Van Subfloor Install (With Insulation) | Transit Van Conversion E07
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- In this video it's time for our van subfloor install with some wood framing for support and with insulation in all the gaps using some Xtratherm PIR board. We’re using 25x50mm timber and 25mm PIR so a perfect fit for a nice level finish in our van conversion. As the last step we sealed around all the edges with some aluminium tape (Abi loves that stuff!).
We had to make some small spacers in places to deal with the irregularities of the Transit MK8 floor and all the different shapes of the ribs. These got placed under some of the supporting beams of the subfloor framing to keep everything at the same height and hopefully to avoid any bowing in the future when we add more weight on top.
All the timber for installing our subfloor was stuck down with Sikaflex 522, which took a while as for a number of days the temperature was below the minimum 5C that it needs for curing. We’ve learnt that doing a van build in the winter definitely has its difficulties! And that’s not to mention the pieces of insulation that started to fall off the ceiling…!
We also got to work trying to find the source of the water pooling in one of the rear pillars and found the convenient plug under the van to drain it out. Still yet to figure out exactly where it’s coming in though! It felt great to have the subfloor installed in our van and not be so harshly cold under foot anymore. For now we’re put the existing ply floor back on top temporarily so we can move around, but we’re looking forward to getting the real floor installed in the van soon! We’ve decided we’re going to use 12mm birch plywood for that, to give a stronger base than the existing 8mm ply that was already in there.
Starting to take shape!
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Products used in this video (includes affiliate links *):
↠ 25x50mm Treated Timber Battens - sourced locally
↠ Sikaflex 522 - geni.us/GS8kmy (Amazon)
↠ Aluminium Tape - geni.us/BEFKS (Amazon)
* Disclaimer: Some of the links above may be affiliate links. If you choose to click on them we may earn a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.
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* Disclaimer: Some of the links above may be affiliate links. If you choose to click on them we may earn a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.
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All our videos are for entertainment and show our process of converting our campervan. They're not intended to be tutorials and we may make mistakes along the way, so always do your own research and if in doubt about anything then make sure to get advice from a suitable professional
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#vanconversion #campervanconversion #vanlifeuk
I love how you guys are so precise and particular about everything, it's exactly my style. I don't want to see 7 day builds, I want to see craftmanship! thanks for this vid x
Thanks! And no problem 🙂We're definitely trying to spend time to make it as good as we can as we want to be able to live in it for long periods of time. Makes it take a lot longer but we think it will pay off in the long run hopefully!
This is like watching the video we didn't make doing exactly the same thing a few weeks back on our transit. We just sawed strips off the floor battening offcuts to level up to the floor joists. I looked like a snowman sawing the celotex.
Yeah can relate to that, makes a big mess cutting those boards 😀 Hope your build is coming along nicely!
Another great video, the international space station would be proud to have it. No more cold feet at last!
Looking forward to seeing the next stage.
Thank you, yes always fun thinking of the next stage around the corner! Quite a lot of stages though... 😮
This looks so good guys. Well done, absolutely fantastic job. you both should be very very proud
Thanks again for the encouraging words 🙂
Super Video and a great help. Thanks
No problem, glad it was helpful 👍
That insulation looked like such a satisfying job! Another great video, can’t wait to see more!
Thanks 👍
Well done
Thanks 😁
Don't put the final floor layer (vinyl?) on until the entire van is finished. Easily 90% of the van conversion videos I've seen people are doing this way too early. Its like when a brand new house is built the carpets and vinyl's are always fitted last, even after paint/decorating.
When I build my transit out, I'm concerned as to how well the back and side doors can be best insulated particularly for condensation barrier, many people seem to keep the metal uncovered or just place wood/carpet literally right on top of the metal, so I'm curious how well such vans perform in the coldest months for preventing condensation forming on those metal parts. Seems people mostly rely on just air circulation (+heat) from two ceiling fans, which seems a bit strange for the most freezing of nights as you're just blowing the heat right out of the van lol
Yes, the final floor layer will be vinyl. We can see pros and cons to doing it early and later on in the build really, so have thought around that. We likely will end up going with it earlier to give us one single sealed sheet to prevent any spillages finding their way down through the joins around the furniture and a slightly simpler install. Doing it later on is possible too though of course, saves material and cost potentially which is never a bad thing.
The back door insulation is an interesting one! There are thin and hard to access cavities around those areas 🧐
Amazing progress, you two! Everything after this will be a breeze! 😊👍
If I was convinced on the subject of stick pins after watching Greg Virgoe's videos many moons back, I am equally unsure now - especially in the roof area. How's your confidence with that? Was it really just the (lack of) temperature when applying the pins?
