Like any project, ticking the small stuff off a list is the way to move forward even if it seems like sometimes you have ground to a halt. A bit lacking on photos…. I’m temporarily unsure of their location… pilot speak for I’ve lost them! I’ll correct that in due course.
I built a new aluminium frame for the water pump and moved the pump from the original mounting position which caused a lot of noise when running, especially in the bathroom…. as we have a direct tank flush not a holding tank, this was particularly annoying if the loo was flushed at night. So now the water pump is mounted on its isolation feet on an isolated aluminium frame bolted directly to the sub-floor in one of the lockers. I also changed the piping from the pump from solid to flexible connections further reducing noise transmission through the pipes. My next step… some time this week is to install a larger one litre accumulator tank between the pump and plumbing to reduce the cycle times of the pump. Thankfully the plumbing system installed in the 5th wheel is rated for a greater pressure than most caravans and motorhomes… that’s what gives us a great shower!! so I’ll be able to match the accumulator pressure with the pump pressure to get the best out of them.
The other little upgrade was to move the grey water and fresh water dump outlets closer to the side of the caravan. They used to be set back about eight inches and required a kneeling mat and one arm dexterity to plug in the flexible waste pipes when on a fully serviced pitch. Now it’s a simple matter of bending over and I can easily access both outlets for connecting pipes…. saving the knees a bit of hard labour at my age is key. Also if dumping at a motorhome service point I can easily see if I’m in the correct position for a clean dump and not going to splash all over the place. As the Hanks say… “Let ‘er rip”
Thanks to my local nut and bolt supplier… Francis Kirk and Sons I’ve been going there for bits and pieces since 1976… I have now got a full set of stainless steel fittings… an odd collection of UNF and UNC sizes…. ready to replace all the nuts and bolts on the pull out sun canopy, replacing the original components that were showing signs of rust and starting to bind up. I also managed to get a set of tap and dies to run through all the threads before changing everything over.
We managed to get some of the picture frames mounted inside the caravan and that makes a huge difference…. along with upgrading the occasional side lights to LED dimmable units…. feels more like home with each little improvement.
Not long to wait now….
Looking forward to Tourfest North West in a three weeks time, 24th May – 27th May at Donkey Creek Farm and meeting up with some of the bloggers and vloggers I’ve followed over the years. Thankfully no one will recognise Sue and I so we can sneak off if it gets too rowdy . I believe it is now fully booked so if you wanted to go you will just have to wait until the next one.
A few days after that we are off to The Old Oaks at Glastonbury…. it’s been a few years since we were there so it will be nice to go back and see all the changes and improvements they have made. Hopefully we can get back out on our bikes again as well.
Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you have a great touring year ahead.
I’d like to take this opportunity to give you a bit of an update on my personal circumstances and a look forward to a couple of projects I’m planning to kick off our year.
First…
… A HUGE thank-you yo everyone that messaged, email and posted about my cancer diagnosis. Things started off OK and I had a stent installed in my colon to stop it blocking and started chemotherapy. Before I got two cycles of chemo completed my body decided it didn’t like the stent and for what ever reason decided to try and pass the stent to the nearest exit. This resulted me being blue lighted in to Manchester Royal Infirmary on a Saturday afternoon. 24 hours later I underwent an emergency Laparotomy to remove the stent now firmly stuck where it shouldn’t be and part of my transverse colon was removed at the same time. Basically the section where the tumour was. A further five days on the High Dependancy Unit followed and another 13 days on a surgical ward. I remember very little of any of this…. basically I was on another planet drug wise. Apparently it was touch and go a couple of times as my colon was leaking into my body.
Part of the surgery included a colostomy, so now I’m learning to live with that. I was released home late on Christmas Eve so got to spend Christmas with Sue at home.
So far I’m recovering as planned. My body strength is slowly returning… I lost a lot of muscle mass bing in bed for nearly a month. My weight has dropped by around 31kg… so if you see someone dressed in 1980’s gear… it could well be me wearing some of my old stuff. I decided against the platform shoes and petrol blue patch pocket pants though!
I go back on the 10th Jan to The Christie Hospital for checkups and to see when I can resume my chemo treatment.
ONWARDS!
