How To Repair Soft Floor In Camper

Many folks who love—and preserve—an older RV have found a painful reality in their treasure: soft spots in their floor. Usually the problem can be traced back to a water leak that's compromised the integrity of the floor. You can sometimes ignore it for a while, but information technology tin get downright unsafe. Having a guest autumn through your bathroom floor is not a pleasant thought.

Replacing a bad spot in the floor is challenging, just non incommunicable for the do-it-yourselfer. It takes time and patience, and at times a flake of imagination. We'll walk you through the process.

Out With the Former
Nosotros recently undertook to solve a soft floor problem in our elderly travel trailer. A previous owner had let a toilet leak go to the point that an expanse of the plywood floor in the center of the bathroom finally developed dry out rot. When we first adopted the trailer nosotros did our best to ignore it, but after a few months, it became apparent that ignorance wasn't bliss. Something had to exist washed.

The first pace in dealing with nasty floor rot is to pray intensely that the underlying floor material is plywood. Particle lath flooring is a expletive, and will chop-chop turn to powdery fluff. Much can exist learned by dismounting a flooring oestrus register nigh the criminal offence scene and taking a squint at the floor cloth underneath. We institute three/4-inch plywood nether our vinyl floor, which meant we'd only need to cut into "solid wood" a few inches across the damage. If yous've got particle board rot, you'll be cutting a long way back.

By judicious tapping and pressing, we managed to figure out how large an area of soft wood nosotros were dealing with, and then went a few inches farther away from the soft spot and determined that this would be the floor surface area that we would cut out. Using a square and a felt-tip marker, we advisedly drew out a rectangle on the floor as the target lines for our cutting. Setting a circular saw the thickness of the floor (and no more), we and so cutting along the lines. From in that location it was a matter of using a pry bar and hammer to wrench the old plywood out of the pigsty, as the manufacturer had used plenty of long staples to install the original plywood decking.

If at all possible, it'southward all-time to leave the sometime plywood intact, as opposed to chirapsia it into petty pieces. This tin give yous a template to use in cutting the replacement wood. Even so, in our case, the vinyl floor was only fastened to the plywood around the borders, then nosotros were able to use the cutout flooring every bit our template slice.

With the plywood out of the hole, you'll probably have plenty of work to do to become the remaining staples out of the floor joists. Nosotros institute that grabbing the staple close to the joist with diagonal pliers, and and so twisting the pliers on the joist gave enough leverage to yank the long-legged staples out of the wood. A shop vac volition chop-chop suck up the grit and plywood fragments, keeping your work area make clean and making it much easier to work.

Preparing for Replacement Plywood
You'll need to create a new base of operations of support for your replacement plywood. In some cases, you may be able to use suitably sized dimensional lumber to create new flooring joists, but there will be areas where yous can't run and attach them to the existing joist arrangement. Since you tin't take the new (and remaining adept) plywood hanging in midair, yous'll use a system of cleats to class that support.

Basically a cleat is a chunk of dimensional lumber (two 10 4s are good for this) laid on its side, and tucked underneath the edge of the good remaining plywood. Stick the cleat upward under the existing plywood so that half of the cleat is sticking out from nether the plywood, like a tongue. Using 2 1/2-inch drywall screws, nosotros drove screws down through the existing flooring into the cleat, spacing the screws close to 3 inches on eye. When yous lay the new plywood replacement piece in the hole, information technology will be supported past the cleat and you simply run screws through the new plywood into the cleat. Voila! The new "plug" is firmed into the spot.

In some areas you may be very close to an existing flooring joist—say the cut is correct along the edge of a joist. In this instance you lot can make a "sister" by screwing some other joist piece onto the existing joist. Hither the plywood screws into the sister.

You lot Aren't Done Yet
Alas the width of the circular saw blade will probable leave a kerf that'due south seemingly as wide as the K Canyon. Depending on what yous'll utilise for replacement flooring coverings, those nasty cracks demand to be filled upwards. The floor-leveling compound sold at lumberyards works OK for sticks-and-bricks homes, but it's a plaster-based substance that easily cracks with motion. Bounce your RV downward the highway a few times and if your floor-leveling chemical compound breaks up, y'all'll have it ruining your new floor. Nosotros were stumped for a while.

Then a contractor friend said, "Bondo it!" Sure enough, automotive body filler was our answer. This had to be the longest part of the job. Mixing the fiberglass-like compound up, smoothing information technology into irregularities and cracks, drying it, and so sanding it with a belt sander seemed to take forever. Don't try to fill deep voids or irregularities in 1 shot; y'all'll need to come after them in a multi-layered approach. If you lot're recovering with vinyl, be sure your screws are driven downwardly deep and covered with trunk filler. And exist sure to follow the precautions with regard to safety. Boxed upwardly in an enclosed RV with fumes from this stuff filling your lungs is a surefire way to damage your organism.

If you're doing a replacement vinyl floor, yous'll actually need to pay shut attention to getting this floor prepping done smoothly, equally imperfections will evidence. Laminates or carpeting cover a multitude of sins.

Russ and Tiña De Maris are authors of RV Boondocking Basics—A Guide to Living Without Hookups, which covers a full range of dry camping topics. Visit icanrv.com for more information.

How To Repair Soft Floor In Camper,

Source: https://rvlife.com/techtips-repairing-floor-soft-spots/

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