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Flooring Install Part 9 | Livestream Shop Cam
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May 2, 2025
Have questions? Ask in the Chat! Join me on this livestream as we finally install the subfloor! Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways we can help you: 1. If you need a vetted parts list, download our → FREE DIY Van Build Cheatsheet to help you save time and money on Van Parts and Gear: CLICK HERE: https://van-builder-hq.ck.page/846c83ab54 2. If you want to get Done-For-You Van Build help, book a → FREE Consultation with my Calendly Link: CLICK HERE: https://calendly.com/odysseycustomvans/intro-call?month=2023-07
View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:25
thank you [Music]
0:46
thank you hey guys welcome to the live stream
0:51
we are installing the subfloor finally so yesterday if you
0:59
guys caught the live stream we actually talked about some electrical things and um so we had to go through the
1:06
system check our wiring sizes couple it with the load of all the uh components
1:13
in our van and then we went through got the right fuse sizing and all that good
1:18
stuff we put it into a chart so make sure you guys check out that video I think it's gonna be really helpful if
1:23
you've never tried to size The Wire and find the appropriate fuse for your
1:29
circuitry so we did that so we finalized everything in here and
1:35
it's good to use it as a checklist because believe it or not I went through and was prepping everything this morning
1:41
to go ahead and get this live stream set up and the floor glued down and the max fan cable
1:49
I did not run the max fan cable so I went put it through the ceiling came straight down our pillar put it into the
1:57
floor here and now we have nine circuits so our nine circuits were right almost
2:02
maxed out of our Max Amps that we can pull out of our sub
2:07
panel which is the max is 60. and I think we're up to 55 amps right now
2:15
that's with everything running full out at the exact same time
2:20
all right we are going to get a piece of wood and bring it into the van and then
2:27
we're just gonna get this thing glued in I've got a couple of tools over here I'm going to show you guys but I'm going to put this
2:34
rear one in first so we can walk on it and gather our tools and then we'll bring in the piece we're
2:39
actually going to glue in today and keep on going but remember the chat
2:45
is open in the live stream feel free to ask any questions that you guys have
2:51
can be anything van related does not have to be all about the van floor
2:59
and as I'm bringing these pieces in they're going to be painted green on the bottom there's no reason that they're
3:06
painted green on the bottom um but when you when you just need some
3:12
paint you can go to Lowe's and they have some paint that either
3:18
didn't sell or you know custom returned or something like that there's nothing wrong with it but it's a half price I
3:26
found so we don't care about the color because we're going to be gluing this down
3:33
so the green color of this and it's on the bottom
3:48
so we're just going to put this piece back in here we took this out because we needed to modify a couple edges on it and then we also
3:56
obviously painted it green so we're going to put this here but then
4:01
make sure you shift it all the way forward so
4:07
that we can align this back panel you want to glue in if you do a three
4:12
panel system like this you want to put the middle one in first not only is it good because the front and rear will
4:19
reference off of it but we have these uh aluminum bars in
4:24
here and we want to make sure that these aluminum bars they these pins get aligned for the pull
4:31
out tray so this will be kind of the home position for the floor and then we'll
4:37
bump up the back and then we'll bump up uh well the front and we'll bump at the back
4:42
if you can imagine if you put the front one in and you're off a little bit and then the second one's off then your rear
4:47
one obviously will be off so if you can get your middle one right the front and back will just
4:53
come right in line all right for this next one we'll bring
4:59
the next panel we'll just set it up over here because we need to prep this for glue our adhesive
5:13
now when we do the adhesive we do not want to do it as thick as
5:21
what we did for the floor the floor was to make up for some gaps
5:26
that we had because we had about a sixteenth of an inch to eighth of inch difference
