Firstly, apologies for the long overdue update, we’ve still been busy working out on the van four days a week. I had been saving the blog updates and planned to publish them in sections that cover the particular task that we’d been working on. However, it has taken us longer than expected on the bulkhead! So with reports of family missing the blog I shall go back to more regular updates!

Planning

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After finishing the walls we’ve almost completed a couple of the next stages. It’s been hard going with the bulkhead and it’s two doors, and we’ve been working on this task for a few weeks. As some of it involves the final finish of the van it’s tricky balancing working quickly with taking the time needed to make it look good, I think we both have a new appreciation for carpenters, to say the least!

We’ve revised the design of the bulkhead a few times since starting this build. We always planned to keep the cab separate from the living area. Our main three reasons for doing so were:

• Safety, the bulkhead stops anything from the living area coming through to the cab in event of a crash.
• Security, helps to hide the contents of the living area and may help reduce the chance of a break-in.
• Environmental control, Most heat in a vehicle is lost and gained through the windscreen, the van has a particularly large one and it condenses a lot. We are hoping the separation which will be insulated on the accommodation side will help to keep the heat in/out.

Our initial plans for the bulkhead were to have a full length door through to the cab, this would let us pop through from the living area in a hurry if we found we had parked up to sleep somewhere unsuitable. The idea of not having to exit the nice warm van, letting all the heat out in the process to be able to drive away is desirable. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of usable space from the living area and in one of my many games of Tetris with the layout I knew there had to be a better way.

Our final design is built around the bulkhead having a ‘hatch’ that we could climb through in an emergency, this means we could still utilize the wall space below the hatch.

Implementation

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The first stages of the bulkhead started with another family effort, after some discussion we decided that the best way to make a start was to build a frame over the existing factory bulkhead, we would then put insulation in between (similar to how we did the floor) and then cover with a ply wall.

Over the course of the weekend we made great strides and manged to get the lower half of the bulkhead battens insulated and vapour barriered. We also cut the hole for the hatch. It was beginning to looking exciting! With the weekends progress ending on a high the next task for Ben and I was to continue the battening out stage on the top half of the bulkhead.

Well done guys!

We started out with placing the support battens around the hatch and began the tedious task of cutting out more squares of insulation to fit into the gaps. This was tricky due to the way that the van roof curves in, but it seemed to work out in the end and Ben’s greatness with the jigsaw paid off as we cut another hole near the top for our storage cupboard that will extend out over into the cab.

Framing complete

After fully insulating and adding a vapour barrier to the top half, we were really pleased with our work and we felt that we’d come a long way in making a good start on the bulkhead. Next up will be to make templates and get the ply lining onto the wall

Almost finished insulating the bulkhead