Go to School to Draw Up Floor Plans

Creating skoolie floor plans is 1 of the almost heady parts of a skoolie build as you go to put all your ideas together like a puzzle and pattern the build that fits your desired lifestyle.

In this DIY skoolie floor plan guide, we walk you through the tips we take afterward designing hundreds of skoolie flooring plans to plan out our build and helping others program their builds.

Even though our build is washed, we often observe ourselves thinking almost how to design different skoolie floor plans because you get to be so creative and in that location are so many unique multi-purpose ideas you tin create in such a pocket-sized space. Also, information technology costs no money and there actually is not much piece of work involved as well researching, thinking, and drawing out dissimilar floor plans.

Pretty much everything after the skoolie floor plan pattern stage either entails spending money, trouble-solving in the grade of figuring out obstacles, or physical labor in the build stage, and then brand sure to accept your fourth dimension and have fun with this step!

Nosotros fabricated sure to get to the indicate and share either useful information or tips that will assist you create your skoolie floor plan and potentially prevent some costly mistakes, but there is alot of information to encompass. Some of these nosotros learned through research and others we learned past making mistakes.

We hope this guide saves you some fourth dimension in researching and some mistakes downward the route. So with that, let's swoop right in.

Knowing the bones interior dimensions of a school bus for creating a school bus conversion floor plan is critical! When we first started designing skoolie floor plans, we estimated these dimensions which cause several adjustments and iterations of redesign in one case we actually bought a passenger vehicle. Although these dimensions tin can be unlike for dissimilar models of buses, below are the general schoolhouse bus dimensions y'all'll need to know.

• Avg. Schoolhouse Motorbus Interior Width isvii′ 7″ from the metallic axle to metallic beam in the schoolhouse omnibus, so brand sure to business relationship for calculation the thickness of your walls.
• Avg. Schoolhouse Bus Window Width is 28″.
• Avg. Larger Schoolhouse Omnibus Window Width is 35″. These are the longer looking windows on a school bus.
• Avg. School Bus Window Height is 24″.
• Avg. School Bus Window Top Off the Flooring is 29″ from the metal floor of the schoolhouse double-decker. Make sure to account for the thickness of our flooring – our floor ended up being ii″ thick.
• Avg. School Bus Interior Peak ranges from the standard school bus meridian of six'2″ to the "tall" school bus height of half-dozen'6″, although the tall models can be hard to come by. This is measuring from the raw metal floor to the bottom of the metallic beam in the ceiling underneath the metal sheeting on the ceiling.

Nosotros recommend the width of skoolie walking alley be at to the lowest degree 24″, merely this will be tight. We went with a width of 30″ (cabinet-to-cabinet in the kitchen or desk-bound-to-burrow) for our walking path, as Sarah and I did not want to be bumping into each other all the time. The countertop hangs over the kitchen and desk well-nigh one″, so we accept about 29″ from edge of the counter to the cabinet or edge of the burrow.

Our skoolie upper kitchen cabinets above our counter hang down 12″ from the ceiling and are 15″ deep to the wall above the window.

Our school bus wheelchair door width is 44″ and the schoolhouse bus wheelchair door height is 59 1/4″.

If you need any other specific dimensions to programme out your skoolie flooring plan, delight contact u.s. and nosotros will work to go some measurements for you lot!

The best place to start is by listing the items you lot demand versus desire in your skoolie. These would be larger items that require planning out your build to accommodate them.

Here is a listing of items to consider in no item social club:

• Couch
• Desk
• Dining Tabular array
• Fridge
• Mini Wood Stove Firplace
• Storage Areas
• Toilet / Toilet Room
• Shower / Shower Room
• Sink
• Range
• RV Furnace / Air Conditioner
• Water Tank / Water Pump
• Hot Water Heater
• Electrical & Solar Equipment
• A Safe for Valuables

Within this list, some people volition run across an item every bit a need where others it'll be a want. I suggest going through this list and brainstorming what you demand to alive comfortably at a bare minimum. All other items should exist placed on a desire list.

Then, I recommend identifying a few buying options of each of the items you need first, so you can find out the dimensions of those items. These don't have to be the last items you lot purchase as you will come across different options before making your terminal buying decisions, but you should strive to get the dimensions of items that correspond what you would desire in your skoolie. This is to get an idea of what size the items are to sympathize how much space y'all actually need every bit y'all start planning out school bus conversion floor plans.

Practice this exercise for the listing of want items, besides.

At present comes the somewhat hard role of selecting the size of bus you desire.

We created a quiz to help you figure this out. I advise first thinking well-nigh what you would be comfortable driving. Some people could never see themselves driving a 40′ bus down the thruway (me included), while others volition dive correct in and figure out driving and parking something that long subsequently they buy it. starting with this to see what it says.

