Toilet compartment damp repair Pictures Here

Delamination of the floor Pictures and description Here

I bought the Caravan a 1990 Swift Challenger 470/SE at the end of February 2006, I knew when I bought it there was a bit of damp in the toilet compartment, but I didn't know how bad so it was a bit of a gamble.
There wasn't even a smell of damp in the toilet the only two signs were a small bit of soft wall board at the bottom behind where the table is stored, and when pulling on the handle to manoeuvre the Van the whole back panel moved, and the handle as well.

I have a friend who for a few years worked at the local Caravan dealers so I was able to take some advice from him on how to tackle the job plus reading a lot of the UK campsite members posts on how they had done their repairs

I thought this will be a job to do over the winter months, but it was bugging me so on Sunday 19/5/06 I decided to bite the bullet.

First of all I took a Stanley knife and cut around the board leaving 3/4" of board to see what was behind it. I pulled all of the board of and removed the wet wood. Luckily it wasn't as bad as I had imagined it was going to be, after looking at  some of the UK campsite members pictures of their repairs.

I managed to save the insulation so I could reuse it (tight Scotsman) After I had stripped everything out I made a new frame from softwood but used a piece of hardwood for where I intended to bolt the handle, rather than use screws. It was a very basic frame butt joints and screwed together no fancy lap joints etc.

I then screwed this in place, and then used some silicone I had and fixed the frame to the aluminium outer shell and used the same for when patched the insulation back in place. It wasn't until the next day I thought about expansion, contraction of the aluminium skin and the silicone, I should probably have used something else, I will just have to keep my fingers crossed it will be OK.

To finish of the inside I had trouble getting the right thickness of plywood so used MDF instead. I had no chance of getting the right covering to match the rest of the toilet so I did a Blue Peter and used sticky back plastic and went for plain white with a wood grain effect.

I didn't fancy trying to hang the stick back plastic like wall paper in such a confined space so decided to apply it to the MDF before fixing it in place, turned out to be a good decision it went on with no wrinkles or bubbles.

Before fixing the wallboard in place I drilled four small hole to mount the Handle then counter sunk the wood on the inside using a spade bit, I used some awning rail tape (Soft sticky stuff that takes years to dry )on the back of the handle to prevent water getting in.

Lastly I used no nails to fix the MDF wallboard in place, and finished it off with a bead of silicone. We do not intend to use the shower in here so the bead of silicone should be enough.