I am looking at buying a used porch awning which is about 12' x 8 ' approx. My caravan is about 18' 6 " and would need a very large awning of which there are very few on the used market.. There are 2 points on which I would welcome advice -is it much easier to erect a larger size porch than a full awning, and if it works out that the upright support has to be against a window , will it cause damage to the window by rubbing against it .
Advice based on your experience would be appreciated
Hi, I use my porch awning when going away just for weekend or couple of days. Very easy to put up (once you have worked out the right way for the poles). I do prefer the full awning for longer periods. You position the porch awning where you want it (obviously include the door) so you can put it away from the window. They are ideal for the boots and other stuff you dont want dragging into the van
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Our van is a similar if not the same size as yours. We bought a full awning from a firm in Denby Dale, later buying a half awning as per our gallery. The half awning is a super size for a family weekend away - it will take a camp bed if necessary, also seats but essentially it is somewhere to take off wet/muddy stuff and leave it! Neither the full or the half awning are difficult to put up if you take your time. The half awning is just smaller and only has 2 roof supports as opposed to the 5 for the full one. A friend, with a similar sized caravan, was concerned that the upright might rub against the bedroom window as this is consiered the weakest point and therfore it would be most inadvisable. Needless to say it doesn't , it actually falls between the window and the opendoor, landing beyond the kitchen window.
We have both the porch and the full awning and have just come to the conclusion(after 4 years) that there is no advantage in using the "porch" and from now on will be using the full awning all the time, its just as quick to erect.
At the end of the day it depends what you want to use the awning for....we did have a full awning but sold it and bought a light weight porch awning which is much easier for us to put up plus has load of space to store boots chairs and table ect.,
We had this quandry as our van is a 20ft+ outfit and we couldnt afford and new awning and couldnt find a 2nd hand one. We had just bought a new caravan and a vehicle big enough to tow it.
At the Caravan show at the Birmingham NEC we saw the suncamp 360 which is a porch awning but after using it its easy to erect and there is loads of room to use it as a proper awning. We are very impressed and looking forward to our next 2 major outings which are a week in Northumberland early July and 2 weeks in France late July and August.
our caravan is 7.81 metres we had a full size awning that came with it, but never attempted to put it up as it would have been huge! So we sold it and bought ourselves a bradcot portico XL, its great easy to put up with the easy system poles, its the same width as a full awning so there is loads of room but just half the size and half the weight, you can also put an annexe in so when the children are bigger and want to sleep in the awning they can.
We purchased a porch awning and sold it a few years later as we found it easier to put up the full awning. Mind you our van is not as long as yours. If we could have purchased a larger porch awning I think we would have kept with it. We now use a Caravanstore which we find suits our needs.
We have a full awning (almost 20 foot of the thing!!) and an Ultima 260 - we use the Ultima for weekends when there is a real chance of it getting wet, as it's so easy to dry. But we use do use the full awning for weekends - it doesn't actually take much longer to put up, it's just a pain to dry!!!