So we are still planning to attend Tourfest North West in May at Donkey Creek Farm and I’m looking towards our first trip away sometime towards the end of this month hopefully. It will only be local and for a couple of days initially.
Future Projects…
The first big one is a bit unusual. I want to add electronic side view mirrors to the Amarok. These are two screens that mount vertically on each of the A posts and link to cameras where your rear view mirrors are. However I’m adding a twist. I want to mount the rear view cameras on each side of the 5th wheel. This would mean that when looking to the rear view mirror on the passenger door of the amaro I not only see the rear view from the Amarok door mirror but also the rear view from the camera mounted on the side of the trailer. Not a big gain driving down the road you might say, but there are two huge advantages. The first is I will not need to fit extension mirrors to the Amarok when towing as the installed cameras and internal A post mounted screen combo will give me the required view coverage required by law. This has already been accepted and approved for commercial vehicles and coaches and is in use on the road already. To comply with regs though these will have to be connected via a Suzi between the trailer and truck. You cannot have wireless devices.
The second is when reversing I will always have a view down each side of the trailer no matter what angle the Amarok is the the trailer. This has huge advantages when reversing into pitches as effectively there will be no blind side reversing as the combination of rear and side view cameras will always allow me to see the three sides of the trailer.
The next project really is one I came up with while in hospital. My last ‘job’ was ground op’s supervisor at Manchester Airport, a job which occasionally meant I had to oversee the ground start of engines, push backs etc. To do this we used a head set plugged into the aircraft so we could talk to the flight deck. This got me thinking…. I have several Dave Clark headsets from my flying days and thought about adapting these for ground comms between someone directing reversing and the driver.
We have tried mobile phones, cheap hand held radios working on DMR Chanels and a couple of HAM handhelds programmed to an obscure frequency that hopefully won’t get me into trouble with the authorities , as my radio licence is for aviation operation, I gave up my ham licence in the late 70’s.
It’s just an idea that may or may not work out… I have the kit and all it will take is a bit of soldering and making up a small circuit board to get everything working. As I am on restricted duties ( can’t lift anything heavier than a cup of coffee or a ham sammich) for at least ten weeks, sitting at my bench in the workshop is not an issue and it gives me something to tinker about with for a while.
The third project is to get a 12 volt 50 Amp service from the Amarok into the 5th wheel. This is in preparation for installing a dc to dc charger if we decide to move over to lithium. If not we can still install a DC to DC charger for the current AGM battery bank we have. The move to lithium is not yet a proven case for us as we currently don’t do much off grid.
Lastly is installing a couple of big solar panels. Initially this will be to keep our current AGM batteries charged, so thinking about 800 watts should do it and this could be increased in the future. One thing we do have on the 5th wheel is plenty of flat open roof space. At this stage I’m thinking of flexible panels bonded to the roof rather than ridged panels as they weigh a lot less.
Unusually for me… and the blog, I might have to partner up with companies to get a couple of these projects completed as at the moment I’m not in any shape to go crawling round the truck or the 5th wheel. We will see how that progresses though.
Thanks again..
So again a HUGE thank you for all the emails, messages and comments. I apologise if you emailed or posted comments with technical questions and I haven’t replied, but I have been out of it for a while. A huge than-you too to the people that have bought me a cup of coffee via the link. I’m well on the way to covering the cost of paying for the hosting of the blog and domain name for another year.
Both Sue and I hope you all have a fantastic New Year and have a fantastic touring season. Stay safe and hopefully we will see you soon on a site somewhere.
Well, I never expected so many questions as to the weight, size and towing our 5th wheel Dream Seeker. So here are the stats…. now these are for OUR Dream Seeker, and as each one is virtually custom made to the buyers specification, then there will be differences.
As our DreamSeeker is currently configured with an Avtex 4G/5G antenna on the roof it stands 2950mm tall (for bridge clearance my check is 3.2m minimum I would ever attempt and then only with a spotter).
From the rear bumper to the very front of the hitch, uncoupled, it is 7638mm long and 2292mm wide. Now that is not the whole story. The pin box (the bit that sticks out the front and connects to the 5th wheel hitch in the truck) can swing out of the way when on a pitch, so the actual length when pitched is 7517mm, so exactly the same as a 7.5m motorhome.
