I think part of the problem is, unless water is pouring in, damp is not really obvious until it is checked at its first service which is normally a year after purchase. Because of the time elapsed and the use it is had, dealers and manufacturers coerce people into a repair. Purchase a damp meter perhaps is a good idea and monitor your pride and joy yourself !!
After watching the construction video on youtube and seeing the guy whizzing around with the mastic gun.
It comes to no surprise that one or two will develop leaks, and mine was one of them.
We have a 2009 charisma. Second service. Damp in bathroom corner over toilet. Dealer took it in resealed and we had it back in 3 days. No other issues since. J x
Billy, i think a better basic design is required, do we rearly need opening windows at the front of a caravan, overlapping seams are a good idea, until recently they were putting seams above the front windows which overlapped if you were lucky, its easy to design a joint to stop water ingress, infact you can make gas tight seams without useing mastic, i know, i,v made them. It seems to me that caravan design has moved on very little for 40 years untill very recently, you,d think they didnt want them to last a day longer than the warranty, which might be very near the truth.
my old avondale has a one piece fibre glass roof which sits on the top like a lid with overlapping joints.. it dosnt rely entirely on mastic not to leak..
all the window rubbers do though.. a caravan has yards and yards of potential leak spots.. its not surprising that some of them leak.. large awnings pulling at the sides dont help ether..
does the average user know how much stress a large awning can put on the side joints of their new pride and joy.. i seriously doubt it..
all in all a very light weight flimsy structure with more thought going into all the luxury gear packed inside than the basic structure..
having said that i am sure a better made structure with less luxury inside would not sell that well.. the British market buys a van more on whats inside than how well its made..
making the basic structure light weight.. as flimsy as possible and filling it with "luxury" is what sells British caravans..
the makers are caught in the trap pretty well like the buyers are.. people really do get what they pay for..
durability is an assumption (made by the buyer) that just isnt there.. the reasons are pretty obvious to me and i dont see the situation changing..
Push the dealer under the sale of goods act about free from minor defects, if they dont budge take them to court, because at the end of the day, even under the sog, its not what you or the dealer think is reasonable it is what a judge would think, and for a van of that price, etc ect no judge would say that it was reasonable for a 1 year old van to take in water, they will try to go down the repair route and if you agree make it clwar that you will give them ine attempt and if not you expect a replacement or refund. This happened to me a few years back with a £36000 motorhome which had a problem after a couple of months with a panel which started to show paint problems, I agreed to them trying to repair to make it as good as new on the understanding that if they didnt they would replace the van, the repair was awful and they did replace the motorhome.
Can you not try trading standards there is something called not fit for purpose .We got a bailey it was 5 yrs old from Glossop 6 month after we told them it was damp the readings were high they did a good deal and we got a coachman wihout too much cost .Surley if they can do it for a used van you should have better chance with a new one .What about manufacturers warranty
As far as I'm concerned, the Swift Group have a lot to answer for. They produce the bulk of caravan and motorhome models these days and I hear of so many problems. We had a Swift Suntor Motorhome that had terrible damp problems and Swift wanted NOTHING to do with it. We had to pay a good amount of money to get it fixed. Then sold it because we were so disillusioned.
The build quality in Swift models is no good, in my opinion, and I'll never buy from them again!
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Topic: Damp after first service
