More and more these days, Skoolies are getting a roof raise. The additional headroom provides a natural home comfort that is too hard to resist.
With our not so regular Skoolie insulation requirements, we required about an extra 10 inches of clearance for framing. Loosing this height from an already short space, we decided to raise our roof by 24 inches to finish at a final interior height of roughly seven feet, seven inches.
The process of cutting, lifting and welding seemed terrifying at first with so much that could go wrong. Being safe and taking our time was key to keeping this process smooth. Luckily, we had an indoor space for this project to avoid any risky wind and it went well.
Using pipe and threaded rods, we made support guides to hold the roof as we raised it. After welding the supports, the roof was easy to cut free and lift using a floor jack with a 4x4 post reaching to the top. Going one inch at a time, back and forth between both ends, we where able to use a nut along the threaded rods to climb the roof up into its final position.
While lifting the roof only took about an hour, the majority of the work in this project was before and after. More than a day was needed to prepare for the lift – windows need to be removed, support guides welded in and the roof cut free. Once the roof is up you are only at the halfway point. There is still least a day of welding ahead to re-secure the roof.
In hindsight, this was a very big project to take on. It would be a lie to say it was not stressful to cut apart our bus in hopes that it would come back together. But was it worth it? Oh heck yeah! We would do it all over again for how much it transformed our Skoolie.
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