Now when we are hitched up to the truck, the effective length behind the vehicle becomes 6630mm, which is actually shorter than some twin axle bumper pull caravans.
The Weighty Stuff…
Our Dream Seeker runs on two 1500Kg rated axles and we have a MTPLM of 3750kg. So at max weight we would have 3000kg on the axles and 750kg on the hitch pushing down into the bed of the truck. The hitch in the truck is positioned directly over the rear axle so this mass bares directly onto the rear axle. Our Amarok is rated for 1000kg in the rear pickup bed so we are easily within limits.
Our Dream Seeker as bought was weighed and had 2210kg on the axles and 570kg on the pin hitch totalling 2780kg. If you subtract that from the MTPLM of 3750kg it gives us a user payload of 970kg.
The hitch is installed directly over the rear axle and has plates underneath connecting it directly to the chassis rails and suspension mounts. This Reese hitch is rated up to 800kg pin weight and 4300kg towing capacity.
Now here’s what confuses a lot of people… our Amarok is rated to tow 3200kg and we are hitching up a potential max of 3750kg…. 550kg more than we are rated to pull. Ahh pull… that’s the key word. The rating is based on the vehicle manufacturers tow bar pull capacity. With a 5th wheel hitch you are also carrying some of the weight so for every 1kg of weight that the truck carries on the pin hitch that is effectively deducted from what you are pulling. So at MTPLM of 3750kg I am carrying 750kg and pulling 3000kg (OK I know that we are moving a mass of 3750Kg but that is how the figures are assessed for 5th wheel towing… not a clue as how this calculation was decided on!)
GTW…. Gross Train Weight
On the face of it we are ok… however there is one last thing to take into consideration. GTW or Gross Train Weight. This is the absolute maximum weight the vehicle and trailer can weigh together in any combination of the mass being shared between the vehicle and trailer. Because we were approaching the GTM max for the Amarok if we had the trailer at MTPLM I wanted some extra safety margin and we opted to have the Amarok uprated to a GTM of 6400kg and the rear axle load rating increased to 2180kg. This was a fairly simple process that involved removing the hard rubber bump stops and inserting air bags, which are currently inflated to 7psi. They have increased the hight of the truck at the back be about 20mm but hitched up the truck and caravan are dead level. The only other thing is a new weight plate stuck to the door pillar of the Amarok. All the weight upgrade installation and paperwork were done by the wonderful guys at the 5th Wheel Company for us.
So there you are….
That’s it, on a pitch we are no longer than some motorhomes at 7.5 metres and when hitched up it is only 6.6 metres in additional length…. which is less than some single axle caravans!
As for drivability, well doing 60mph on the motorway and having big vans steam past at 70+ it doesn’t move or even impart any sideways forces I can feel when driving. Road bumps you can just about feel but no where as much as I could towing our single axle caravan.
On corners you just have to be mindful the the rear wheels of the trailer will scribe a smaller arc than the rear axle of the tow vehicle so for example a 90 degree left turn into a street means you need to move more to the right hand side of the lane before the left turn…. but all you class one HGV drivers know this and can definitely teach me a thing or two about 5th wheel driving.
And as for driving round tight spaces…. can you get your caravan 90 degrees to your car?
I’m still new to this and a blind side reverse does have your head swivelling a bit and I can now see why a lot of American 5th wheels have side mounted rear view cameras. I’m just getting used to the novelty of a rear view camera…. so all in good time.
Brakes…
The brakes are something else. They are Electric-Hydraulic units working on 4 massive drums. Once you get the feel of them and learn to keep an eye on the red LED in the truck that lets you know when the brakes are operating, then within a few miles it becomes instinctive. I can now judge how much pressure to apply to get the brakes to just let me bleed off a little speed or apply with some gusto then ease off so the LED goes out and we coast to a gentle stop without giving Sue whiplash at the moment we do stop. I have not tried an emergency stop and intend trying to drive so that I never have to.
While we are still on the subject of brakes…. yes it does have a handbrake that works on all four wheels and like on you over run break away cable we have something similar…. it’s a cable that is attached to a switch… pull it out and a separate 12 volt lead acid battery powers the hydraulic pump and applies pressure to all four drum brakes and maintains that pressure. The other end of this safety cable is clipped exactly as you do a normal break away cable to a secure part of the vehicle. In my case the floor mounting rails of the 5th wheel hitch.
