1999 Trooper. Sliding Door Insulation.

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While repairing the barrel lock on my 1999 T4 Trooper, once I'd removed the Autosleeper door card to get at things, I saw my "insulation". This is a replacement sliding door so I'm hoping the "nicked from the loft" insulation (see attached) isn't even close to what was originally present, although I would like to know from the A/S hive mind if that's the case or not. I'm planning to rip this out and replace with Kingspan, foil bubble wrap & insulating tape in any event.

TIA.

To a certain extent... there's not a lot of point in going OTT with insulation. The entire frame of the door is steel, and steel is a (relatively) good conductor of heat, so a significant amount of heat loss will go around the insulation, whatever you put in.

The other point of guidance that I've been given in the past is not to ram stuff in until it completely fills the space. The received wisdom is to only partially fill, leaving space for air to circulate inboard of the insulation, and leaving a small gap at the bottom so that any condensation running down the inside of the steel panel can easily dry.

On the Celex (T5-based, not an A/S model) they had glued a cellular foam sheet to the panel - it filled only around half the space. On our T5-based Trooper, A/S had (as far as I could tell) adding nothing to the foam sheet that's fitted by VW at the factory.

Air is an excellent insulator, providing it is not moving around and carrying heat away. A reasonably small sealed empty void full of air is actually quite well insulated on its own. Think double glazing. 
The 
Insulation mediums such as glass wool, foam panels etc. help to stop the air moving and thus conveying heat away. If the void is not well sealed then you need something fibrous or cellular in that void, but not necessarily completely filling it, to stop the air moving too much.

Thin foam panels glued over parts of the area by the factory are probably just acoustic panels, designed to reduce resonance in a panel.

You should certainly not over-stuff the insulation. If you compress a soft insulating medium such as Rockwool or glass wool then you are expelling the air that is the actual insulating medium and replacing it with a greater mass of solid material that will conduct heat.

The other way is to fill everything with a closed cell foam. In my industry (steel boats) almost every boat built now is insulated with sprayed closed cell urethane foam, including all framing. All cavities are filled. All metal framing is covered with at least a thin layer of foam to reduce cold bridging. Everything is in effect covered with captive air bubbles. 

I have not as yet come across foam spraying in panel van conversions although I guess some high end and bespoke converters use it. Personally if I were converting a van I would not even consider any other course. The foam seals everything, stiffens panels and deadens noise. It also bonds well to the steel and prevents corrosion.

The snags are that it is more expensive, slightly heavier, requires specialist equipment and skilled installers and is harder to remove for accident damage repairs.

You were lucky to have any insulating material in your doors. Our Warwick had very little in the sliding or rear doors. Haven't checked the driver and passenger doors, I guess there is none in there at all.
I looked at a 2018 Autotrail T670 this week and all the doors sounded very tinny despite its apparent 3 seasons rating.The only way to really know what is inside is to remove the door cards and I dont suppose the selling dealer would have been too happy.

I own a 24 Fairford and this is what AS claim in the handbook:

‘This motorhome is designed for use in
cold climates, and is certified to grade 3 in accordance with the European standard EN 1646-1: 2012. This means that it has been tested and shown to provide a comfortable internal environment even when the external temperature is as low as -15oC.’
That takes a bit of believing. Our experience of near freezing temperatures last weekend in Scotland made it Baltic around the sliding door area and slightly warmer further back.
I hope your ideas of replacing the insulation works well.
Any other ideas from owners about how to improve the temperature levels around the sliding door area?

Glyne Lock produced a long thread on making improvements to his Kemmerton XL, which I found very useful, and I followed his tips on insulation.  It will be near-enough the same doors as you have:

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Glyne used Dacron for the insulation, which might be easier to fit than kingspan.

We had the normal Kingham issue of almost nil warm air circulation to the front of the van whilst near-sauna conditions at the rear and in the loo. I don't know where your boiler is or how the air system is plumbed but in our case the normal 60mm ducting was reduced to 2 x 30mm ducts where the ducting passed behind the fridge, and only one of those 30mm ducts was actually "heating" the front. I managed to combine both ducts into a new outlet in the settee front, which has improved matters considerably, but I also have a plan to replace these with a proper 60mm duct when I change the fridge to compressor type.

