Hi guys, I'm curious how much you use the deck. My partner wants one and I'm not convinced we'd go up there enough to be worth the effort/cost! Thanks for the video!
Hey! Overall we really like our deck and two years later we’re still happy we installed it. We find that we don’t go up there to hang out as often as we thought we would because the ground level is usually more convenient and more comfortable. Where the deck comes in super handy is when we need to clean our solar panels. It’s really easy to hop up there with a squeegee and give them a clean. We’ve also mounted a few things to the deck boards. And one of the other big benefits is it provides a lot of shade to our van, which we’ve really appreciated while down in Mexico. Another bonus is that our solar panels are securely mounted, without having to add any holes to the van 👍🏼 If we were to change anything we would prioritize more solar panels or any extra storage containers over having seating areas. Hope this helps ☺️
Hey Eli! We didn’t show the filming of the bolts being installed because they are under the panels and we can’t get the camera under there 😜 it’s a bit of a tight fit hence why we recommend installing the panels before putting the unistrut on the van. But the panels are bolted to the brackets, have lock tire and are torqued. The tape is also on the brackets juuuuust in case. With all these in place they definitely shouldn’t be going anywhere! Hope this helps! 😊
Discovered your video while I'm buying the aluminum today! Crazy good timing. You're very thorough and I appreciate that in a DYI video tutorial. Keep up the good work and safe travels!
Hey! Our ceder deck boards are 1in thick. For most of the deck the max span is under 2ft, so they’re quite sturdy. We have one section that’s 3.5ft between supports and it has a bit of flex to it.
Hey! The deck has been pretty much perfect after a year and a half. The few things that need attention: - bugs have blasted the paint off of the front cross rail, needs to be repainted / vinyled 🤷🏻♂️ - the cedar needs to be sanded down and restained (starting to silver) - some of the bolts and washers are getting surface rust, but everything is still solid Besides that, the design has been great! It’s a little labour intensive to install, but well worth it 👍🏼
Great Video! Loved watching. We just purchased a Promaster 2500 159 - Planning to do a similar layout to you!! Thanks for all the tips and the great work!!! Beautiful job!! :)
@@HayleyandJake I'm definitely going to do my own roof rack and am hoping to have room for a small deck. I was thinking 80/20 but am linking that unistrut option. Looks stronger. So helpful to see different methods. Thanks again.
Do you notice any partial shading with the one solar panel next to the fan? currently trying to fit 4 panels on a 159.... going to see if this way adds up. Thanks!
Hey! We haven’t noticed any impact. Our panels are connected in parallel, which means they’re more tolerant to partial shading, and our fan is only a few inches higher than our panels - they are only really shaded early in the morning and late in the evening, when solar isn’t that efficient anyways 👍
Hi Sam! Thank you, we’re really happy with how it turned out, and it’s held up perfectly for almost a year and a half now 👍🏼 The bolts go through a fender washer (so the wood doesn’t split), then through the plank, then into channel nuts in the unistrut. It’s very flexible and secure, but they’re a bit of a pain to line up during install. Are you doing a van conversion!?
I went with the 80 20 with stainless steel and aluminum fittings mostly because I have seen rust streaks on a lot of roofs. I have 1,200 watts of solar panels and a 24x24 boat hatch and a Maxxair fan on the roof. No room left for the deck. Decks are cool. Nice work on the deck and explaining the what's and why's of what you built. Definitely a thumbs up 👍
Hey that sounds like a pretty sweet deck you’re going to have! And so much power! ☀️thank you for the kind words, we are glad you enjoyed the video 😊✌️
Awesomeness!! 👏🏼Your deck looks FANTASTIC and the detailed video is amazing! We're working on our deck build and have a question. How did you connect the wood planks to the unistrut? My guess is as you individually installed each plank, you just had to hold the square nut that went in the unistrut in place while installing the bolt? If that makes any sense...
Hey! Thank you, we love our deck 😊 You’re bang on, we used unistrut spring nuts and bolted through the top of the wood into the nut. They’re a bit tricky to install since you need to get the holes lined up properly, and the nuts can sometimes twist before they’re tight enough to stay put. We also used fender washers under the bolt to stop the bolt head from pulling through the wood, and loctite to keep the bolts from loosening as we drive. Hope this helps, good luck with your build!
