I brought my first caravan, a 93 Fleetwood, knowing certain jobs required doing; one of the jobs was a section in the floor that had delaminated. So I read up on it curtsey of this board and a couple of others, stripped the furniture and carpet out to reveal the floor.
What I hadn’t expected to find was that the previous owner had hacked a 6”x 4” hole in the floor. He had done this out of inexperience, I presume that he had thought that the floor was going rotten and wanted to have a look inside.
This left me with an additional repair to the floor which I was unsure about how to tackle, a piece of old carpet had been put back into the hole to build up the foam sandwich that had been damaged and the top piece of flooring had been glued back down with wall board adhesive, which had melted the foam insulation, not very nice.
I decided to square up the hole by removing more floor section then put in a new piece in completely. I had to support the new section so I put in some battens; I did this by removing some of the foam sandwich material and used a batten wide enough to support the old and new sections of floor in much the same way as a joist would support a floor.
I then glued and screwed the new section of floor in; the end product was as good as new. I then moved onto the floor delamination, which wasn’t too bad but require attention, I decided to cover an area of about 1.5 meters. I marked out a matrix at 6” centres, and started to drill 7mm holes for 8mm dowels where the lines crossed, just through the top layer of flooring as advised by the caravan repairer that sold me the adhesive kit, I questioned that it was just the top section of flooring and not through the foam, but he insisted that this was the correct method. He also advised me to cut all the dowels in half as they did not need to penetrate the foam through to the bottom floor layer.
I was now left with another problem in that I had a hole in the floor that I had repaired with no foam insulation in it, this would take up an awfully large amount of resin adhesive so I had to think up another way to fill this hole before applying the adhesive.
I had already spoken to the same caravan repairer who was very helpful and he had advised me to fill the hole with polystyrene sheet, the same stuff that’s in the walls of you caravan, to just cut a section to size insert it then put the top layer of floor section in.
Unfortunately I had already glued and screwed this area and didn’t really want to fetch it up again, so I decided that I would fill it with expanding foam, the caravan repairer had advised against this as he said that because it had such a high expansion rate that it would cause the floor to bubble. As this was my only option I had to give it a go, what I decided to do was to fill the cavity after I had drilled all the holes for the floor glue, I also put some extra holes around the repaired section to allow the foam to escape so that it did not cause to much pressure under the floor and cause the floor to bubble.
This worked very well as the extra expanded foam just vented out of the ports I had created; you have to keep wiping the foam away as it comes out of the holes as it starts to cure and this would prevent any more foam from expanding through the holes, but be careful with this stuff, I can see how you could easily damage your floor by applying to much. I tested the expanding foam on the floor insulation just to make sure that it didn’t react with it, the foam insulation is exposed by the floor vents.
I left the foam to go off for 24hrs and then started re-laminating the floor, I taped up all the seams and holes on the under side of the floor as I had read on these forums, I was also advised by the caravan repairer to put very slight pressure on the underside of the floor as my floor had dipped in one section and although delamination had occurred at this point there was very little space to get adhesive in as all the layers are still in contact with each other, this I did and I think that it helps to bond everything back into the original position.
I then mixed up the resin and started to inject it into the floor, I had a much longer working time than I first thought, but it is winter and not very warm, the 7mm holes are the perfect size for the large syringes, you know when there is a space as it is easy to inject the resin and hard if the floor is still well laminated together.
It is a messy job; the resin comes back up the hole and the surrounding holes. I scooped it back up with a wall scrapper and used it again. I injected all the holes first then knocked in the dowels, I think it is best to fill every hole in the floor in the area that has been treated with resin because as you are walking on it you can see the resin start to work out of some of the smaller screw holes, I just put the screws back in these holes, but didn’t screw them all the way home.
I used lots of surgical gloves as the stuff gets everywhere. When I had finished I checked under the caravan to make sure there wasn’t a large pool of resin on the floor, some had leaked out of the seams that I had covered with gaffer tape proving that the resin had penetrated both layers of the floor.
The additional resin that’s left on the floor is easiest removed with the wall scraper as it starts to go off as it gets very thick and comes off the floor leaving it nice and clean. As I have said I have done this in winter and the cold weather gives you plenty of time to work with the resin, it may be a completely different story in summer, the only downside being that I will probably leave it a couple of extra days to the suggested 24hrs just to make sure everything has set.
I have written this as a guide to help anyone else who is considering the repair themselves, the information I found on this and various other forums was invaluable. I must say a special thanks to the engineer at Stafford Caravans who spent a long time explaining the process to me.
One last point, shop around for your resin as I had quotes of as much as £70 a tin to as little as £25 a tin.
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Topic: Floor Delamination
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