Hope everyone is having a good Christmas break.

Having lived in a tiny, old touring caravan for 7 months since we had to move out of our rental house during the first lockdown we finally moved into a static at 11pm on Christmas Eve – felt like luxury having a proper bed, sofa, heating, a proper electricity supply and plumbed in water. I did spend most of Christmas morning fixing leaks and connecting sewerage but it finally feels like we have a home. This will be our home while we get on with our barn conversion and then we will rent it out or let friends come to stay so we are doing it up nicely.

Attention has now turned to the heating and insulation, this has the “winter pack” but the walls are 3mm ply, 1″ fibreglass and then external aluminium so pretty dreadful. Plan is to stick (strong double sided tape) foam insulation to the outside and then clad with timber with recesses around the double glazed windows (will be painted).

Options so far for the insulation are:

100mm thick second hand expanded polystyrene panels (ex industrial building) – £280 (collected locally)
60mm PU foam with foil facing (seconds) – £480 + delivery
60mm phenolic foam – (seconds but currently out of stock) – £430 + delivery

The industrial XPS will mean deeper window recesses and I may had to remove the metal cladding (= ballache!) but wont degrade and is £200 cheaper

Phenolic would be nice as fire proof but currently out of stock (happy to wait but for how long?)

Also in terms of air gap/membrane etc I was just planning on leaving a 1″ air gap between the insulation and the outer timber cladding and not use any membrane etc. All insulation joints will be taped and I will adapt the guttering to ensure no rain goes behind – does this sound sensible?

I wouldn’t have anything that burns on the outside of the caravan, especially with an air gap.

What flaperon said + a million! Absolute death trap.

On a tangent you seen the Chinese diesel heaters?

Would battoning and rock wool with a membrane then clad be any better?

You’d need to do something different for the roof too.

Can you put a fence or a hedge up to keep the wind off as well?

Has it got central heating. You’d be better running that on low but constant and supplement with some oil radiators. You’ll burn through the gas though (we use our static March to October).

As above, I’d avoid anything that could set on fire.

Also, adding anything to the outside needs to be done properly or could create condensation.

I used some super thin silver insulation for my conservatory ceiling with silver tape on the joints. I’ve been so impressed with this. For the thickness it’s amazing.

Not cheap, a 4×3 conservatory cost £150 but was so easy to use. You would be able to insulate the inside without losing too much space

I would avoid anything flammable! Near us there were some council flats insulated externally and classed just like you’re planning, they had a breathable membrane to stop insects apparantley.

My stepdad just fitted a Chinese diesel heater into his uninsulated timber workshop, it’s mega! Warm and toasty and uses hardly any fuel, he has a car battery set up with a cheap solar panel to charge it so zero electrical cost.this may be worth looking into?!

I lived in one for 7 years. I did try to insulate it better, but I’m not sure it made a great deal of difference.
I started with the floor, it was just 18mm chipboard, nothing underneath, with an open field at the back, so any wind would soon make the floor cold.
I put some 1 inch sheet polystyrene in all the gaps between joists, then bricked up all around the bottom to prevent the wind getting underneath.
I think that was the biggest help.
I then did the ceilings in the bedrooms, again, 1 inch sheet insulation, with plasterboard over the top. Oh, and windows, it had single glazed windows, these were all changed to double glazed, eventually, all from skips or sites where old windows were being thrown away. We were skint at the time, so had little choice in what we could do.
It had coal fired central heating, and to be fair, once the Parkray fire was on, the place was toasty, it was only 40′ x 10′, with a lean to bedroom on the side, so not a big area to heat.
However, once the fire was off (very rare in the winter), it got really cold. I had to work late once, when I lived alone, got home at 2am, was too tired to light the fire, woke up the next day to all the pipes frozen. That was grim.

That multi layer insulation that Damascus has used is fitted a lot by the building trade with can be purchased from toolstation /screwfix. I paid around £100 for a roll ages ago. It needs around 50mm air gap each side to work efficiently.

Just to add that I doubt a double sided tape will hold any foam on for long.
Needs a mechanical fixing.

Well we used our first 47kg LPG bottle last night. Had to pop out in the ice in my boxers to open the valve on the new bottle and switch the reg over (left it off so I could see how long 1 bottle lasted). Got about 12 days out of a bottle which is not good…but we do have the boiler on almost constantly at the moment as we are just enjoying be comfortable for the first time in 7 months and keeping our ageing spaniel warm is more important to us than a bit of ££ at the moment. It’s not like we have any rent or mortgage to pay at the moment.

Re insulation – The cheap polystyrene was tempting but is it worth the risk for £200? Not really, and apparently it is skinned in metal which I would ideally want to remove to stop condensation on the back of the cladding. Unfortunately phenolic currently out of stock and completely non-flammable microporous I used for aircraft parts is a tad expensive. We could use mineral wool but the U value is not as good per mm and I worry about it getting damp.

The foil bubble wrap was my original idea a while back though, I could stick that to the outside of the static pretty easily but how effective is it really compared to foam?

Double sided tape for the insulation to the aluminium shell would be fine as it is in shear and only used by itself during installation as the wood cladding would be self supporting off the floor ant attached to the static and also be attached to the insulation.

We do have central heating (combi boiler on 47kg LPG tanks) and double glazing. Currently fully exposed to winds from our field going underneath and the roof insulation is questionable. Insulating the roof would be a complete ballache as no access from below, would have to take take the roof off.

Just to add we do have a woodburner we were going to install as a last resort but I am quite against them for a few reasons (risk and health), shame as we could easily coppice our own wood here. We have had a 63A supply fed to my shed and then a 50A supply to the static so we have plenty of power and instead of installing the new lpg hob got an induction one. The lpg fire will be getting removed and all the gas pipes taken out, bar the boiler one, when we can get someone out in January to service the boiler.

Someone suggested rockwool above, and just doing some calcs on my spreadsheet we could go for 100mm rockwool with a membrane behind the cladding, that would be roughly the same as 60mm phenolic, no fire risk and a lot lighter. Wondering if we should seal the back off with foil bubblewrap stuff so I can then make each panel as a self supporting unit – cladding-membrane-rockwool-foil which we then just need to secure to the static. Or membrane each side to stop corrosion of the static caravan wall, it is aluminium after all.

I run some statics, 3 of them year round. Haven’t insulated outside but well insulated underneath and blocked off all round to prevent cold air seeping in that way. Decent factory insulation, lagged and trace heated pipes too.

Cosy curtains all round, including the door. Centrally heated and do well with that on low most of the time.

That was me.

I’d go rockwool. Could you build a free standing “porch” over the top to keep rain off the roof and then board and sheet the roof with out the risk of water getting into the roof insulation.

Then like I say rockwool the walls.

If you did the porch you could block the windward side off to stop windchill