Another small maintenance job that fits well within the capabilities of the most basic of handymen/ladies. This job is another that will save you considerable cost both in outsourcing the maintenance, and in rectifying the damage that will result is avoiding it altogether Many vans today have a HWS (Hot Water Systems) and of the 3 more common ones we’re only interested in the most common of the 3 types, the gas/elec storage HWS. The other two HWS’s are the instant gas and the stainless steel storage unit. The most common gas/elec storage type HWS have whats called a sacrificial anode, which is a serviceable maintenance item that you should…

Our “Diesel and gas heater” article describes the fundermental difference between gas and diesel heaters …. diesel heaters need to be routinely serviced, and gas heaters need nothing.   So this article is for the brave souls who made the conscious decision against a lifetime of maintenance free bliss from a gas heater, and are now looking for some info on saving the significant service agent fees by maybe having a go at servicing their diesel heaters themselves. Your in luck because its not a very difficult job for anyone relatively handy using basic tools, which will include 2 x Torx driver bits.   Firstly have a cursory look over the attached…

Camec are a common caravan door brand.   The outer door has 3 clips which when closed clip into the 3 corresponding receivers on the inner screen security door. The clips are quite fragile, deteriorate over time and are also easily damaged by exuberant closing or slamming in the wind.   Owning a Jayco provides the additional issue of the door on most vans opening with the wind whilst towing, where all 3 clips are particularly important to secure the door against the air pressure. The upper and lower clips are the same, and the central clip differing in design.   We’ve broken 4 clips and after the first breakage we were forced…

Caravan windows are made from acrylic, and whilst acrylic is a robust material its kryptonite is its susceptibility to scratching.   Just washing the van with a broom will leave fine marks over the windows and sometimes just looking at them with an angry face seems to scratch them. Traveling about in our relentless quest for caravaning Nirvana, we tend to squeeze the Behemoth into places which are often far to small for it, and as a result our windows do cop a bit of a flogging.   I needed a simple cost effective and doable remedy to make those window shine again, short of replacing them with new windows. Researching the…

Known by a few names, drop jacks, corner steadies, drop legs, whatever they’re called sometimes they just aren’t quite long enough, or when they are winding them out to their full extension is a painfully long process.   32mm x 3mm square aluminium section slides very neatly inside Alko drop legs.   The extension of the leg is a threaded rod thats in the centre of the drop leg, the aluminium section slides in around the thread rod and doesn’t interfere with the usual leg function at all.   The choice of aluminium over steel is that standard steel section sizes don’t fit neatly inside each other leaving a lot of rattle room.…

One of the banes of every caravan’er’s existence at one point or another is the slow or lack of adequate drainage from the vans sink and shower etc via the vans grey water sullage/waste outlet and connected pipe.   At the risk of being Capt Obvious a smooth, unrestricted and a continuously descending flow path is paramount.   Jaycos for example seem to excel at getting each of these, if not all of these wrong and have a history of Coco Pops and pasta noodles put down the sink somehow popping up in the shower. There are a few simple and quick fixes to help with flow, along with some more elaborate…

Some smart cookie with some serious common sense came up with the very cool idea of stringing stainless steel wire rope between awning arms, to create a permanently deployed clothes line.   We have followed suit and have found it pretty damned handy.   We’ve also added a personal touch to make it a little better for us. These clothes lines are available commercially, but they are incredibly cheap and easy to make from scratch, particularly if you want 2 of them. Probably the only key point to remember whether you buy a kit and make it up yourself, is not to over tighten the turnbuckles.   You’ll only do this once, because…

This where to How Too