We installed two types of insulation in this van. The first was Kilmat, an automotive butyl and foil sound deadening mat. These are the shiny foil rectangles that you see adhered to the flat surfaces of the van. This is a first step towards making the van not sound like you are driving in a tin can. As you can see, we had some great help from the family to get all this installed! We cut to fit pieces on the walls and roof, and around the wheel wheels.
After that, we then covered the van walls, ceilings and just about anywhere we could stuff it with 3M Thinsulate Insulation. We pulled down the headliner and was able to place both Kilmat and Thinsulate in the front of the van, and then using lots of 3M90 Adhesive, cut to fit and then glued Thinsulate over the walls and ceilings, inside wall and door cavities, and anywhere we could access between the metal and the outer wall.
One learning that we discovered while doing a water test on the CR Laurence window that was installed later in the sliding door...door handles leak and are designed to leak! We found this out when all of our thinsulate insulation that we placed behind the moisture barrier in the door was soaked when we did the water test. In hindsight, that is why a van has the moisture barrier installed on all the doors with handles. After figuring this out, we ended up removing the thinsulate insulation that we had added in the bottom of the doors, where the inslulation was directly under each handle. While thinsulate is a polyester and polypropylene blend and inert, it will hold moisture and dirt will find its way in overtime creating a great habitat for mold growth. This also prompted us to check the water drainage holes in the sliding door and found that many were mostly painted over. When Ryan gently opened these up - water did come out. We both learned an important lesson here about door drainage!
Besides that, we just glued and stuffed insulation anywhere and everywhere we could! Not as exciting as some of the other steps in the build, but when we are sleeping in our van in the middle of winter somewhere cold, I will remember all the work we did to insulate well!
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