PS…
I’m currently writing this sat in our Dream Seeker at the wonderful Donkey Creek Farm near Freckleton. It’s one of those sites that I don’t want to tell you about so I can just keep it to ourselves. (and no, before The Caravan Vlogger ask’s…. this isn’t a sponsored link!)
EOE (Errors and Omissions Excepted) As I said earlier these figures are based on OUR Dream Seeker and OUR Amarok do not take any of these figures to be a basis of working out any load capacity for any potential vehicle or caravan purchases. Speak to your vehicle dealer and caravan dealer.
OK a bit of a rhetorical question really. Caravan Chronicles now has a bit of a shop. Well I call it a shop, it’s really just one page of links to stuff I have bought and used throughout the blog from Amazon.
I started a while ago adding a few links here and there at the end of my posts for bit’s and bob’s I’d used in any particular post. I got a few emails asking where I’d got so and so from and it seemed the best place would be a single page to list everything. So here it is… Caravan Chronicles Shop.
It’s not a real shop, I’m an “Amazon Associate” (fancy title!) but all that really means is I get a small… and I mean small percentage if you buy anything via Amazon by clicking on the link. So far this year I think it has paid for a couple of Grande Latte with Extra Shot from Costa.
Fear not, don’t think I’m going to load it up with “Merch” (I think that’s the term) it’s only going to be stuff we have bought and used so no teddy bears wearing tee shirts with the Caravan Chronicles logo emblazoned across their furry chests.
That’s it for now. Off in a few days to meet up with Travelling K (yep all the way from NZ!) for a super secret event… Schhhh.
As usual Henry and Oscar would like to thank you for following along. Here they are checking out their new cat shelf I made from some of the 12mm tube and bending tool left over from the “Mirror Mirror” project. (Links to both can be found in the shop!)
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.
It’s that time of year again, a few days before the opening of the North’s biggest caravan and motorhome show and the first of the New Year at Manchester’s Event City and again we are sat thinking about changing the van this year. Mind you we were convinced last year… and the year before we were going to change the caravan.
In 2017 we went to the shows, round dealers and almost did the deal. However a few things just kept us from signing on the dotted line. We also came close last year, but again there were design elements that just didn’t sit right with me.. or t least would make me compromise more than I wanted to.
So here is my guide to any caravan designers out there working on the 2020 design that they hope is going to be the next winner.
Looks and sounds good…
A locker containing a TV swing out arm…. OK stop watching American RV shows right now. What were you thinking guys… We don’t sit round campfires watching TV in the middle of the Mohave… honestly we don’t. If people want to watch TV in their awning I’m pretty sure they will have come up with a way by now that suits them. It’s not even like you designed the thing so that you could leave a 24 inch TV permanently mounted and closed away securely in the locker.
While we are on the subject of TV’s…. stop putting the radio in a cupboard in the front of the caravan… put it near where you provide a TV mount. A lot of thin screen TV’s have poor speakers and a great solution that many caravaners opt for is connecting the TV sound to the radio AUX input… but a lot don’t because it becomes a major challenge routing a pair of screened wires round and through all the cabinets. Make it easy, put the radio near the TV, install a AUX jack and sell it as a feature!
Own Up….
Right, which designer is going to own up to designing a storage space in the wardrobe in the rear bathroom of a van to store the table. Did you design the van and at some point while you were stood at the coffee machine someone say to you “Dude I didn’t see where you stored the table in your design” and you immediately rush back to your workstation and in a panic put in the wardrobe in the rear washroom.
Have you ever had to get a table out, and set it up with a caravan full of people balancing drinks when some one is shooting “PLEASE SET THE TABLE UP NOW… DINNERS READY”
It’s on the other side…. or end!
