TRIBUTE T620 FLOOR DELAMINATION - HELP!

DiggerJon

DiggerJon

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Since 1991
My 2011 Tribute T620 has developed floor delamination between the heater and the fridge. I have viewed the suggested remedies on the internet and it does not look tooooooooo complicated but the problem I have is that the vinyl wood flooring effect is stuck on the the floor and will be an absolute b*****r to lift and impossible to re-lay flat - if at all. I've had my trusted mobile caravan repairers around to do the job but they are unwilling to do it as they cannot guarantee that the floor will look untouched when they've finished due to the vinyl floor problem. I now wonder if it would be possible just to do the floor repair leaving the vinyl intact and then lay cushion floor/lino sort of thing over the top and right through the van thus avoiding the problem of relaying the original vinyl flooring.
Any thoughts, suggestions, hints or tips would be very welcome!
 
DiggerJon said:
My 2011 Tribute T620 has developed floor delamination between the heater and the fridge. I have viewed the suggested remedies on the internet and it does not look tooooooooo complicated but the problem I have is that the vinyl wood flooring effect is stuck on the the floor and will be an absolute b*****r to lift and impossible to re-lay flat - if at all. I've had my trusted mobile caravan repairers around to do the job but they are unwilling to do it as they cannot guarantee that the floor will look untouched when they've finished due to the vinyl floor problem. I now wonder if it would be possible just to do the floor repair leaving the vinyl intact and then lay cushion floor/lino sort of thing over the top and right through the van thus avoiding the problem of relaying the original vinyl flooring.
Any thoughts, suggestions, hints or tips would be very welcome!
Click to expand...
Would the sale of Goods Act '6 year rule' help in this situation?
Irrespective of the manufacturers guarantee length, a consumer has 6 years to report any faults
Maybe worth speaking you your solicitor?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ng-complaints-official-guarantee-expires.html
 
Can you get at it and do it from underneath ?
 
I'm with a try like wot RC sez.(y)
 
My tribute T715 floor was done under warranty from under the floor by dealer, after advice from auto trail, as he did not want to remove the cupboards,and vinyl floor. Long running dispute between dealer and auto trail.

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HANCOCK said:
My tribute T715 floor was done under warranty from under the floor by dealer, after advice from auto trail, as he did not want to remove the cupboards,and vinyl floor. Long running dispute between dealer and auto trail.
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How old was your T715 please as I may approach my dealer to see if it can be done. Only 4 years for a floor is not very good!
 
2013 tribute, floor and side walls damp, heap of junk
 
Had a similar problem caused, I think, by previous owners kids/adults jumping out of the top bunk bed instead of using the ladder. Anyway, the van was double floored so couldn't do the repair from under-the-neeth and vinyl had been adhered to the floor (and ran under all cupboards, etc.) The repair I decided upon was the green gunk sold on ebay which is a sort of slow expanding foam. It needed holes drilling in a grid, slowly filling each hole, tapping floor to settle the liquid, more filling etc. The problem was the vinyl. Before drilling holes I laid a sheet sticky back plastic over the floor to be done, I sharpened the edge of a piece of 15mm copper pipe with a Dremmel attachment. When it was knife sharp I punched the vinyl floor, picked out the circular piece of vinyl, drilled the hole, filled with gunk, filled with gunk, filled with gunk until I was sure I couldn't get any more in. Then banged in a dowel to seal the hole and left it for 24 hours. Some holes had pushed the dowel out, some were ok, some green foam etc. Razor blade to slice off all the green foam, bang the dowels back in, remove the sticky back plastic (which saved the green adhering to the vinyl floor and then superglued the little round pieces of vinyl back into the holes they'd been punched from. The floor was fixed a treat but in certain light you could just about see the circles on the floor. I was going to recover with more vinyl but never did, they sorted of blended in after a year or so of usage. May not be the correct or perfect way of dealing with the problem but I was happy with the result.
 
doing the job from underneath comes with its own set of drawbacks and is not and easy DIY task. The easiest and most satisfactory is to drill through the bonded vinyl flooring to inject the epoxy neccesary to relaminate the floor, then lay new vinyl flooring over the entire floor to match

