Right, as I said earlier, I have removed the screws from the front panel and called upon my brother to give me a hand removing the panel. Viola!

What is obvious immediately is that the RHS (left in the picture) is rotten. The plywood fell out unlike the one on the right of the picture which you can still see as nice and dry!

Bad bad bad...

After cleaning out the insulation wool and polystyrene it looks like this...

It looks to me like Mr Botchit has been in at the wiring and has made a complete balls-up (am I allowed to say balls-up here?) of getting into the space, and an even worse job of sealing it up afterwards. I refer you back to the earlier picture of the wiring on the inside.

As you can see, an area of the floor has rotted, and there is some evidence of this on the inside, just a little in the corner. Thankfully no-one walks in this area so it might just be ok to leave this dry out.

I think I see what needs to be done to get at the fixings for the inside panel at the front...I need to pop out the front window and remove the aluminium sheet surrounding it. This should be a relatively easy task given the groundwork I have already done. Watch this space...

Oh, before I finish this page I thought it worth mentioning about the holes in the aluminium sheeting I discovered. Where a steel screw or staple comes into contact with the alluminium and gets damp it sets up a very small electrical discharge like a very very weak battery. It is a reaction between the two metals. This is what causes the damage to the aluminium. I remember reading about this recently in an article to do with fitting a spare wheel carrier onto an aluminium chassis. Thats why they line the holes with a neoprene sleeve! Looking at the holes in my front panel I can see that they are exactly where screws or staples are! A little liner of thin plastic before I seal it all up and that should take care of that!