❄️How to *ACTUALLY* Insulate Campervan for WINTER VANLIFE ❄️

we're wrapping up our installation this week but before i share with you our build video i thought it was actually really important to make a separate video that details the main mistakes that we notice that other builders make online now there is so much information out there about insulation spanning from like insulation is the most important part of your build to like there's no such thing as insulation and there's no such thing as sheep [Music] this video will have two main parts first a conglomeration of fun facts about insulation and then in part two we'll get into all the materials and like r-value and all that sort of stuff but it's kind of hard to understand the material side if you don't understand how people mess it up does that make sense living in a van with poor insulation is an absolute nightmare even if you have a heater built into your van if you go out to dinner and you come back 45 minutes later the van is already cold it feels like nothing can properly dry inside and this is all because of a decision that you made at the very beginning of your van build the first big insulation mistake that i see almost everywhere went on van tours and on all these van videos is people don't insulate the side door or the back doors this is a massive issue not insulating those doors is essentially like not insulating an entire wall of your vehicle in our build back in 2018 we didn't do this either and it was easily one of the bigger regrets of our build what we ended up having to do later in that trip was get like 3m hooks glue those to the back door cut holes in a blanket and hang it because during the night we could actually feel the wind coming through the crack in the back door and that is literally right next to your bed we had this same problem in the van in the states and we ended up hanging blankets over the side door and the back door every night these doors are sheet metal they're conductors so if it's cold outside the metal will be cold and that creates a thermal bridge that impacts your tiny home and this is especially comfortable at night when you likely have your heater turned off or during the height of the day in the summer when you're in the sun some people think if it's too hot they'll park in the shade but the reality is when you're living on the road the sun is your power source you want to be parked in the sun as much as possible to be able to grab all that energy fill up your battery and operate comfortably in your van moral of the story you need to make sure you are covering all of your thermal bridges at least with some fabric or something doesn't have to be wood paneling but something to cover the metal [Music] okay under fact two before you insulate you're going to want to have an understanding of your layout and what you're going to attach your cabinets to attaching all of the main structures of your build a lot of people will do slats like wooden slats around the framing that is definitely an option it all depends on your planning we have a really fun way that we're approaching it that you'll have to keep your eye out for the next video i think this will be a huge game changer for how people approach insulation one cool thing a lot of people don't think about is the insulation behind their overhead units that usually has their clothes your clothes will be a natural insulator when you are living on the road so you don't need to have this mega insulation pad directly behind a cabinet that holds all your clothes you can have that be a little bit thinner because once you stuff that full it becomes a natural barrier plus it will give you more storage space okay fact three don't insulate the very bottom of your chassis a lot of people will end up stuffing wool or expandable foam on that bottom canal that's right in line with the floor those have holes for water and moisture to escape the van some water can actually get into some of there and then it can quickly escape from the same space stuffing that with wool or foam or any other material all of that material will inevitably get wet just avoid it it is important though to obviously cover up all of those mega holes along the floorboards [Music] fact four the order of a van build matters if you've been following our series you might have seen that we were doing things in a very particular order tanks and then we moved to the floor then we did solar then we did security then we did wiring and now we're doing our insulation you should not be approaching wiring after you insulate your van you will have to undo a lot of your insulation work with wiring you're like stuffing a lot of your wires through different crevices around the van moving it through different channels if you're filling that with foam or if you're stuffing that with wall it's going to be really hard to add wires fact five what's a vapor barrier and why are people talking about it so much it's not a political party why is everybody all up in it there's a lot of confusion about the role of a vapor barrier if it's necessary but i think we should explain sort of what it is when you're living and traveling in a vein full time you are creating a lot of moisture in your space not only through breathing but also through cooking through moisture can accumulate onto the body of your van which is kind of a recipe for rust it can hinder your insulation it's something you want to avoid so what people will do they'll either tape around any of the air holes to separate the air that's inside from the insulation and the body of the van itself there's also kind of heavy debate on if the insulation materials you use in your van build should be able to absorb moisture it's a good debate but this is a new field a lot of this feels like very theoretical the majority of the materials we are using are non-absorbent and we will be implementing a vapor barrier as well we'll show you how next video are you subscribed you subscribe look at how cute milly is subscribe to the channel remember that a vapor barrier can be done with like a foil tape or some people will actually use like a reflectix and they'll create like a space dome oh yeah and since i mentioned reflectix reflectix are not a form of insulation they are a reflective material so if you are taking reflectix and you are putting it straight onto the body of your van you are literally doing nothing it doesn't have a roll it reflects heat and heats up the air you need a gap there in my opinion if you are going through the step of insulating your van you might as well tape it up and have a barrier as well especially for large cargo bands if you're planning on living in them or traveling in them full time fact six moving into the importance of insulating a ceiling and insulating a floor sealing absolutely heat rises so if you're able to insulate the top of your van to make sure that that heat does not escape where you don't want it to it's also a nice protective barrier from the sun now we're in a very unique situation where our solars literally cover the entirety of our van so we are already protected from the sun's radiant heat but we want to be able to maintain the heat in the van and not have it escape upwards we're also working on a really cool curtain system that you're going to see soon to make sure that we can keep the heat from escaping through our glass roof windows and our roof vents floor insulation is a whole different debate a lot of people don't even bother and the reason they they don't bother is they say that the floor is going to get cold anyway i could understand that an insulated floor will still get cooler but if you are