5:32
in some areas of the floor depending on where the floor sat
5:38
so for this one
5:44
let's see here so you can see we got a painted green on the bottom
5:50
so now let's see the best way to pop this in here
5:55
some upside down
6:20
and the reason I painted this is uh
6:26
this is a sanded ply flooring
6:32
and you can't get flooring that has properties in it for like mold
6:37
prevention but I went ahead and just it took me two seconds to paint this
6:44
um I painted it and this is a outdoor paint that has a mold preventative built into
6:51
it so anywhere that you know moisture might get to we have the wood sealed but it
6:59
also has a mold preventive inside so we don't have to really worry about that the top one is bare because it's going
7:05
to receive the bonding primer for our epoxy floor that's just to ensure that we get a
7:12
really good Bond so what we're going to do now is
7:19
we're gonna find get our new toy which is this Milwaukee caulk gun
7:24
I've never used it before so it might be interesting seeing how it works we need our four
7:31
bolts here so that we can align up our floor before it fully settles in
7:39
let's put those there we're probably just going to use one tube of the pl Marine Fast cure
7:49
we got another one just in case and then on this back side we have a
7:55
drill we have a 5 64th drill bit
8:03
we have number 10 inch and a quarter uh
8:08
sheet metal screws now these sheet metal screws do not self-tap
8:15
I'll explain that in a minute and they have a coarser thread
8:20
and that has to do with because we have a thin wall piece of aluminum and I found that the
8:26
finer threads are stripping so in hindsight yes I would get the
8:33
thicker gauge aluminum tubing um it's not really a deal breaker because
8:39
the only reason that we have this uh floor are these aluminum pieces in here
8:46
is to make sure that we don't get that seam over time as well as distribute the
8:52
load from this uh tray over here that we got in the van
9:00
and then we need a countersink bit so that that way we can countersink our
9:06
sheet metal screws into the wood and we're probably going to only use maybe four or five screws
9:14
but we got time so after we come down here we can actually sit on the board and take our time drilling those holes
9:21
into here and if you guys remember we put these in here so that the seam doesn't have that
9:27
little bubble that little hump that happens over time because after expansion and contraction
9:33
all the time it'll that floor may move and I just I just
9:39
don't want that we did not glue these in
9:44
so we'll need to actually put a couple dots of glue here
9:51
before we lay our floor down so these this will be the first thing we do and we'll get this uh we'll get this
9:58
lined up same thing here we'll take this out so we'll go ahead and do that first
10:06
and then when we do our glue we're just going to do some lines around the edges a little bit in the
10:13
maybe three things in the middle um we don't have to go crazy with this glue like we did the other one
10:21
so let's uh yeah let's get going
10:37
foreign
11:05
we can wipe off thank you
11:10
the nozzle
11:16
keep everything out nice and clean
11:45
so this Milwaukee this is the M12 so this is not the uh M18
11:52
I like the M12 line because I use the M12 for the grinder where I cut out the
11:58
ribs before I cut the windows out and it's just nice to have smaller tools
12:04
sometimes instead of the big you know chunky DeWalt stuff that I've got
12:11
this Milwaukee tool also has an auto drip feature or uh
12:17
Auto drip anti-drip anti-drip feature
12:40
so I'm gonna go pick up the battery
13:18
that's interesting so when you push the reverse it doesn't Auto reverse it just releases this so
13:25
you pull it back I guess that's a good thing
13:31
I guess it would make sense to automatically go back
13:37
all right so this should actually be a pretty cool thing here
14:14
yeah I don't know how it's supposed to sound so give me a minute
14:20
there you go
14:27
oh this is very nice
14:52
foreign
15:11
that's not bad
15:58
okay
16:09
the auto drip feature it's okay but it might be messing up because the way I'm using it so
16:19
okay that looks good
16:29
go ahead and set these in here
16:39
and if you notice we used our little slash marks
16:45
that way we can take this we took this out and then we can still make sure that we uh
16:51
line everything up properly it's going to work really good
17:24
foreign
18:13
