If you want to know the best way to protect your tourer and keep it in tip-top condition, John Sootheran’s got it covered!
CARAVAN COVERS come in many styles and sizes. Choosing your cover wisely is important – the best can add years of life (and looks) to your tourer, while others have the potential to damage it.
Selecting a suitable material is vital, as any cover that traps moisture on the surface of the caravan for long periods may do more harm than good.
Most caravans spend at least half of the year just sitting dormant – on your drive or a seasonal pitch, in a farmyard or at a specialist storage facility.
Wherever you keep it, your van will deteriorate most rapidly when it’s not in use. Moving parts can seize up, seals and sealant perish, finishes discolour and metal components corrode.
This degeneration is partly down to the weather, but it’s also a result of the effects of UV radiation in sunlight. UV light can be very damaging to caravans, causing cracking, flaking and chalking in plastic, rubber, glass fibre and paint.
UV affects paint in two ways. UV-A dries out the resins in paint, causing it to shrink and crack, while UV-B attacks the pigments, causing discoloration.
As well as protecting your van from these adverse effects, a cover safeguards your cherished tourer from the negative consequences of airborne contaminants, tree sap and bird droppings (which can be damaging and tough to remove).
For example, without a towing cover, particulate-filled diesel fumes get caught in the vortices behind the tow car and become ingrained in the surface of the caravan’s front panel. This is damaging and discolouring.
Regarding the interior of the caravan, a cover shields furnishings and finishes from the fading effects of sunlight.
Caravan covers can also provide an additional layer of protection against physical attack by thieves. With a cover, opportunist thieves can’t see inside, and if they do break in, they can’t see out either, which must be unnerving, even to the most brazen crook. This might well encourage them to go elsewhere.
So, not only will a cover save you days of elbow-grease and cleaning time over the lifetime of the van, it should also result in a higher residual value when you come to sell on your tourer.
By buying and using a good-quality cover, you are also demonstrating to potential buyers that you’re the sort of person who really looks after their possessions. The cover should have maintained your caravan in the best possible condition – and you should point this out to prospective buyers.
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