I do like the "adhesive only" attachment of the floor battens. Less holes in the metal floor will mean less chance of corrosion down the road. Perfect choice in my books. 😊👍
The weather here is still very April-ish - wet and cold, so I just managed to remove the airline rails from the wall substructure of our Crafter (they were attached with stainless rivets - impossible to drill out and glued in additionally). After taking an angle grinder to the rivets, using the heat gun and just brute force, I managed to get them off. I am currently looking for a body shop to get some driver's side rear panel damage repaired.
There's plenty of video material already, but we need to compile it into something coherent for publishing. Hope to have the first two or three done for YT and Instagram in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
You guys stay with it. It's still very inspirational seeing your progress! 👍
Best regards from Germany,
Volker
Thanks for the support! We suspect there will be some less breezy parts coming though... (hint: windows 😛). Yeah we initially were really happy with the stick pins but have to say, did not find them very useable on their own. The adhesive on the back of the ones we had at least was not very strong. In the end, every single one of the panels we had on the roof and the walls came off, apart from one single solitary one on one of the rear doors. And to actually remove the pins, a few seconds of pointing a heat gun at them, and they literally just fell off cleanly! We think a few things contributed to that though. As we said in the video it was bitterly cold when we were sticking them up, and we've learnt the hard way how important a bit of ambient warmth is for adhesives to cure properly (the camera mirror fell down three times before we re-stuck it in warmer weather). So the cold was a big factor we think, but also we possibly were a little on the light side with how many pins we used per board, as we semi-rationed them to have enough for the whole van from the supply we had. So instead of each corner, for the smaller boards we made a triangle with 2 corners and a top middle pin if that makes sense. The boards are quite light though being foam, and we cut them into small pieces so we figured that would be fine. And last thing, we fixed the boards on straight after doing the pins. So some or all of those played a contributing factor we think.
What we ended up doing was getting another box of the pins (slightly different ones too) and redid the whole lot. This time we waited for a warmer day, used more pins per board, left them overnight with no weight on them first, and finally went around and added the aluminium tape on the edges. So if they fall down this time...! 🧐😜
We wouldn't feel comfortable using only the pins now, but with the tape as well they've been pretty solid up there.
And yes we spent a while filling 74 holes we counted in the floor, so weren't about to be making some more in it anytime soon! 😀 Hope your build is coming along well 🙂
@@SelfBuiltStories I will have to source some stick pins here to test - this may appear silly: I am still trying to find a German translation for it. 🙈
I also had one afterthought to the use of adhesive without screws on the battens: If you use 25 mm battens and insulation, will the adhesive not add at least 1-2 mm to the height, that you have to compensate for when mounting the plywood? I was thinking of using some laminate foam underlay at that point to "even things out"? 🤔
Windows: Cutting up perfectly good sheet metal to install windows is like parachuting from a totally intact aircraft. VERY scary, but once the trip is finished, it's very satisfying. 😂
Our build requires a lot of preliminary work yet. I think you did see the instagram pics and the derelict state of the passenger cabin. I will have to dismantle all the plastic parts and steam clean them. I did place an apple on the dash over night and it was still there in the morning. Apparently there's nothing alive in there. 😂
We were able to get all the timber battens nice and flush at the same height and the foam boards are maybe a millimetre or two lower, so the ply floor going on top will just rest nicely right on top without any compensation. The slightly tricky part was getting all the timber level as the ribs of the van end prematurely in places, and some are also slightly less proud than others, but we just made lots of different spacers out of wood scraps until it was all nicely even.
And always good to know you don't have rodents in your van! We were parked up on a beach in a campervan on holiday once and in the morning the engine was really misbehaving... Turned out a mouse or something similar had crawled up into the engine bay and chewed a hole through the air intake filter. It was a funny moment at the garage when he pulled it out and saw a hole clean through the side and some nice comfy bedding it had pulled in there. 😂
Hey guys, loving the content. I wanted to ask where do you put the battens? Is it where the layout of your furniture ect is going to be ? Would appreciate some advice 🥹
Hey, thanks! And yeah good question, for the sub floor we mainly just spaced them out evenly and put them where they made sense to be able to support the ply floor on top. So around the edges a lattice in the middle. One thing we would do better if we did it again was making sure that there was a batten directly under the joins in the ply above. As in one spot in the van we can feel the join between the two ply pieces as the batten below is not directly underneath the join (about 10cm away from the edge) so there's a tiny bit of flex. Doesn't really bother us but something that would have been easy to avoid if we'd thought about it more 😛
When we've secured our furniture down we've gone into the ply layer so don't really think about where the battens are underneath (except when drilling holes we try to avoid going through them). But anything substantial we secure to the walls/bolt in as well. And for the wall battening we did try to put the battens where we'd need them for all the furniture, so having something around the height of the bed, bench seats, overhead cabinets etc. It really helped but we didn't get it perfect as it's so hard to predict the final layout at the beginning so we've added/modified some as we've gone along too. HTH! 👍
Hi guys, what did you use over the wheel arches - the reflective foil - was it just more Dodo deadn? Thanks!
