An early task on the van was to get a floor installed – the main floor of the van is ridged metal – not very comfy to walk on, noisy and easily damaged.

We needed to know the entire van layout before we installed the floor – because we needed to put the floor beams in the right place to support heavy furniture and internal walls. 

Plans drawn, we then had to decide on extras for the ‘underfloor’ such as insulation and if we wanted to run any electric cabling through under the floor.

We’ve gone for 25mm celotex insulation boards in between the floor beams.  This was decided on because the floor beams are 25mm, so it’s makes for a nice flat base.

Before fixing it in we did a final install to make sure it fitted well.  It’s like doing a giant wonky jigsaw puzzle.

Time to fix it in place. 

We didn’t want to drill through the floor of the van, so we went with sticking the floor beams in place with some Sitcks Like Sh*t. Then wedging and sticking the celotex in place in between the floor beams, along with some electrical conduit to feed electrical cables through later in the build.  We then put aluminium foil over all the wood beams, joining all the celotex, to create a vapour barrier.

Ta-daa, one solid floor base.

Now to put an actual floor on top.

We made templates of the floor out of cardboard to get all the shapes correct – vans don’t come with any straight edges or surfaces.

We used these cardboard templates to cut out 4 sections of floor from 12mm hard plywood.  For install each board needed holes pre-drilling and counter-sinking that would line up with the 25mm floor beams – approximately 40 holes per board.

We lifted the boards in, starting at the rear of the van and then screwed them all down. 

To finish off the plywood we gave it 3 coats of quick drying interior clear satin varnish. 

Later on in the build we’ll be adding a floor covering on top of the ply wood… 

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