I know you can buy a noseweight gauge to check your tow ball weight, for e.g. my Citroen C4 Grand Picasso is stated as no more than 50kg.
However, does anybody know of a way / any equipment for weighing the actual caravans overall 'laden' weight once loaded up?
I'm personally not aware of anything but to me it's just as important as getting your noseweight correct, as there's so many ramifications of an over weight van.
I also think weighing every item one by one before placing in cvan is too time consuming.
Therefore fellow caravanners, would you be interested in a portable and light to carry and store, way of simply measuring your caravans overall load weight once it's all packed, that would only take 1-2 mins if something for this was made available and at the right price?
As daft as it sounds I actually have every item stored in our TT on an excel spreadsheet. The list includes what the item is, how much it weighs and the cost of it.
To start the list off can be time consuming because you may have to weigh certain items to know the weight. Thereafter any new items can just be added as you will know the weight of what has just bought.
Using excel the list calculates the total weight as you add or remove items. That way we always know the total laden weight of the TT. The only thing you need to do is make sure the weight is distributed correctly and check the nose weight.
The list covers three things IMHO and they are the total laden weight, what you actually have and the total cost, which if needed can be produced for insurance purposes.
The other method is to take your fully laden unit to a local weigh bridge.
You can use portable axle weighers but I imagine the cost to buy would be quite high. Unless you are carrying heavy items like bikes/several cases of beer etc you are unlikely to come anywhere near overloading caravan. If you just carry a couple of gas bottles/clothes/food/camping chairs/table you will be ok.
If you want to find weight of loaded caravan with stuff you normally carry, drive to a local weighbridge. If they are too busy to allow you to detach caravan from car weigh car/caravan together, then return & weigh car, gives you caravan weight.
The only way I know is to take your outfit to a public weighbridge. The one local to us charges £10 and that's to weigh whatever you want ie. car and caravan independently or both together as a unit then either the car or caravan and calculate the difference between the two.
Both describe the reich caravan weight control unit. Having read some people's comments who own them they seem to work quite well
------------- Bill
For a licence dated 1997 or later you must add together the plated max weight of the caravan and trailer, if the total is 3500 or less you can tow it. You may even tow a caravan with a MAM greater than the cars unladen mass the restriction was removed in 2013