day 7 - ceiling removal.

At long last a bus update. I'm even posting the update on the day I did the work- amazing. Work has been a bit busy the past few weeks and so I've been less than motivated to go in on the weekend or stay late and work on the bus.

The objective right now is to get the bus ready for the roof raise. To accomplish this I need to remove the interior roof sheet metal, roof insulation, buy steel and then I'm ready to go! I'm planning on roping a friend or two and the silent partner in to help with the process so we can knock it out in one afternoon of work.

Today I got some of that pre roof raising process done! I started off by drilling out a bunch of rivits holding the interior roof sheet metal on. I was able to remove one half (its got a seem down the center) pretty easily and pulled all the nasty insulation out.

Off comes the metal. 

Half the insulation scraped off. 

The latest in insulation removal fashion.

Perfect for nasty fiberglass. Also my double gloves, latex and framing gloves. 

One half removed! 

I went to move onto the second half but discovered some bolts that were reluctant to be removed blocking my way. They are from the ladder on the side and I either needed a second person to hold one end of the bolt outside while I took off the inside or I could have just cut them off. Last time I encountered this problem I ended up cutting them off but since I was hot and tired (fleece lined shop coat is not good for sunny days, good at keeping the fiberglass out though) I decided to call it a day and wait until I could convince the silent partner to come help me, hopefully next weekend.

While I didn't accomplish my goal of getting all of the ceiling out I was able to get a good look at the framing of the roof which was necessary for moving on in my planning for the roof raise!

Check out that framing. 

This is the joint I'll be cutting at, see the break that is already there below the joint? I'll re-cut there.

For some perspective, I'll be cutting where that big shadow is running across.

The cut will get a bit funky when I get to the back. 

With the ceiling removed I saw exactly where I wanted to do my cutting. I did a few measurements to see how much steel I will need to buy. I'll be cutting a 1' piece for each of the vertical supports (16 total) and then I will add a horizontal piece between each vertical piece so for my steel buying purposes I measured the perimeter of the bus for that length. The sides are about 14'-8" and the front/back is about 6'3 at the top. I may not need to add a horizontal piece at the front/back because there isn't one currently, but it would certainly add strength. Including the front/back that makes my steel total 57'-10". The steel I will buy comes in 20' sticks so I will buy 60'. I believe the price for a stick is around $25 so I'm looking at around $75 for my framing steel.

The other thing I will need to find is some sheet metal to fill the raise. When I was pulling off the roof interior I was tempted to re purpose it as the exterior sheet metal for the raise, but it has a kind of ribbed texture to it so I think not. I had originally wanted to salvage the ceiling sheet metal and put it back up when I was done with the raise however it was pretty full of holes and also re installing a big floppy piece of insulation covered sheet metal above my head didn't sound fun. Instead I may rip down plywood into strips and make a paneled ceiling. More research into how other skoolie folks did their ceilings is needed.

Lets hope next weekend will be the roof raise!

♥
Mer.