I'm starting on van number 4 and here is my floor plan. It will be a 159 with a 3 person passenger seat. What advice and comments do people have?

 

@Curious Campervans were producing a 44g tank that might fit in for your needs - ya might want to check in with them.

If you are building commercially how are you protecting your company from liabilities around the added Ford Transit seat?

5 people in a van? - Why not an EXT?

Propane - Under-mount tank or Propane Locker?

 

Back to the floor plan, I think it will work well.

 

I envy you guys with CAD skills. I mostly sketch things up with paper and pencil, but when measurements are important (like pieces fitting together) I cheat and use Excel as 2 dimension CAD. Cell size as required, sometimes 1" squares, even as small as 1/8" when needed. Here are the four slices of my current floor plan... floor level, wheel well level, countertop level and upper cabinets. Relatively easy to extrude from there to a side view of each wall. That is still in flux, will add as it becomes more firm.

The purple and green drawing is a side view of the floor, with measurements (in inches) taken from the step-up to the cab.. The green is 1" XPS, with seams spaced to avoid support gaps in the ribbing of the metal floor. The purple is 3/4" Baltic Birch plywood, with seams staggered to minimize exposed seams, avoid overlapping XPS seams, as well as to use the factory tie-down bolt locations efficiently. The plywood is biscuit joined edge to edge.

 

I envy you guys with CAD skills. I mostly sketch things up with paper and pencil, but when measurements are important (like pieces fitting together) I cheat and use Excel as 2 dimension CAD. Cell size as required, sometimes 1" squares, even as small as 1/8" when needed. Here are the four slices of my current floor plan... floor level, wheel well level, countertop level and upper cabinets. Relatively easy to extrude from there to a side view of each wall. That is still in flux, will add as it becomes more firm.

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Hey @Sather

Nice trick with Excel 👍

I have not sorted my HWT out yet & may go “on demand”. Either way it will be propane for me. The 14”x14”x14” HWT you have picked out - what have you choosen?

 

That's an interesting way to use Excel! Well done.

IS there a PPP* ?

Looks like the water tank weight will be balanced with the battery and fridge weight.

(*porta potti place)

 

That's an interesting way to use Excel! Well done.

IS there a PPP* ?

Looks like the water tank weight will be balanced with the battery and fridge weight.

(*porta potti place)

Thanks. Basically using it as a drafting table, only using the border function (straight lines of varying width and color) with pattern fill and text inserts. The learning curve was easy. I was a big fan of MacPaint on the early Macs. You could do curves and diagonals. Ran flawlessly from original thru system 9, no longer runs under OS X. The disadvantage is neither program allows you to select an individual object and resize it.

Balancing the weight was intentional, didn't do any of the math but I figured it would be reasonable. Also, keeping the weight low.

The potty will go in the bottom of the closet or in the underbed storage. Pull it out when needed. I didn't want to dedicate the floorspace required for a permanent loo. Shower will be plumbed to the back doors with a curtain between them.

 

I like your floor plan Sather. Two suggestions came to mind: (1) the upper cabinet above the head of the bed ... there's not much room there, so if you want to sit up, you'll need to make that cabinet really small or forego it altogether, and (2) for the bed frame, you might consider running all supports from wall to wall and removing the "front to back" ones.

 

Thanks. I agree with the bed / cabinet dilemma. I may sit up with my back against the rear doors. Haven't settled on where the TV goes, but may end up watching from the front seats swiveled to the rear, mini-home theater style. And then just sleep in the bed. I have had the privilege of using my sister's Minnie Winnie a few times, which has a shelf over the head of the bed, and haven't had any issues with it. Similar "walled in" feel to it, so the shelf is almost a requirement for a place to put your phone, etc. I plan to use some of the "gap" between the aft side of the bed and the rear doors to build some sort of shelf at or near bed height, like having a night stand.

There are three "wall to wall" supports for the bed. It isn't very clear in my drawing, but the "front to back" ones are just IKEA bed slats.

 

Totally agree about the need for a shelf for phones, etc. I didn’t realize that need until I recently started using the van overnight. So this weekend I’m building a shelf into the upper part of the door, above the window.

I understand about the ikea slats now. Makes sense. I considered the expanding ikea beams with slats. Seems a cost effective and easy to remove solution. In the end I went with the steel and plywood because I was concerned about all the movement of the van disrupting the slats… I wanted everything bolted down.

I’ll look forward to seeing your build!

 

Totally agree about the need for a shelf for phones, etc. I didn’t realize that need until I recently started using the van overnight. So this weekend I’m building a shelf into the upper part of the door, above the window.

FWIW, this is a picture of the Minnie Winnie bed area. Granted, she has more ceiling height to work with, but the clearance from the top of the mattress to the bottom of the 7" deep shelf is 23". The cabinet over the shelf is a whopping 24" deep with 30" of clearance from the mattress. I can't sit up in there, either.

 

Makes sense to me.

My priority was to be able to sit up, so I had to forego the overhead cabinets or drop the bed lower than I wanted. Too bad; I could certainly use the storage space. Now that mine is built, I'm happy with the result and wouldn't change it. But for you, cabinets overhead could work well and turn out to be a better design.

 

I also created my own plan model, before I started construction. But that didn't help either=) It was about the entrance to the house. We decided that the entrance would be straight into the house, without a porch. That's why we laid the foundation that way. And when we built the house, we realized that a porch was necessary... We ended up looking for a firm and finally turned to boutiquehomeplans.com. They explained and redid our mistakes. Now, visually, the house looks more thoughtful and the porch isn`t only aesthetically pleasing, it`s also convenient – now we can change dirty shoes without entering the house when it rains, and furnished it with plants.

 

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Wow! So many ideas here. Thanks