New Job - All Sorts Of New Builds

[vwhammer]

Well, I started typing this long-winded approach to explain the significance of my move to Colorado and the job that came with it but, as it was with the basic premise to that story, my attention span or lack thereof got the best of me and forced me down another path.

Please allow me to give you the abridged version.

I moved to Colorado and got a job that loosely falls into my dream job category.
Since I was a wee lad I wanted to build vehicles that could get you out into the wild to do whatever it was that beckoned you to the wild in the first place.

My primary interest was 4x4 vehicles with all the fixin's but this is close enough for now.

My wife's job brought us to Colorado and it just so happened that a friend whom I worked with in the past was a couple of years into starting a new shop that specialized in building camper vans.

I mentioned to my friend that I was moving to CO and the rest is history.

So I now work at Altitude Vans in Rollinsville CO.

Altitude Vans is under construction

altitudevans.com

Next week will be two months on the job.
We currently have three vans in process and have been doing some day work for a handful of clients in that time.

We are not a big shop but have a second building in the works down the street where most of the builds will take place and the current shop will likely be the fab for all the parts that go into that build.

Anyway now I am rambling so please allow me to show you some of the things we have been working on.
I have my own van build (a Vanagon) that will end up in the shop soon enough but for the time being we have had a few Sprinters in the shop for full build-outs.
My first project was building the power system for a 144 inch 4x4.

We got that van to a point where the client could use it for a couple of months before winter hit so we moved on to the next van which was a 144 inch 2wd van.
This one is getting all the goodies.
It will have radiant floor heat, An off-grid AC system, 10kw hours of energy storage and a garage under the bed.

We CNC cut most of the wood we do for most panels.

Then it gets upholstered.

I built a pair of cabinets out of some 1/4 inch birch ply and some aluminum angle.
One will function as the power cabinet and the other as the water cabinet.

Parts are a little slow to show up these days, especially out in the mountains.
So while we wait on all the power and water parts to show up to mount in the cabinets we decided to get started on the next van.

She's a big'un
This one is getting a full build-out but we have a process so the first step is to pop the windows and install the window flares and some front windows that open and close and have screens.
Nothing like cutting windows out of a brand new van.

I think that gets us all up to date.
I just wanted to pop in and post a little up date on my life.
Really itching to get my Vanagon to the shop so I can knock out the last few things on that and pretty pumped to be building these things for a living.

As I mentioned, we have a lot of new things in the works.
New shop, CNC plasma table, a lift or two and some other new metal fab tools as well as some updates to our wood fab tools.

Should be pretty exciting.

 

[vwhammer]

Oh dang I almost forgot!
The owner of the shop also has a brewery/taproom right next door to the shop
So occasionally we call it a day a little early and go nab a beer.

 

[RVflyfish]

Dude you’re livin’ the dream! That second van sounds epic. If it’s not proprietary info, would you mind sharing which radiant floor and off-grid AC system you’re going with?

 

[vwhammer]

Oh nothing proprietary about it.
We just route a pattern into some plywood and lay some pex in it.
We then use a diesel water heater from Webasto (or maybe it was Espar) to warm it all up.
Several places sell the heaters or you can even get one from Aliexpress if you are trying to be frugal.

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Full disclaimer: This is not the best method of heating super fast or in super cold temps.
It works ok down to about 40 degrees and if the customer plans on camping in colder weather we add a heater core and fan arrangement that runs on the same heater.
I should also mention that you can add a heat exchanger to the system and heat up water for showers and dishes.

The AC system we are running in that particular van has a heater core built into the air handler part of the system so the whole thing should be pretty slick once installed.

 

[RVflyfish]

Can’t wait to hear more about the AC system.

 

[vwhammer]

The AC system is a unit designed and built by Proair out of Canada that is sold by a company called Undermount AC.

24V Undermount Air Conditioner for class B van or RV -Ducted Evaporator

We are not presently accepting preorders for 981 evaporators. Please see our 916 offering. Preorders are the only way of guaranteeing your order is part of our stock replenishment. Click here to see stock levels and anticipated dates.v Fully native 24V Kit. All components are 24V A Note on...

undermountac.com

You can even spec the system out with van-specific mounts for many of the components and the heater core option in the evaporator box so it can do heat as well.

We got the AC system in-house but I have not unpacked it enough to get pics.
I should also mention that we are running a separate 24 volt alternator (can't remember what current rating) for the electrical system on this van.

