I stripped of the rest of the awning rail, and cleaned it up with white spirit and meths. Peeled back the aluminium to expose the staples in the cross-struts that remain, and do my best to hack out the ceiling ply that was sandwiched between. This section was harder because it was dry so not crumbly. Despite the rain, this went OK, all new wood in except at the very front where the centre rail is rotten anyway. No pics of the finished wood.
After a strenuous battle, managed to get the heater off the floor. It was bolted through, with some sort of huge filter under the caravan. Spent time crawling under the van on a tarpaulin in the rain with a collection of spanners and wrenches. The filter was attached with very rusty wing nuts, these broke when I tried to get them off! This meant that although I could loosen the heater from the floor, it wouldn't come off because of the filter. In the end I used a saw to hack through half of the heater and break the entire road thing.
It is still leaking around the door frame. I realise this is because the door has a little slack when closed, I try a heath robinson fix with a piece of plastic to hold it more tightly, don't expect it to work. I'll come back and take this on next time (along with the rotten wood a the front and installation of marine plywood in place of all the rotten stuff around the front panel).