But....... having just looked at the Fairford on the AS site I'm not sure that the foregoing is any help to you. I am guessing that your boiler is under one of the dinette seats near the front, so ducting may not be the issue but it might still be worth checking for restrictions, kinks, whatever.

The Bargee wrote:We had the normal Kingham issue of almost nil warm air circulation to the front of the van whilst near-sauna conditions at the rear and in the loo. I don't know where your boiler is or how the air system is plumbed but in our case the normal 60mm ducting was reduced to 2 x 30mm ducts where the ducting passed behind the fridge, and only one of those 30mm ducts was actually "heating" the front. I managed to combine both ducts into a new outlet in the settee front, which has improved matters considerably, but I also have a plan to replace these with a proper 60mm duct when I change the fridge to compressor type.

But....... having just looked at the Fairford on the AS site I'm not sure that the foregoing is any help to you. I am guessing that your boiler is under one of the dinette seats near the front, so ducting may not be the issue but it might still be worth checking for restrictions, kinks, whatever.

We have that same issue of sauna conditions in the loo and warm at the rear and cold at the front. You would think on a £80K+ van it would have a heating system that worked! However (keep calm, lad, keep calm) ours seems to have a boiler under one of the rear seats so the outlet there is blowing really warm air. I’ve had a look underneath the van but cannot see where the heating ducts run being that there’s so much slung under it (gas tank, clean and waste water tanks and I think some other large black box which I’m not sure what it is, maybe something to do with the heating). I’ve signalled to Marquis that there is a heating issue (along with fridge and water pump - both of which are completely avoidable with a different widely and commonly available systems) so I’ll be speaking to them tomorrow, I’ll throw your information into the conversation to see if it an issue with me, many thanks for your reply.

I forgot that you may have the underslung Whale boiler, in which case if at the back and if the heating ducts run under the van then they may not be well enough insulated to retain the heat well enough, but I would have thought you would see the boiler (in that black box?) and the ducts. Or is your boiler actually installed inside the van under a settee? It it a Truma or a Whale?

Perhaps the ducts run inside the van? 

If you have heat in the loo, and if that is a warm air outlet I can see in the front face of the forward facing dinette seat (in the AS 360 degree view) then the ducts may run on the offside, in which case how does the dinette duct get past the loo/shower? 

Does it step down in size like mine did (where it passes behind the fridge?) Does it perhaps dodge under the van in 30mm hose to get past the loo etc? I don't know the model or spec. of your van so can't really help any further beyond guessing, but you probably want to establish where the ducting runs and whether it steps down a size at some point. AS clearly has form for that! The smaller duct size does seem to have a very big effect on the air flow. 

If my maths is correct:

One x 60mm duct = ca. 2828 sq.mm.

One x 30mm duct = ca. 707 sq.mm. 

When I effectively upped my ducting to the front of the van from 1 x 30mm duct (= 707 sq.mm) to 2 x 30mm ducts (= 1414 sq.mm) it made a big difference to the warm air flow to the front. If therefore I double it again to a 60mm duct (2828 sq. mm) (which I can do when I change the fridge) then that is going to be probably four times the potential air flow of the one original 30mm duct.

Rocky wrote:Glyne Lock produced a long thread on making improvements to his Kemmerton XL, which I found very useful, and I followed his tips on insulation.  It will be near-enough the same doors as you have:

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Glyne used Dacron for the insulation, which might be easier to fit than kingspan.

thank you Rocky
its always nice to see what i have shown is a help 
from a place i supplied the trucks on contract and they used Dacron do under stand its use
roof insulation is a big NO NO lots of reasons the main one it holds water and when doing repairs for people i find it and have to remove to carry out the repair i do not put it back and other items damage the van

Many thanks @The Bargee you’ve given me much to think about - and explore!