Right I want all designers to go and stand on empty pitches at five caravan sites and look round. What do you see? Bollards…. you read that right Bollards… at the rear of the pitch. Why there you may ask? Well designing a site or upgrading a site if you can avoid digging across a pitch to install services it tends to be cheaper and easier to reinstate the ground afterwards, so most are laid out that way for cost and convenience. Is been like that for quite a few years. So why do you insist in keep designing the power, water connections at the front of the caravan… and some of you just for good measure put one on each side. If you take the common size pitch and park your caravan in the middle throw up a mahoosive flappy tent thing on one side and connect up your Aquarol (other water containers are available) then try to squeeze your tow car down the other side – that is if you have the room with an 8 foot wide van – avoiding parking so that vehicle door can actually open without bashing the water container or the passenger can actually squeeze past.
Here’s an idea….
Here’s an idea…. put the water inlet and power inlet on the rear off side corner and while you are at it check out how American RV’s have a locker with all the connections inside and a convenient opening in the floor to pass the connections through. That would save cutting holes and installing expensive fittings. While you are at it moving the water about, here’s an idea, install a simple Hozelock fitting with a check valve and pressure regulator so when on a device pitch, rather than expecting customers to buy expensive adaptor fittings, they can just buy a cheap food grade hose to hook up. Could this be the next USP I wonder?
To off grid or not to off grid?.. that is the question.
I applaud the designer that moved the leisure battery from a side locker to under floor mounting and moved the gas bottle from the front to the side. Heavy items, get them low and in the centre I say.
However, next year go one step further… make the battery locker bigger to accommodate two batteries and ready for Lithium… which may mean insulating them. Nearly all caravans are sold now with solar panels, but it would be nice to be able to choose to install an additional battery to take advantage of the solar without having to start installing aftermarket sealed and externally vented battery boxes.
It’s behind you…
…. well it might be but I can’t see it. It’s time to offer a rear view camera option on all caravans now I think for safety’s sake. A lot of motorhomes are offering it as an option or a standard fit. While it is fairly easy on a motorhome as the display choice is dictated by the designer. For a caravan it’s slightly more complicated as some vehicles have rear view systems built-in, some have nothing so how do you decide what to install? Simple really.. most systems use composite 1 volt peat to peak video and there are dozens of components out there on the internet that allow this to be digitised, scrambled, flipped and sent vis radio, bluetooth, over power feeds and via IR so it can’t be that difficult or expensive to install a system with a remote screen at a sensible price point. The biggest hurdle for anyone contemplating installing a rear view camera system is actually mounting the camera on the caravan body and running all the cables.
Electronic Brakes…
Unless you have towed a trailer with electronic brakes you will never know how horse and cart our current over-run hitch brake system is. In the land of the… that lot over the pond, have been using electrical braking systems for a while and in the land down under (Straylia… YESSSS….. for John Cadogan fans) ALKO have been offering a system for a number of years that is really just an extension of their caravan chassis ‘kit of components’ and could easily be adopted for European component chassis.
Now a lot of you know from my past volumes of scribblings I kind of enjoy delving into caravan dynamics and I really want a caravan with electronic brakes. OK before the comments come stating that under current regulations you are required to have over-run braking system etc etc…. yep I know. However from my poking around this subject for over 18 months now, it seems that you can fit electronic brakes as long as the existing over-run setup is retained.
If you are still reading this go and check this out from seven years ago about a system that was going to be produced….. if I was setting this cones out I think I’d be going changing my undergarments…. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIB7Rmhll9s\
Right, I wanted to keep this down to a short 1000 words, and I failed as it’s over 1300 now. I hope you have all had a great Christmas and may 2019 bring you new touring adventures and memories. We’ll see you on Thursday 17th at:
Ok, not one of my usual blog posts. I get a lot of email asking about various electrical items related to caravans and motorhomes and a few things seem to keep cropping up on a regular basis. One is to do with 12 volt relays… what types are there and what are the pin connections.
Another is to do with cable size relating to load and its relation to the length of cable…. “I have a 40 Amp load and its 3 metres from the battery… what size cable do I need?” type questions.
In the past I’ve emailed back with answers, but one caravan engineer asked me if I know of any information sheets that had this type of info that he could put above his workbench.
So I’ve produced a couple of A3 size PDF information sheets (they will print A4) that can be downloaded printed out and pinned up, shoved in your notebook, glued to the lid of your tool box or used to wrap that must have tool present for your beloved caravan or motorhome DIY enthusiast in your life (seasonal eh!)
