Damp in a caravan: the signs, the cost and the value

How water gets into a caravan

Damp is the most common reason a caravan loses value, and most owners find out late. By the time you can see it, water has usually been getting in for a season or two.

A touring caravan is not built like a house. The walls, roof and floor are bonded sandwich panels: a thin outer skin, a layer of insulating foam, then an inner board, glued together as one piece. It is light and strong, but it has a weakness. The panels are joined at the corners, along the roof edges and around every opening, and those joints are kept watertight by sealant and rubber gaskets, not by the panel itself.

Sealant has a working life. It hardens, shrinks and pulls away from the aluminium over time, depending on how the van has been stored and how much sun and frost it has taken. Once a joint opens up, even by a fraction, water finds it.

The usual entry points are:

• Failed sealant along the awning rail, corner mouldings and roof edges
• Window and door frames, where the gasket has flattened or screws have worked loose
• Roof lights and vents, especially older ones that have gone brittle
• Stress cracks in the outer skin, often at a window corner, caused by years of flexing on the road
• Anything bolted through the body, such as an aerial or awning bracket

Here is the part that catches people out. Because the panel is bonded, water does not simply run down and drip on the floor. It soaks into the foam and travels sideways along the bond line. That is why the wet patch inside is often nowhere near the leak outside, and why a repairer has to trace it back.

The early warning signs you can spot yourself

You need no equipment to catch most of these. Open the van up on a dry day and look properly.

• The smell. That musty, earthy smell when you open the door is the earliest sign of all. A dry caravan smells of nothing much.
• Staining on the wall board. Tide marks, dark edges or a yellow-brown shadow, usually low down in corners, above windows or behind the seat backs.
• Blown or bubbling board. Press the wall gently with your thumb. Sound board is firm. Damp board feels spongy, or the decorative surface starts to lift and bubble away from the ply behind it.
• Soft floor underfoot. Walk the whole floor slowly, particularly by the door, under the washroom and around the wheel arches. Any sponginess that was not there last year matters.
• Swollen lockers and furniture edges. Chipboard and ply swell when wet. Locker bases that have gone lumpy tell you water has been sitting there.
• Condensation patterns. Some condensation is normal in cold weather. Condensation that forms in the same patch every time often marks a cold spot where the insulation has gone wet.

Check the outside too. Sealant that has gone hard, cracked or lifted is a warning even if the inside is still dry. So is rust or mould on screw heads.

How damp is measured and what the readings mean

A damp check is done with a moisture meter, which has two small pins pressed against the wall board. The reading is a percentage. A proper check takes readings at dozens of points around the van. One high reading means less than a pattern that gets worse towards a corner.

Readings move with the weather and with how the van has been aired, so treat them as a guide. What matters is the trend and how widespread the high readings are.

What a repair actually involves

Can damp in a caravan be fixed? In most cases, yes. The question is whether it is worth doing.

A small job means finding the failed joint, stripping the old sealant, resealing properly and drying the area out. That is affordable on a van that is otherwise sound.

A serious job is different. The furniture comes out, the inner wall board is removed, the wet foam is cut away, new board and insulation go back in, then everything is resealed and refitted. Labour drives the price, not materials. Professional panel repairs of that kind often run well into four figures, and the number varies a lot depending on how far the water has travelled and whether the floor is involved. Nobody can quote it accurately without stripping it back.

When repairing is worth it, and when it is not

Repair makes sense when the damage is caught early, is limited to one area, and the caravan is worth several times the cost of the work. A newer van with one leaking roof light is worth putting right.

It usually does not make sense when:

• The estimate is close to, or above, what the caravan is worth once fixed
• Readings are over 25% in several separate areas, which points to widespread failure rather than one leak
• The floor is soft, which is the expensive one and usually where owners stop
• The van is older, the layout is dated and buyers were already thin on the ground
• You are paying storage every month while you decide

Many owners spend more on storage and a partial repair than the caravan was ever going to fetch.

What damp does to resale value

Declared damp knocks a caravan down hard. Most private buyers walk away, and dealers price in the worst case because they have to. A van with no damp history sells on its condition and layout. A van with known damp sells on what it will cost to put right, and that gap is usually wider than the repair bill itself.

It is still worth knowing the real number first. A free caravan valuation tells you what yours is worth as it stands, which turns the repair decision into a calculation rather than a guess.

Your options if you sell it as it is

You do not have to fix damp before you sell. There are damp caravan buyers who price vans on their actual condition, soft floors and blown panels included, and who take the repair on themselves. If the van is past repairing at all, you can also scrap or remove a caravan and be rid of it, storage costs included.

Whichever route you take, do not hide it. A buyer finds damp within minutes, and a sale that falls through on the driveway wastes everybody's day.

If you would rather not take the repair on, describe the damp honestly on the form, including where it is and how bad you think it is. We buy caravans anywhere in the UK, damp and damaged ones included. The offer is free, there is no obligation and there are no fees. If you accept, collection is free.