so what I'm doing is I'm walking on this other piece of this floor over here and I just want to
18:19
make sure that this sound will not happen after I put down this floor
18:27
so I'm trying to figure out how I want to actually put this down
18:47
foreign just rubbing up against the the van
19:15
all right let's put a couple beads down and we'll see what we how we're doing here
19:29
[Music]
19:45
yeah this is gonna make us go through a tube really quick
19:53
I did not think it would be this might be a good thing
20:13
so we can change the speed settings on here see if we go down to three
20:22
oh no that ain't gonna work
20:42
okay let's get uh another tube here
20:57
let me hit the release button you just pull straight back and it'll come out of the tube foreign
21:28
so I'm gonna have to disassemble this after we're done to clean it out because uh
21:36
yeah our tube malfunctioned look at this
21:41
so look at this
21:48
man that sucks well I'm gonna clean this up
21:54
so that's what happens when tube doesn't work
22:06
all right so let me go back to our caulk gun let me go grab it
22:22
put some gloves on for this one
23:10
well it was nice when it lasted
23:20
I'm probably going to trowel this down a little bit because it's just way too much you don't want
23:26
that thick of a layer because it's going to it's going to keep it's going to get the floor too high and you're going to have
23:32
like these air pockets so we don't want that
23:49
all right going back to
23:55
plan A we're gonna make sure we have this right
24:01
here on the back so that's how thin I wanted it
24:07
I did not want it to be as thick as this over here
24:39
yeah if the manual caulk gun actually is much easier
24:45
so that just may not been the right application for that you know
26:04
foreign
26:15
yeah I think we just need to knock down those high spots and we'll be all right
27:01
someone gets something to knock down those high spots and we'll put the floor in
27:26
foreign
27:45
I think I can use denatured alcohol to clean up that uh gun but
27:51
that kind of sucks for this first time using it yeah yeah
27:58
we're just gonna knock down all these high spots
28:13
yeah because it put a ton of caulk over here
28:41
foreign
28:58
piece we don't want on the floor
29:12
yeah once we put on the weight on the floor it's going to knock all this stuff down uh we just do not want these high spots
29:45
foreign
30:22
yeah someone definitely changed up my method after this
30:59
foreign
31:13
excellent all the high spots are knocked down
31:19
and we are good to go so let's go ahead and now everything's knocked down thin
31:27
and so I hope you guys get the reason that I'm knocking it down is because
31:35
we use the thickness to level the foam but we don't need that because
31:40
it's already level so trust me and you want as much surface
31:45
area contact because any place that may be foam with no adhesive
31:51
uh if it's not close to another place that does have adhesive could make a noise
31:57
so okay that's good
32:02
Super Fast cure but we need to get this floor down so
32:09
now the priority is to make sure that we it is really tacky right now
32:14
so we need to make sure that we get our alignment bolts in
32:22
and that that really is the first priority
32:30
so before we actually push it down let's go ahead and get those
32:36
and put them through the hole
32:43
and then from there we can shift it
32:49
wherever we want to
33:07
okay looks good there I'm gonna take this glove off because
33:12
it's got It's I got stuff on it
33:19
see how we're doing here
33:34
now remember we don't want our
33:40
we don't want our back piece of wood to influence this piece so let's see where
33:47
we're looking over here and let's check our back seam perfect
33:54
this line is perfect okay now we can actually stand on it
33:59
dance on it whatever you want to do we're going to start from The Middle
34:04
and then just go to the outside
34:20
foreign
35:31
pretty quick because as soon as I get these bolts in back here we need to make sure we have some
35:38
weight on it so I'm going to go ahead and get some weight
36:09
tire change brake rotors
36:15
that's what I use I've got heavier stuff but we'll put
36:21
that on after we do our uh after we drill our holes over here
36:32
so this one you need a little bit more weight on
36:38
that side everything else looks really good
36:55
foreign
37:04
let's get a piece of aluminum tape measure we're going to use the aluminum to just Trace out a line
37:37
correct there is no screws through the floor
38:34
foreign
38:52