(I have been told that Office World can print and laminate A3 PDF’s cheaply…. I never knew that!)
I have stylised them as technical drawings and I’ve had to watermark them and some of the icons as I found a lot of my drawings were ending up “as is” or edited on various sites and forums without any credit or link back to Caravan Chronicles. You are free to print out and use them for your own personal use, but if you wish to use them (or any of my drawings) for commercial use, inclusion in blog posts or forums please include a credit line back to CaravanChronicles.com and drop me a line to let me know.
We are just back from Chester Fairoaks after doing the Chester Christmas market and a bit of shopping at Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet Village and will be adding off to York for a bit more Christmas Market action.
I have a couple of more information ‘posters’ in development but if you have any ideas for future offerings, drop a line in the comments below. Of course my legal advisor – Henry has asked me to point out E & OE
(Everything on the internet is improved by a cat apparently… so here’s Henry)
When you are starting to look for a replacement… or even your first caravan, you collect ideas. You see something and think “that’s a good idea” and from that point you start judging all other caravans against that ‘thing’ you have in your mind that you think is a good idea. After a while you start to build up a collection of “that’s a good idea” and ‘thing’s’. What your mind builds is a perfect caravan for you and that is what you are endlessly searching for.. your perfect caravan.
Well here is a “that’s a good idea” that is one of a collection for my perfect caravan. If you have ever watched any of the American RV walk rounds one thing that is common to them all is they all have slide outs… heck even some slide outs have slide outs of their own. (I’m waiting for the next super king cab dually pickup truck to have a slide out..!) Nope it’s not a slide out I’m thinking of though.
You know when you start watching things on YouTube you sometimes end up somewhere completely off topic and you can’t resist…. well a while ago starting with watching Andrew Ditton… I ended up watching some videos from a site called Anton’s Camping.
Now my Danish is not good I have to admit, It is in fact abysmal. I have mastered “OK” and I think “Hello”… or “Hallo” (that might be Dutch?) but that is about it. Back to Anton…. he does do a good walk round of caravans we don’t generally see in the UK and one thing caught my attention on one of his walk rounds is the electrical and water connections to caravans. A Knaus in particular.
One of the things on our list for a new caravan an internal fresh water tank. However, this Knaus takes it to the next level.
Next to the water tank are the water drain valves and water inlet connection…..
…. and 230 volt electrical connection with a hole in the floor to pass the electrical cable and water connection through.
Now for me this is a big improvement on having a locker that contains the battery and 16 amp connector, in which you always have to slightly force the hinge a bit when trying to shut the cover while your mains cable is dangling out of an under sized groove cut in the hatch door developing a permanent kink. Additionally the hassle of cleaning off the water connection under the plastic flap on the side of the caravan after you have just driven two hours down a rain-soaked motorway with all the road spray running down the side of the caravan and under the flap… then once connected, remembering you forgot to close the drain tap just as the call from inside the caravan goes out…… “Have you turned the water on yet?”… and you feet get wet again as the pump kicks in and a river of water cascades from underneath the caravan.
This is on my “that’s a good idea” list and any caravan that does not have this setup is just not going to be MY perfect caravan.
Something Else…
One thing that looking for a new caravan brought home is how they are all the same. Different manufacturer seems only to mean different cushions, everything else is nearly identical. I guess if all the manufacturers all use Alko chassis, same layout, cooker, loo, shower… all the windows and roof vents come from one supplier and internal fittings from another supplier then we are limited to what they can actually do. So it is down to the “that’s a good idea” things that are going to make the difference.
Now… Where was I going back at the start with the American RV stuff…. what you see on every American RV is a locker that houses all the water connections drain taps flush valves for their grey and black tanks… heck most have lights and heaters installed for winter use.
Maybe looking across the pond or down under to ‘Straliah’ to see if there is anything that can be used to move our caravans (and motorhomes) forward design wise. This is not always a good thing however. It was obvious that someone from Swift had been watching too many RV videos where manufacturers had installed a mahoosive TV on the outside of a motorhome and rushed into the next design meeting slightly red-eyed with all the late night YouTube viewing doing an impression of Michael Caine… “Hang on lads… I’ve got an idea…..” which resulted in, in my personal opinion, that useless ‘pull out swing arm tv mount in a locker’ waste of space on the side of their caravans.
