Our caravan is a 30ft Australian made Millard Starcraft. We have hypothesised that it came over with a circus at some point, before overstaying in the corner of some backyard in Oamaru. Regardless, it was built for Australian climate and environment. Plentiful were the insect screens. Scarce was the insulation.
We have remedied this.
We had a few constraints for choosing the insulation. Batts would be too thick for the walls, polystyrene flakes like nobody’s business and reacts to electrical wires, and though we briefly entertained spray-foaming the whole thing it seemed like a method best suited when you have to keep the wall lining on and we were absolutely liberating those walls from the original plywood.
In the end we chose goldfoam, which is light, waterproof, fire resistant, relatively inert, and squeaked in at the higher bound of our budget. The insulation is one of the most expensive single parts of this project, but we really wanted to go the extra mile. Sunny Dunedin gets really hot for much of the year, and having good thick insulation will really keep it temperate throughout the many long scorching days that give Dunedin its reputation as a truly tropical destination.
There was a lot of preparation to get to the point of insulating. This and the inner lining feel more productive as we see the progress we make, which wasn’t so evident when we were doing the bulk of the repairs. But seeing it up makes me glad for the effort and time we’re putting into this. More and more I am going to be proud to live in this, and more and more I see us becoming further prepared for the life we’re moving into.
The next newsletter will be called Lining.
The Grace of God be with you all,
Mā te wā, Giles.