Building an RV in an apartment

[Alex Hardt]

Sounds like an interesting challenge but I know others have made it work....it just might take a bit of figuring out.

There is a lot of work that can be done in the apartment space itself. I think a big problem would be air compressor noise in addition to any riveting or grinding & sanding (dust and noise). Sound blocking blankets might mitigate some of this....but I am not sure it is really viable to have an air compressor in the apartment due to noise. I am guessing that a battery drill and a non-pneumatic hand squeezer may offset some of the pneumatic riveting noise and could be done in the apartment in addition to using patio space if available.

Rather than build solely in the apartment itself, is it possible to rent an apartment with a garage space? The apartment complexes that I have lived in have had that option - it's more expensive but at least it's another work area in addition to the apartment and it's more suited to building or having an air compressor along with maybe some sound blocking blankets or panels.

Another possible thought: when I was looking into building my -7 with limited space (our home is about 900 square feet), I checked into industrial and business rental options near our home. Maybe sounds crazy, but my Plan B was to rent a space in a strip mall near me for building. Is there someplace close by that you can rent to do the most noisy and messy work and then use the apartment space for other less noisy work?

If you are able to get a quiet compressor and mitigate the noise, building in a living room is a convenient place to do work. We built our empennage, both of our wings and each -7 fuselage section in our 14x14 living room.

- Alex -

[bruceh]

Drilling and deburring produce a lot of small aluminum chips. If you have carpet, you'll never get it out. If you walk from tile (better) to carpet, the carpet will still get filled with aluminum chips.

Compressors are loud! Riveting is louder! Space really isn't too much of an issue if you have places to store the kit pieces before and during and after.

[digidocs]

Check out the California Air Tools CAT-1P1060S compressor---I have one at the hangar and I think it's quiet enough you could get away with it in an apartment. You can easily have a conversation with someone while standing next to it.

The electric drill advice is good. Even though I have a pneumatic drill, I used a compact Bosch 12V cordless drill most of the time and it worked well. I think smaller is better here.

Shooting rivets is where you're going to get into trouble. You'll definitely want to squeeze everything possible, but that still leaves a lot left that you just have to shoot. Maybe you can do the squeezing at night and save the shooting for special agreed upon hours with the neighbors?

[Papa]

Do you really have no choice about the apartment? I only ask because I live in Las Vegas too, and suspect you might be able to find a small house, perhaps in a little more rural area, that would work a lot better. I have an RV-8 at VGT, and am building an RV-10 now. I don’t think they’ll let you do your phase I flight test out of VGT. I’m still a couple of years away from that with my 10, so I haven’t sorted that out yet. When I built my 8, I lived in Colorado and did the flight test out of KFNL. Good luck with the build!

[flion]

It depends on the apartment construction, mostly. I built the tail and wings of my RV-6A in the living room of a 2-bedroom apartment in Ann Arbor. The main structure of the building was concrete (some government-built housing, as I understood it). The compressor was the loudest bit and standing in the hallway outside it was just a low hum. I checked with my neighbors and they had not noticed anything. "Really, an airplane? Can I see?". I was careful not to rivet at night.

As for cleanup, how long will you be there? Many apartments are repainted and carpeted as a matter of course for a long-term rental. But I had no problem cleaning up; I put plastic sheeting down and donned scrubs which stayed in the work area. A few aluminum chips escaped to the kitchenette area, which was easy to clean, but nothing made it to the bedrooms.

Sorry, the pictures I have from back then are pre-digital scans sized for the network speeds of the day. That's my SO riveting the vertical stab while I buck. When doing the wings, the jig was moved to the side of the living room so it didn't block the outside view. Oddly, the IR TV remote worked better bouncing off the skinned wings than when pointed directly at the TV.

[Ralph Inkster]

Maybe consider a RV-12? Put it together with a (silent) manual hand riveter. You will end up with the strongest hand shake in the state!

[bifft]

I built my empennage and wings in the living room of a one bedroom apartment. It was a one floor concrete block building and I was on the end unit so only had neighbors on one side. Did limit riviting to during the day.

With the wing kit came the fuselage longerons, and the length of those told me I wasn't going to be able to build the fuse in that apartment. Had to hang them diagonally from the ceiling extending into the kitchen. Ended up buying a house with a garage.

[rph142]

I built most of my -3b in the living room of my apartment. I put the compressor in a closest and lined it with thick padding. You’ll want to concentrate your riveting for when your neighbors aren’t home. The aluminum dust made a mess of the walls and looking back I sort of feel bad for the owners. I own rentals now so I’m sure Karma will find me.

[RV7ForMe]

For what it's worth I build part of my empennage kit in my college dorm room. And Well There is dust and aluminum chips everywhere. I really wanted to do it so I did. I had the compressor boxed in and did all of my drilling with a cordless drill. So it was really just the riveting that was noisy and that really is not that high of a percentage of the build time. Most of it is de burring and drilling things together

I now moved to a barn and have a bit more space. But there is no such thing as too much space.

[rv6n6r]

In my hangar I don't have neighbors who would be bothered but I still want to build a sound-proofing box for my "quiet" Husky compressor, as it is just annoyingly loud. Seems like a must-have if you do it in an apartment. This looks like a good step-by-step for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EikC...ature=emb_logo

Also in case you haven't already searched for and found the voluminous information and opinions on compressors in this forum bear in mind there are two types, two-stage oiled compressors, and oilless. The oilless type are invariably louder but also require a less maintenance and won't introduce oil into the air supply (not good for painting). For that reason most of us use the oilless type.