Advancing Alvar

[AK49er]

Any way they can add outside storage would be a big plus for us. It seems that interior space is great on most B's but it's the outside storage or lack of, that is needed. Wet stuff stacked in bags is getting old and all the tools that I carry in separate bags take up space along with the "might need" stuff. At this point, I am reluctant to use a hitch mount carrier as I believe it would not aid the way we use our rig.

[booster]

I think both of the methods started out as plain old running boards that helped in getting high trucks. Many were fiberglass and broke. Many were nerf style and rusted or got bent. In the rv stuff, the versions of them do the same thing, but also need to blend in with the rest of the exterior storage and ground effects. Peronally, l don't think I would like the nerf bars in the middle of a sde skirt, but to each his own. The "expedition" look may also be playing a part in it.

Our Chevy doesn't have any storage in the running board area, but some other models did. If you look at a Ranger compered to a 190, you get a good comparison of basic vs smoothed. I would think the nerf setup would look similar to the Ranger. Maybe a tiny wind resistance advantage to the smoothed type.

[Davydd]

We will still have the outside storage built into the nerf bar design. I just don't know exactly how it is configured yet. The fiber glass skirts on most Sprinter designs have not been the greatest in my opinion. I manage to scuff the paint on both driver side and passenger side on mine.

On another note, we sold the Great West Van Legend today to Lake Region RVs in Ramsey, MN. We negotiated trade in value. We don't have to now be on the hook to sell it ourselves. More importantly we have it out of our driveway with impending snow season coming upon us and we don't want to possess two RVs at one time. We did that already with an Airstream trailer and our first Pleasure-way Class B. It wasn't fun.

[Davydd]

ABOUT FLOORING

The first thing that goes down throughout the van, including walls, ceiling and floor is a product called Hushmat that dampens noise, vibration and heat. It is basically a rubberized self-sticking mat with a foil surface. Then a plywood floor is put down over the entire floor even under the cabinetry. Down the center aisle an electric heat mat will be installed. I understand the heat mat only works when plugged into shore power and can be controlled with a timer. Radiant heat flooring is nothing new for me. I designed our house over 30 years ago with electric radiant heat throughout controlled by 15 separate zones. I’m used to toasty warm flooring.

We are going with a hard surface floor throughout. There will be no carpet. Carpets have to be vacuumed and we don’t carry a vacuum cleaner. If we want more soft we will put down carpet runners that can be shaken out and beaten as we have done in the past with our Bs.

The finish surface will be a recycled rubber product called Eco Surfaces Commercial Flooring. It is compressed flakes of recycled rubber in mat form about 1/8” thick so will have a through color. If this were a building, I understand I could earn points with this product toward LEED Certification (U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) for what it’s worth.

The recycled rubber floor surface is sealed for protection. The design is such that it will conceal dirt very well, in fact it will seal sand very well since the color design we selected is called Go Pound Sand. I’m not sure dirt concealment is a good or bad thing. This is the color:



The floor should be a little bit cushiony soft under foot as the floor should have a little bit more give than a harder vinyl or linoleum. Advanced RV gives you a wide variety of floors to choose from. I probably could have, if I felt it was necessary, brought in my own floor choice. I first saw the recycled rubber flooring in the Mzungu experimental RV they built last winter. It was good enough. In my architectural days we put in a very similar floor in the Chip Ganassi/Target IndyCar shop so I was not totally unfamiliar with it.

To me, the recycled rubber flooring is an honest expression of exactly what it is. There are other floors that look great but many are imitations of stone, tile or wood, all products you would not want to put down because of the excessive weight they would bring. I don’t know if that counts for anything. The floor we had in our Great West Van Legend was a rather striking emulation of an Italian porcelain tile floor complete with indentations for the grout look. It actually fooled a lot of people, but imitation it was.

Other floors for consideration? True linoleum maybe made from all natural materials of linseed oil, recycled wood flour, cork dust and limestone. The real linoleum stuff is as green a natural product you can find. Your grandmother’s floor has come a long way and is now a premium product and it is about as durable as you can get. Other floors would be cork or bamboo for sustainability.