with this board though you guys can maybe you can see how it's got a crown to it
38:58
um it's just uh in a perfect world you can have a
39:04
perfectly air-conditioned shop and the wood's not going to bow on you but the the goal is to as soon as you can
39:12
get the wood from like say your Lowe's or your hardware store cut it and install it I
39:21
mean in a perfect world you could do it same day but uh we know we don't live in the perfect
39:27
world but if you can do it on the same day
39:32
that you want to do that because over time the board is going to work work naturally over time
39:38
and that's going to create this problem so to alleviate this problem
39:43
I actually need to have a I'm using the spare tire from this van
39:48
and some more weight and I'm putting it on the center and smushing it down so you'll see me do that here in just a
39:53
little bit but now I'm just tracing the making a pin Mark so I can know where my piece of
40:00
aluminum is since I'm countersinking nothing has to
40:07
be perfect but I'm just going to come and put a I'll put a screw here
40:14
put a screw right here at the end right here
40:19
and then I'll do one in the middle and I'll do one in the middle here
40:27
so I'm going to countersink these and the cool thing about the Lonzo epoxy
40:33
is it's it's it's it's really thick it gets thick very quick so you can just
40:38
trowel it over any dip in this and then when you do the roller it's going to
40:44
make any of those stuff indistinguishable but we're going to start with the middle and then work our way out
40:53
make sure I'm still on camera
41:02
so the floor is held down by the adhesive the peel Marine
41:08
that's what it's held down by
41:13
because the reason the peel Marine works so well is that it doesn't dry hard
41:20
uh it dries solid but it's it's almost like almost like a rubberized uh
41:29
so it can it can flex and move and it doesn't rip so when the van flexes and the chassis
41:35
flexes the floor is going to work with it and it won't pull away from the wood
41:47
so like my Milwaukee caulk gun my other drills are not working so I have one
41:54
drill so you guys may laugh that I'm gonna countersink I'm going to change a bit I'm going to drill and then I'm
42:00
going to change a bit and then whatever I do have three drills but two are not working right now so
42:10
all right and just countersink it and then use the head of your screw
42:17
to help you determine how deep it needs to go
42:23
deeper is better than shallow because the whole point is to hide
42:30
just to hide the screw
42:38
okay so that should that should work right
42:43
there now this uh 5 64th bit that I'm using
42:51
I'm using this to cut the
42:57
so we have a screw right and then you have threads and there's a sh if you can kind of think the middle as the shaft
43:03
we want that cut out but we don't want the threads cut out if that makes sense the only reason I'm doing this is
43:10
because these are non-self-tapping threads but they don't make a non-socket head screw sheet metal screw
43:17
without the Tapper at the bottom and the issue I was having is that the
43:23
screw size with this one inch the tap would actually touch the bottom and it makes it it tears up the threads
43:31
maybe that'll make sense to you guys [Music]
43:38
I'm not drilling through the van just the first layer of the aluminum tube do not go through
43:44
the van
44:02
foreign
44:23
perfect that is awesome now when you're tightening this down
44:29
you may go remember it's aluminum it's soft so when you feel it's sandwiched
44:35
make sure you immediately stop because if you keep going you're going to squeeze it too much and
44:43
it's not gonna be good so guess what
44:49
this process worked very well we're doing good as soon as we get the spare tire and get
44:55
the rest of this little bubble out of The Middle we're going to be on our way
45:14
there's a faster way to put a floor in but it's much more expensive
45:20
so I thought for you guys that this I think I thought you uh I think you might
45:26
like this method it takes longer you can kind of see how many days it's taken to uh
45:34
it's mainly me you know teaching to get materials and stuff like that but if you had to have this all set up in a day
45:40
and you had a helper you could do it but this is the lowest cost solution
45:46
the uh the foam the PO adhesive in the floor
45:51
uh that's your that's the best you're going to do that can see you can't really buy a floor kit
45:57
floor kits are usually about twenty five hundred dollars
