Minimising Condensation

Minimising Condensation

Condensation occurs in your camper usually just after sun up after very cold nights. The colder the night the worse it gets! Moisture in the air usually from your breath condenses on most metal surfaces as there is a good deal of aluminium in A'van camper trailers. This can cause all sorts of problems if you choose to ignore it. If you have a TV/video on the drawer cabinet, water droplets can fall from the roof onto the unit causing the dew protection circuitry to activate, preventing the set from switching on. We have ruined a couple of books because of water damage due to condensation droplets. If you have a camper with front shelves be aware that the hinge area gets very wet. We avoid putting lap tops, cameras, radios etc. in this area. We do ponder just where this liquid leaks away to and is it damaging the side walls of the camper? Does anyone know? This problem seems to worry many A'vanners and it was raised at a club meeting at Imbil in May 2001. Sue Van Baardwyck advised us to have all top vents open at least 3 inches. We tried this and it helped marginally - we were then very brave and left them wide open all night, but still got great gobs of water and near froze to death! Having ALL windows and vents open also does not work. Our friends in the States mostly have air conditioners so they do not have these problems, as an AC removes almost all the moisture from the air in both cooling and heating modes. To minimise condensation if bush camping, all you can do is open all the windows and curtains and let as much sun in as possible. If on a powered site we use a different strategy. As soon as we wake up we switch on a small fan heater - hottest setting, and open all top vents. This makes a big difference as long as you start just before sunrise. A fan on cold also works but you tend to get frostbite!

We suggest if you have them that condensation problems be addressed to avoid other problems further down the track. Tell us your views please. The photos were all taken in A'vans with outside temperature under 5 degrees. In our view all RV manufacturers need to address this problem as you probably don't need rocket science to solve/minimise it. It rarely gets a mention in Caravan World yet bobs up all the time on newsgroups and bulletin boards.

A Few Ideas

Moisture does not seem to form as much on vinyl coated surfaces so why not coat some of the aluminium? An easy fix for the main offending roof apex is to simply attach PVC moulding on the outside of the aluminium running along the inside of the roof. We haven't tried this as yet, but if anyone has please share the info here. Another solution is to maybe plastic coat both apex aluminium extrusions. In the meantime another more practical member suggests an old towel on the end of your broom to get rid of the droplets along the top apex. Hard to do on those freezing mornings! We would emphasise that the examples below are EXTREME and the worst we could possibly find, so new buyers should not be put off by these problems. For anyone worried about this it should be noted that condensation actually occurs in ALL BRANDS OF CAMPERS regardless of cost and even in $250,000.00 motorhomes. You will find that by using a bit of commonsense you can minimise condensation.

Bob Eustace

A Novel Condensation Solution from the A.C.T.

We have just returned from a most enjoyable trip in the van to Port Stephens on the NSW Central Coast, then inland to Mudgee. Discovered (at last) how to fix early morning condensation water drips - go to Mudgee in the middle of winter! The water vapour condenses on the aluminium then promptly freezes. I could scratch my name in the "frost", but no drips!

Keith & Pam Thomas

Brian and Jackie wrote:-

We're having trouble with condensation in the van on cold nights. We have plenty of ventilation but still get water dripping from the metal strip on the roof and around the windows. Does anyone else have this problem, and if so, have they any solutions.

Brian and Jackie Hawkins

Another Email from Keith and Pam:-

On the subject of condensation, Jim Wright (a fellow Sportliner owner) covers all his offending aluminium with masking tape. Jim swears as to its effectiveness in stopping condensation. Whilst agreeing this could be an answer to the problem, I cannot see Pam letting me stick masking tape all over our baby! In the long term, masking tape gets dirty, can lift at the corners and can "ooze" terrible sticky stuff. Meanwhile, we will continue to wipe over the aluminium (yet another advantage of a Sportliner - lower ceilings), and wait until some bright spark comes up with a more aesthetically acceptable solution!

Keith & Pam Thomas