When I opened the back doors of the van the other morning,
I noticed something unusual about the mattresses for my pullout bench/bed.
We'd seen some seriously heavy rainfall the night before and all three of the mattresses
were soaking wet at the end nearest the doors, and so was the bed underneath.
Luckily the water had been absorbed and hadn't made it to the floor,
but I needed to know why this had happened and how to stop it again.
After a lot of feeling around, I was relieved that the walls were dry
but noticed the ceiling by the back door felt wet .
My first thought was that the feeble plastic plugs which cover the roof bar
mounting holes had failed, but I sealed them in and they were still intact,
plus there was no evidence of water coming from their location on the inside of the van.
My next guess was that the seal on the doors I had made when I carpeted them had failed, which
would have been embarrassing as in my last video I said how they were firmly stuck to the doors!
Thankfully it wasn't that either and the doors were completely dry.
Next I checked the door seal which runs around the entirety of the back door opening.
There were no cracks, holes, tears or anything else that might cause concern, so
I pulled the seal away to check underneath and find where the water had got in.
There was a damp patch just on the curve so the water must have
found its way in under the seal and dripped onto the mattress all night.
After working out how the water got in, I wanted to work out why it got in.
But before I got a chance to work this out, another bout of heavy rain came along,
so I pushed the seal firmly back on, took the mattresses inside to dry,
and left a bowl on the bed to catch any water in case it happened again.
Unfortunately it did.
I checked on the van first thing the next morning
and there was water in the bowl as well as a very obvious location of entry on the ceiling.
I set about solving the problem and when it came to the seal there were three things that
I noticed might be causing a problem, and a very important fourth one which I'll go into later.
The first was the amount of dirt on the van. This really wasn't doing the seal any favours.
The second was the excess carpet which I tucked over the metal to be covered by the seal
and the carpet overlap here appeared to be wet.
Thirdly, the glue overspray left from the carpet clearly didn't allow the seal to
sit flat on the metal. This was apparent all the way along the edge of the van.
Whether it was just one of these reasons or all three,
I felt pretty confident that by addressing them I could stop the leak.
When it was time to get started, I pulled the seal again and began cleaning the seal inside and out.
From this angle you can really see how jagged the carpet overlap on the metal is.
The next step was to clean all along the metal lip, first with water to remove the dirt,
and then with white spirit to get rid of the glue.
The white spirit also helped to loosen up the carpet ends which
I could now trim back in areas that were too long.
I wasn't worried about it being neat as it would all be covered
by the rubber seal - I just wanted there to be less carpet overlap.
As I came to refit the seal, I made an interesting discovery
which is the fourth potential reason for the leak.
I discovered that the rubber seal actually has thin, pliable metal running all the way
through it, so it can be opened or closed more to fit the object it's attached to.
Now this doesn't negate my previous efforts but
hopefully helps them prevent any more leaks in the future.
With this in mind, before fitting the seal I went round it and closed its gap with my hands.
Then I could fit it to the van, tapping it firmly in place with my hand
for a tight and hopefully watertight fit and there was only one way to find out...
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So, I put a bowl in the back of the van in case it dripped
and tipped a bucket of water over the roof.
I also set up a camera in the van to create possibly the world's most boring
time-lapse of the van doors and, happy that the seal had kept water out on this occasion,
I put the mattresses back in.
The real test however came when a couple of days later another lot of heavy rain was forecast.
I left the camera time-lapsing on the van doors again overnight
and I'm pleased to report that no water has ingressed into the van.
Hopefully that solved the leaky door seal problem,
but I'll be sure to report back if I have any further issues
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