Chilly Pop Tops

Once I’d fitted seat belts, the missus immediately came up with a new bus threatening issue. The elevating roof in our T25 camper isn’t insulated and there was a danger of the nippers catching a chill up there. Presumably this was due to a sub-Antarctic microclimate which develops up there at night, which I had some how failed to notice thus far.

I could really only come up with one scheme, to extend the concept of thermal window screens to cover the whole roof.

I ordered a vast quantity of screen material and some attachments online from the excellent Olearys, and was rather impressed when the order arrived a couple of days later.

Working with the screen material is pretty easy, it can be cut with scissors and doesn’t fray. It isn’t cheap so I found it useful to make my mistakes with cloth patterns first.

Commercially made screens are typically edged with webbing like material. This looked easy enough to do but when I consulted a well-respected sewing guru on the difficultly of the job, they turned pale in horror and began gasping for breath. Interpreting this as a negative sign, I took the quick option and edged my screens with silver masking tape. Its looks ok at the moment, only time will tell if this is a durable solution.

In order to attach the screens I used screw in press-studs, or least tried to. The studs are provided in two parts, which are positioned on either side of the material and then hammered together to close. The problem I found is that the hammered over edges are not strong enough to survive the force needed to pull the stud off the socket, and they frequently separate. I still haven’t found a satisfactory solution to this.

The screens where tested for the first time last week, and I’m pleased to report that there was no sign of frost, snow or huskies in the roof, and that nippers didn’t get par boiled either.  A handy side effect of the screens is that they cut out light, which was always a bit of problem with the thin canvas roof.