Another Floor Repair

[sdiddy]

Hello All,

I have a 1963 Airstream I'm attempting to restore to usable shape. I removed the black water tank to examine the floor condition and did find some soft spots and a hole. The hole is actually under the shower. These are the only soft spots I've found in the floor.

I've attached a couple of pictures, the first showing the soft spots and the second showing the hole. I'm assuming that the hole can be patched, but my concern is for the soft spots since they are near the edge of the floor. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I should proceed? I was thinking of using some kind of hardening/penetrating liquid that was sold at Home Depot for the soft spots.

The hole is fairly small and is soft around the edges, so, if anyone has suggestions about patching a small hole, please let me know.

Thanks
Steve

[malconium]

Generally speaking a perfectly good approach to repairing parts of the floor more or less regardless of size seems to be to do the following:

1.) Cut out the bad part. The easiest way to do this is to use a circular saw with the blade depth set just a hair short of the thickness of the plywood. You can then use a sharp utility knife to cut the last little part loose. If you have any place where there is a screw into the frame that will not come out you can cut around it with a hole saw and saw the screw off later with a hack saw, recipricating saw or a cutoff wheel.

2.) Cut a new piece to fit the hole (actually if you cut the new piece first you can draw around it and cut the hole to fit the new piece).

3.) Add plywood strips 4" to 6" wide to the bottom side of the joints (centered on the joints of course). Attach them with glue and decking wood screws. Add more glue and set the new piece in place. Attach it with more decking screws.

4.) If there are places where the new piece sits on the frame cross-members you can attach the piece to the metal with self-drilling/self-taping screws. I was able to find suitable screws for this at Home Depot.

As an extra you can coat the new piece with some sort of sealer or resin such as Rot Doctor if you want to. Of course making sure that whatever the source of water was is fixed so it will not happen again.

I hope this gives you a head start on your repairs.

Malcolm

[Auretrvr]

When installing new carpet in the cockpit of our 310 moho, I found some wood rot under a window that had a long term leak. It was roughly 4x8". We dried it out thoroughly and very gently removed the worst debris, finishing with a soft brush. (Be careful here. There will be spongy wood left that you don't want to scrape away if it is holding together.) Then I used the Minwax product for stabilizing wood rot. It is a resin that seeps into the area and bonds it to make it harder than before! I used a whole can. Be sure to ventilate well! After it cured, we filled the depression that was left. I have been carefully protecting the area from the leak until I can get that window done. This was a perfect application for us since the damage was small and not a weight bearing area.