Great video...Thank you.....What lengths Unistrut did you buy? Looks like 10ft in the max at many places.....but looks like your lengthwise pieces are longer. Did you buy 20' lengths and cut them? I assume you ended up with 2 lengths...the long pieces and the cross pieces?
Hey! We’re glad you liked it. The lengths available when we bought ours were 20ft and 10 ft. Our long pieces are 160” (just over 13ft), and then the cross pieces are 5ft. We had them cut by the supplier ☺️👍
Hey thanks for watching! We’re happy to hear you found it valuable 😊 thanks for taking the time to let us know, we appreciate it! Good luck with installing your deck and panels 👍
hey this was awesome! im about to start my van build and i might just put a roof deck on mine cause now i think i might actually be able to do it! thanks also for all the more in-depth info on the materials used and why you chose them!
Hi! I’m going to build a roof deck just like yours on my ProMaster and was wondering what size bolts and washer you used to connect your 12gauge unistrut to each other?
Hey Angela! That’s awesome 😄 good luck with the install! 👍 we originally wanted to use 1/2” bolts but the driver didn’t fit in the unistrut, so we used 3/8” bolts , fender washers and spring nuts 🙂
Hey thank you for watching the video and for your kind words ☺️ We love these mounts 🙂 They made it super easy to install the unistrut 👌 take care! H&J
Hey thank you! The wooden part is around 5ft wide and 6ft long. Plenty of space! We still need to get a proper ladder to make it easier to access, but when we’ve been up there we’ve loved it 👍 Are you planning on building one of your own?
@@HayleyandJake Thanks!!! :) Yes, we just bought our van so now making the design to star to build! Trying to figure out how to have a good size deck + the solar boards + skylight... We are from Brazil :)
Hi Haley & Jake! We are super inspired by your build and have been referencing your videos more than most for our build because we love how informative you both are! You keep adding little bits of info in your videos that we didn't even think about, and I just know its saving us SO MANY instances of "Oops". LOL. We do have a question. With the Unaka Mounting Brackets - you mentioned that your promaster extended (also what we have) has 'five rows of mounting points". Since these brackets are sold in pairs, would I be correct to assume that each row includes two mounting points and that we should order FIVE sets of two brackets? Just want to make sure we don't order too many or too little because they aren't cheap with inflation right now. Thanks so much! >.
Important to point out that we haven't actually gotten on top of our van yet because we are waiting on our custom ladder. And would otherwise climb up and count them lol
One more question; we are curious why you went with four 100 watt panels rather than two of renogy's 200 watt panels? Can you give us some insight on why you chose the former? Were the 200 watt panels just not available? Were there dimension/measuring issues that prevented you from using them vs the 100 watt panels? Thanks!
Hey Kayla! We’re glad that you’ve found our videos so helpful! Thanks for letting us know, we appreciate it!☺️ How far along in the build are you guys? Our promaster (159 ext) used 10 mounting brackets, 5 per side. The Unaka brackets come in sets of 2, so we order 5 sets in total ☺️
For the 100W vs 200W panels, I don’t think renogy offered them when we got ours. We were initially looking at their 400W kits, but we wanted to use the DCDC mppt 50w controller, which didn’t come with a kit at that point, so we essentially made our own based on their other kits. They also kept selling out at the time, so we jumped on them! If you are looking at the 200W, check the voltage they produce against your solar controller specs. Our controller can only take ~24V, which means parallel connecting our panels. I’m not sure if the 200W are higher voltage or not 🤷🏻♂️ other controllers can take higher, just need to check with what you’re using
@@HayleyandJake Thank you so much for letting me know, appreciate it. Still waiting on our ladder (we ordered a removable telescoping ladder with roof rack hooks on it, so we were unable to climb up there just yet). We just started our build recently. So far, we have the Kilmat done, and have all the materials for our roof rack (less the cedar planks will buy those when ready). We are on a time crunch so we are prioritizing more necessary aspects of our build first and may finish our rooftop deck later at a new location. Currently starting our interior framing and gathering components for our solar and plumbing systems to help with time management on shipping. Those should all arrive right when we are ready to use them. Sorry to hear the larger panels weren't available when you built yours, perhaps you can upgrade should you ever find the need. We are opting for (mostly) renogy products but we chose the 210 watt solar panels by Newpowa for a combined 410 watts on the roof. (A friend of ours says they have amazing customer service). This will also save space for a larger rooftop deck or an additional ventilation fan. :) Thank you again for the detailed response, and we will definitely comment if we have additional questions. Hope to run into you on the road someday! :)
Hey Friends, thanks for watching! What's on the roof of your van 🚐?
