How to Fit Carpet in Your Caravan’s Tunnel Boot (Step by Step)
Tunnel boots have got a lovely floor on them, a really nice hard floor, and they’re all sealed up. Unfortunately, that floor lets things slide around in there. While you’re towing, gear can move around, slide from side to side, bang up against the sides.
Putting some carpet in it lets things grip a bit better and stops your load moving around so much. It also means if you spill anything wet in there, you can just pull the carpet out, leave it to dry, wash it out, and put it back in again once it’s dry. Here’s exactly how we did it.
– For all your Caravan and Camping Gear: Caravan RV Camping
Choose a Good Quality Marine-Grade Carpet
A good quality marine grade carpet is the best choice for something like this. We went with a fairly neutral grey to keep things nice and easy, with a good solid backing. It comes in a varying amount of sizes, and by luck the size we chose was exactly the same width as our tunnel boot, which made the whole job easier.
Measure Before You Cut
Take a measurement of the tunnel boot first, both how long it is and how wide, so you know how big to cut the piece of carpet.
Cut a Square Edge First
Start with a new square edge along the carpet. It doesn’t matter how good the manufacturers are, they’ll never get the factory edge perfectly square, so square one up yourself first. Use a set square, mark it with chalk, get a nice straight line, then cut it with a sharp knife.
Once that’s done, put the next measurement on, which is for the width of the tunnel boot, ours came to 2250mm, and square that up too.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Before cutting that second line, measure it again. Another way to check you’ve got it square, if you don’t have a set square handy, is to measure the diagonals. On any square or rectangle, measure from one corner to the opposite corner, and then the other two corners. If both diagonals are the same length, you know you’ve got it square.
Fit It, Then Use the Offcuts
Once you’ve squared everything up, cut it and fit it, ours went in like a glove. That’s a genuinely easy mod to do on your caravan. With the leftover carpet, cut a little mat for the doorway, and if you’ve got a step, you can make one for that too.
Our Thoughts
This is one of those upgrades that costs almost nothing and takes an afternoon, but makes a real difference to how much your gear knocks around while you’re towing. The squaring technique here, using the diagonal check, is worth remembering too, it works for lining any storage compartment in your van, not just the tunnel boot.
Don’t skip the marine-grade carpet for something cheaper. Being able to pull it out, dry it and wash it is the whole point if anything wet ever ends up in there.
