Many people “frame” their van floor. This means they make a wooden grid like structure on the floor to then cut pieces of insulation to fit inside. The purpose of this is to give the floor more stability, strength and to anchor future parts of the build to.
First of all, wood is a great heat conductor so the more wood in your floor the less your insulation will work. These wooden routes create a great path of least resistance for heat to travel throughout your pieces of insulation.
Keep in mind, everything comes into play for your entire systems R-Value. This means framing the floor has a negative impact on how well your insulation does it’s job. Check out my previous post to learn about insulation here.
Second, it can take away precious space in the van. I don’t know about you, but I bought a tall van for a reason and I wanted it to stay that way.
Third, your floor isn’t going anywhere! Many people stick the wooden framing down with some type of adhesive and use those as anchoring points for the plywood. They drive self tapping screws to anchor the plywood to the wooden framing. I understand this although the wooden slats are still not anchored into the actual metal floor anyways (only adhesive materials) so it all just seems silly.
My Dad’s friend from third grade has been a carpenter for over 40 years. He is very good at what he does and when I spoke to him, he made me feel more comfortable in this decision. He has even put flooring down in vans before. He said the best ting to do is use half inch birch plywood with a few self tapping screws and that I do NOT need to frame the floor.
This is because some spots where two cuts meet may not stay 100% down or that specific spot may get a lot of traffic over the years.
This brings me to my next topic..