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And I was looking to buy a tribute, anyone on here who have any good points for them?.
Mickey
 
hi DiggerJon, I have just bought a 2012 Tribute T620 (privately) and the floor seems to "give" in the space between the fridge and the fire just like yours it seems. did you manage to sort it? do you have a link to where you say you saw fixes and did you find out how it was caused and if so could this be covered by the 10 year "body construction integrity warranty"? hope you can help, cheers, derek
 
And so what happens if you just leave it, and put up with a creaky floor?? o_O It cant go anywhere, it's just flexing.
 
Tootles said:
And so what happens if you just leave it, and put up with a creaky floor?? o_O It cant go anywhere, it's just flexing.
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No - don't leave it. The plywood upper becomes more and more stretched and the PU foam layer becomes more and more compressed. Before long it feels like you're walking over a peat bog, or for those who have never done so, like walking over a trampoline. The floor, because it has stretched, tends to bulge upwards in some places and down in others.

It has just been demonstrated to me again - I've been given a caravan in reasonable nick that my daughter intends to use. The floor has delaminated and has been left to its own devices for a very long time. It's actually quite hard to walk in it until you develop sea legs. Just one more little job ............

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DiggerJon said:
My 2011 Tribute T620 has developed floor delamination between the heater and the fridge. I have viewed the suggested remedies on the internet and it does not look tooooooooo complicated but the problem I have is that the vinyl wood flooring effect is stuck on the the floor and will be an absolute b*****r to lift and impossible to re-lay flat - if at all. I've had my trusted mobile caravan repairers around to do the job but they are unwilling to do it as they cannot guarantee that the floor will look untouched when they've finished due to the vinyl floor problem. I now wonder if it would be possible just to do the floor repair leaving the vinyl intact and then lay cushion floor/lino sort of thing over the top and right through the van thus avoiding the problem of relaying the original vinyl flooring.
Any thoughts, suggestions, hints or tips would be very welcome!
Click to expand...

When I did the floor in my caravan you need to cut off the dowel heads and then belt sand the floor back flat as some of the resin has to come out of the holes and set. The floor is likely to be spoilt in my view. In my caravan I did not replace the carpet I ripped up but laid wood effect cushion floor and it looked great and I was able to show that the repaired floor had been done properly!
 
delboyginger said:
hi DiggerJon, I have just bought a 2012 Tribute T620 (privately) and the floor seems to "give" in the space between the fridge and the fire just like yours it seems. did you manage to sort it? do you have a link to where you say you saw fixes and did you find out how it was caused and if so couldn't this be covered by the 10 year "body construction integrity warranty"? hope you can help, cheers, derek
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See BwB post #9 above. I followed most of that but I would strongly advise using the floor delamination kits which are two pack rather than the foam ones as it is far easier to clean up after. Another advantage is that the resin is clear and does not foam green like the foam kits. Also, buy more than you think you may need as I was amazed how much I used. The result is noticeable, more from my bungling cutting the excess dowelling rather than anything else, and I just covered it up with a short piece of carpet runner. The whole job took about two hours in total but a good 24 hours to cure but that was in cold weather which is preferable as you have more time to inject the holes before the resin goes off. Best of luck; I was surprised how easy it was to do and now I have a lovely firm floor.
 
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I did part of my floor too using the green foaming stuff. Just keep filling till you can get no more in, pop in the dowels ( I drilled 25 mm into the floor and bought 25mm dowels, so no cutting) keep wiping the foam away that pushes past the dowels until it stops oozing. The more you wipe, the less you will have to scrape or sand away next day.
Then I refitted the vinyl floor. Looks perfect, but we are having the floor carpeted tomorrow.