Once y'all call back you know what size bus you want, accept the quiz nosotros created beneath to see if this confirms your initial decision or if you should potentially consider another size school motorcoach.

We highly recommend not to purchase a bus past how much you lot can or can't fit into it! Really consider what you programme on doing with the bus and what fits those intentions. We have seen several people begin converting a total-size school bus to realize they fleck off more than than they can handle from a build standpoint. Even worse, they go done with information technology and end upwards feeling uncomfortable driving it with all the weight within of information technology.

We also recommend truly considering the corporeality of space y'all need! Downsizing is very hard. That is an understatement. We have a 30′ nine window school jitney and we even so struggle sometimes and demand to keep going through different storage areas to go rid of things we exercise non demand whatever longer. Going too small could make you become sick of living on as well little or crusade your infinite to be cluttered all the time.

Once you lot figure out a general bus size, start looking at dissimilar school buses. Check out our Classifieds section to see school buses for auction there. Nosotros besides have an article on the Superlative five Places to Find a School Bus For Sale that explains how to search through Craigslist, Facebook, eBay, and Online Auctions, likewise.

Make sure to take note of the layouts of different schoolhouse buses. Some school buses have no wheelchair doors and some accept one or two. There are varying unlike lengths of short, medium, and full-size buses. Some accept a rear engine creating a deck area in the back to build around, while others are dog nose with a back door.

Almost every bus you come across volition exist different in some form or fashion.

Drawing skoolie floorplans will probably be the most fun, yet challenging part this early on in the skoolie build process.

Drawing up dissimilar school bus conversion floor plans for all the different buses is low run a risk and a great way to figure out how much space you really might need as y'all lay everything out. However, information technology tin go stressful!

The stress can come once you lot accept fatigued upwards a few floor plans for schoolhouse buses and begin realizing that you might not get everything yous wanted into the size of jitney yous wanted to buy. This volition at least be the case if you lot autumn into the seventy%+ bucket of people who take our skoolie size quiz and get the answer of a brusk jitney conversion or mid-sized bus conversion.

These smaller buses (even our larger 9-window mid-sized school bus) comes with sacrifices.

This is why this footstep is so important. Let solitary the fact that skoolie flooring plan drawing is basically making a series of decisions that will create your skoolie build plan that volition be both expensive and fourth dimension-consuming to alter once you beginning buying items and building out your skoolie.

As well, very difficult if you purchase a bus and information technology wasn't the right size…

Nosotros recommend drawing at to the lowest degree 10 different skoolie layout options.

Using the basic dimensions of school omnibus windows and the buses you establish in footstep iii, describe a few for the platonic double-decker size you desire, then a few for the double-decker sizes with 1 or ii windows smaller and larger than your ideal omnibus size. Proceed in mind the types of buses yous institute and where the wheelchair doors were and if there were wheel-well humps inside or not. Also, if the buses are front-engine or rear-engine and if either of these would benefit or negatively affect your platonic skoolie floor programme.

We also recommend you practice this earlier you lot beginning looking for a used school jitney for sale. Having floor plan drawings done for various size school buses with dissimilar configurations will help y'all make a better decision of whether each bus for sale that yous come beyond will work for you or non. These drawings volition assist you sympathise what y'all can gain or what you lot might demand to give upwardly depending on the bus you decide to go with.

Sarah and I are technically inclined when it comes to building website and cyberspace marketing, but not when information technology comes to drawing out skoolie flooring plans.

After talking with our friend Alex who is an architect-designer out in Santa Barbara, he recommended designing skoolie floor plans on SketchUp.

SketchUp is free and supposedly like shooting fish in a barrel to figure out. However, nosotros didn't really accept the time (or patience) to larn the program as we had eight months to get out of our apartment. We wanted to make we saved as much fourth dimension for our build as possible.

Throughout this commodity, yous have actually seen many of our original skoolie floor plan drawings.

They are non pretty, but they got the job washed and are actually very representative and drawn to "scale" – well, soft of.

Nosotros simply used an iPad Pro and the GoodNotes plugin.

If y'all have the option, GoodNotes is a paid plugin and it has a graph paper option. We used this as nosotros could describe out a rectangle to represent buses with each square representing a 1′ x one′ section of living space and duplicate it to a new sheet. Each duplicate cartoon we could erase a few items and draw out a different variation of the same floor plan without having to depict out EVERYTHING all over again every time.

In that location are also many other options similar GoodNotes, besides.

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Source: https://www.skoolielivin.com/skoolie-floor-plans-diy-guide/

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