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Well made my choice, the 2009 compactalite 250 model, with the 2,5mtr sq ground sheet from camping and general, inc postage £175.95. Hopefully will arrive to try out this weekend. Last timeI place an order with C&G just before midnight on a Wednesday delivery was on the Friday...impressive.

Now I expect I will find it cheaper..........best stop looking!

No worries Anniemacxx

bazzerg, please let us know how you get on this weekend

Brought the Compactalite 2009 model from Camping and General myself today. I found this the cheapest I could find when I was looking.

I have been contemplating getting one all season, but didn't want to spend more than £150 on it. Now the price has come down I took the plunge.

I choose it over the Sunncamp Ultima 260, purely because I preferred its looks and pole arrangement. Currently I have a Sunncamp Scenic, little porch awing which is ok, but not really big enough to get a table or 2 chair in. I was looking for somthing a bit bigger, but easier to put up and dry out than my NR cotton awning.

Still think the full awnings are the best, but hopefully this is the next best thing, for winter camping.

Well it was delivered before 1 pm the day after I placed my order from C&G...however due to the gales and rain over the weekend at Teversal I was not brave enough to put it up !!

I did open the bag and everything needed was in it

Never mind though, now got an excuse to go away again....

Hi bazzerg,

Isn,t that just typical when you want to try a new toy out!

Let us know how you get on when you eventually get to use it.

Hi

We have just returned from our 3rd outing with our 2009 model purchased earlier this year. I'm very aware that any comments made about an awning are very subjective and dependent upon the experiences/needs/expectations etc of the person making them so keep that in mind!

We were looking to replace our Scenic Plus which had become brittle and sad - it had served us well over many short breaks and in all types of weather. We have a full Bradcot awning and an Ultima 360 so had ideas about what we were looking for. Needless to say we also had ideas of what we didn't want!!

This weekend we (2 of us) put the compactalite 250 up in a bit of a breeze which at times was a bit tricky however once up it proved to be stable and coped well. It is well guyed (7 I think) and has additional storm straps which we used. These can vibrate noisily in the wind however a couple of elastic bands part way down the length solved that. We did not have a problem with flapping where the sides meet the van. On each side there is an interesting arrangement with 2 triangles of fabric which pull out parallel with the van; there is also a flap of fabric that has shock cord in it that gets pegged down. The awning is spacious and the headroom is good. DH is 6'2" so really appreciated that. Our 2 chairs looked positively lost in the space but we have no problem accommodating our more normal 4. 

It does not come with a draught skirt - we have kept the one from our scenic plus - and to help keep some draught out it is necessary to peg down the exterior fabric at the bottom of the walls. This has brass grommets in it but they are not big enough to get rock pegs through - we were on hard standing so using rock pegs for pegging down. We were able to use the pegs supplied with the awning in the grommets and they coped fine.

At the end of the day it is a lightweight awning and as such we are very pleased with it. We did get some wet through the awning channel strip but past experience says that this will lessen through use. We did not get any puddling on the roof - this has been a big problem with our Ultima and one we were hoping to avoid. All the zips worked fine and we haven't spotted any faulty stitching.

For our purposes it ticks the boxes. My only reservation is that for those 2 or 3 trips that we do in the winter, turning up in the cold and dark it will be harder/longer to pitch than the Scenic plus was.

Hope this is of help to someone. Happy to try to answer any other specific questions.

Thanks Annegor for your helpful feedback to my original post on this thread.

Just a few questions about the front window zip arrangements:

I'll try and explain as clearly as I can what I mean!

If I remember correctly from my last visit to the dealership the right hand front window (looking from outside) has three zips, one to zip the window up/down, one for the curtain and one for the flyscreen/mesh screen. There is a sleeve pocket at the bottom of the right hand side wall to stuff some of the unzipped bits into. You cannot completely unzip and remove some parts and there doesn't appear to be any way of clipping back some of the (unused or unzipped) window bits - they have to be stuffed into the bottom right sidewall pocket and can look untidy e.g  if you just want to use the mesh bit zipped down. Do you get my drift? Seemed a little bit of a Heath Robinson affair. Perhaps I missed something - the dealer could not enlighten me - how did you get on?

Cheers

Hi lunar & others

I've used the Compactalite 250, 2009 model, for this summer.  (see my reports elsewhere on this site).   There are some good points and some not-so-good points about this awning but I suppose for £179 it's not too bad. Best of a bad bunch you could say?  The front 'triple window' arrangement that your talking about is actually one of the good things about this awning.  It's really flexible with regards to window arrangements.  The triangular pocket for holding the side doors is OK as it gets them completely out of the way when not in use.  We did get some pooling in the roof during heavy rain, but this only happened once.  You'll find that as long as there's a bit of wind with the rain, then it'll blow the roof upwards and empty the pool of water! Tightening all of the guys helps prevent this too - all nine of them!  Did have leaking at the gutter joint, same as others have said here - but our friendly dealer was very good and supplied a free can of sealant spray to help this!  Certainly found it better than the similarly designed Kampa awning that I bought before. (Dodgy doors and mud wall design!)  It'll be very interesting to see how much the 2010 model changes?   

Hi Lunar

I know what you are referring to re the window arrangement. During the time we have used the awning we have never (sadly) needed to use the mesh rather than the window so our mesh panel has been tucked into the pocket on the side wall. I didn't find it too difficult to fold it fairly neatly and tuck it away. The curtain folds/rolls to the side and there are retaining straps and toggles to keep this in place neatly. The triangle windows at the sides unzip and roll back to their own retaining toggles. I'm afraid we haven't had a whole panel unzipped so at this moment in time I'm puzzling. I'm sure it was one of the things we tried at the dealers but don't recall for sure what we did. I think you may be right that the panel has to go in the pocket. We're away for Half term week so will check it out then.

The doors have double ended zips which allow you to open the top to let air in should you wish. This is a feature we liked when we had trailer tents and wanted ventilation but didn't want the children to crawl out!

Cheers Dougiew. I didn't like the Kampa either....and thanks for the tip re sealant spray...I'll negotiate a free one!

Thanks again Annegor. I like the double ended zip arrangement too so you can have the windows 'verandah' style.

Perhaps we'll have a heatwave at half term so you can try out the mesh window.....yeah right!.......anyway, have a great time and I'll await your further report.

Hi Bob

Not sure about the top ferrules either...!  But the other straps inside are for hanging an inner bedroom.

Cheers

Dougie

I think those extra straps are for pegging down at the bottom. I too was puzzled by these but visited the manuafcturers site today and looked at their pitching instructions for the new 2010 model, and they appear to be pegging the same arrangement out on these as the 2009 model.

This bank holiday was the first time our compacta-lite 250 got soaked (2nd time in use), and it leaked on the awning channel webbing and also through the middle pole seam and if that wasn't enough it also appeared to let water in through the stiching on the vinyl windows. Plus the pool of water sitting on the roof had to keep knocking it off.

Is this normal? I mean the leaking on first real raining? It was drips and small puddles....but the zips and seams were soaking. We had to pack it up wet yesterday and its still drying out in my kitchen! The indtrucions didn't say that it needs to be weathered before use?

I had some of the exact same problems the first time out!  Got in touch with shop and he sent me a spray for the gutter leaks and to be fair, it did the trick.  Water did pool in the roof too so next time I took more care tightening the side guys to stretch the roof out and it's much better now.  Didn't have the zips problems though - so you best get in touch with supplier again.

Dougie

Called C&G this morning, very helpfull. They are sending me out some seam sealant. Giving that a try first and then if it continues I'm to let them know.

Can't say fairer than that. Good service.