[Jackflash]

My wife and I removed all the seats and tracks in our van except the row directly behind the driver/passenger (we have kids). Those seats/tracks are for sale. This left lots of unnessary holes in our floor so after removing the carpet so we put in a new sub floor. We could not decide what to then cover the floor with.... my wife thought "something easy to clean" was a good idea. I wanted something affordable and durable. We ended up going with a commercial grade peel and stick (trafficmaster from HomeDepot). DON'T USE THEM! They do Not stay in place when the sun hits them and they are super slick! Its been a month now and when the glue gets hot in the sun, they all lift up. Really it's awful! What is everyone using and how did you get it to stick???? Im worried about the off gassing of the adhesive. We are looking at the nitro roll coin flooring in a one piece seamless. Am I going to run into the same problem????? PLEASE HELP!!!!! Has anyone else used the coin flooring or something similar? If so, what was your experience?

 

[EddieZ]

I've got the gray Husky vinyl coin mat in my van. It's not glued down. It's held down by the weight of the cabinets, and screws through 2 bed legs, and the doorway thresholds. I've had some misgivings, due to its expansion from heat. When I first laid it down, I had a great fit, and it looked fantastic! Weather warmed up a bit, and it wrinkled. I trimmed it a bit, but, didn't want to trim it too far, as it might look sloppy in cold weather. It looked great, again. Now that the weather's getting hot for summer, I've got what now appear to be permanent wrinkles.

I think that it would be better if it was floating, with nothing anchoring it to the sub-floor. On the other hand, there's another forum member with the same material, who thinks it would be better to glue it down completely.

 

[Jackflash]

Thanks for weighing in. I've heard the same thing about possibly gluing down the floor for better results in the heat.I really want to figure it out before going down this road again. I hate to hear about The wrinkling that you are dealing with.I have seen some pretty expensive Adhesives that claim to help Mitigate the expansion and contraction of those floors But the cost is nearly the same as the flooring. Hoping to find something affordable and also low odor. I hate the thought of going back with carpet But I'm feeling pretty frustrated.

 

[GaryBIS]

Hi,
We used a single piece of Vinyl flooring to do the floor.

I cut the Vinyl to 72 inches wide and 122 inches long and then unrolled it in the van.

Trimmed the edges by just pushing it into the corners and edges and cutting with a utility knife — leaving about 1/8 inch for expansion — this goes surprisingly fast.

After reading the instructions on the adhesive can and talking to the floor store person, we decided not to glue the floor down, but just let if float. The adhesive says that repeated freeze thaw events and temperatures below 10F may damage it (not sure if the “it” is the adhesive or the floor), and the floor store people said that they have some difficulties with RVs that live outside and some types of Vinyl floor cracking with the heating and cooling cycles. According to the floor store, the floating installation is fine and they do it quite a bit.

Some pictures of our install here: http://www.buildagreenrv.com/our-conversion/our-conversion-flooring/

No problems after a few trips and a couple years.

Gary

 

[EddieZ]

Like GaryBIS, I did have a floating "linoleum" floor in mine, before the vinyl coin mat. It was pretty good, and relatively cheap. You have to look in the store, to determine which flooring will lay flat. Some is intended for no-glue installation, and more likely to lay nicely.

I switched to the coin mat for 2 reasons. First, coin mat was what I wanted to begin with, but I didn't realize it was available to me, locally. Second, my floor does get rough treatment, sliding a 14-foot kayak in, sometimes with sand on the bottom. I had a couple of 1/2 inch gashes through the top surface, when I replaced the floor. It showed white, in the dark floor. I took a black Sharpie to it, and it hid better.

I think the lino flooring would be fine, if you'll not abuse it. There's a pic of the floor, here: http://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/...50-project-minimalist-kayak-6.html#post205241

 

[skagitstan]

Another vinyl floor here.
So far, we're quite happy with it. Seems rugged, no apparent bubbling or lifting, handles the abuse of the ongoing build, and clean up pretty easily.

Some sub-floor insulation work write-up at
http://anniebuild.blogspot.com/2015/07/insulating-more-floor.html

and vinyl install starts at
http://anniebuild.blogspot.com/2015/08/laying-vinyl-floor-part-1.html

Stan

 

[Jackflash]

Thanks for the input. Your van looks great!

 

[Beridian]

Related question about floors

Related question about floors, how are you folks trimming your add-on floors around the side and rear doors? There are plastic trim bezels that lap over the floor and down into the door opening, are you sneaking the new floor under these bezels? Or are you trimming it out in another way? Photos?

thanks

 

[joefromga]

No-glue floating vinyl flooring is good stuff but be careful for tearing. You can tear it with your hands.

If you're going to be loading and sliding things in the coin mat is probably much more durable.

 

[EddieZ]

Related question about floors, how are you folks trimming your add-on floors around the side and rear doors? There are plastic trim bezels that lap over the floor and down into the door opening, are you sneaking the new floor under these bezels? Or are you trimming it out in another way? Photos?

thanks

You have to compare your total floor thickness to the total floor thickness of the original floor, and compensate, to use the original thresholds. At this link, there are 2 posts in a row that cover that: http://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/...50-project-minimalist-kayak-3.html#post173538

 

[Jackflash]

Well, we've decided to try a roll in bedliner over the subfloor to get that rugged look and feel we want. And then plan on using the roll coin flooring as a free-floating mat over top of that. That way any expansion and contraction around the perimeter of the van would reveal the black bedliner material instead of raw plywood. We are going with a product called herculiner sold at our local Northern Tools. This product looks very promising since its rubbery, doesn't give off much of any gassing, and is completely temperature stable. It says it's good on tons of different materials and is good for sound deadening and insulation as well. My wife and I will be stripping out the old linoleum squares tomorrow and hopefully finishing it this weekend. Supposed to be sunny and 84 degrees. Will try to include some pictures when we have them and when we figure out how to post pics on the Forum.

 

[Robert24b]

Well, we've decided to try a roll in bedliner over the subfloor to get that rugged look and feel we want. And then plan on using the roll coin flooring as a free-floating mat over top of that. That way any expansion and contraction around the perimeter of the van would reveal the black bedliner material instead of raw plywood. We are going with a product called herculiner sold at our local Northern Tools. This product looks very promising since its rubbery, doesn't give off much of any gassing, and is completely temperature stable. It says it's good on tons of different materials and is good for sound deadening and insulation as well. My wife and I will be stripping out the old linoleum squares tomorrow and hopefully finishing it this weekend. Supposed to be sunny and 84 degrees. Will try to include some pictures when we have them and when we figure out how to post pics on the Forum.

So how did the bed liner work out? Does cargo slide across it? I want to use it in my garage but I'm worried about my cargo sliding around.