Where to Start? At the Beginning of Course!

We bought a Citroen Relay LWB 2.2 L3 H2 variant van.
Our thinking that led to this choice was being able to permanently mount a standard double bed across the van, the head room and also the van body is galvanised which more or less eliminates any rust problems for many years to come!


So, the Self Build starts with a fantastic weekends work by Sue, stripping out all the old ply lining and flooring ready for the sound deadening and insulation.

The Build Commences

Now with an empty van, the build process commences!
Sue is doing a great job on the insulation. First fitting sound deadening to the larger van panels which we used Flashbond.  For the main insulation boards we're using Jablite Polystyrene Cavity insulation. It was cheaper to buy 25mm thick sheets than it was the 50mm stuff, so we're doing a double thickness on the walls.
It was amusing picking up the 2400 x 1200 sized sheets, they just fitted in our current campervan, I didn't have anywhere to sit tho!

Swivelling Front Seats

I've been tackling the Captain Swivel Seats, we bought two Ford Galaxy seats with integrated swivel plates.  Being Ford seats I am having to modify the mountings to fit the Citroen van. Started by having to weld some additional metal plates to the fixing to fit the Relay seat box mounting holes. For some reason I welded the adapter plates on the wrong way round and then realised they were on the wrong seat!
Packed up, will have another go tomo!
It's taken a few days modifying the two Captain Swivel Seats to fit the seat bases, but it's done now!

Van Floor Construction

Today's progress focused on the floor, my knees were feeling the corrugated metal floor!
Making use of the cheap Jablite Polystyrene sheeting (25mm) for underfloor insulation, batons were fitted in the walkway areas and the rear garage area to help spread and take the weight loading where needed.
The floor was the original 9mm hard ply type stuff that came fitted in the van. All in all a good solid floor to build up on.

Interior Vapour Barrier

Using builders foil aluminium tape, Sue covered the polystyrene sheets sealing them.
Phew, insulation all done except the two roof panels that are going to have roof light vents fitted. We will close off the insulation around them when the roof vents are in and done.
Sue has worked flippin hard today

Roof Skylights / Vents

Daunting job today. Cutting a big hole in the van roof to fit a Fiamma 40 roof light / vent.
I've been following the many posts about fitting roof vents, sealing them and reading with interest people who have had leaks and what they have done to reseal the roof vent.
Anyway, hole cut with jigsaw cutter, painted the bare metal edges with Hammerite, used plenty of IDL non setting bedding mastic to bed the roof vent into the hole, fixed it down with marine grade stainless self tapping screws. Cleaned the excess IDL from around the edges and ran a nice bead of Sikaflex 252 around the whole vent. Hopefully it's got a good seal now and not leak!
Fitting the second roof vent tomo.
Tackled the 2nd roof light / vent today. This one was to be fitted over the roof ribs. I made wooden fillers to fix into the ribs to give me a level all round surface to fit the roof light / vent.
Fixed the fillers with Sikaflex 252 and then used IDL mastic sealer to bed the roof vent in. Fixed with marine grade self tappers and a final nice bead of Sikaflex 252 all around the whole vent to give a good final seal.

Pre Cabling and Conduit

Today ran in several lengths of 20mm flexible conduit with pull through cords along the primary wiring routes in the van Bodywork to facilitate easy running of wires and cables during the build and after, saving to have remove wall and roof panels later to run in any later wiring.
The hardest part of this stage of the build is trying to best guess where your going to fit things later in the build so that the conduits can be delivered more or less to the correct location!