Following on from my last post – Never Admit to Being a Caravan Designer (Well Not to Caravaners!) I was floored by the number of emails I received on the subject of design. So after our trip out to the Manchester Caravan & Motorhome show at Event City a few days ago, I thought I’d sit down and pen a few more thoughts on the subject.
I believe that if you store something where you use it, it will make your life easier. One of the big items that almost every caravan wrestles with is the Aquarol. its bulky, fairly lightweight when empty, often wet from the liquid sunshine we enjoy in the UK and sometimes muddy. Where do you put it when travelling? OK, so you buy a bag to sort out the wet and muddy bit and maybe just put it in the doorway… or in the shower tray. That seems like a good place. Just carry it through your nice clean van and put it in the shower tray. Sorted…. unless you have a mid bathroom shower that has the shower ‘conveniently” located over a wheel so the floor has a step in it. The designers sell it as a feature… “You can rest your feet on it when showering” they say. However don’t stick your Aquarol in there if you have bi fold doors!
A fellow caravan enthusiast who shall be nameless – I’ll call him George… decided that this would be perfect for storing the Aquarol. He put it in the shower of his previous rear bathroom outfit for years without incident so no need to change anything. Upon arrival at site in with the first outing of the shiny new caravan all was going well until Mrs George popped her head out of the door and exclaimed to George that she could not get the Aquarol out. “It’s in the shower dear” exclaimed George. Irritatedly “I know that I can see it but I can get it out” came the rather louder reply. On examination of the problem George discovered that the carefully placed Aquarol had somehow shifted and was now preventing the bi-fold door from opening therefore stopping it’s extraction and subsequent deployment and use for brewing that much-needed cup of tea.
What’s the moral of this story? Well if you store something where you use it it will make your life easier. So as nearly all caravan users possess possibly one of the best inventions ever for transporting the splashy stuff about with ease why haven’t caravan designers thought about this? I was thinking of George when I was pondering the uses of this cupboard…..
There is a matching one on the other side funnily enough… but what did the designer have in mind for these cupboards… shoes (who would want to put wet shoes away in there?) Handbags…. maybe but I prefer to hang mine on a hook. It looks great… on a computer mock-up but as for use, well maybe I have a better idea. As they are right at the back of the caravan you really would not want to store your collection of beach pebbles in them.
Instead of a cupboard, just block it off and instead create a wet locker across the back of the caravan and stick a door like this in it……
… it may need a bit of adjusting size wise but imagine a wet locker accessed from the side that you use the Aquarol and wastehog on that you can simply throw these two bulky but relatively light items in… and there would be room for your wet and muddy mains cable too! All right where you need them.
Now here is an idea…. put the water inlet in there along with the mains inlet and a small hatch in the floor…. save on cutting holes in the side of the caravan and it means we all might just get away with using shorter mains cables!
Caution Vehicle Reversing
In a galaxy far far away… oops wrong blog…. I recently watched a chap valiantly trying to manoeuvre his caravan onto an awkward pitch using his motor mover. Stone walled raised bed one side, overhanging branches, awkward access angle all on a short pitch with a stone wall at the back of the pitch. Normally I’d postulate that the chap in question would have been able to perform this manoeuvre on a sunny afternoon with remote control in one hand, a mug of tea in the other while carrying on a conversation with the couple two pitches down. However at eight o’clock on a winters eve in near wartime blackout conditions required the use of a head torch (flashlight for my US readers) and a lantern held aloft by his partner and much wandering side to side and swivelling of the head to direct the head torch in the desired direction.
We don’t have a motor mover… for some reason Sue seems to take enjoyment from me sweating like a traction engine driver at a summer steam rally when reversing on to a pitch… but if we did, the question I’d have to ask is why don’t they have a 13 pin socket wired in so that you could simply plug-in the caravan’s road lights and turn on the reversing lights, hazard lights… heck even get the marker lights and brake lights to work. I’m sure there are people out there that have to detach their caravans on the road and reverse them into their drive and having simple flashing hazard lights and operational marker lights would be a good safety feature.
I have a small cunning device waiting to be fitted…. it consists of a remote key fob and a couple of solid state relays to be mounted in the caravan. On selecting reverse while seated in the vehicle I can simply push a button on the key fob and it will turn on the awning lights and can be made to turn on under floor LED flood lights to light up either side of the caravan. It stays on for a pre-determined time that can be adjusted so if you have to pull forward for a second attempt (highly likely) the lights stay on. Just waiting for a suitable time to mosey off down to the caravan storage site to do a test fit.
The Perfect Caravan
For those go you that have been following the blog for a while will know we have been flip-flopping like a stroppy teenager over getting a new caravan. Well we were…. then we weren’t than we were, then we changed our minds about what we wanted. Then we couldn’t find one and we changed our minds again… anyhoo we managed to tick more boxes off our list with one of these than any other…..
So the question is….. will we or won’t we? Will there be a deal at the NEC in February to tempt us…. or will we wait until the August price slashing begins?
By the way if you wanted to know how George managed to retrieve the Aquarol…. it required a wire coat hanger and a length of paracord…. and about four hours of fishing to raise the Aquarol up above the step in the shower tray.
Caravan Chronicles 
All your ideas sound so logical …, so logical in fact that no caravan manufacturer will bother to act on any of them!! Yes, I have no faith 😉
Hi
To be honest I don’t think UK caravan manufacturers read my blog so I guess I’m preaching to the wise.
However I do know one American RV manufacturer does as they contacted me a number of times and we’ve had a good exchange of emails about various things.
Simon, I avidly read your Blog posts and find your technical upgrades, modifications and investigations fascinating and well beyond my own competence level. But I am surprised that you don’t have a motor mover.
