Putting it Together VII

Time flies and here we are, many months have past since my last post.  The main events since my last post include

• Wiring
• Insulation
• Sheathing
• Sheet Metal Bender Construction
• Roof Panel Construction

Lots of time was spent sorting through the wire salvaged from the junk campers to figure out what I could use and what I could recycle.  Then I spent a long time planning out where the outlets, lights, switches, the power panel and battery compartment should go.  Since I have the battery compartment indoors I had to create a special vent system to remove gases from the charging process that are combustible.  Next comes all the drilling and pulling of the wires.  Below is just one shot of the wires as seen from the outside of the camper before insulating and sheathing.

 Here is a shot of the installed insulation which was all salvaged from the junk campers.

 I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that the camper won't fit out the garage door if I install the roof.  It would end up being higher than the garage door will allow.  To work around this I came up with the idea of building four roof panels that I can install after wheeling the camper outside.  The four panels are made using the salvaged roof trusses from the junk campers.  I have the trusses rather close together.  This is because I'm using very light sheathing which is only about 3/16" plywood (thanks Chris) which will be covered with 24" wide aluminum coil.  Somehow I'm hoping this combination will work out to be a lighter roof than what the original campers had.  I'm no engineer so none of this has actually been calculated.....just taking a guess at it.  The picture below shows one of the roof panels on the camper walls prior to getting insulation and sheathing.  As I built them I placed them on the walls to make sure I had a close fit.  Notice that the side wall of the camper now has sheathing on it.  Again, this is 3/16" plywood (yep, thanks again Chris) to keep down on the weight.  One note for the pure camper junkies, the wall sheathing idea is a deviation from what I found when I tore apart the junk campers.  They did not have sheathing at all. Instead they had the aluminum siding on the outside and that's it.  The difference is that they used siding that was in narrow strips and it had stiffness to it because of bends and lips on the edges.  I will be using flat 24" wide PVC coated aluminum coil for my siding, so I wanted something solid to back it up.  In the end this wall is going to be heavier than the junk campers had, but hopefully not too much.

 Below you can see two views of one of the roof panels down on a set of saw horses as I am installing the aluminum coil.  This is the rear panel which is evidenced by the five clearance lights which are installed along the rear edge. The seams are sealed with silicone caulk and barn screws.  Barn screws are the type with rubber washers under the head and are typically used to install metal roofing and siding material on a pole shed.

This next shot shows one of the roof panels upside down.  I had framed out sky lights in between the roof trusses and then used my router to cut out the paneling which produced a nice effect.  I used a 1/2" straight carbide bit which is a pattern following style, which simply means it has a ball bearing on the shaft that is exactly the same size as the cutting bit.  All together there will be four skylights.  Each is about 12" wide and about 30" long.  These will be one of the last things I install after the camper is outside and all sealed up and nearly completed.  The reason is that I only want to go on the roof once since it is rather light construction and once I seal up the skylights I didn't want to be lifting and moving the roof panels around which would only increase the chance of messing up the seal.  The skylights are simply made out of 1/8" thick clear polycarbonate sheet.

Below is a shot of all four roof panels sitting on top of the camper walls.  You can kind of see how the total height is a little higher the the top of the garage door in the background.  I'll pull these off when ready to roll outside. It's tough to see in the pictures but the aluminum actually extends 2" below the top of the wall. This overlap is designed to make sure all water goes straight down and doesn't have a chance to linger near the joint between the roof panel and wall.

To accomplish all the bending of the 24" wide aluminum coil I needed something a bit more substantial than a chunk of angle iron and a set of C clamps, so I ended up building my own sheet metal bender (also know as a box and pan brake). These things are pretty spendy to buy so building my own was really the only option.  Actually it turned out pretty cool.  Here's a shot of the bender which can handle a sheet up to 40" wide.  The shoes are removable to allow bending inside of a box. 

So next on the list is to start installing the siding.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but at this point none of the window openings are cut out yet.  I nailed the sheathing right over the windows and other openings (except the door).  The theory is that I'll run the siding over the windows too and then once it is nailed, caulked and screwed in place I'll use my router with the pattern following bit to cut the window openings.  

That's all for now.  No promises on posting again soon.  Life is full and unfortunately blogging isn't one of my top priorities, but rest assured that sooner or later I'll have an end to this project (and blog).

See ya,

Chris