2018 TAB 400 floor repair idea.

ETRADIO

After experiencing a soft spongy floor along the most traveled areas of the trailer, I have an idea, why can’t I just take a razor knife and cut along the base and remove that and use it for a template to lay down marine plywood and install a floating vinyl floor system on top of that. Is there anything that would prevent me from doing this? And does anyone have a picture of what that floor looks like with the top floor material removed? Has anyone removed the underbelly cover on a 2018 Tab 400? Maybe I can at lease check the subfloor areas for water intrusion while I’m under it, and possibly address the floor issue from below and weatherproof the underbelly with some tank heaters and insulation. 

Dave_J

fyi:

Denny16

@ETRADIO I had the floor replaced on our 2018 TaB400, here is what the floor looks like under the Infinity flooring

This is the new seal layer installed over the Greencore subfloor, next a new Azdel panel is glued to this and a new Infinity floor covering installed.  To see the process, go to https://tab-rv.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/11153/tab-400-floor-replacement
cheers

ETRADIO

2018 TAB 400 FLOOR REPAIR : UPDATE MARCH 28th 2024 

We have begun our removal of the foam from the floor, we are down to the AZDEL, the soft spots are not what we expected, there is no water damage discovered at this point. The idea of using the removed rubber flooring covering is working out perfectly. I will be posting pictures soon. 

ETRADIO

UPDATE: March 31st 2024

Okay Folks, a few months back I told you that my wife and I were going to replace the floor in our 2018 TAB 400. A lot of you said it can’t be done. First “IT MOST DEFINITELY CAN BE DONE.” You have to have very sharp razor knives, a small pry bar, pliers, rubber ballot and a 7 in 1 tool. First we cut the rubber mat out from the floor and removed it in one piece so that we can use that for our pattern for the new 3/4 inch marine plywood floor that we are putting down, then we removed the first layer of Azdel, there’s 2. We discovered that the soft spots in the floor is actually a HUGE DESIGN FLAW! They use these odd shaped inserts to go inside the spaces of the floor frame and sandwiched between Azdel, (they’re screwed in from the sides but….What happens is that this (Brilliant Idea) works for a couple of years until the inserts begin to fail, this cause the inserts to sink down to the bottom section of the Azdel giving you a soft spot, we discovered that the whole floor is done like this. We will post the entire job when completed, right now we will post what we’ve done so far. When we get through with this floor, you’ll be able to jump from a second-story building onto the floor of our camper and the only thing that will happen is you’ll break your legs way before you break this new floor! Cheers! 

Denny16

If you put plywood down on the floor, you are going to need to increase the gap on the bottom the the rear and galley cabinets to maintain the Alde return air flow.  Our factory repaired floor did not include adding plywood, just removing the Infinity flooring, adding a replacement Azdel panel over the Greencore that caused the soft spots and a new moisture barrier and Infinty flooring added on top.  No more soft spots or floor issues.

Cheers

ETRADIO

actually, I will adding additional air flow for the Alde System. The floor did not fail because of greenboard, our failed because of poor craftsmanship. The idea was to save weight, the cross beams are to far apart to provide support after several years of use. but I have the remedy, I have done other floor systems and it seems that all RV craftsmanship suffer in one way or another.

ETRADIO

UPDATE: 
Floor cut and laid, Now the next steps will be to add the additional crossbars and screw the floor down, we will be adding commercial grade carpet squares to the top. Easy to maintain and replace if needed, the floor will be easy to repair if needed, since I now have a complete template. There’s nothing complicated about doing this if you have experience in wood work and RV maintenance. I’ve been doing this for 40 plus years, I would recommend taking it to a professional if you are not experienced. We have 8 hours into this, by the time we finish the project I would say it takes about 24 hours all together and about $300.00 worth of materials and some time.

ETRADIO

DIY NEW FLOOR INSTALL ON 2018 TAB 400.

Finished Product!  my wife and I decided to redo the floor ourselves due to soft spots in sections of the main flooring, so with a crowbar, scraper and a razor knife. We removed the top layer of the floor all the way down to the final layer of Azdel, we used the top foam covering as a template to cut the new floor, we did this by carefully cutting out the top layer of floor covering along the edges of the main floor, you will need an extremely sharp razor knife to do this. what we discovered was that the floor soft spots were not because of any damage….it had soft spots because of a poor design. They have inserted cheap pieces of Styrofoam in between the cells of the metal beams which will always fail because the Styrofoam will compress, no matter what you do you will always have soft spots in your floor. It’s just a matter of time before it happens, imagine walking on Styrofoam with a thin layer of Azdel on top of it, as you walk on it after a period of time it will begin to compress were the most foot traffic is. The problem is, the spaces in between the metal beam cells are to large to use this cheap styrofoam without it compressing down, We used aluminum flat bars and three-quarter inch marine plywood, mapped out the metal grids in the floor, then we used aluminum flat bar, 2 inches wide and placed them across all the cells in the main flooring area, then we screwed the plywood down to the metal beams of the floor, leaving about a 16th of an inch gap for expansion between the walls and the plywood, then sealed the edges with expandable silicone. along with the aluminum flat bars between each cell, this technique insured that there would never be another soft spot in the floor of this camper. After we installed the floor we installed, medium pile carpet squares with waterproof, backing that included foam padding, this insured a soft nice feel to the floor and added to the insulation. We used the template that we currently had from the flooring to aid in the angle cuts of the carpet squares. We made sure that the ductwork for the Aldi system had airflow, tested & It worked perfectly. we averaged about 20 hours total for the project, here is the breakdown.

Material cost.

Wood -                          55.00

8 Aluminum flat bar- 100.00

Self tapping screws - 30.00

Carper Squares -        140.00 

Labor at 20.00 per hour. X 20 hrs / 2 people

400.00 each = 800.00

Total - 1125.00 



vhollow

The end result looks great! Thank you for sharing the details and images of your project. It will be very helpful when I tackle the floor repairs for my 2018 400.