I am reasonably new to caravaning, taking it up in 2012 with an old caravan bought on eBay which weighed less than 750KG. This got me fully into the hobby so I took the B+E test which then allowed me to then upgrade to a 7.5 meter 1500 KG Sprite last year.
I would be totally stuffed without the motor mover. The old caravan could be shifted single-handedly even up the slope of my drive. I admit it was a ‘free’ gift when the caravan was purchased, but I would gladly pay for one now. I can place the Sprite exactly where it needs to go on the driveway… this would be practically impossible using the car, due to the angle, the fence and the kerb. I have no reversing camera on the car – So I drive the caravan hitch over the ball. I think the Motor mover is the single best accessory on the van.
Hi
Where we store our caravan means we have never needed a motor mover so we have been kind of lucky in that respect.
I’ve been driving for over 40 years now and I’ve been fortunate to drive a wide range of vehicles in that time… passing my driving test in a Series 1 Land Rover in the 70’s and from that point towing old military trailers to car and plant transporters and building a big trailer to hold camping equipment in the early 80’s was just a progression over a number of years. So for me towing the caravan was just a progression.
That said, for new drivers now it is a totally different ball game in todays traffic. Where I spent a couple of weekends learning to reverse a military trailer up and down the road where I grew up is not practical or safe today.
With out next caravan, it will be a twin axle and the total outfit length with our current tow vehicle will be 13.149 M (about 43′ 3″) and I have a feeling that I will be needing a motor mover!
I wasn’t old enough to pass my test before all the categories were stripped off: I passed in 1999 and took the B+E in 2017. The additional training I took to pass the test (even after 5 years of towing experience) was really valuable for best practice – thinking about it I’m pretty sure I read guides written by you prior to towing for the first time, so thank you!
I do try to reverse the caravan where possible, but I’m usually scuppered by other vehicles or narrow pitches. I did however, perform a miracle of maneuvering at a Welcome Break on the M5 to extricate myself from their shocking caravan parking area on a busy summer weekend. It was overrun by cars as an overflow. A selfishly parked van and boat trailer prevented me from leaving. Many caravanners took one look at the parking at left… wish I’d done the same.
If you do decide to get the Coachman… see if they’ll throw in a mover! (our caravan was purchased at the NEC Feb show)
Hi Simon, there is one solution for an Aqua-roll, I’ve used for a long time. The Gas locker at the front of my Sprite Alpine. The van manufacturer simply dumps brackets for twin bottles in the middle of the locker, thinking the buyer can easily get the bottles out. Carefully measuring and moving their bracket position apart equally to maintain balance, its possible to easily get space for the “Roll `” on its side, two strips of wood 100mm apart stops the fore and aft movement and “Bob your Uncle” all neat and tidy and no problems if its muddy and wet, the locker is ventilated. The roll, Ive found is always in service when I need to change bottles over so no problem there!
, and bottles are easy to get in and out also. I”m 75 and have no problem with them
My 2018 Sprite will not fit a 40L AquaRoll through the Gas Locker door. The only location for the AquaRolls (I carry 2 for normal pitches) are in the lounge; the Wastemaster fits under the fixed bed. I could put them in the shower with the door in its secured travel position… but I don’t like the idea of them bashing the wallsin there.
Simon a belated Seasons Greetings to you. Over the years I have found your posts quite interesting. In the one above you mention reversing. Maybe it is time for you to investigate fitting a camera on the rear of the caravan. One that could be used for reversing onto a pitch and also used as a replacement for the mirror when towing. When travelling on the continent quite often a vehicle would come up so close behind the caravan that it was impossible to see in the rear view side mirrors even though I could see the rear corners of the caravan. You then indicate to overtake a slower moving vehicle when all of a sudden the car behind you pops out as if by magic and proceeds to overtake you forcing you to pull back in. Food for thought anyway> LOL!
Hi Ian
Belated seasons greeting to you too! I have played about with rear view cameras in the past. I know the one I want, its a twin camera version… reversing and rear view so should comfortably tick the boxes. However mounting is potentially going to be a tricky affair, I working on options at the moment.
If you have a look at a lot of the American pickups that have towing packages, apart from having extending door mirrors, a lot have integrated reversing spot lights mounted into the mirrors to light up the path ether side of the vehicle and trailer.
This got me thinking, I have auxiliary LED reversing flood lights on the underside of the Amarok… and although when a trailer is connected it automatically disables the rear fog and reversing lights, there is a way to activate the rear flood lights… I just need to install a VW switch.
Ah, the aquaroll… we used to throw ours in the back of the towing vehicle. In NZ we also have the wet/muddy issues and squeezing a wet dirty tank past clean bedding was the cause of much marital strife! The only trouble with not keeping the tanks in the caravan is remembering to take them when you go caravanning – which is why we ended up owning 2 grey water tanks.
Our new caravan has on board 90 litre fresh and grey water tanks – they are brilliant. Setting up now feels like cheating – pull into the site, level the van, plug in the power then boil the kettle!
We still need to take a small portable grey water tank if we’re staying somewhere longer than a couple of days so that we can empty the onboard tank without having to shift the caravan to the dump site.
I realise this isn’t an option for many caravans – 90 litres of water equates to 90kg of payload – but the local importer of Dethleffs caravans specifies an upgraded chassis giving a payload of 350-400kg depending on the model purchased.
Love all the design ideas. With regard to parking a van at night, The Lunar Clubman has illuminated grab handles both ends and a service light on the offside along with a front locker light and awning light. These would be ample for manoeuvring.
Thats good…. can you turn the service light, front locker light and awning light on while hooked up and engine running though?
Never tried that but if your using the mover why would you need to
Just thinking for those reversing using the vehicle.