looking at building a 80/20 roof rack for my 4 panels! Also I'm a CrossFit coach and saw your hoodie lol
@@treynewsom1817 hahaha I love my CrossFit gear! Where do you coach? Good luck with the rack!
Hi guys, I'm curious how much you use the deck. My partner wants one and I'm not convinced we'd go up there enough to be worth the effort/cost! Thanks for the video!
Hey! Overall we really like our deck and two years later we’re still happy we installed it.
We find that we don’t go up there to hang out as often as we thought we would because the ground level is usually more convenient and more comfortable.
Where the deck comes in super handy is when we need to clean our solar panels. It’s really easy to hop up there with a squeegee and give them a clean. We’ve also mounted a few things to the deck boards. And one of the other big benefits is it provides a lot of shade to our van, which we’ve really appreciated while down in Mexico. Another bonus is that our solar panels are securely mounted, without having to add any holes to the van 👍🏼
If we were to change anything we would prioritize more solar panels or any extra storage containers over having seating areas.
Hope this helps ☺️
Did you *just* tape the solar panels to the brackets or did I miss you connecting them with nuts/bolts?
Hey Eli! We didn’t show the filming of the bolts being installed because they are under the panels and we can’t get the camera under there 😜 it’s a bit of a tight fit hence why we recommend installing the panels before putting the unistrut on the van. But the panels are bolted to the brackets, have lock tire and are torqued. The tape is also on the brackets juuuuust in case. With all these in place they definitely shouldn’t be going anywhere! Hope this helps! 😊
*Locktite 😊✌️
Discovered your video while I'm buying the aluminum today! Crazy good timing. You're very thorough and I appreciate that in a DYI video tutorial. Keep up the good work and safe travels!
Hey thanks for finding us! That is definitely great timing 😄 Good luck with your build! And thanks for the kind words and warm wishes 😊
fun
Thanks! We love it 😁
What thickness was used for the decking?
Hey! Our ceder deck boards are 1in thick. For most of the deck the max span is under 2ft, so they’re quite sturdy. We have one section that’s 3.5ft between supports and it has a bit of flex to it.
@@HayleyandJake thank you so much for the info
You’re welcome! Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions. Good luck with the build!
Good job you two, looks great!
Hey thank you so much 😊 we hope you are keeping well!
We are thanks - a little frustrated with how long it's taking for our ordered van to get built and delivered. Enjoy your van!
Oh no!! I’m sure it will show up soon and look better than you imagined! 🙂
How is your deck holding up? I am planning a very similar build and would like to know what, if anything, you would change.
Hey! The deck has been pretty much perfect after a year and a half. The few things that need attention:
- bugs have blasted the paint off of the front cross rail, needs to be repainted / vinyled 🤷🏻♂️
- the cedar needs to be sanded down and restained (starting to silver)
- some of the bolts and washers are getting surface rust, but everything is still solid
Besides that, the design has been great! It’s a little labour intensive to install, but well worth it 👍🏼
Great Video! Loved watching. We just purchased a Promaster 2500 159 - Planning to do a similar layout to you!! Thanks for all the tips and the great work!!! Beautiful job!! :)
Thanks, we’re glad you like it! Good luck with your build! 😁👍
Very nice end result. Thanks very much for sharing your process...
Hey Owen! Thank you, we’re super happy with how it turned out 😄. Are you adding one to a van?
@@HayleyandJake I'm definitely going to do my own roof rack and am hoping to have room for a small deck. I was thinking 80/20 but am linking that unistrut option. Looks stronger. So helpful to see different methods. Thanks again.
Good luck with the build 😄👍
Do you notice any partial shading with the one solar panel next to the fan? currently trying to fit 4 panels on a 159.... going to see if this way adds up. Thanks!
