Haven’t said much since the accident post. tl;dr; I was living & working at a mountain restaurant in Jotunheimen.

Now I’m living in an apartment in Tønsberg, and today I noticed there was some mould developing in the van. Norway is dark and cold. The humidity inside the van from living in it in summer, no ventilation, and potentially weekend trips now in winter, lead to this.

Here’s how I fixed it: (edited in June 2021)

Sorry, no pictures of everything.

Step 1: Stripping all the wood and insulation from the van

Step 2: lay all your wood panels on the ground

First, do all of this OUTSIDE on a sunny day. You don’t want mould spores everywhere.

• Take out EVERYTHING from your van down to bare metal.
• Then you wanna sand down the mould so that physically it’s all gone.
• Next step, you wanna lay everything down on the ground and douse all the wood with 30% vinegar. This kills mould very effectively
• Let it all evaporate, after about 3 hours, there’s no smell of vinegar.
• Flip your wood upside down and do the same on the other side
• After that, make sure the wood is very dry
• Paint your wood. Paint will keep the wood more protected

As for insulation: some insulation doesn’t grow mould on it, others do. To be safe, you can replace all your insulation.

Step 3: To prevent it from coming back:

ADD VENTILATION 🙏

I cannot stress how important this is. Just leaving doors ajar might not be enough.

After putting all the interior back into my van, I made a hole in the roof for a small roof fan:

UODATE: August 2022, still no mould. The combo of heater + ventilation keeps the inside very dry. I hardly get condensation on my windows even on cold days, even with two sets of lungs breathing in there all night.