Fixing a Floor - Fiberglass RV
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Old 02-08-2009, 03:36 AM   #1
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Trailer: 1972 Boler American and 1979 Trillium 4500
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The floor on our trailer left a lot to be desired. We originally started pulling up the carpet tiles laid by a previous owner. I’m not sure what was more important to us, our dislike of the colour or our dislike of potential mold. Pulling the tiles left a layer of stinky foam that had to be scraped off.


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The underlying original linoleum left a lot to be desired so we pulled that up too. The linoleum left a fiber layer that had to be sanded off.


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We expected to find soft spots when we pulled the rear benches because of the hole in the roof and the missing water tank. I poked and prodded around a bit which ultimately resulted in a hole through the floor. Views from top and bottom are below.


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Continued in Part 2
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Old 02-08-2009, 03:50 AM   #2
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Part 2

I started patching the hole with a layer of fiberglass patch from underneath. Using waxed paper as a separator, I prepped a few layers of fiberglass on a scrap of plywood then held the patch in place from the underside using some jacks. Once cured, I laid a few more layers of glass into the hole from the topside.


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Some of the soft spots were a little more extensive than we expected. The floor was soft in the area marked in the first picture below. I tried using some of the “Git-Rot” liquid mixture for fixing wood rot as shown in the second picture below. The second picture also shows the results of the second stage of the fiberglass patch in the bottom right.


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“Git”-Rot works great, but is very expensive, it would have cost me a couple of hundred dollars to fix the entire area. I used the jug I bought following the instructions allowing the liquid to flow down to the bottom of each hole. Once that had cured, I sanded off the remaining soft wood and used fiberglass strand body filler to completely fill up the depressions. After curing the floor was finished by sanding everything smooth and level.


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We decided to use a vinyl strip flooring because got a great deal on this Karndean Van Gogh product from a local source.

We needed a smooth surface to install on, so I decided to lay some thin painted MFP board down as a sub floor using PL400 sub floor adhesive since it is flexible and not affected by sub freezing temperatures. One 4X8 sheet of MFP was not enough to do both floor sections, so I decided to get 2 sheets so I could carry the smooth floor over into the storage sections, the rear looked so good I purchased a 3<sup>rd</sup> sheet to do the front under the bunk too. The stuff was relatively inexpensive looked nice and once it was caulked to the walls would make cleanup much easier.


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Continued in Part 3
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Old 02-08-2009, 04:01 AM   #3
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Part 3

This is what the vinyl strips looked like going down. They have a special latex adhesive that must be spread out with a very fine notched trowel. Too big a notch and your tiles will float until the excess weeps out the seams. Trust me, it takes months to finish weeping. I used some PL400 to attach the vinyl strips to the kicks. This is what it looks like partly finished.


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And the floor completed with trim in place.


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One problem I found was the metal trim at the door edge has to be opened a bit wider before installing. If not, it has a tendency to pull the vinyl strips outwards creating a gap between the strips.

The whole job was spread out over a couple of years since I was doing other fixes and modifications at the same time. You can follow the full Restoring Our 1972 Boler American as it progresses.
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Old 02-10-2009, 12:46 PM   #4
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Wow that looks great. We have been trailer floor shopping trying to get ideas for our future new trailer (talk about putting the cart before the horse).
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