What's Happened Since Our Last Update: Not Much

Welp. It's been over a year since I posted anything here. Last summer got really hot, then I had to have half of my thyroid removed, and then I had to recover from that, and then and then. We've done a little bit of work here and there on the van since the last update. So this post is to catch up on that stuff.

Kitchen Vent:

We installed the vent that will go over the kitchen area, for use in very poor weather when we need to cook something inside. It required a small amount of creative construction, because the depth of the ceiling was greater than the depth of the vent cover I found that suited our needs best. The ceiling and insulation added up to quite a thick layer:

Measuring the depth of vent duct needed: about 2.25 inches.

So we used the 3D printer to create a short length of duct, to guide the air out of the van and not just into the ceiling space.

The green printed insert, installed in the vent hole.

You can see the cheery green color through the vent cover, even, which is kind of fun.

A close-up view of the vent cover, through which a glimpse of the green duct can be seen.

And here's what it looks like in place with the rest of the ceiling:

A view of the van ceiling from the side door, showing the installed vent cover in place.

Electrical Work:

I don't have pictures of this, because there isn't really a visual that goes with it. But we did some work on configuring the inverter/charger to work with our batteries and other pieces of our electrical system. That part just involved researching things about each of the pieces to make sure that everything was set correctly. I'm really glad that part is done; it involved a lot of thinking so I put it off for a while. So hooray for that!

Getting back on the sawhorse:

We made a small start on continuing construction on the side walls this spring as well. We didn't get very far before running out of parts, but it was good to get back into making progress on building out the interior. Here's where we left things:

The rear, driver-side area of the van, with two horizontal wall studs installed.

We need to buy more plywood before we continue further, so that's next on the to do list. At least, it's next after we figure out what's broken with the parking brake. While the brake controls work fine from inside the van, releasing the parking brake doesn't actually seem to turn the parking brake off. So we'll have to figure that out before we drive it anywhere to pick up the aforementioned plywood. Fingers crossed it's a straightforward situation.

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