The essential guide to camper van insulation and ventilation
Your camper van insulation and ventilation is integral to the comfort level of your van life. A well ventilated van will help remove hot air, cooking smells and water vapour so will smell fresh. A well insulated van will be warm and cosy in the cold and cool in the heat. Insulation and ventilation work hand in hand so consider both before you start your installation. This post will guide you through all you need to know and camper van insulation and ventilation to help you in your own conversion.
Why is ventilation in your camper van important?
Condensation is a camper van’s enemy because it leads to rust. Cooking, wet areas and even people breathing in the camper van create water vapour. With so many potential sources, an effective ventilation system will prevent a huge problem.
If there isn’t enough air flow in a camper van, condensation will build up and cause damp, mould and rust. Avoid condensation by improving airflow with a good all round ventilation system.
How much ventilation does your camper van need?
How much ventilation a camper van needs depends on a few factors so there’s no hard and fast rule. Yet the fundamental principles of ventilation remain the same. A good ventilation system means bringing in air from outside and creating circulation.
A camper van needs enough ventilation to keep air circulating and to remove hot air, water vapour and pollutants. The more people using the camper van, the greater the ventilation system needed.
Because cold air sinks, hot air gathers at the ceiling of the camper. So roof vents are perfect to expel air from the camper van. Place vents to bring fresh air in lower down on the camper van walls or floor.
What type of ventilation is best for my camper van?
The most basic type of ventilation for a camper van is to open the doors and windows. It’s a low cost but incomplete approach. During the winter months, it’s not practical to keep your windows and doors open and it leaves you without any security. So what options do you have to ventilate your camper van?
Wind deflectors for your windows
You can gain a little security by installing wind deflectors to the side windows so you can leave them open a little at night. Every bit of fresh air intake counts when it comes to ventilating a camper van.
Louvred air vents
A few louvred air vents fitted in strategic positions in the walls of your camper van will give a constant fresh air intake. You’ll need to cut holes in the side of the van where you want to fit the vents but the products are low cost. Make sure you fit fly screens behind each vent to stop unwanted bugs entering your camper van.
Wind powered roof vent
These wind powered roof vents are small so ideal for ribbed roofs such as those on a Sprinter van. Powered only by the wind, these vents won’t drain your batteries and pick up quite a speed whilst driving. The extraction rates can get quite high so they’re more effective than the louvred air vents.
Pop top roof vents
Our Unimog, Mowgli had 4 of these pop up roof vents. They open on all 4 sides so can provide constant ventilation and they had fly screens already fitted. We used to drive with them open so we know they’re strong and robust. Again, you’ll need to cut holes in the camper van to fit these vents.
Extractor vents
Our Sprinter van conversion has a had one of these extractor vents installed. Fitted with a 12v motor the fan can rotate in either direction so air is either expelled or drawn. Because our Sprinter van Baloo was a minibus in a previous life, we bought her with an extractor fan already fitted. Baloo has loads of ventilation now. We’ll keep you posted on how it all performs.
Chances are you’ll use one or two of these together in your camper van ventilation design. The important thing is to have enough movement of air into and out of the camper van to get rid of any lingering water vapour.
Essential reading: how to plan your camper van conversion
Why is insulation in your camper van important?
Base vehicles, ripe for conversion, tend to have little or no insulation installed. It may have started life as a courier van or something of the like. It never needed to be warm and cosy because it was never intended as a home. Now we want to turn our van into a comfortable camper van. So how do we turn a metal shell into a home to keep us warm in the cold and cool in the heat? Decent insulation combined with good ventilation, we create an environment anyone would be proud to call home.
Also read: choosing a base vehicle for your camper van conversion
How much insulation does your camper van need?
How much insulation you need depends on where you intend to take it. You’ll need better thermal performance if you want to live in your van during cold winter months. The primary aim of insulating your camper van is to reduce heat loss in cold weather and to keep the inside cool when it’s hot outside.
What type of insulation is best for my camper van?
A nightmare of a question! You only have to google it and you’ll find a multitude of answers, everyone with an opinion on what is right and wrong and yet all inconsistent. It drove us mad when we started to research how we would insulate Baloo. So here we’re not going to even try to tell you what’s right or wrong. Instead, here’s a list of the materials you can use to insulate your camper conversion. When deciding what combination of materials to use in your own conversion, consider your ventilation at the same time. Avoiding and managing condensation is critical in maintaining a pleasant home.
Reflectix foil wrap
This material is like silver bubble wrap. Because it’s a radiant barrier, Reflectix is often used as sun shade on the inside of camper van windows. There’s a lot of debate on how effective this stuff is as an insulator on the camper van walls though. It is most effective with an air gap so this needs to consideration before adding the next layer of insulation.
The inside of most camper van walls consist of large flat(ish) panels and lots of smaller spaces too. Reflectix is easy enough to install on the larger panel areas with adhesive tape or spray.
Rigid Panels
Polystyrene and styrofoam boards are low cost and quick and easy to fit to the large panel in the camper van. We used 25mm on the roof of our Sprinter van conversion and 40mm thick board in the walls. In Mowgli our Unimog camper, we had 40mm boards all round. We used the boards that are foil lined on both sides as it gives a slight improvement on the thermal protection.
Loft insulation
This is the flexible rolls of material we find in many lofts. The advantage of loft insulation is you can squeeze it into all the nooks and crannies you can’t fit the boards into. Again, the choice of materials is wide. You can choose fibreglass, recycled plastic, recycled denim or wool. They all have different properties and R-value. Wool tends to have the highest R-value (thermal protection). Fibreglass is nasty stuff to work with because it makes you itch and you need to wear a mask and gloves to install it. It doesn’t handle moisture too well either. We used the recycled plastic bottle material in our Sprinter van conversion.
