Small Japanese Reunion

The hostel WiFi password is “checkout10am”, just in case you didn’t know. I made sure to be out on time, but still feeling a bit sluggish, I luxuriated in a lie-in. I had been up late chatting to a French girl called Lena and a Canadian lad called Doug about their travels. While waiting for my laundry to dry, they gave me the name of a good sushi restaurant for a date night.

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DOACC: Skylights

Diary of a camper conversion

I’ve got the best brother. While I was in a work training course, he was taking on one of the most stressful jobs I had been putting off.

Installing skylights means cutting whopping great big holes in your nice new, clean, smooth and watertight roof. I was dreading it because I’ve been so many examples online where people have installed them and then after the build is complete, they find water running down inside their van walls.

That would be the worst thing so I’m grateful he took this on and completed the first one for me. And it looks great! Huge thick sealant bead around the inside and it’s fitting nice and flush.

However… When it hinges up to open, the glass hits the roof, so it doesn’t fully open 90 deg, meaning it doesn’t stay open by itself. This is a bit of a disappointment as this was a feature I was looking forward to. But thinking about it, I probably wouldn’t leave a huge glass panel balanced up there unattended, so I would probably have made a stay for it anyway at some point.

The only other downside to this is that if you push it to hard, it’s going to lever up the whole skylight and break the sealant… But we will conveniently ignore this blatant design flaw and move on!

The second skylight was left for me to have a stab at. Cutting huge holes, then jig sawing around the carefully drawn line. Deburring and painting the edge to prevent corrosion. And finally, squeezing out half a Sikaflex tube of sealant to glue it in place.

Now we really for it to cure, and I check it for leaks when it next rains.

DOACC: Structural Batons

Diary of a camper conversion

Working around the insulation is a pain, but it kept Kai and I warm-er when we took the van out on its maiden overnight trip to Sussex. It did mean that the odd bit of fluff got covered in wood glue, but that’s not the end of the world.

Today David helped me start framing out the van with batons. These were ripped strips from 18mm ply because it’s structurally more consistent than plain wood, is thick enough to fill the depth of the van pillars and will be strong for mounting the bed to it later. It was counter sunk with a spade bit and then metal self tapping roof screwed into the ribs. We added a little glue behind it to prevent squeaks.