Just like with any home, before we can put down our beetle kill pine, we need to do our bus subfloor install. Typically people use an oscillating strand board because it’s cheap and easily attainable. This product off-gases a ridiculous amount of chemicals into any space that it’s installed in. The typical boards are laden with formaldehyde which has been known to be cancer causing.
To alleviate this concern with our bus subfloor install, we decided to choose a product from Columbia Forestry called PureBond plywood available at Home Depot. We are using the 1/2″ birch in 4’x8′ sheets. (found here). PureBond has no formaldehyde, is FSC certified, qualifies a construction project for LEED credits, and even though it’s a clean product, the price is very competitive with traditional building materials.
Since you can’t do a bus subfloor install without some kind of insulation, we have a product from Knauf that is a rock wool (found here). This is a fire-retardant mineral wool insulation with an R-factor of 13. We understand that the R-factor is not that high but as long as we seal everything real well, it should be sufficient. We shipped to store and picked this up at our local Do-It-Best center. The cost is also significantly cheaper than the other natural options out there.
Once the floor is all insulated and cozy, we attach the plywood with 1″ self-tapping sheet metal screws. Unfortunately, We still had to predrill every hole because the framing steel was just TOO hard to get through with the screw alone. We also countersank all of the screws to allow for unencumbered install of the pine flooring later.
After all of that is done, we have to tackle the bench that used to have the rear 3 person seat mounted to it that will become our closet in the long term. After much cutting, miter cutting, measuring, and swearing, we finally have it all attached and ready to move on to the next step.
Check out the video of the process below and don’t forget to subscribe to all of our channels! Thanks, everyone, and Happy Wandering!
