How to Choose the Best Caravan?
Buying your first caravan is like building a house and the choices are endless.
The hours spent researching caravan manufacturers, comparing designs and specs, and examining build quality can be intense. But the reality is you don’t know precisely what sort of van you need until you have broken it in – towed it on the black top, set up, packed up, taken it offroad and off-grid. Many times.
After more than two years in our caravan, touring deserts, mountains, bush and beaches, we have a clear idea of what we do and don’t want in our next van. And some things on our wish list might surprise you. Here are 13 changes we would make to our next caravan.
Smaller rig
Bigger is not always better. With caravans getting forever larger and more luxurious, there’s the temptation to get as big as you can tow. And while it’s wonderful travelling with all the mod-cons of home, the bigger the rig, the greater the weight burden, the more fuel you burn, and the harder it is to manoeuvre. If you’ve ever tried to reverse a 24-foot caravan into a mouse hole in the forest, you’ll know what I mean.
We are a family of five with three kids aged 11, eight and six. Having completed a half-lap of Australia in 2021, and with more extended trips planned, we wanted a full-sized family caravan. We opted for a 22-foot semi-offroad Franklin Razor. The triple-bunk van has a north-south double bed up front, a five-seater club lounge in the middle and a full ensuite opposite the bunks at the rear. While we much prefer to be outside when travelling, we also recognise that during a rainstorm, windstorm or mosquito plague, inside is the only place to be. We love that we can all fit around the dining table, and we have more cupboard storage than we need.
The downside is our caravan is a monster to tow, with an aggregate trailer mass (ATM) of 3.5 tonne. Add to that an extended draw bar and extra clearance, and it’s a big unit to manoeuvre and park. Too big for some little off-the-beaten track campgrounds and tight access roads. In hindsight, we think we would have been well served by a 19-foot van, even if it meant sacrificing our north-south bed and club lounge and settling for a shower over toilet. But we would miss the concertina blind separating us from the gromets at night. It’s hard to imagine squeezing five humans into a smaller space right now, but my husband and I do look forward to a time when we can downsize to a single-axle, go-anywhere offroad caravan, sans bunks.
Mattress upgrade
A caravan mattress is like an uber-fashionable haircut. It feels amazing in store, then you wake up the next morning and wonder what on earth you’ve done. I’ll make a huge generalisation and say most standard caravan mattresses are ordinary. Some are downright punishing. One of the first things we bought for our van after that first night was an 8cm memory foam mattress topper. It has made our mattress infinitely more comfortable, but we kick ourselves for not enquiring about upgrade options before we closed the sale. Buy the most expensive mattress on offer. It’s money well spent. We also have a pull-out bolster on our bed, which serves as a space saver to accommodate the club lounge. It’s inconvenient and needs to be remade each day and will be jettisoned in favour of a full-size mattress in our next van.
Drinking water tank
By far the biggest inhibitor of our off-grid adventures is water. We use water judiciously when unplugged and can stretch our two 95-litre tanks out to a week, supplemented with a couple of fresh-water jerry cans. However, we would love to be able to carry non-potable water when it’s available, such as from a river or bore. In our next caravan we will install a designated drinking water tank and a separate tank for showering and washing up. This way we can lengthen our stay by tapping into non-potable water sources (with a 12V pump and filter), without contaminating our drinking water.
Composting toilet
After water, our toilet is the next biggest caravanning killer when we’re off-grid. We currently have a 20-litre chemical toilet. When used full time, the cassette lasts about three days, and that’s factoring in tree wees from the two boys. A shovel is not particularly appealing for anyone. We could buy an extra cassette but it’s more weight and the thought of a stowing mishap with a full unit makes my stomach turn. Instead, we will opt for a composting toilet and are considering having one retrofitted in our current caravan. Units like Nature’s Head last much longer than traditional porta-loos (weeks rather than days) and offer a more sustainable solution for managing human waste. Not only do they have less odour (when used properly) but they also negate the need to visit a dump point ever again; the peat ‘compost’ is simply bagged and disposed of in a rubbish bin.
