Subfloor Mania

For our subfloor we decided to use 1/2″ foam board glued directly to the bottom of the van with 15/32″ plywood glued on top. We sealed the wood with a deck primer just to give it some added protection against moisture.

I made up some templates with cardboard to trace onto the foam and wood while Thomas was at work so we would be ready to go once the weekend started. I’m still a bit chicken about driving the van, though, so I waited for him to be off to go to the store for all our supplies. We needed to get the foam board and glue. We thought we had all the wood we would need, but we figured out later one of our big pieces was not the same width. It seems we might always have to make a second trip to the store!

With all our supplies ready, the first task was to clean out the van. The fan install left a lot of fine metal shards on the floor and every time we stepped inside we were leaving dirt and leaves, plus I had made a bit of a mess making my templates leaving cardboard all over. Thomas used a shop-vac to thoroughly clean the floor before we started and he did again after everything was test fit right before we glued everything down.

We traced the template onto the foam board and used a utility knife to cut it out. Then we tested the fit in the van and carved out any necessary spots to get the perfect fit. It was extremely satisfying when those pieces fit snugly together in the van.

We then used the foam as templates for the plywood and cut it using our nice new jigsaw we got for the fan install. The blade we chose was rated for “clean cut, wood.” With our safety glasses and gloves on, we got to cutting. Thomas did most of the work with the jigsaw, but I worked up the courage to cut one of the pieces at least. Once the wood was all cut for the back, we had to put the foam back down for it to fit properly. At that time it was getting pretty late and we couldn’t cut the front piece because it was too noisy, so it was time to pack up for the night and start again after church the next day.

Back at it the next day, we got the front piece of plywood cut and fit and removed everything so we could glue it all down. We got all the foam glued before realizing we would need more glue. Back to the store we went again! We grabbed some good duct tape while we were there. We decided to tape the seams of the foam board to protect the R-value. Plus, being on the road we’ll need duct tape right? It fixes everything.

After the store, we figured we may as well wait for the temperature to go down before we finished our project. We went ahead and duct taped the foam, but we waited for the sun to set before finally gluing the plywood down. It doesn’t necessarily fit perfectly, but it fits well enough. We are pretty proud of the job we did. We put some bricks on top to weight it down as the glue cures and snapped some pics. Our next big project is our second fan install. Let’s hope it goes at least as well as the first.