Painting all the sides of a new floor?

[supergg]

I was wondering what you all think about painting all the sides of a new floor with a good exterior grade paint before putting it in? It could help waterproof it a bit more. It would not be the finish floor. Just an idea.

[Aviator]

I think I would use a marine grade epoxy to make a near waterproof coating.

[HiHoAgRV]

I second the epoxy...

http://www.airforums.com/forums/f109...tml#post976432

[supergg]

Is that sold at an rv place, boat shop or the depot?

[Melody Ranch]

Epoxy sounds great. I use exterior porch paint.....
and a coat of Vulcum on the edges for that extra waterproofing... It lasted over 50 years on the front porch and preserved the high traffic wood floor there....cheap and available everywhere.

[supergg]

Exterior paint gets rained on all the time and seems to last a long, long time. Epoxy, on the other hand, is tuff as nails. I have not even taken out my floors yet. I am just working on some ideas.

[worldinchaos]

Originally Posted by supergg

Exterior paint gets rained on all the time and seems to last a long, long time. Epoxy, on the other hand, is tuff as nails. I have not even taken out my floors yet. I am just working on some ideas.

For the record, everyone always seems so adamant on epoxy resin. However, for a closer price to a good exterior grade paint, you can get polyester resin ($35/gal at West marine), which has maybe 10% more water absorption compared to epoxy resin, but in comparison to all other paints and for our purposes, it is nil. This is of course assuming you are not letting leaks happen from the top, and you are not sandwiching the insulation against the frame like was originally done so that water will not be resting right under the wood. In those cases, I would go with epoxy resin for that extra bit of security. (or at least a topcoat of epoxy resin on my two layers of poly resin).

[Nuvite-F]

Originally Posted by supergg

Is that sold at an rv place, boat shop or the depot?

Gougeon Brothers WEST System epoxies Gougeon Brothers, Inc. are sold at most boat supply places. There are a variety of good boatbuilding epoxy systems sold by various boatbuilding supply places.

I have never used polyester resin, but having built a couple of epoxy-plywood boats I think very highly of marine epoxies. The thing about epoxy that may not be true of polyester is the extent of the penetration of the resin into the wood. Although syrupy, epoxy is unbelievably "runny" and penetrates deeply into the pores and crevices in the wood.
.

[68 TWind]

I used West to coat all the edges, top and bottom, and in about 8 inches. Why, because that is what was rotted on the old floor, the edges. I also applied 3 coats of a good marine urethane exterior spar varnish to the rest of the wood. In the rear, a little wider than the hatch and inboard to past were the toilet flange is, I went a extra step. I glassed the floor with fiberglass cloth and West resin. I used a medium weight glass fabric. This gave extra stiffness to the floor around the toilet flange and total water protection along the inside of the hatch area. I feathered the edges and there so there would be no bump under my vinyl floor. Of course I fixed all the water leaks so don't have any problems with water getting in the hatch cover at this time, but I sure feel better knowing that I did everything I could to preserve the integrity of the floor if there is ever a leak.

[InsideOut]

FWIW...the pros that installed my Marmoleum will not install it over a painted or epoxied floor. The recommended glue for the linoleum installation will not stick to the smooth, slick painted/expoy surfaces...the glue needs to penetrate the wood in order to bond with it and stick properly.

We painted the bottom side and the edges of the wood under the c-channel - but the nearly one-piece (2 meters wide) Marmoleum was bonded directly to the bare wood, both on our current trailer and our previous one that was done 9 years prior to our selling it this spring. We did make sure the one seam was "welded", not just butted and we caulked the perimeter to the wall, so it is essentially a seamless floor. We've never had any problems with it delaminating...this is the one thing we wanted to be 100% sure it was "done right" and paid to have done by a professional on our restorations.

IMO, it was money well spent for the piece of mind that the floor is solid.

Of course, depending on your proposed floor finish, this may not be the issue...I just would hate to see you go to the effort & expense painting or epoxying the floor only to have the floorcovering installer sand it off.

Shari

[HiHoAgRV]

Originally Posted by InsideOut

FWIW...the pros that installed my Marmoleum will not install it over a painted or epoxied floor...
Shari

Thats a very good point. The super hard slick surface of epoxy doesn't allow much to grab it. Even when we use this stuff to build Kayaks, it must be sanded prior to applying any overcoat.

One attribute that boat builders look for in an epoxy is penetration of the wood. If it just sits on the surface and gets hard it will tend to chunk off. Me is gussin' thats why the Marm'pros don't wanna mess with a prepped floor...

[L.D.Clara]

Originally Posted by worldinchaos

For the record, everyone always seems so adamant on epoxy resin. However, for a closer price to a good exterior grade paint, you can get polyester resin ($35/gal at West marine), which has maybe 10% more water absorption compared to epoxy resin, but in comparison to all other paints and for our purposes, it is nil. This is of course assuming you are not letting leaks happen from the top, and you are not sandwiching the insulation against the frame like was originally done so that water will not be resting right under the wood. In those cases, I would go with epoxy resin for that extra bit of security. (or at least a topcoat of epoxy resin on my two layers of poly resin).

The water absorption wouldn't be the major issue in my book either. More importantly, because epoxy is more flexible and sticks to wood a lot better than polyester - the epoxy actually soaks in and really sticks hard, polyester not so much. This is why when wooden boats are sheathed in fibreglass epoxy resin is used (when it's done properly) otherwise the flexing of the hull causes separation of the glass/resin from the hull then water gets trapped and rot does the rest. It's also why nobody uses polyester resin as a wood glue, but epoxy is used quite heavily for that purpose..

Perhaps the same might happen with the trailer floor, I don't know, but that's the view from the boatbuilding side of things.

As a side note, West epoxy is a really good product that's been around for ages, but for that quantity it's going to hurt in the wallet department. There are cheaper alternatives. I recently built a cedar strip canoe using Raka epoxy, which was a fraction of the price can be bought online/over the phone and is working out fine so far...

Hope this helps,
Rob.