Alutec,solid or Smart HT, the competition for your custom is warming up.
The main production appears to have no materials to rot, sounds good to me. have a look at the video, what do you think. 2014 Swift Smart Ht
Been to see one. It is excellent on the outside and extremely well put together, However, the interior is purely a matter of choice and it didn't ring our bell. Also the price is very upmarket compared with Swifts' other vans.
It will be interesting to see the new design being introduced throughout the range.
I am sure Swift have reserched this better than Bailey with their Alu-tec range which was introduced too early and wasn't tested enough.
------------- John
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Watched the 3 vids,& yes, impressive. No wood at all in the body, not even floor so nothing to rot even if seals fail & need resealing. So really all it needs is still to be good with no bits dropping off in 5, 10, 15yrs time.
The beauty of new non wood construction is that there is nothing to rot even if there is a leak. Granted you still want it sealed properly. I think resale values will be far higher with wood-free vans.
Our windows came with the house when we bought it 10 years ago and were probably here 10 years before that. I have never heard of anyone having their window frames fall out. Must be down to shoddy windows and/or installation.
Just been reading the article in this months CC magazine about the Swift Smart HT construction. Interesting and great to see that more manufacturers are developing new and improved build methods. The move away from timber and reducing the use of screwed jointing has to be the way forward. But isn't it a shame that we spend huge sums of money on our caravans almost in the expectation that they're going to leak.
Interestingly both Elddis and Swift state features such as cold bridge for their couplings. In the construction industry a cold bridge is a failure in the thermal performances of the envelope, me thinks they have their terminology back to front. We have an alutech Orion and the coupling between the walls and roof is the weak point in the fabric design even with a thermal break the inside and outside is only separated by a thin skin and condensation will still form if there is a big difference in air temperature. If it was a building all voids would be back filled with insulating expanding foam. The construction technology is still an improvement .