Thanks to everyone who has passed comments & given helpful advice in the last few months on the issue of fitting carpets to our Troll. We were looking at a way to make the floor warmer for when we use the van in the colder months but that we could remove for the summer.

We mulled over lots of thoughts and suggestions as the backing on our numerous mats started to wear thin and needed replacing. We were attracted to the Carpets for Caravans fitted service but put off by the £250 price.

Anyway we really had the solution all along in my workshop & garden shed. We had some Flotex carpet tiles fitted in our old kitchen from when we first moved into our current house. We didn't love it & when we had a new kitchen built it became surplus to requirements. I have a couple of largish sheds and I used it to carpet the floors to stop cold rising up. They have worked great for this but have been down for over 10 years and never cleaned.

To cut a long story short I took one out and power washed it, followed by a shamoo and then used the steam cleaner on it. It came up a treat after all this time. So I did the same with another 15. Some were a bit marked and damaged but I salvaged a lot of them.

The job of fitting them in the Troll was a very fiddly and time consuming but I got there eventually and am pleased with how it turned out. If we just move out of Tier 3 we will be able to try it out for real.

Have included some pictures

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Thanks for the helpful suggestions that got me moving.

MikeT

hi Randa

You can't see the joins as I have mild tremors in my hands so the camera on my phone shakes and goes slightly out of focus

You notice it best with the shot where Kath is sitting on the side. it is the truism that many clouds can have a slight silver lining - I mean it over not seeing the joins in the tiles, not over not being able to see Kath clearly.!

The tiles are each 50cm x 50cm. They have a heavy backing and a very short pile so they are a bit difficult to cut around fiddly bits. I used a very sharp but lightweight stanley blade thingy and was amazed not to cut myself once.

MikeT

Blimey! That looks good. I’m going to have a crack at something similar. Any tips on templates, fitting and the like?
Capn C

Hi Capn C

Will put something up tomorrow as I certainly did some things wrong to start with and sat scratching my head a few times.

I did buy one of these for a tenner which proved really useful for the complicated bits

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B082...0?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Cheers
MikeT

That looks very comfy, love the welcome mat

Welcome mat purely down to Kath John .

She says it is to counter my tendency to be a miserable old curmudgeon........................!

MikeT

a bad-tempered person, especially an old one

I had to look it up !

hi Capn C

Sorry I forgot the post on tips other than the excellent toy that I mentioned above.

The tools I used were a couple of long levels for drawing lines in pencil or chalk on the tiles. I also used my old Dad's metal setsquare that he had when he was an apprentice in the Shipyard in the late 1930s, to make sure my cuts were straight. I used a couple of sharp Stanley type knives for cutting the tiles and for a few cuts a very strong & sharp set of scissors.

If you are using tiles pick the position of the longest straight run of tiles from end to end and put down a chalk mark on the floor to give you your straight edge. I started at the bed end and worked towards the door. I have the 540 multifunction beds that double up as bench seats. These have a gap underneath and plastic fittings that stick out. I decided to cut round these and put the edge of the tiles slightly under the benches. I tried to lay the full tile and then the two side pieces as I went along.

the Flotex I used has arrows on the rear to show the direction of the pile so I tried to stick to this as best I could but started to run out of full tiles (that I hadn't previously cut to fit the shed floor. I didn't stick the tiles to the floor as I will remove them in summer. I aslo numbered every tile on the back as I laid it to give me a plan to follow when I re-laid them.

There were some incredibly fiddly bits but using the tool I mentioned above I managed to just about fit them in to give a tight fit.

It did take me longer than I thought it would and in some places I had to cut the tile into smaller bits to get a good fit.

If you do decide to have a go yourself with carpet tiles I will send you some pictures.

Good luck

MikeT

oh and I forgot to mention that you might need to take off the plastic covers for the screws near the floor to cut around to get a tight fit and then put then back
particularly near the toilet door.

Under the gas heater was especially fiddly to fit and took a lot of small cuts.

Mike

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We did this too, it does make it warmer during the winter [ especially for the night visits] carpet tiles left over from another project
Dave

I like the carpet tiles Dave. Did you have to glue them down?

Hi Eribanaut

Those look really good. I love it in blue

When we wee toying with buying some new Flotex tiles to do our Troll in I wanted to go for blue ones. However Kath thinks i have too much of a fetish for blue in my life as a Blackburn Rovers fan and her mission in life seems to be to get me to accept other colours. Hence the up-cycling of the old brown tiles.- not a patch on your blue...............

MikeT

Hi Steve & Debbie we didn't stick ours down as we want to be able to remove them in summer. They are quite rigid so if cut reasonably close to the edges they hold themselves in

MikeT