[Aeronie]

I am very excited about the flooring. I'll be traveling with three dogs, two are larger 75 pounders. This floor will stand up to all the dog traffic. We went with the color "Monster's Ink" which should hide a lot of doggie driven dirt in between sweepings. I too will have no carpet and plan to only take a broom and a dustpan for floor cleaning supplies.

[booster]

Why would they put the electric floor radiant heat on a timer rather than a thermostat? Or does it have both?

[Gryphon]

Originally Posted by booster

Why would they put the electric floor radiant heat on a timer rather than a thermostat? Or does it have both?

One benefit that comes to mind: waking up to a warm floor in the morning without having the heater on all night.

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by booster

Why would they put the electric floor radiant heat on a timer rather than a thermostat? Or does it have both?

Could it also be on a thermostat? I really don't know the answer as I haven't inquired in detail about it. However, the floor is for comfort not heat for the B since it is a just a strip down the aisle and I doubt it would be capable to be a main heat source. Our modus of operation has been to turn heat on only in the morning.

In our home, the electric radiant heat in all our floors is the only source of heat for our house. That's a different purpose but it is sure nice walking around on toasty warm floors in the winter.

This is the heat strip from photos sent before the video. We are getting progress photos weekly.



This is the rubber flooring installed. As you can see it goes down throughout before cabinets are installed.

[Fastpaddler1]

Good plan Davydd. Assume you will get your new Alvar next Spring?
AL

[Davydd]

Tentative date is now middle of January. Sooner? Possible, but I really don't want to pick it up during the holidays and there are some design things yet to be worked out and I don't want to rush that.

[Fastpaddler1]

Well, that's good not to rush. We will all be keen to see the finished product--sort of like seeing a newborn after waiting 9 months. With your new addition that would be longer. I wouldn't have the patience. It should be quite a colourful vehicle and I do like the flooring. I like to be surrounded by quality cabinets, good lighting and so on so you will have a lot to keep you contented--if you can survive the final bill!!

al

[Davydd]

Not much to report this past week other than to say I have been doing a lot of CAD drawings conveying what I desire and trading messages back and forth. It has been kind of frustrating because I would like to be right there in the van working out details. I don't even have my proxy Great West Van anymore that I could sit and stand in to visualize, measure and work things out. I feel like I am working blind right now. I built my house, a mortise and tenon heavy timber frame home where I cut each timber and erected. After I got done with it I realized the finished house was a bit different than the drawings I started out with.

[Davydd]

Advanced RV sent us an actual sample of our quartz countertop that we selected way back in May when in Ohio. It arrived today. I laid it down on our house kitchen countertop and this is the result. The kitchen countertop is Silestone, a composite quartz product. The countertop we selected for our B is Stone Designs Color Quartz Surfaces. Basically we selected nearly the same surface 6 years apart. That's scary.

[mlts22]

I like the foil insulation in the wheel wells. It is a relatively small thing, but it can make a lot of difference.

[avanti]

Far be it from me to second-guess Herr Neundorfer, but IMO it is a BIG mistake to install a vapor barrier in a B-van. The golden rule of insulation is "only one vapor-barrier". The reason, of course is that you will never keep ALL of the moisture out (because tiny openings and weep holes will "breathe" with changes of barometric pressure, and thus pump in water vapor), and you want the insulation to dry out as rapidly as possible after conditions become less moist. The problem is that your van already HAS a vapor barrier (the metal body of the Sprinter), so adding another one is a very bad idea. If it were my van, I would take advantage of ARVs legendary flexibility and have them delete the applied vapor barrier.

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by mlts22

I like the foil insulation in the wheel wells. It is a relatively small thing, but it can make a lot of difference.

The foil you see is a product called Hushmat. It is a rubberized foil faced product Advanced RV covers the entire inside on the floor, walls and ceiling including the cab area. It is a sound and thermal insulation product. I think mostly for sound dampening since they also fill the entire van withblue denim insulation. Small thing but it is just one more thing among many that differentiates from the rest.

[avanti]

Hushmat is great. I have used it (or its equivalent) in other vehicles to excellent effect. To be clear, that is not what I was critiquing in my "vapor barrier" post. I was thinking of the reference to a vapor barrier in Mike's video of your build.