Vapour barrier
Many camper conversions add a vapour barrier over the top of the insulation and before lining the walls and ceiling. This will prevent any water vapour not ventilated making it’s way to the metal and eroding it over time.
Many converted camper vans use a combination of insulation materials. In our Sprinter van Baloo, we’ve used rigid panels with recycled plastic bottle loft insulation. We have refitted the original headliner and it is also insulated with wool and a vapour barrier too. We’ve not used a vapour barrier on the walls.
Your camper van insulation and ventilation work together to help provide a clean, warm and dry home. Because you’ll only install the insulation once, our advice is to do it well. Have plenty of ventilation and the structure of your camper van will give you many, many comfortable van life years.
Read next: how to register your converted camper with the DVLA.
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Blimey…I have spent age researching the internet on ideas to do everything necessary to get the van that I want. We all do it, we take advise from others who started off like just like ourselves to make the ‘right’ decisions. Everyone seems like an expert, until you listen to the next person. It is a very interesting exercise, and a little stressful at times…what to do… So….insulation… I have read sooo much on this, I almost feel like an expert now :-) I found this blog whilst researching ‘ventilating insulation’ in a camper van, as I have only come across one person discussing this and he was a commercial fitter in the US doing adventure vans. I have ordered some sheep wool for mine, as I really like the idea of this product and the insulation and soundproofing qualities seem good. I was looking at Thinsulite, but this is another product that you cannot readily get in the UK. Anyway, I appreciate the information on no insulation and more light in the van…I may get around to trying that next time, but for the moment if it’s bought, then it’s going in.
I love the site buy the way, I will be spending some time looking through it and getting some new articles in the future.
So glad to hear you stayed warm and cozy. It’s been a brutal winter here, -30’s & -40’s. Way too cold to enjoy the outdoors on my time off, so being able to hunker down and stay warm is a real blessing. The other WoW”s (Workers on Wheels) bailed months ago, but since my boss knew I had the only cold weather capable rig, he asked me to stay. He’s a great boss, and always found a job for me for many years, so I agreed. I’m no stranger to cold weather, but this one’s been a dilly. Had to learn a whole new skill set, but great job, great boss, great pay, just lousy weather. Three out of four isn’t too bad hehe.
You might want to consider sliding doors on your cabinets rather than swinging doors. Sliding doors stay shut while traveling, and don’t require extra interior space to open. I also put my drawers behind a sliding door, and it works great and they never fly open. I used to have problems not being able to fully open swinging doors, and the sliding doors totally solved that problem.
Great minds think alike! We’ve also gone for sliding doors and our shelving unit is behind it too! Even our bathroom door slides :-)
You’re right on ventilation, but not so much on insulation. The proper and needed amount of ventilation pretty much totally defeats any positive effects of insulation. Too many people have been conned into believing that insulation has some sort of magical properties that will keep you comfortable. It doesn’t. The cold hard truth is it keeps the heat in during the summer, and keeps the heat out during the winter…
Parking in the sun during the winter, and in the shade during the summer will do you far more good than any amount of insulation. Insulation won’t keep you warm all night in the winter, or cool all day in the summer, these things still require heating and cooling sources. You can easily obtain comfortable temperatures with proper heating and cooling, with or without insulation, and no matter how much insulation you have, you still need the heating and cooling.
If you start with a window van, with many opening windows in the back, you can avoid cutting holes for ventilation. In the winter, if it’s sunny, those windows can provide an amazing amount of FREE heat. In the summer, they can provide an amazing amout of FREE cooling, and combined with parking in the shade, and possibly a cheap 12v fan, they can keep you more comfortable than any amount of insulation.
I started out with a well insulated sprinter cargo van with 2 fantastic roof vents with fans. It was always either too hot or too cold, too dark, and too damp. When it didn’t work as expected, I went the opposite direction with a window van. I kept the original interior, just removing the seats. The ventilation is 1000% better, and I don’t miss the insulation at all. My window van is both cheaper and easier to heat and cool.
In comparison, my insulated cargo van MAYBE held the heat in about 15 minutes longer in the winter, but it robbed me of a ton of heat that the windows provide during the day. In the summer, since I had solar panels on my cargo van, I needed to park in the sun in an attempt to have power, and the van turned into an oven. The roof vents, and even opening all the doors didn’t help much. In my window van, I got rid of the solar panels, and park in the shade with my windows open, and it makes all the difference in the world.
My window van also solved my depression and anxiety problems, along with my day/night confusion problems whatever they’re called. I’m much happier and healthier with windows and a view. Even at night, being able to see where this or that noise came from, and seeing that it’s not a threat, allows me to instantly go back to sleep, instead of laying awake for hours worrying and wondering about it. Lots of windows have amazing advantages, that far outweigh any disadvantages. My insurance rate dropped by over $50 a month too, and driving is so much easier with windows all the way around and no blind spots. Using just outside mirrors on a dark and rainy night is both scary and dangerous.
Hi Jack – so pleased your set up works so well for you! We hope we’re as happy with our finished build as you are with yours. We’ve just finished installing the Webasto heater and gave it a test drive at New Year in northern England. We were nice and cosy so pretty pleased. We’re just finishing installing the cabinet fronts now so that should give a little less space to heat so hopefully not use so much fuel in cold climates. Our next major test will be in Patagonia so we certainly hope so! Definitely agree with the windows all round – can’t beat natural light first thing in the morning :-)