Grey water bypass
We don’t want wastewater stinking out our grey water tank unnecessarily when it’s not required to be captured. It makes sense to have a grey water bypass so that water can be discharged directly into a drain or (responsibly) onto the ground. In our current van, wastewater passes through our grey water tank before entering our outflow pipe and sullage hose. This is a design flaw that only serves to spoil our tank with soap, grease and other odour-causing kitchen and bathroom detritus that could easily be diverted. Another must-have for us in our next van is an external flushing valve to clean out the grey water tank periodically after use (Crusaders have this feature).
Power boost
I never wanted to be the family producing enough electricity to power a small village. As a caravanning kid of the 1980s, solar-powered coffee machines, air fryers and other whizz-bang appliances were never a thing. BUT modern technology is power hungry and, as much as I love the simplicity of caravan life, I accept there’s a place for an off-grid energy solution to support appliances that draw a lot of amps. Our current set-up is modest. We have two solar panels on the roof feeding into two 120Ah AGM batteries. Short of a sun-blocking dust storm of biblical proportions, it’s enough to keep the lights on, water pump running and phones charged. We don’t run any big kitchen appliances, but it would be nice to plug in the kettle and toaster, and do the occasional load of washing, water permitting. We also have laptops and cameras that need juice, together with our electric toothbrushes (my one luxury on the road). With this in mind, our next caravan will have more grunt under the bed. We will aim for a 2000W inverter with a 200Ah lithium battery. This will be sufficient to power everything except the air-conditioner. For that we’d be looking at a 3000W inverter, but now we’re just getting silly.
Gas heater
We’re normally chasing the sun in our caravan, so what a shock it was when we woke to a crisp one degree morning at a free camp in the NT’s West MacDonnell Ranges last year. I thought a heater was superfluous, but my goosebumps told me otherwise. We’ve considered retrofitting a diesel heater in our caravan, but it’s another fuel source to manage. Instead, we’ll opt for something like a Truma Combi gas heater in our next caravan. These nifty devices have the dual function of providing instant hot water and ducted heating simultaneously. Extra points for energy efficiency.
Ditch the oven
While our wish list is long, there are some things we can do without in our next caravan. Namely our oven. Many vanners ditch them to save space, but our motivation has more to do with function than storage. We rarely use it, mostly because it leaches heat and is terribly inefficient. Aside from keeping a few snags warm, it’s not much chop. We prefer to crank up the heat under the hood of our Ziggy barbecue.
Bedside niches
Oh, how we wish we had these little cut out hidey holes in our bedside wardrobes for storing easy-access books, phones, chargers and water bottles. The bottom of our wardrobe has a huge, underutilised cavity that goes to waste. We can put things on the small bedside shelves above our drawers, but they can’t stay there in transit and anything tall (like a water bottle) gets knocked over the instant you open the wardrobe door.
Lights and sockets
We don’t necessarily need more of them, but they need to be better positioned. We need a light by the front of the caravan to illuminate our slide-out barbecue (for now a magnetic USB light does the trick). Ditto a light on the blind side of the van for accessing the tunnel boot and power, water and sullage connections after dark. We require more 12V plugs and they need to be near storage pouches where our devices live. We do not need more internal lights. Our caravan lights up like Times Square on New Years Eve. However, I think an orange/bug light is essential for outside and I’d also like a dimmer, so we can better soak up the outback ambience without dazzling the local wildlife.
Slide-out washing machine
We have a 3.2kg top loader washing machine. It does a reasonable job but is in the bottom of a cupboard and requires emptying out a shelf to access and removing the cupboard panel to wrangle when it becomes unbalanced, which is often. I’m not sold on a wall-mounted front-loader because of weight and performance, but a slide out unit would be a better solution.
Air-bag suspension
This has got nothing to do with giving the van a softer ride on corrugations and everything to do with banishing levelling ramps from my life. While not a big deal, levelling ramps are needed at about three quarters of the sites we visit, and air bag suspension would mean one less thing to carry.
Try before you buy
One thing we will do before we sign for our next van is try before we buy. New caravans are a huge financial commitment, and it pays to make the right decision. I’ve hired vans through RV share platform Camplify which enables you to rent everything from a small vintage van to a modern bells-and-whistles offroad rig. The Airbnb of caravanning, Camplify has more than 6000 hosts around the country, so you’re bound to find something you aspire to own where you need it.
THE NEXT STEP
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