Hiya, it's self adhesive foil faced insulation around 8-10mm which comes in a big roll, can get it here and from the same seller on eBay: www.carinsulation.co.uk/category/camper-van-insulation-sound-proofing-materials. We used it on most of the exposed metal in the van where we didn't have either the supasoft or the PIR board to break the thermal bridges
The roof plugs leaking are a common fault on transits.
Yeah we had one of them leak so we went up on the roof fairly early on and put some sika around all the seams and joins and every roof plug, has held up great so far 🙂
Hi guys I’ve been watching your build , iam just going to get on with my floor , a great job , I was wondering why it wouldn’t work putting the battens long way to save on hight or am I missing something
Hiya, cool thanks for watching :) With the battens we used 1x2s and the 2 side is face down, so they are in the flatter way, if that makes sense. They'd have been taking up more height if we rotated them around 90 degrees and put them sitting on the short edge. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you arrange it so you have battens supporting the joins between any plywood you're going to be putting on top, as otherwise you'll have a slight bow as you're moving around over the join.
Me again! Was it 100mm insulation for all the walls and then 50mm for the floor? Just found you guys and working my way through all your videos!
We used 100mm SupaSoft (the recycled plastic bottle fluffy stuff) in the cavities, 50mm PIR board for the walls and ceiling and 25mm for the floor. If we were doing it again we'd use 40mm on the ceiling though as it would have been quite a bit easier to work with. The 50mm sticks down proud of the metal ribs at the sides a bit so when we were putting up the ceiling we had to add some tapered wooden shims to span the difference. We have the benefit of the extra 1cm of insulation, but it made the project take longer 😛
Well done guys, it looks great. We're just about to do this ourselves. I was thinking of just using a cheap silicone to stick the wood to the floor, and hoping that gravity would keep it in place. What do you think :)
Cheers, and yeah that's pretty much what we did really with SikaFlex. Would imagine that any decent adhesive that can bond both wood and metal should work. We didn't want to screw anything into the van metal so went with the adhesive approach and haven't had any problems at all 👍
@@SelfBuiltStories Brilliant, thanks for the reply. I watched a guy yesterday patching up all his holes, then he screwed it into the floor, creating more holes. Crazy lol. Anyway, back to putting on the sound deadening :)
Keep up the good work :)
You're welcome! Ah yeah after spending so long sorting them all out we weren't about to make more 🙃 Good luck with the build!
@@SelfBuiltStories Cheers, Thank you :)
@@foxystravels Np :)
Is there any squeaking noise from the PIR board? Just wondering if they rub the frame. I am planning to do something similar.
nope, nothing that we notice anyway. When we're parked up stationary the only thing we really hear is the wind whistling through the maxxfan occasionally. And while we're driving the cab/road noise and having the bulkhead in means we don't hear much from the van either, just the occasional clanging of the shelves in the oven pretty much. Unless we go over a huge pothole where we might hear some of the contents of the cupboards 😛 But can't say we've ever really noticed any squeaking 👍
Where did you get your 25x50mm timber from for the floor please? :)
Hey, we got the majority of all our timber from Totem Timber in Plymouth: www.totemtimber.co.uk/ 👍
How much insulation board did you use on the floors? I don't want to over order the insulation board and we have the same van model!
Hey, we bought three full sheets (2400 x 1200mm) of the 25mm which covered everything we needed it for in the van. That was mostly the floor, but we also used 25mm to insulate the cavities on the rear doors and sliding door as well, and the bulkhead. HTH 👍
What screws idid you use for floor? Assume they go into metal but not right through to other side?
Realise you stuck and didn't screwthefloor!😊
Yep, we didn't want to drill any more holes in the floor after spending so long filling them all 😀👍
Zzzzz
🤷♂️