Camper Van Flooring

Adding camper van flooring and campervan floor insulation to your new van conversion is vital to creating a warm, comfortable and inviting space for you to spend quality time with your loved ones. The options and procedures for installing camper van flooring and camper van floor insulation are vast, and with so many different ways to do it, things can get complicated. Fortunately, Installing a floor insulation in your van conversion doesn’t need to be that hard and there is a simple way to do it.

Keep reading to see the different layers that make up our van floor insulation and a simple trick to help your install…….

Camper Van Flooring  

First, we researched and brainstormed some ideas to find a flooring solution that would work best for our situation.

Campervan Flooring Ideas

Bedrug Vanrug

One of the easiest campervan flooring ideas is to install a Vanrug and you’re done. I had thought about doing just this. Cutting the rug to fit around the RIB seat frame so the rug could go in after the seat was installed. Unfortunately, the seat frame did not line up with the ribs and would not sit level on the van floor. This meant some type of subfloor needed to go in before the seat. This is a good thing It has forced me to add a little extra to the design of our van floor insulation.

Polyiso Foam Board Insulation

The next option is to use Polyiso Foam Board Insulation as your campervan floor insulation. The pros for this options is it has one of the highest available R-Values. The cons, you will still have to use some type of top layer to prevent compressing the Polyiso and give you a subfloor to lay down your camper van flooring. The added labor required to install Polyiso Foam Board Insulation has eliminated this option from our build. Definitely worth considering though

Installing Plywood Floor In The Van

Installing Plywood Floor In The Van is next in the list of Campervan Flooring Ideas. Depending on your locations and the average ambient temperatures when you plan on inhabiting your van, adding floor insulation may not even be necessary. Although, some type of sound deadening is highly recommended.

 

Campervan Floor Insulation

Our Campervan Floor Insulation is made up of the following layers.

Noico Sound Deadener – First Layer

The first layer of our Camper Van Flooring insulation system is a small amount of Noico 80 mil Butyl Automotive Sound Deadener. The addition of a butyl sound deadener will help to dampen vibrations and noise transfer from beneath the van. Read this, if you need to know more about soundproofing and sound deadening.

 

Carinsulation Thermal Sound Deadener – Second Layer

Carinsulation Thermal Sound Deadener is a lightweight automotive heat barrier. This closed cell polyethylene foam is reinforced with aluminum facing on both sides. It gets great reviews on Amazon. I am excited to see how it performs as part of our Camper Van Flooring Insulation System.

 

BedRug VanRug – Third Layer

The Big Tip: The beauty of using a Vanrug in your flooring system is you can use it as a template to trace out all the other layers. Not to mention it has great insulating and sound deadening properties.

 

Plywood  – Top Layer / Subfloor

For the subfloor and to tie everything together, we will be Installing a Plywood Floor In the Van. This will make for a solid surface to mount the RIB seat and leave options open for floor coverings to be installed at a later date.

 

 

Camper Van Flooring – How We Did It

Tools and Materials Used

• Noico 80 mil Butyl Automotive Sound Deadener
• Car Sound Deadener Application Wheel Roller
• Heat Gun
• Space Heater
• Foil Tape
• Carinsulation Thermal Sound Deadener
• Heavy Duty Scissors
• Clamp-On Saw Guide

Installing Sound Deadener – Noico Butyl Sound Deadening Mat

Installing sound deadening mat is normally quite easy. Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to throw six inches of snow and frigid temperatures at us.

 

 

 

Using a combination of a space heater and a heat gun to get the Noico Butyl Sound Deadening Mat to properly adhere.  We went with about 50% coverage on the floor. This is about 7 sheets cut into strips.

Installing Thermal Acoustic PE Foam Insulation – Carinsulation.com

We used foil tape to join the sections of Carinsulation.

As we said before, a Vanrug makes a great template to get the perfect outline of the van floor.

The Carinsulation Thermal Sound Deadener is in. Notice the square holes? This is where the plywood will bolt down and the RIB Seat will bolt in.  

Cutting Out The Plywood Van Subfloor

We had the wood cut to the correct width by the panel saw at Home Depot.

 

 

 

Three pieces of ⅝” tongue and groove spruce plywood. Cut to the width of the Vanrug. The Vanrug makes a great template to get the perfect outline of the van floor.

Installing The Bedrug Vanrug

The Vanrug goes on top of the Carinsulation Thermal Sound Deadener

Installing The Plywood Floor In The Van

The plywood flooring is held down by the tiedown bolts. I swapped out the T-40 Torx bolt with a longer M8 Hex bolt. ( Long enough to go through the thickness of the flooring.)

Installing the plywood floor in the van.

Done

 

What’s Next?

Campervan Folding Bed Seat – Scopema RIB Altair

To get the vehicle functioning for family use, we have already taken delivery and unboxed our new Scopema RIB Altair. This campervan folding bed seat seems to be an amazing product. Manufacturing some chassis bracing and drilling through the floor should not be too hard.

Parking Heater

Once the van is ready for passengers we can focus on installing our parking heater. We had planned to use the Webasto Air Top 2000 Parking Heater but then decided to try the Chinese Parking Heater from Drivworld.  The Chinese Parking Heater is less than half the price and includes most of the installation hardware, we figured it was a good bet. It looks great out of the box. We will see…

Van Roof Vent Fan

We had planned to make the van roof vent fan one of the first projects. Unfortunately, a delay in receiving the van meant old man winter has set in. The bonding adhesive required to glue on the van roof vent adapter will not set at lower temperatures. We will have to rent an oversize shop for a weekend or wait until warmer weather to complete this.

Finally, if you have any questions, contact post a comment or reach out on one of our social channels.

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Thanks for reading, and remember to always take the road less traveled!