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Gary's Fleetwood Garland damp repair.

This is not intended to be a step by step show how on a damp repair as Caradad has superbly already covered it on his website, with incidentally, the exact same model of van as mine and the exact same fault!

This is intended only to show what I found and how I tackled the different stages of the job!

I'll also add that I'm by no means any carpenter! Spent most of my life messing with mechanical things and working on the railway. So, as far as i'm concerned anyone could crack this using some thought, planning and basic tools. I say basic tools, the only remotely 'specialised tool I used was a chop/mitre saw that I managed to borrow off a mate. The rest was a hammer, scraper, carpenters square, tennon saw, cordless drill/driver, beefy heavy duty stapler, set of chisels, sharp knife and a dozen 59 pence plastic clamps and a few other odds & ends I've forgot to mention.

Materials were, 32mm mastic roll, 19mm mastic roll, rail insert strip, high quality water proof wood adhesive, 2 tubes of Sikaflex 512, 25mm x 75mm softwood, 2 lengths of 25mm x 25mm softwood, sheet of Selotex foam board, sheet of 3mm ply yet to be procured.

The first job was the destruction stage. This is the most worrying where you wonder if you made the right decision, grit your teeth and go for it, do not look down!

You'll notice the rusty screws and black dust seeping out at the bottom of the window, this is a dead giveaway that there's big trouble behind. Indeed, the only thing holding some of these in was the plastic wood effect covering on top of the rot.

Click any picture to make it bigger.

Here we go then! Lots of black dust and rotten wood. At least its dry though as the van has been under cover since last August thankfully!

It was basically rotten the whole length of the front shelf below the windows.

Its imperative that you disconnect any 240volt shore supply and your battery! I also made a note of all connections on the back of the Zig panel. The Zig panel is basically tucked down inside there out of the way.
It was easier to maneuver about with a few of the wires disconnected.

Unfortunately the small piece of panelling that covers the wires was an early casualty of the stripping process. I'll have to make good in the rebuild stage.

That shelf was a total mare to get out, held in with what seemed like a thousand staples and inaccessible screws from underneath in the front bin and also in the ends, screwed in through the side walls. There are also screws going in up through that frame work.You cant get to these screws and brute force was used to remove it. I even contemplated leaving it in but i'm very glad I didn't as you'll see later, it was total junk when it was new! Certainly light weight though.

The fairly good condition bits you see here are the walls up the sides of the windows. These were unaffected by damp but it all has to come off. This takes some time and effort with a scraper as its all bonded to the existing window frames. I was glad when I finished this stage!

I now have the new shelf in and it's a lot easier than taking out the old one! I got it out mostly in one piece and used it as a pattern for the new shelf. I struck lucky and got a nice new sheet of 18mm marine ply for the new shelf. I don't mind the extra couple of kilo's, it's well worth the extra strength.

I've also now finished the new frame, it took me about 1 day to get it all cut and fitted. It's slightly low along the bottom of the front middle window but if need be I could gently shave the GRP back the meet the frame along the bottom.

I also cut away the Fablon where that frame attaches to the shelf, only because i'm fussy and didn't want the bond impaired but I suspect the screw driven from under would suffice!

I also shaved back the edge of the GRP along the bottom of the middle window today. After some measuring It turned out to be the opening that was a bit inaccurate and not my frame, it was 4mm higher on one side so that was a bonus! If you look at the picture to the right of the frame work you'll notice that the opening is higher than the frame by a few mm.