46:05
so [Music]
46:11
I think this is a great DIY solution
46:31
and you want to put a pretty good amount of pressure because you are
46:38
cutting into the aluminum foreign
46:50
make that connection all you got to do is stop
46:56
the cool thing is after all this floor gets laid down locked down
47:01
we can take the orbital sander and we will sand this just one more time just
47:06
lightly and it'll get that edge even more perfect
47:27
thank you
47:55
foreign
48:42
thank you man that's looking really good
49:04
foreign
49:11
[Music]
50:00
wow
50:13
last one foreign
51:10
[Music]
51:16
all right that's it we've got each one of these countersunk in they look really
51:22
good
51:27
and uh yeah so we're going to load this up like I was saying earlier
51:39
I'm very happy with the way it sounds if you do not spread out the adhesive
51:47
that is where you're going to get that popping that floor popping effect
51:52
so for example let's listen to this back panel now okay if you put the raw wood down
52:00
and you don't seal it that that noise won't be there but when
52:05
you seal it you can almost think of like you know it's two coated surfaces you have the
52:10
insulation and then you have that painted surface it's kind of tacky even though that's dried overnight
52:16
but this one you can hear or you can't hear there's no noise but now let's listen to this panel over here
52:24
you hear that it's almost like a splintering and cracking
52:31
so that's because the painted surface uh
52:40
it's like sticking to the foam
52:45
and it's not that the paint is not dry it's like a
52:50
it's almost like a surface area thing where it's like it's so smooth
52:57
that when it touches it kind of sticks it's like almost like a like a cling foam I mean a cling wrap or something
53:04
but you hear this right and then now we have this that we spread
53:15
okay so make sure you spread the adhesive
53:21
all right I'm gonna stop dancing now but this one check this out over here
53:28
it's quiet
53:34
now hear this right here
53:40
so that means uh we need to really make sure that we put
53:45
a really good piece of adhesive on there so that we don't get that deflection with the wood
53:52
because this is a high traffic area this is the place where you walk in the
53:57
van and you don't want that to be noisy
54:02
so if you put it's right here
54:09
that's where the foam is deflecting a little bit so we're gonna make sure we put a lot of adhesive
54:14
and I'm gonna stop repeating myself let's go let's see what you guys are
54:20
saying in the chat all right um
54:25
uh let's see here yeah Jamie said How's it held down just
54:31
it's just adhesive only um
54:37
see what else all right so again we're going to load
54:44
this up I'm going to prep the other panels we're gonna hop off of here let me know
54:51
if you guys have any questions really quick um let me put the camera right here so I
54:56
can talk to you guys uh let me turn this brightness down
55:02
so we're gonna do q a here for about another five minutes
55:08
let's see there we go and I'm going to talk to you about
55:13
briefly um so if you have questions ask them right
55:19
now and while I'm waiting on those questions I'll go over what we worked on yesterday
55:28
because I've updated a little bit so yesterday I created this chart right
55:33
here and so what this chart is it is these are all of our components
55:40
that are in the van these are the operating amps of all those components
55:46
that are in the 12 volt fuse block so if you remember if you watched
55:53
yesterday we were talking about this Blue Sea Systems fuse block right here
55:58
the fuses that it uses are ATC so they're they're pretty much those ones
56:04
that I mean they're the same thing that you would have like in your car if you needed to work on them
56:10
and then we talked about we labeled what wire size we ran for the components and
56:16
then this chart in green is our double check so if we're operating at 10 amps and we
56:23
have a 14 gauge wire a 14 gauge wire means that it can handle up to 15 amps and so that's kind of our
56:29
check to be safe and then we went on line and we found a few size calculator
56:37
and no affiliation but explore.life has a really good one right here
56:43
you just put in the device in the amperage the wire size and then your voltage of your system
56:48
and then it's going to spit out right here the recommended fuse size for that circuit
56:54
so this is a little chart it's good for a DIY wire because one it gets you familiar with the stuff that's in your