Hey! We haven’t noticed any impact. Our panels are connected in parallel, which means they’re more tolerant to partial shading, and our fan is only a few inches higher than our panels - they are only really shaded early in the morning and late in the evening, when solar isn’t that efficient anyways 👍
Love the video. How did you secure the cedar planks? Wondering what the bolt goes into.
Hi Sam! Thank you, we’re really happy with how it turned out, and it’s held up perfectly for almost a year and a half now 👍🏼
The bolts go through a fender washer (so the wood doesn’t split), then through the plank, then into channel nuts in the unistrut. It’s very flexible and secure, but they’re a bit of a pain to line up during install.
Are you doing a van conversion!?
I went with the 80 20 with stainless steel and aluminum fittings mostly because I have seen rust streaks on a lot of roofs.
I have 1,200 watts of solar panels and a 24x24 boat hatch and a Maxxair fan on the roof. No room left for the deck. Decks are cool.
Nice work on the deck and explaining the what's and why's of what you built.
Definitely a thumbs up 👍
Hey that sounds like a pretty sweet deck you’re going to have! And so much power! ☀️thank you for the kind words, we are glad you enjoyed the video 😊✌️
Awesomeness!! 👏🏼Your deck looks FANTASTIC and the detailed video is amazing! We're working on our deck build and have a question. How did you connect the wood planks to the unistrut? My guess is as you individually installed each plank, you just had to hold the square nut that went in the unistrut in place while installing the bolt? If that makes any sense...
Hey! Thank you, we love our deck 😊
You’re bang on, we used unistrut spring nuts and bolted through the top of the wood into the nut. They’re a bit tricky to install since you need to get the holes lined up properly, and the nuts can sometimes twist before they’re tight enough to stay put. We also used fender washers under the bolt to stop the bolt head from pulling through the wood, and loctite to keep the bolts from loosening as we drive.
Hope this helps, good luck with your build!
@@HayleyandJake Very helpful; thank you so much!! 🙏🏼
Great video...Thank you.....What lengths Unistrut did you buy? Looks like 10ft in the max at many places.....but looks like your lengthwise pieces are longer. Did you buy 20' lengths and cut them? I assume you ended up with 2 lengths...the long pieces and the cross pieces?
Hey! We’re glad you liked it. The lengths available when we bought ours were 20ft and 10 ft. Our long pieces are 160” (just over 13ft), and then the cross pieces are 5ft. We had them cut by the supplier ☺️👍
@@HayleyandJake Sweet. Thank you. You happy with the Renogy panels? I was looking at their 200W version....
@@marctania2349 yeah we've had no issues with them :)
Thanks for the great video! I'm getting ready to get my rack and solar panels installed soon, and your vid helps tremendously!
Hey thanks for watching! We’re happy to hear you found it valuable 😊 thanks for taking the time to let us know, we appreciate it! Good luck with installing your deck and panels 👍
Thanks for sharing guys! We loved watching you guys build it, we have so much inspiration for ours :)
Hey thanks😊 we are glad you liked the video and we are really excited to see the deck you build! ✌️😆
hey this was awesome! im about to start my van build and i might just put a roof deck on mine cause now i think i might actually be able to do it! thanks also for all the more in-depth info on the materials used and why you chose them!
Hey that’s fantastic!! We are glad we could help 😊 good luck with building the deck! You can definitely do it 👍 take care, H&J
What a great job. That’s next for us! Thanks for the vid
Hey, thank you!! Good luck with building your deck! It’s such a great addition to the van 😊
Hi! I’m going to build a roof deck just like yours on my ProMaster and was wondering what size bolts and washer you used to connect your 12gauge unistrut to each other?
Hey Angela! That’s awesome 😄 good luck with the install! 👍 we originally wanted to use 1/2” bolts but the driver didn’t fit in the unistrut, so we used 3/8” bolts , fender washers and spring nuts 🙂
Thanks for the help! I hope my turns out just as fantastic as yours!!
Looks very nice! I like the mounts you chose for the unistrut! Good job! 🤙
Hey thank you for watching the video and for your kind words ☺️ We love these mounts 🙂 They made it super easy to install the unistrut 👌 take care! H&J
Well explained!
