Camping in the great outdoors can be a terrific boost for your health and wellbeing, especially when you can keep your caravan as a cosy home away from home. Fainplast has developed a waterproof foam PVC compound to help ensure that, replacing wood frames that risk developing wood rot from moisture.
“It’s an excellent solution for many camper builders,” says Ottavio Tulli, Materials Specialist in Fainplast’s R&D department.
Caravans have been traditionally built with a lattice wooden fir strip inside the sandwich panel. In this case, water infiltration can in the long run cause the wood to rot. Replacing the wooden strips with plastic slats solves that problem.
Tulli says the most difficult challenge in creating the PVC compound “was to obtain a uniform density both on the exterior and the interior of the PVC element. This has been achieved by developing a new type of die just for this purpose and using a specifically formulated compound.”
Fainplast teamed up with the profiles producer Komplast to develop the material and the equipment involved. “It gives the customer a superior solution that can be used instead of wood and offers better durability and excellent flame resistance,” Tulli says.
And there’s another advantage: caravan manufacturers can directly hang cabinets and other furniture directly to the PVC-made panel. “You can’t do that with other plastics,” Tulli explains.