57:00
van but then also you can reference you can do the most important thing which is add all these
57:07
values up and then make sure that this number is not higher than your fuse
57:13
block so our fuse block has a maximum of 60 amps technically this can do a hundred but
57:20
you know why it's 60 it's 60 because we only ran a six gauge wire to it to
57:27
service it so 60 is our Max we're at 56 so we're
57:34
good to go now remember that means that every single one of these items is full bore maxed out running as much
57:41
consumption as it's going to do that is how you want to size both your components your wires
57:48
um for to be safe
57:57
all right let's see well you have to pull the that first piece of flooring up fix a squeak
58:05
okay so the we have a glued in the we haven't glued in the first piece of
58:10
flooring yet so that week will go away once we did the adhesive on it so what's happening
58:17
is this squeak is because that that board is deflecting
58:24
so I may do two things um I may put another piece of the uh
58:33
the quarter inch um what am I trying to say the lattice on that edge
58:41
but what's really making the squeak is that deflection so if I put
58:47
one another piece of lattice under there that'll stop the foam from deflecting and it'll keep this the top piece of
58:54
glues on there uh from squeaking so some of the squeaking is from deflection so when it moves down I'm gonna over
59:01
make this dramatic but what's happened is the wood is going over like this so
59:06
it's like squeak squeak so we can support this
59:12
but if we don't put enough we don't spread the adhesive out
59:18
then it'll also create that so we want the foam and the wood to be one
59:24
so if it does deflect it does like that but it doesn't squeak so I'll support it I'll show you how to
59:30
do that um uh you guys won't you won't miss anything because I'm going to pause from
59:36
this and I got to do something else and then I'll I'll come back alive and I'll capture that
59:42
um I might even call it how to fix a squeak in your floor but we'll we'll support that explain why
59:49
it's squeaking and then we'll install that piece live so you won't miss that piece being installed
59:57
yeah so two things create this squeak the deflection in the floor that's why we put all those strips in the floor
1:00:03
because if you have any dips uh that's uh
1:00:10
so a squeak happens if everything is vertical and goes down there's no squeaks the squeaks happen when
1:00:15
the two Services move in this direction so that top floor squeaking sliding kind
1:00:24
of sliding over um yeah I'm going to see if I can fit a piece of lattice in there but don't
1:00:30
worry we'll catch it we'll put on the live stream you won't miss anything
1:00:38
all right let's see here
1:00:44
last but not least wanted to talk real quick about the DIY van build cheat sheet this is a an Excel sheet that's
1:00:50
highly organized that I've developed I put it together to organize the last three years of all the purchases that
1:00:56
I've made on Amazon it's a quick reference guide for me but for the diyer this is something that's really going to
1:01:03
help you save time and money you can save money by making sure you're buying stuff that I use and you don't have to
1:01:08
vet yourself and then you can save time because the list is completely organized for you all the electrical stuff
1:01:15
Fasteners Hardware insulation Roofing security solar and most importantly tools
1:01:21
um I haven't added the Milwaukee on there yet uh I need to clean it up as you guys
1:01:27
saw earlier today but stuff like that will be on the list there's only two there's over 250 items on this list it
1:01:34
consistent uh consistently grows so it gets bigger over time as we add things and I think it's a great addition to
1:01:41
having your back pocket as you're building your own van build out it's completely free all you have to do is
1:01:46
put your name and email address it'll come directly to your inbox you can go to
1:01:52
vanbuilderhq.com or you can click on the link in the description below to get your free DIY van build cheat sheet
1:02:01
all right that is it for this uh Quick Lunch stream we'll come back later and
1:02:07
we'll go through gluing in the other two pieces um
1:02:14
so I'll probably actually just do that front piece if I do that fix but uh yeah look forward to another live stream
1:02:20
later tonight and we'll talk to you guys very soon
1:02:34
thank you
#Flooring
#Home Improvement