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Topic: Non wooden construction caravan floors..

Jake Drummond

via mobile 03/12/2022 at 10:47am
Location: Fifeshire
Outfit: Saab 9.5 Est. & Europa Timberland Fr

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I'm taking a risk here posting about rotten floors and their wood construction after some nasty comments on another site, 🙂 but here goes; Quite a few modern caravans have timber free wall construction methods and plastic or GRP front and rear panels, but TT he manufacturers continue to use plywood in the floors, which still presents issues with damp - and in some cases rotten - floors. I'll not mention the names of any makes of the caravans prone to this issue as this sparked off some 'debate' on another site, but I believe that one manufacturer did/or has moved to a non timber composite floor construction. Did this work, or have any issues?
I'm sure most caravan owners would be interested in this subject.

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AndyDW

05/12/2022 at 10:25am
Location: Lincs
Outfit: Coachman Wanderer 19

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There was a range of small unitary GRP caravans made, (cant remember the name now though). One assumes they must have had a GRP floor.

............
Andy

Fiona W

via mobile 05/12/2022 at 1:15pm
Location: Ayrshire
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Eriba have a tubular steel frame rather than a wooden one, but I don’t know what the floor is constructed with.

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blueexpo97

05/12/2022 at 1:37pm
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That's really good to know, but it's all about the floor.

aaet

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morepints

06/12/2022 at 8:47am
Location: Dartford Kent
Outfit: VW T6 conversion

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Thought this page might be of interest - i realise I didn’t understand what delamination was, even though our last van had it happen. So that would suggest the question is about the thin plywood parts of the sandwich, rather than, as I’d thought, a 18mm sheet of ply. Then presumably there’s a subframe of some sort that attaches to the Alko chassis. Mmm, might have to do more research…….

Paul_B

06/12/2022 at 10:23am
Location: Yorkshire
Outfit: Car & Caravan

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I believe that Elddis started to use GRP under their caravan floors when they started with the solid construction, I don't know if they kept it up.

They should really think about using drip rails as they did years ago, especially on the rear corners

Pickled Onion

08/12/2022 at 5:17pm
Location: Near Alton Towers
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There are plusses and minusses of a wooden floor construction. The older polystyrene foam in the middle was prone to delamination in heavily used areas but could be repaired. The later closed cell foam was a lot better at withstanding wear and it is cheap. simple to manufacture and relatively light.

The main problem seems to be that of constant water ingress, wherever from, it causes it to rot. Improvements have been made to replace the wooden internal framework with plastic as it doesn't rot, however, the ply on the top and bottom still does.

GRP instead of ply will cost more and be heavier.

The best thing of all would be if they could design a caravan so that the floor stays dry. I don't mean it won't get wet by towing it on wet roads, this dries out when you park up, I mean does not get wet by weather ingress.

But then again, if they lasted longer, we would keep them longer and the manufacturers and dealers would make less money off us?

Dave.

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
Teach a man to fish and you can get rid of him for a whole weekend.

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