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I don't think there is anything wrong in buying a van with a small ammount of damp     if...................

1/   you buy it really cheap (few hundred quid) and you want to do it up or......

2/   you don't intnend to keep it very long, say....you only want to use it for a few trips and then scrap it.

Years ago we had vans that we knew had a patch in the usual places, we had hollidays with the kids in them and it never bothered us. We used to take it for granted that if you bought an old van it would have some, thats all we could afford but we had some great times. The van was just a place to lay our heads.

I love my van, it's my holiday apartment, but sometimes I think we are perhaps so wrapped up in our quest to have the perfect van we loose sight of the reasons we started caravanning in the first place.

Now I think we are more wise to the dreaded damp and what it can do and for me this site has enlightened the facts, this makes me slightly obsessed to my annoyance lol.

Quote: Originally posted by Janx on 20/11/2009

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I love my van, it's my holiday apartment, but sometimes I think we are perhaps so wrapped up in our quest to have the perfect van we loose sight of the reasons we started caravanning in the first place.

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My fisrt van was a Swift Challenger, dry when purchased but I soon realised that it had had a lot of water ingress earlier in it's life. Front windows and roof / wall repair to blame. Having previously worked in a local boatyard I was able to blag a space in one of the sheds with good ventilation and set about removing the saloon area furniture, and then the front wall lining. The extent of the damage soon becamd apparent, and I stripped everything forward of the kitchen. The wood framing which had been previously wet had dried out, rotted, and was basically powder, and considering how much structural integrity there isn't in a caravan to start with, it was only the aluminium outer layer that held it all together. Having re-framed and with new insulation I clad it all with a lightweight oak faced ply, coated with danish oil and it looked superb. Not what I planned for my first forray into caravaning but a real education and quite a steep learning curve. (Also very satisfying when finished). Since then when buying a van I have found allsorts of problems that owners were not (?) aware of and saved myself much time and hassle. Buyer beware!

Quote: Originally posted by bordercaz on 19/11/2009

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Not only all that, but the weight of the extra water in the wood will make the van heavier to tow and upset the balance, thereby making it potentially unsafe and more likely to be the cause of an accident, even if it doesn't fall apart.

And it will not be very nice for anyone with any breathing problems to spend a night sleeping in it as it could exacerbate their illness.

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Quote: Originally posted by pinkfloyd on 22/11/2009

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Quote: Originally posted by bordercaz on 19/11/2009

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Not only all that, but the weight of the extra water in the wood will make the van heavier to tow and upset the balance, thereby making it potentially unsafe and more likely to be the cause of an accident, even if it doesn't fall apart.

And it will not be very nice for anyone with any breathing problems to spend a night sleeping in it as it could exacerbate their illness.

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Goodness me, if a van is so heavy because of all the extra water carried by damp wood then it would qualify for keeping goldfish in.

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No, goldfish can't swim through wood - but a piece of wood can hold it's own volume in water.

Quote: Originally posted by ArtJackson on 23/11/2009

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Damp can add a lot of weight to a caravan, one way of finding the extent of damp if you know the makers' stated unladen weight of caravan is to weigh it. The extra weight will be the water.

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Quote: Originally posted by motley on 23/11/2009

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Or the mud and crud collected under the van!....

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