I very much doubt of you would be able to do the job from underneath. The liquid has to flow till it fills the voids. It would just pour out of the holes underneath before you had enough of the stuff in.
 
hi Jon (and you other folks), thanks for the replies. I was fooling myself in to thinking delamination just meant the wood effect vinyl flooring coming unstuck from the floor but it is obviously the plywood floor laminates/layers coming apart from each other. the obvious question is why haven't manufacturers come up with a quality product that this doesn't happen to? I think the most important thing to know is how thick the floor is so you can drill to the required depth (I suppose autotrail could supply this). I was wondering if it would be feasible to cut the vinyl flooring along the lines of the "wood" and right up against the units and peel it back to get at the floor and when finished stick it back down (what with?) so it hopefully wont be seen. does anyone have any views on this, cheers, derek
 
I don't think you can peel it back then stick it down again - its not strong enough for that. Lay a new vinyl cushion floor on top!

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hi, just been on ebay and a supplier of the fluid/adhesive has this :-

"Modern caravan floors and walls are made of sandwich construction, with the floors made of upper and lower sheets of thin plywood bonded to a Styrofoam core.
If the bond breaks down, de-lamination takes place. It is most likely to happen to the floor area around the door, and this can manifest itself in a spongy floor"

I can now understand how this fluid can work.
still interested in your thoughts about attempting to peel back the vinyl floor, cheers, derek
 
delboyginger said:
........................the obvious question is why haven't manufacturers come up with a quality product that this doesn't happen to? I think the most important thing to know is how thick the floor is so you can drill to the required depth (I suppose autotrail could supply this)......................
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This problem became apparent a long time ago when (as I understand it from my caravanning days) solvent adhesive, used for years without any delamination problems, was outlawed. Apparently adhesive used at present is water-based and is nowhere near as good as the original.

Floor depth isn't important - you simply drill through the upper plywood layer which is no more than 6mm thick. You'll know your through the plywood because the foam offers zero resistance to the drill bit. The foam is thick enough that there's no danger of continuing onward through it and the underfloor material. As soon as you're through the upper plywood - stop drilling.
 
Abacist said:
I don't think you can peel it back then stick it down again - its not strong enough for that. Lay a new vinyl cushion floor on top!
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i can guarantee you can't lift the "vinyl" as it is bonded to the plywood (?) big time as if it was photographed on! I'm afraid it is an 8mm drill through to the depth of the dowels supplied (set a drill stop to the drill) on a grid formed on about 4" squares, suck up all the dust created and inject in the resin until it won't go in any more and tap in the dowel. I thought in retrospect I should have smeared some vaseline around the holes to stop the resin sticking as that would have made cleaning up the excess resin so much easier once it had set. Hindsight is wonderful!
 
hi all, went to todds motorhomes in lostock hall preston who are tribute dealers and asked there opinion. yes there is delamination and yes they can repair it. as previously stated by you the flooring cannot be peeled back to do the floor and they do it from underneath! they drill a number of holes from underneath and put bolts in like a self tapper and gently push up the top plywood floor, they then drill more holes and inject the fluid through tubes to fill the voids, they have to monitor the floor and lower the bolts till flat so it takes time. holes are sealed during and after. not sure if that's the exact sequence but it all seemed feasible. this all obviously takes time, you have to leave the mh with them for a few days, and money at approx. £400/450. the chap I spoke to Paul was very helpful and said the people who do it had to go on a course at tribute I think and they do guarantee the work, so pays your money etc. a lot more money than the diy method but I would have destroy my floorcovering and don't know if it would be 100% good. I still think its strange that the mh industry are all quite blasé about this delamination and find it acceptable. I will let you know what I decide and what happens, thanks for your help, cheers, derk

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delboyginger said:
approx. £400/450
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delboyginger said:
could this be covered by the 10 year "body construction integrity warranty"?
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Robert Clark said:
Would the sale of Goods Act '6 year rule' help in this situation?
Irrespective of the manufacturers guarantee length, a consumer has 6 years to report any faults
Click to expand...
Do the Warranty and/or the Sale of Goods only apply to the original purchaser? (Can't remember offhand.) If not, then surely Todds is your best option?
 
hi, I will look into that sale of goods act but knowing any manufacturers they seem to be able to wriggle out of most things, cheers, derek
 
If it helps with your decision I regard Todds as totally trustworthy after several dealings with them over a number of years.
 

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