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by avanti

Far be it from me to second-guess Herr Neundorfer, but IMO it is a BIG mistake to install a vapor barrier in a B-van. The golden rule of insulation is "only one vapor-barrier". The reason, of course is that you will never keep ALL of the moisture out (because tiny openings and weep holes will "breathe" with changes of barometric pressure, and thus pump in water vapor), and you want the insulation to dry out as rapidly as possible after conditions become less moist. The problem is that your van already HAS a vapor barrier (the metal body of the Sprinter), so adding another one is a very bad idea. If it were my van, I would take advantage of ARVs legendary flexibility and have them delete the applied vapor barrier.

You are correct sir...in static buildings. An RV van moves from climate to climate. Vapor travels from warm to cold. In the north we put vapor "retardant" on the warm side. In the south we most often, depending on the wall structure, not put in any vapor "retardant" at all. Metal is deemed a perfect vapor "barrier" as long as it is 100% in coverage and sealed. Foil is considered the same. Plastic sheet not so much, so I call it a "retarder". Vapor will normally pass through a wall and will only condense when it hits a dew point somewhere in the wall sandwich. In the summer both north and south vapor will normally just pass straight through. In the south most of the year vapor will just pass through in either direction. In a moving van then it is best to keep vapor from passing through at all. What will get into the walls will as you point out will exit the weep holes as they are designed for that. Since most travel in temperate areas, most of the time vapor will never be a problem. As an architect I have dealt with this problem all over the United States. I don't have a problem with what Advanced RV is doing since the metal exterior is going to let little through or let any pass out to the exterior as most buildings do, and the interior will keep what little there is from getting into the walls in any serious way. Another thing a van does as opposed to a building is also stabilize temperature with the outside and vary greatly in temperatures. It gets rather complex and almost impossible to analyze. The bottom line is it won't hurt and any layer of anything adds to sound, air and thermal dampening.

Edit: There are some situations where you do camp with outside cold temperatures that can create a dew point condensation inside a wall assembly. In those cases there is only one logical place to install a vapor barrier and that is on the inside surface. Otherwise, in a very enclosed space you will produce a lot of vapor and it needs to be stopped as much as possible from penetrating into the walls. I can't see any other choice. It is an excellent cold climate choice for camping vs not having a vapor barrier at all.

[booster]

The condensation in a wall will occur at varying points in that wall based on all kinds of conditions, and it will not always be at the metal surface where any moisture can run out the weep holes. It will be wherever the air hits the dewpoint. My concern would be when the condensing occurs within the denim insulation, which is a very real possibility, because the denim will absorb and hold the water, making it very difficult to get dried out. If there is not an air gap between the metal skin and the insulation, you would also get that moisture being absorbed instead of running out the drains.

Will it be a problem in the real world? Who knows, and it would most likely depend on the conditions the van was used in more than anything else.

[Davydd]

In an insulated wall the dew point will generally be reached inside the insulation at some point and not in an air space or the outer metal wall. You can graph it and see that would be the case most all the time. That was my whole point that having the vapor barrier on the inside is best in order to retard as much moisture as possible. When will it happen? I think mostly if you attempt winter or cold weather camping. Otherwise, I doubt it would be much of a concern given the temperate climates we mostly all travel in. In the desert and high mountains the air is generally so dry and the overnight cold temperatures are of such short duration that I doubt it would be a problem. A lot of Bs are insulated and moisture doesn't seem to be a major topic.

There is another solution. Install polyisocyanurate closed cell spray insulation. Closed cell insulations are basically their own vapor retarders. The only problem with that idea is if not done properly there have been high incidences of its expansion distorting the outer metal skin and showing through. That's a big problem during installation that can be controlled with good quality control. But, since it is closed cell trapping air, and a van not being static like a building, the effects of changing altitude could also cause distortion I think. Think about your unopened bag of potato chips in the mountains. That's something I can't find a lot of info on. If someone installed closed cell insulation in a work van properly and only drove in one locality the problem might never become apparent.

BTW, my house has my own homemade sandwich panel on the outside of my timber frame made up with 3-1/2" closed cell styrofoam insulation. The inside face of the walls and roof is 2 inch thick tongue and groove pine. There is no through wood studding to transfer heat loss to the outside.