Bailey seem to be the only manufacturer thinking outside the box on design… getting without the front locker and putting the gas bottle in a side locker close to the axle. Even dropping the battery into the floor (spare wheel in a recess in the floor would be great too!) Maybe they might want to look at reducing the clutter and having one locker just for the water and electrical connections… and maybe towards the rear so we can use shorter cables and water hoses on serviced pitches.
Anyhoo, if you want to watch some of Anton’s Camping videos you can do at the link above, or for the video of the Knaus I’ve taken the still shots from is below. Keep a look out for the natty umbrella holder (although it might be a baguette holder!) and possible the best door bin replacement idea yet!
Although it might seem quiet here at the Caravan Chronicles pitch there have been a few things going on behind the scenes so I thought it was time for a catchup and a chat.
A lot of people have been asking why I haven’t done any YouTube videos? Well the simple fact is they are flippin’ hard work…. plus I don’t particularly like being on video. I’m not a ‘presenter’ by any means… (mind you I’m not a writer either but enough people seem to read this blog). I really don’t know how Andrew Ditton, Dan Trudgian and all the others have time to produce the amount of good quality content that they do. Hats off to you guys!
I also missed a milestone some time ago. I was watching the stats counter tick away waiting for the blogs 20 millionth page hit/view what ever you want to call it and for some reason I stopped watching. It was a few days ago that I thought to check and blow me it had ticked past the 21 million! I started to look at how I’d hit this figure and it seems that a lot of my technical stuff has been linked to in various leisure (and boating) blogs and forums around the world so a lot of hits are derived from people searching on these. I also seem to be developing a wider audience ‘down under’ in “Straliah…… Yessssss” – I really should stop watching John Cadogan videos on YouTube!
While I’m mentioning Australia, My friend, well-known author Collyn Rivers has launched his new website RVBooks.com.au
Collyn has been writing books about Caravans and Motorhomes in Australia and New Zealand for a number of years and now all his books are available as eBooks from the website.
Collyn is also an engineer with quite a pedigree and his technical articles are superb in their detail and explanation. Although tailored to the Australian and NZ markets, Collyn has started to introduce information relating to European manufactured caravans and motorhomes as imports are starting to do surprisingly well down under.
In a recent email from Collyn he explained….
“Caravan rollovers have sadly reached serious proportions here as more and more newcomers do not understand that it is not possible to get away with towing 3.5-tonnes at 100 km/h (62 mph) behind a 4WD that weighs only 2.5 tonnes and increasingly with a tow ball mass of little over 5%! This year so far over 200 have overturned almost overturning the 4WD as well. Sadly most owners seem to be in denial”
Have a read through some of the technical articles he has written, the explanation and answer is quite clear.
What else…
Is it me or are available pitches getting harder to find? OK I know I have been trying to get into the C & MC’s Bristol site for the last three… maybe four years without much success but sometimes it’s almost as difficult to get into other sites too. I know both clubs are undertaking rolling refurbishment and upgrades to a lot of sites and sometime this includes adding additional pitches. But I wonder if more thought should be going into looking at developing new sites? I know the figures put forward by the leisure industry at large all show ‘staycations’ hitting new levels with year on year increases not seen before and the NCC announced record levels of caravan and motorhome ownership which puts pressure on existing sites.
Trying to find suitable space to develop a new caravan site must be a nightmare… let alone gaining planning permission, but a thought did cross my mind. Thinking about the Bristol site, maybe it’s overwhelming popularity is because it is right in the centre of Bristol and ideal for a city visit. I wonder if there are opportunities being missed looking at brownfield sites that could be developed within cities. Just my thoughts!
New Caravan?
As you know from some of my previous ramblings, probably for the last 12 months or so we have been thinking about a new caravan and kind of narrowed it down to a twin axle, centre bathroom layout and ideally a twin bed, but that was about it. Despite going to view a few, nothing jumped out at us and it has been interesting to watch Dan Trudgian and family go through a similar process. So what did we choose…. well lets say we’ll start looking again at some point in the future…. maybe.
Caravan Chronicles 