Stowford Farm Meadows

Why Have I Got A Leak?

The first indication that you have a leak in your van may be a damp patch appearing in a wall. You may notice a discolouration in the laminate or the wall being soft to touch.

For a damp problem to show itself in this way, the van may have been leaking for up to a year, depending on the size of leak.

Where Is It Coming In?

This is a hard question to answer, water can travel through the van and appear in a different area to the leak.

The main problems occur through the caravans rails, such as the awning rail, the roof light and the window seals.

How Do I Stop It?

There are two different ways to do this.

The best way is to remove the rail or roof light and re-bed it with a non-setting bedding mastic. This is ok providing you are confident that the wood behind the rail hasn't rotted. If it has the rail may not be able to be screwed back to the van, causing obvious problems.
The second, cheaper and easier way is to seal over the rail in much the same way as you would seal around a bath with a silicone sealant. To do all the rails normally takes 1-2 hours.

What Do I Do About Damage?

Damage to the woodwork that has been caused by a leak is irreversible. Whether the woodwork is worth replacing totally depends on the age of the van and the amount of damage involved.

Replacing panels and timber is a costly job due to the amount of man hours involved and in older vans isn't generally cost effective.

Panels can be replaced by removing the rotten ones and gluing new panels in their place, big, flat panels are easier to replace than front window sections.

Although we have a device which can indicate the extent of the damage which we use when carrying out a damp check, the amount of damage is hard to assess until the whole area has been exposed, at which point the work will have to be completed, which is why it is sometimes hard to give a quote.