# 265a Helping Ben with his bus project

Ben had decided to buy this school bus and to get the price to a reasonable level it needed to be about a 20-year-old retired bus. He found something for sale up below Washington DC and we began a multiyear process of making a Skoolie

There is a scenario where we could have given him the money but we felt like that doesn't do anyone any good.

I wanted to find a way to help him secure a loan with an institution and not directly with us to avoid any issues. He found a credit union that would talk to us so we set it up to where he could borrow 15,000 and we would cosign for that. The bus cost $3,000 and then there would be quite a bit of an expense to turn it into an RV Skoolie.

I left our crosswinds campground and booked a plane in Raleigh and was going to meet him at a Starbucks or something as close as possible to the bus location. He drove his car up so he could drive the bus back and I would follow in his car

The strangest thing happened when I was at the airport checking in. I couldn’t find my boarding pass online.

I went to the counter to ask questions and they said you bought a ticket for 30 days from now and we can't help you with that. There's no transferring or fixing it. It was a special price from some sort of sponsored link for like $100. They found the only possible ticket available for right now for like 260. All I could do was beat myself up for making such a foolish typo when I was filling out the reservation for the plane ticket.

With some delay and difficulty meeting Ben he found me at a Starbucks-type location waiting for him. He was about an hour late and that's no fun. We drove over to where they had the buses for sale. He had all his research before now it so was already a done deal. He filled out the paperwork and got the money's done cranked himself up a bus and we started to drive towards Raliegh

I'm sure he would say that driving something this big for the first time and was very overwhelming. We filled up with diesel and started a long drive. He didn't know how to adjust to the air ride seat so it beat him to death all the way. As he finished a five-hour drive he realized there was a button he could press that would engage the air cushion seat. I guess when you’re new you have to suffer 5 hours first.

One eventful part of the trip was about an hour and a half in. He had to go across a very high arch-type bridge where it felt like the two lanes were barely big enough for two cars. Considering the monster he was driving it was just a very scary bridge about 200 feet above a river. He spoke later about how that was a baptism of fire on how to drive a big vehicle. We arrived in the Raleigh area near dark.

I'm playing retired guy so I had more time on my hands. I had called around every imaginable storage facility and most of them were either very expensive or they said you would not be able to work on anything on the premises.

I found a storage lot in Pittsboro that was a good price and everything was fine for me it's only about 20 minutes south of Jordan lake. For him, it's like an hour from where he lives. We couldn’t be choosey initially and hoped we could find a storage location closer to him in the future.

He parked the bus there and called it a very long day. He went on home that is he took me to my truck which was at the airport and then we all parted ways.

This is one of those stories that goes on for 2 years so I think it's best to just hit the highlights. First, we removed all of the seats and took them to a metal scrap yard. Anywhere there was rust we sprayed was a compound called Ospho which is phosphoric acid that turns the rust into a new compound. It stops rust in its tracks.

We primed the entire metal floor of the bus which is now an open area.

Next, we put down plastic to provide a moisture barrier, then luan, and began the framing of the walls just like you would if you were building a house.

We installed a 100-amp electrical panel and all the 120 volt and 12 wiring systems. The 12-volt system runs all the lights and other things like the furnace and then the communications type things like cable and internet.

Ben had done a very elaborate design on the SketchUp program and knew what he wanted. He wanted to include a washer-dryer that he owned. It was an expensive set that you can't resell for much so he found a way to incorporate them into the design.

They’re kind of large for a tiny house but whenever, if ever they die he can replace them with a smaller combo unit and use the cubby for storage.

Everything had to be designed from scratch and there was the dilemma of how to deal with the wheel wells humps that are at four points in the bus. They're very much in the way so we had to incorporate them into the design. We boxed them out with plywood and two of them became platforms for the washer and dryer. the other one is a pullout daybed and the other one is under his computer desk area.

He is also because he is my kin, a very big fan of a good hot bath. If he could find a nice soaking tub he wanted that too. I found one at the habitat for humanity store for 10 bucks and that's a pretty good deal considering they could be $1,000 or more new.

I also helped him get everything plumbed up in pex with hot and cold water and the water heater.

We figured out how to provide all of the plumbing for his gray and black water and all the tanks required.

As a design issue, each tank you need are about 300 a piece. He would need 5 tanks. Two for fresh water, two for gray water, and one for black.

He proposed what if we could use 55-gallon barrels and we found some made of plastic that works great for 12 bucks each.

I plumbed in all of the gas lines using a material designed for LP that well just call yellow pex.

Each fitting required is about 15 to 20 dollars. To do the job we would need 30 fittings. We used pex fittings at a dollar each utilizing a heat gun and double crimps. Whenever I finished the system I pressure tested it at 50 psi for 2 days and it didn't leak. LP systems operate at about 4 PSI so he gave me great comfort to know it was 10 times stronger than what was needed.

He ran into as many obstacles and challenges as you can imagine. Somehow together we solved them all so it was a great father and son gigantic soap box derby project that you can live in.

Underneath the bus, there was way too much rust so I took it to a local company that does sandblasting. The owner let me do the sand blasting so now I can say I’ve done that once. I blasted everything underneath sparkling clean and then Ben and I coated the entire metal surface under the bus in a material that the sandblast guy suggested. It's 90% zinc paint.

It's unbelievably heavy because of what it is and when it combines with the rusty metal and blends with the rust and turns it into a new compound. It's pretty amazing stuff but messy.

Skipping forward quite a bit to 2020, Ben has finished the bus functionally. It has walls covered with something we call brown board. It's the equivalent of pegboard without the holes.

He is living at an interesting place called the Wildwood Farm.

The rent is very affordable at under $400 a month and it's way out in the country. There have been plenty of challenges because it's a small family-owned business with all the quirks that come with that. One of the things that I like a good bit is living here has brought Ben out of his shell a bit. Ben has always been a little antisocial but he has formed friendships with all of the tenants. They have Saturday night outdoor cooking with a communal pizza oven where they all enjoy each other's company.

He is living in the bus full time and has been doing so for the last year. He recently got a job with UNC health doing computer installations for a new building as a temp.

He said they like his work a good bit and of course I'm very proud of him for this. He said they're going to take him on as a permanent temporary contractor.

He asked if there were remote possibilities and they said yes. It appears that this is his dream is coming true. He wants to be a remote IT-type contractor help desk guy. This way he can travel the country in his skoolie and work full-time remotely and all he needs is an internet connection.

There is a cool story where he wanted to have cedar boards for his ceilings but it was expensive and even more expensive to deliver and I found myself in an area in Tennessee that had a cedar sawmill and got it for him on the cheap and brought it back to Raleigh on one of our future trips.

Skipping forward a few years I came into town last year in 2020 and we painted the entire exterior of the bus. At first, we were getting quotes but it was 5,000 plus so we figured it out for about a thousand and it looks great.