Great job and looking great🙌🙌🙌
Thanks Givey and Myla! We appreciate your continued support 😊 Your vans coming along really nicely! 👍
This is such a wicked setup! Nicely done guys 👏
Thank you so much!! 😊 are you planning on building a deck on your van?
Nice work! It looks great!
Hey thank you 😊 your vans coming along really nicely!
It turned out great! Thank you for the informative video, very useful!
Awe thank you! We love how it turned out!
We’re glad you found it helpful 😁 thinking of building one yourself?
@@HayleyandJake I'm heavily considering it!
@@drivitt it's well worth it! (We think anyways :D)
You guys absolutely kick ass. that's certified
Whoa thank you so much! 🤩 You planning on building a deck? 😄
@@HayleyandJake Oh yeah!
Right on!! 🙌 we love having ours. Great hangout spot 👌
Hey, nice van!! Whats teh size of the deck? Do you think it is a good size?
Hey thank you!
The wooden part is around 5ft wide and 6ft long. Plenty of space! We still need to get a proper ladder to make it easier to access, but when we’ve been up there we’ve loved it 👍
Are you planning on building one of your own?
@@HayleyandJake Thanks!!! :) Yes, we just bought our van so now making the design to star to build! Trying to figure out how to have a good size deck + the solar boards + skylight... We are from Brazil :)
That’s great! Good luck!
Feel free to reach out if you have an other questions! ☺️👍
@@HayleyandJake Thanks!!
Hi Haley & Jake! We are super inspired by your build and have been referencing your videos more than most for our build because we love how informative you both are! You keep adding little bits of info in your videos that we didn't even think about, and I just know its saving us SO MANY instances of "Oops". LOL. We do have a question. With the Unaka Mounting Brackets - you mentioned that your promaster extended (also what we have) has 'five rows of mounting points". Since these brackets are sold in pairs, would I be correct to assume that each row includes two mounting points and that we should order FIVE sets of two brackets? Just want to make sure we don't order too many or too little because they aren't cheap with inflation right now. Thanks so much! >.
Important to point out that we haven't actually gotten on top of our van yet because we are waiting on our custom ladder. And would otherwise climb up and count them lol
One more question; we are curious why you went with four 100 watt panels rather than two of renogy's 200 watt panels? Can you give us some insight on why you chose the former? Were the 200 watt panels just not available? Were there dimension/measuring issues that prevented you from using them vs the 100 watt panels? Thanks!
Hey Kayla! We’re glad that you’ve found our videos so helpful! Thanks for letting us know, we appreciate it!☺️ How far along in the build are you guys?
Our promaster (159 ext) used 10 mounting brackets, 5 per side. The Unaka brackets come in sets of 2, so we order 5 sets in total ☺️
For the 100W vs 200W panels, I don’t think renogy offered them when we got ours. We were initially looking at their 400W kits, but we wanted to use the DCDC mppt 50w controller, which didn’t come with a kit at that point, so we essentially made our own based on their other kits.
They also kept selling out at the time, so we jumped on them!
If you are looking at the 200W, check the voltage they produce against your solar controller specs. Our controller can only take ~24V, which means parallel connecting our panels. I’m not sure if the 200W are higher voltage or not 🤷🏻♂️ other controllers can take higher, just need to check with what you’re using
@@HayleyandJake Thank you so much for letting me know, appreciate it. Still waiting on our ladder (we ordered a removable telescoping ladder with roof rack hooks on it, so we were unable to climb up there just yet). We just started our build recently. So far, we have the Kilmat done, and have all the materials for our roof rack (less the cedar planks will buy those when ready). We are on a time crunch so we are prioritizing more necessary aspects of our build first and may finish our rooftop deck later at a new location. Currently starting our interior framing and gathering components for our solar and plumbing systems to help with time management on shipping. Those should all arrive right when we are ready to use them. Sorry to hear the larger panels weren't available when you built yours, perhaps you can upgrade should you ever find the need. We are opting for (mostly) renogy products but we chose the 210 watt solar panels by Newpowa for a combined 410 watts on the roof. (A friend of ours says they have amazing customer service). This will also save space for a larger rooftop deck or an additional ventilation fan. :) Thank you again for the detailed response, and we will definitely comment if we have additional questions. Hope to run into you on the road someday! :)