Vapour Barrier
It’s been a week since our last update but we are still around and working on the van! I admit we’ve been quite tired lately and needed some time to relax, in addition to looking into other aspects of the build that have yet to come.
The Barrier
After superb progress last weekend, we decided to take a few days off at the beginning of this week. The solar panel weekend was a great success but we had lots of business work to catch up on. Gandalf is now starting to look like a camper on the outside and so its time to give him a much deserved upgrade on the inside. As you’ve guessed we’ll be heading back to work on the inside of the van this week as we finish up some odd bits of insulation that still need to be done and then we’ll be making a start on the vapour barrier.
Having only two days in hand to work on the van this week we decided to concentrate on getting the vapour barrier on the walls (we’ll do the ceiling later as we want to put the ceiling on after the walls). This will also help to protect the Celotex during the next stages, as it is quite fragile.
What is a vapour barrier and why do we need it?
The vapour barrier is a crucial part of the build, the whole van needs to have a continuous barrier over the insulation, but underneath the lining of the walls and ceiling. This barrier will prevent any water vapour (from breathing, cooking etc) that is not ventilated, from making it’s way to the metal of the van and eroding it over time. The vapour barrier itself is basically a tough foil bubble wrap type material, we have gone for the double bubble variety which is thicker and easier to work with and it will also give a small boost to the insulation.
Nuts, Bolts and Battens
We needed to finish up adding the battens that we made a start on last week. Ben was tasked with this and managed to get a couple of the battens on fairly quickly. Meanwhile, I made good progress in adding the vapour barrier to the passenger side and the rear of the drivers side of the van. All was going well until we realized we didn’t have enough nuts and bolts to finish up the battens. This was going to cause a bit of a problem, given that I couldn’t finish the vapour barrier along the remainder of the drivers side without the battens in place.
Unfortunately, the nuts and bolts that we are using are specialist items. We decided to use the left over nuts from the Unistrut system that we used for the roof rails. I’d ordered some with springs on the back and these seemed to hold particularly well in the large factory made cavities.
It was difficult to come up with a solution for the larger holes because of their shape. We noticed that the cavities have small ridges around the edges on the inside that would allow for a nut with ‘teeth’ on it to grip onto it once tightened. We chose to use the spring variant as this should help stop the nut falling back into the cavity whilst it’s being tightened.
Although disappointed, we realized that we’d have to stop work and leave it there for now while we ordered in the parts, as it’s not something you can just walk in and pick up from a local hardware store. We hope that the nuts and bolts will arrive in the early part of next week so we can carry on with the vapour barrier. We have much to research on the ply lining side of things so time will not be lost whilst we look into appropriate wall coverings.
We are still pleased to have got a good chunk of the barrier done over the two days that we’ve had to work on the van this week! Wish us well for next week, hopefully we’ll have some walls to show you!
I have also been working on more in depth articles on the build process that lists materials and further information. Naturally it’s taking me quite some time to get everything perfect and up on the site so please bear with me. More information on Vapour Barriers can be found here.