This AC system is rated at 12000btu (900w) on its lowest setting and 20000btu (1300w) on its highest.
Just working with the numbers without calculating any losses or depth of discharge, our 10kwh battery alone could possibly run just the AC off-grid for a little over 7 hours on its highest setting and about 11 hours on its lowest.
Assume an 80% DOD and minimal losses due to running directly on 24 volts directly.
We could realistically get 5 hours of AC on its highest setting or almost 9 hours on low and that is if the AC was running non-stop without any cycling the entire time, which it usually is not.
Of course, we have a fridge and lights and an induction cooktop running on the electrical system as well so those times could drop some.
However, we are also putting about 800 watts of solar on top and have been tossing around the idea of building some slide-out mounts so we can stack panels and double that number.

To some those times might not seem like enough but one could reasonably assume that, if you need the AC, it very likely might be sunny so the solar will help a ton with those numbers, especially if we can get 1600 watts on the roof
It's also not likely that the AC would be running non-stop at full power at night either so to make a long story short it should work just fine.
We also have room in our battery box for twice as much battery if it really becomes an issue.

 

[coguzzi]

I used to spend a lot of time up around rollinsville when i lived in the area, its a great place to be

 

[vwhammer]

Yeah there are all kinds of cool things happening up here now.
We have the van shop and the brewery going on.
The brewery shares space with a distillery.
Then the distillery owner is trying to get this big building across the street put back together to have a restaurant/bar and music venue.
Even a place up the street that is getting an electric vehicle conversion company going.

Should be a pretty happening place come next summer.

 

[RVflyfish]

Thanks for all the AC details. Super helpful. I too am looking at a 24v system with 800w of solar and had thought about slide outs to increase that. Great minds and all that...

 

[vwhammer]

More work on the black van.
Got the window flares installed.

Cut a hole in the roof and mounted a Maxxfan.

I know none of this is super exciting but it was my first time installing a max fan and the window flares.
It was not terribly difficult and seemed to go off without too much trouble but was a new thing for me so...

Got the first stage of wall insulation wrapped up.

It's real hard to get pics on the inside of a black van.

Still gotta stuff the doors and work on the roof insulation but we figured we could start prepping all the tongue and groove that's going on the ceiling.

This mammoth takes a lot of wood.

You can just make out about the same amount of wood that is covering the table saw in the background.
All of this is for the ceiling.

Worked on some roof rails today and we have been doing some design work on some trim and a giant roof rack that will function as a deck hangout spot as well as holding a solar panel or two.
more pics of all that as it progresses.

UNtil next time...

 

[b. rock]

Oh damn, Rollinsville? Never would have guessed. I guess as Ned explodes it was natural that Rollinsville was next.

 

[vwhammer]

Been a minute since my last update.
I will apologize for some of these garbage pics but it's starting to get dark and cold up on the mountain so we don't have the garage doors open anymore.
As such the lighting is not great and my phone sucks so these are what we get.

Anyway, on to the update.

Got all the wood installed on the ceiling job and cut some holes for lights.

Got the wiring in for the lights as well.
There are ten lights in total and it's split up into a front zone with six lights and the "bedroom" zone with four lights.

We got to a stopping point on that and had a customer bring in a van for a few upgrades.

It had a pretty nice basic setup installed and it worked but she wanted some additions.

These piles of bamboo...

Would eventually turn into some new drawers that would flank the already installed kitchen set up.

Slapped in a table while we were at it so she can use it while making food and swivel either seat and use it as a table.

The client also requested a place to stash her skis so we whipped this up.

We will see how this works and may come up with some improvements in the future once we get a little feedback.

Lastly she also wanted a place to stash here auxillary solar panels so we made a little stash up under the bed where all three could be slid into place.

There is already 600 watts on the roof so I don't know that she will need these but it was a pretty simple thing to do and now they are out of the way until she sorts out that she never uses them.

We have since done some more work on the big black van and are trying to get it to a point that the owner can use it this weekend for a quick trip to Arizona.

I will get some pics of that progress over the next couple days and post up later.

Also got some parts for the white van but probs won't get back to that until next week.

Really been struggling with parts availability but we have been jumping around from van to van and keeping pretty busy.
We also have two more vans we have not even started on so there should be no shortage of updates.

Until then...