opting for something like floor heaters if you have an insulated floor you will be able to maintain that heat insulated floor with floor heaters makes winter camping super easy fact seven windows windows are incredibly romanticized when it comes to van life i happen to think that two extra windows within your van is plenty it's a nice balance between having views and having privacy but the reason i bring that up today is because windows are the biggest battle when it comes to installation and you are already dealing with one mega windshield and a driver and a passenger window so there's already a lot of glass for you to insulate glass has an r value of one we'll discuss this in part two but that's a big breach glass is a big breach and will give you less control over the temperature in your space this is a big reason why some people will actually make like full dividers to be able to separate the cab is so that they're not dealing with the impacts of that breach if you have some sort of a thick blanket or a curtain and it gets really cold you can put that down and put that across the cab to be able to kind of cut off that space with the windows that you do have it is so important to have insulated curtains now i like the ones that have kind of reflectix on one side and then like a blackout on the other and then some padding in between in fact keep in mind moment thing number eight is time insulation is a tedious process and it takes much more time than it looks like it takes on youtube videos we've been working on our installation for literally five days straight keep in mind that we're well aware that this is extensive i have never lived or traveled in a van that is as well insulated as we're making this one and that's why we're so jazzed about it but it is a huge time commitment [Music] do you like the sheep she likes the smell of it look at that she's rubbing it's a dirty kitten now it's time for part two which is the types of insulation that you can do this kind of digging into how do you insulate what did you choose why did you choose it when it comes to explaining the materials used in insulation i'm going to be just like a little bit big because there are literally hundreds of different materials that people use and it depends on the thickness and what you can source and also the weather that you're dealing with if you're dealing with winter storms or tropical weather your approach to insulation is going to be very different because you don't want super thick insulation if you're in the tropics that will just hold the heat inside aggressively when people talk about the r value they are talking about thermal resistance and that's basically deciding how good of an insulator something is the higher the number the better the insulator and you're starting with r value of one i mean technically it's like point you can get into decimals like metals or conductors but there's glass has an r value of one but something with like an r value of five great helpful we like it so i'm going to start grouping some of these materials we'll start by talking about the two insulators that have the highest r value right that are the best insulators and those are spray foam or these like foam boards like the poly iso boards the xps boards i know we're using like kingston boards these are the most effective insulators for van conversions so let's talk about the two when it comes to spray foam we're not gonna do it we didn't do it we don't want to do it i mean there's a lot of benefits to it but something's unique to consider about spray foam it has some risk associated with it because when this foam expands it actually can warp the metal even if a professional does it i mean if professional does it the odds of that happening are much smaller but it's still a risk and there is a fair amount of cleanup involved now is it a faster process than what we've been doing yes but we found the risk wasn't worth it we actually consulted somebody about coming and doing the spray and when we were chatting with him they actually discouraged us from doing it because it's so permanent this spray foam becomes like a rock after you put it on and it expands it's essentially part of your van now it's also so effective and people who have it seem to really love it so it's about you deciding if that risk is worth it to you if you want that permanence everything i just said we decided to skip it and then you have these like thick foam boards this is the kings fan we've been using see essentially kind of like the spray foam but like condensed down this is what they use in like houses and apartments and it is tough right you can see you cannot install this very gracefully on a surface that is curved it doesn't bend you've been watching your videos you saw us install this on our floor using these on flatter surfaces of your build that's great insulation but then there's kind of three groups which is your really sturdy types of insulation your flexible types of insulation in the u.s and like canada there's a lot of like thinsulate that's then there's things like k-flex anything that can allow those curves in your chassis to be properly messed with sturdy flexible and then you have like wool as its own separate section of material wool can be used to either cover like the entire chassis some people do entire wool builds you have to get creative to like how to attach it or people use wool as like a stuffing material right to get between all of these crevices of the chassis to be able to get to hard to reach spots that maybe this is a little bit too thick for there's wool that has like inner woven fiberglass that's used to help prevent like rats from eating at the wall that's not really a problem for the van build community but and then there's stuff like sheep wool you like the sheep she likes the smell of it look at that i'm like 73 concerned that this video was very confusing and rambly very probable i really like this idea of doing videos that talk theory that talk like mistakes and reasoning and then afterwards showing how those ideas and how those thoughts were implemented into the build like let's focus on lottie's skill our ideas our van and then let's understand the theory separately is this a good idea if you think it's a good idea leave it below so i really hope that the comment section becomes a resource right so if you agree or disagree with anything that i've said in this video please tell me below share what you've learned what you agree with what you dislike what you're doing in your next van because people read through all of this if you were around when we did toilet talk video that ended up being a huge resource for people that security video i absolutely loved doing and reading through the ideas with the kill switch never would have thought of that so thank you so much for being with us along this van journey i know it's a long one it's a long one but it's going to be so worth it rome wasn't built in a day friends i hope you and your family have fabulous new year and we will see you in 2022. bye [Music] you

Channel: Ladi & Margaret

Views: 142,473

Keywords: campervan insulation, winter van life, winter vanlife, van life insulation, van life, vanlife, tiny home, van build, off grid, self built, DIY, van conversion, living in a van, alternative living, building a home, campervan conversion, tiny home renovation, van tour, van life vlog, van life build, van life couple, van life winter, insulation, winter camping, how to insulate campervan, van conversion build, van build camper, how to insulate, van build insulation

Id: lOqqUYLZPD8

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 29 2021