t live off-kilter without it screwing with your head, we need a system to level the living area regardless of the terrain on which we’re parked. These are common on RVs.
There are many manufacturers of several different styles. They come in myriad sizes. None of them will fit the bus. I have spoken with engineers at a half dozen companies, and they all assure me that their products are completely inappropriate for my use. I finally managed to track down a company that builds leveling systems for specialty vehicles,
and we can use their product on the bus, but I seriously had to talk to the engineers of custom built military and police products to find what I needed. This type of thing has happened for pretty much every major item we need. Toilet? There is one and only one that will work for us,
and the first company I contacted didn’t want to sell it to me, so I had to find another supplier. Ceramic tile, you say? I have to use a specific system.
In some ways, this is all pretty cool. I’m learning a lot, I’m confident that the materials I’m using are the best materials available, and I haven’t been able to do much on the bus proper anyway because of the weather. (Once the rain finally stopped, it hovered around 100 degrees for a month. Not the best time to be in a metal box.) I’m antsy to see physical progress though.
Electrical remnants and other fun finds
I’m still waiting on my welding gear to arrive, so I thought I’d tear out some of the random electrical bits that remain from previous systems that I don’t want to use. Things like the breaker box that doesn’t have anything feeding it,
and the cut off wires stubbed into the floor.
The first one was easy and pretty painless; I just had to remove a few screws. The second required my climbing under the bus.
Now, I’ve been under the bus before this. I had to climb down there to unbolt the driver’s seat, and I looked around some before we purchased the bus in the first place. It really isn’t too bad. It’s high enough that I can kneel in most places without hitting my head, and it’s in good shape overall.
That said, there’s some gross stuff down there,
and some annoying stuff,
and some downright scary stuff.
There’s also the mystery substance, which I believe to be pretty substantial rust, but I’ve not seen anything quite like it before. It’s only in two places, and it almost seems like those pieces of metal were welded with acid that’s been slowly eating them. Low grade steel maybe?
All of which I will have to deal with another day. My concern today is this:
And what’s under the duct tape?
Really? Household receptacles? No weatherproofing or anything besides duct tape? I presume they served some purpose at some point, but I can’t imagine why anyone would deliberately install this particular configuration. They were conscientious enough to goop up the bolts;
they couldn’t bother to use the appropriate receptacles? I’ll grant you, these faceplates are tough to remove…
Oh.
I see.
Silicone caulk, huh?
Awesome.
Floor Plan
While I’m waiting on the welding supplies, I thought I’d put down a temporary floor plan to see if we can actually move in the spaces we have mentally designated for the various “rooms.” So I busted out the tape (every roll I had on hand) and laid it out.
Then I busted out the Illustrator for a scale version. I also laid out my rough plans for under floor tanks and storage bins.
The total interior area is just over 200 square feet. It’s definitely small for two people, but I’ve been in apartments that were smaller, and I think this layout will give us enough living space that we won’t feel like we’re constantly on top of one another. It also seems that we’ll have plenty of storage space. What do you think? Anything not here that we’ll probably miss more than we realize right now?
Tearing up the floor, Part II
So the floor is gone now,
and I’ve figured out where all the water came in. You can see daylight at the bottom of the door in back with the wood gone, which means water had more than enough access. As well, there are more than a few unfilled holes in the metal floor.
My welder hasn’t arrived yet, but when it does (hopefully soon), I’ll set to work on sealing the holes.
Tearing up the floor
A bus floor is made up of a very soft plastic coating (like melty linoleum) over 3/4″ plywood on a metal floor. It’s a big floor, so the plastic has seams, and they cover those with metal trim that is fastened to the plywood with screws.
There is also trim where the floor meets the walls which is fastened to the walls with screws,
and a few odds and ends like the wheel wells
and heating duct.
In theory, you simply unscrew everything, peel up the plastic, unscrew the plywood, and remove all the trash to view your lovely metal floor.
Our bus is a 1981 International Harvester, and after almost 30 years, a lot of those screws are no longer actually screwlike. With some, the heads separate from the rest of the screw. Some have to be drilled out because they’re stripped. Others just pull right out of the wood.
Then there’s the area in the back that has no screws at all because a section of the trim has been replaced with caulk.
I get all of this cleared out and start pulling off the plastic coating, using a flat head screwdriver in places to pry up a corner after it tears. It tears much more than I would like because it’s held on with a lot of adhesive, and although this part sucks, it looks really cool.
So I unscrew the plywood (only three screws across at each edge, so this part goes quickly) and lift up the first piece,
and my hands tear right through it. Rotted plywood is not a good sign. After wedging hands and feet and a pry bar underneath it, I manage to get it shifted on top of the sheet next to it. What I find underneath is worse.
I expected some rust, especially by the back doors. I wasn’t expecting this much, but I can work with it. What I really wasn’t prepared to see was standing water. You see, I have no idea where this water came from. The bus, as far as I’ve been able to tell, is watertight. It has sat through Portland rains with nary a drop inside, and it’s been over a hundred degrees for the past few days here, so you would think any water that snuck its way in would have evaporated back out by now.
It’s not really a problem per se; the floor was getting rebuilt anyway to accomodate the radiant floor heating system. I just don’t like a mystery in these matters. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to deal with it any more today. Ethan is having his very hairy chest waxed for charity this afternoon, and I have to go film it for documentation on his blog (Starts With A Bang!) and youtube.
More floor removal to come.
Cleaning her out
I’ve finally settled in to the new house enough
to set to work on the bus in earnest. The first step: cleaning her out. The people who sold her to us were kind enough to include some building materials for our refurbishment, but there was also a lot of general crap about.
So I emptied everything out (except the stove, which is hopefully finding a new home this afternoon) and gave her a good sweeping, and now she looks fancy.
Next step: tearing out my freshly swept floor.