Seams a bit damp

Nearly a month after we bought Bertha (our beast of a 1990 motorhome), we’ve finally had a free weekend to start some work on her. We chose to begin by giving her a good clean inside and out, but also by investigating a little damp bit of carpet we’d spotted beneath the rear seat in the back corner (opposite the toilet). We’d done some detective work online and found this posting about some damp made by the previous owner back in 2010 (shortly after he bought her), however we didn’t know the extent of any fixes he had made.

After we’d dismantled the seat, stripped back the carpet and pulled away rotten and sodden walls, this is what we’re left with:

So we set up a heater to dry it out so that we can assess the damage a little more, but we think we’ve found the culprit – the seams at the rear were pretty badly sealed (as mentioned in the previous owner’s posting). So we cleaned the seams properly and as we were doing so, the wooden batons inside changed from damp to wet. We then applied a little bit of lots of Sikaflex (caravan sealant – nasty stuff to work with) and have left it to dry with the heater sorting out the interior. Once that’s done we can replace all of the rotten batons, polystyrene insulation and plywood inside. Here’s one of the seams in all its glory – covered first in nastiness, then cleaned, then slathered in Sikaflex:

In other news, as we tested out the water pump for the first time today, water gushed from our Paloma heater (obviously added by the previous owner as per his posting). We checked the drainage plug on the heater which was very stiff and very closed, so we guess that water was left in there during the winter, which has burst a pipe or component inside. What fun! That’s for another time!

As for the cleaning? Well, Bertha is now much cleaner on the outside and we’ve made a start on the inside, but there’s still plenty to do!