Hello and welcome back to my Nissan NV200 van conversion.
It's just a short video this week,
as I've been noticing some marks on my van cab headliner for quite a while,and
it turns out to be mould, so it got me thinking 'why is there mould appearing on the headliner?'
A quick peek hunter would reveal why...
In order not to bend or break the headliner I first had to remove the fixings holding it in
place. This started with the four trim clips holding the edge to the ceiling.
I then removed the curtain so I had better access to the headliner.
I pulled off the door seals, grabbed a torx t30 bit to remove the sun visors,
and pulled the lights and sensors out of their holes too.
It was at this point I could have a proper look under the headliner and see why it become mouldy.
As expected there was an abundance of condensation clinging to the uninsulated van ceiling.
It really was in a bad way up there, so I removed the headliner completely
and could begin phase one; cleaning the headliner.
I was really keen to get as many of the mould marks off as possible
and to do this I used an off-the-shelf household fabric cleaner and some elbow
grease, as the last thing I wanted to do was bleach or mark the headliner.
Having gone over it a couple of times and given it a good scrub it was looking much better
and by the looks of it the headliner was pretty pleased to have had a clean...
I could then leave it to dry in the hot British winter sun...
or lent up against the radiator!
But while it dries, let me tell you how I'll be insulating the cab ceiling.
So this is my van ceiling,
and this is me installing the ply panels a little under a year ago.
You'll see all the silver foil bubble wrap insulation up there
and I wanted to do the same for the cab ceiling,
but how can I be sure that this was working and would do the trick for the cab as well?
Well, you've already seen the condensation on the bare metal so I decided to have a
peek under the ply on the same cold morning I was removing the headliner -
not a drop in sight and the plywood panel is in as good a condition as the day I put it up.
Checking this gives me lots of confidence that not only will the condensation be minimised
or even stopped, but that i'm using a method that will solve the problem for years to come.
The other benefit of using foil bubble wrap insulation is that it's really thin
and won't interfere with the shape of the headliner or how it fits to the van ceiling.
With that settled, I wiped the ceiling to get rid of any moisture and could begin insulation.
It's a fairly simple process - I cut a piece of insulation to length,
stick it in place using aluminium foil tape along the edges
and then repeat the process again until the whole ceiling is insulated.
With that done I could replace the headliner which went back up as easily as it came down.
And that was that the entire van ceiling is now insulated.
It seems blindingly obvious that you'd insulate the cab as well from the outset.
That said it was really easy to do at this later stage in my van build
and now that it's done I don't have to worry about condensation or mould again in the future.
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got in my van build series where I cover tons of other topics for converting a van into a camper.
Thanks for watching!