Just bought a motorhome? A Survival Guide for new motorhome owners.

If you’ve just bought your first motorhome, campervan or even caravan, congratulations. Fun and adventure await! We remember how excited we were when we first got a van, and to help you prepare for your first outing we’ve pulled together a survival guide for new motorhome owners.

Motorhomes are pretty simple really. Despite the vast archives of forums, magazine and blogs (like ours!), you don’t need to know much for your first outing. We’ve put together a quick checklist, to help you get out there and enjoy yourself without (a) mangling the van or (b) finding you can’t work the water heating and enduring a freezing shower.

Demonstration

If you’re buying from either a dealer or privately, the seller should be happy to give you a demo of this stuff. Make notes, video it on your phone, have 2 or 3 of you watching, whatever you need to do to remember it:

• How does the fridge work? If it’s 3 way, does it change over automatically or do you need to do it manually? Is there anything to stop two heating sources being selected at the same time (we’ve had ours on 230v and gas at the same time, it stops it working)?
• How are all the beds made up, are there any extra bits you need (we were missing a bit on our first van)?
• How are the tables made up and stored?
• How does the water heater work, and does it need some time before the water’s hot?
• How does the living space heater work?
• Where do you turn the gas on and off – at the bottle, at the isolator valves and at the appliances?
• If you can monitor the charge level of the leisure and starter batteries, how do you do it? Just for future reference: where is the leisure battery located (if under the bonnet, which one is the starter battery)?
• Same for fresh, grey and black water levels – can they be monitored?
• Where is the fresh water fill-up point, and the electrical hook-up?
• Where are all the 12V and 230V sockets inside the van?
• If there’s an inverter fitted (for running 230V AC stuff from your 12V DC leisure battery), where is it?
• How do you empty the grey water?
• How do you empty the black water (loo waste)?
• How do the windows and skylights open and close? How do the blinds open and close?
• How do the doors open, close and lock?
• If you have a TV system, how does it work (including lining up the satellite dish and storing it)?

Finding Somewhere to Go

We recommend staying close to home for your first night or two. If you can get on a campsite with electrical hook-up even better, so you can check everything works as it should.

You can use various apps, maps, websites, forums and books to find places to stay in your motorhome. We’ve written several posts detailing how we find places to sleep in a motorhome. These posts cover motorhome stopovers and campsites in the UK, as well as our favourite free overnight stops in Europe, fab first night motorhome stops from Calais, and much more. You can find all these posts in the How To… find places to sleep in a motorhome section on this blog.

Motorhomes Don’t Drive Like Cars, Take it Easy!

Even if you’re driving a relatively small campervan, it won’t drive quite like a car. Crank the size up to 3.5 tonne or more motorhome, and you’ll notice much more difference, things like:

• Motorhomes feel wide! That’s because they are wide, but not as wide as you might feel when you’re sat in the driver’s seat for the first time. We’d suggest using a quiet road or car park to get a feel for your road positioning.
• Your motorhome won’t slow down as quickly as your car when you brake. Leave a bigger space ahead of you than you might in car and start braking much earlier. If you do need to brake hard expect things inside cupboards to move, so be prepared for stuff to fall out when you open them unless they’re tightly packed.
• Cars can’t see past you, so might be more likely to caught out with heavy braking. Again, try to brake earlier than usual. Also indicate early if you need to pull out, to pass a cyclist for example.
• The longer your van, the more you need to delay turning into junctions. If you don’t, the back end of the van will go up the kerb.
• On dual carriageways and motorways, large overtaking vehicles will ‘push’ and then ‘pull’ your van as they pass. Try not to over-compensate with your steering.
• If you have a left-hand drive van in the UK, having a passenger look up the road for you is helpful, especially when you need to overtake or pass obstacles parked in your way.

Our overall best advice is this: don’t panic. You’ll probably feel you’re holding up the traffic sometimes, we do. We’ve been driving motorhomes for over a decade and we haven’t got any faster in all those years!

No-one wants you to have an accident though. Take it easy, don’t go any faster than you’re comfortable with. Pull over where it’s safe if you need a moment to regroup and let the faster traffic past (or go all the way around a roundabout to let faster traffic past).

Stuff to take

We filled an entire room with stuff for our first trip, we’ve even written a packing list of everything we took on a year-long motorhome tour in Europe. If you don’t want to wade through the full list, I’ll just pop in a few things which are easy to forget if you’re just starting out:

• A 230V hook-up cable if you plan to stay on campsites, and make it nice and long (we’ve seen some good ones on reels for easier storage) – the hook-up points are sometimes miles away
• Rubber gloves – whoever’s emptying the cassette loo will be wanting these. If you’re tempted to empty the loo at home to avoid doing the job on site, we did that, and the house stank for ages
• Tin and bottle openers – if you’re anything like us, you’ll be wanting to eat and drink… alongside openers, don’t forget essentials like tea, coffee, cooking oil and sugar etc.
• Loo chemicals – you need the blue one which goes into the cassette – get some from a camping shop – the cheap stuff works as well as the expensive stuff. Same goes for loo roll
• Your satnav – GPS co-ordinates are far better than addresses or postcodes for campsites as they can sometimes be tucked away. Ideally take a map too, so you can double-check you really do need to go down that tiny, narrow, unsealed road
• A water carrier which you can pour into the fresh water tank somehow – beats a hosepipe which may be too short or impossible to connect for some other reason
• Wet weather gear, umbrellas etc. We once left home in sunshine, by the time we reached the campsite it was tipping down and we had nothing suitable to wear

Checklists

It’s worth knocking up two short lists of things to do: one when you arrive on site, and one for when you leave. Ours are on a laminated piece of card by the dashboard. Even though we’ve followed them a thousand times we still us them. Ours go like this; yours will be different depending on how your van works:

Departure

• Quick visual check round the outside of van – any lockers open, electrical hook-up cable attached, windows open, is the step up, any washing hanging out, is the bike secured?
• Inside the van make sure all skylights are fully locked down, cupboards and bathroom door are properly shut, and nothing’s loose to fly into your noggin or smash on the floor as you turn the first corner. The fridge catch is a good one to check to avoid loss of beer stash at turn one.
• Gas supply switched off at the bottles?
• Fridge switched from mains/gas to12 Volts (if not automatic)?
• Electrical hook-up cable if used disconnected and packed away?
• Levelling ramps stowed?
• Steady legs lifted up?
• Satellite dish or TV antenna lowered?
• Habitation doorstep stowed (after your external look around)?
• Trailer secure (if you’re towing)?
• It’s worth a quick look at where you are about to drive to ensure there are no rocks, pot holes, low hanging branches etc.

Arrival

• Check how flat the van is with a bubble spirit level (or just stand up and feel for it). If it’s not level, use plastic ramps to get it as flat as you can, or move somewhere flatter
• Switch the gas supply on at the tank
• If we have electrical hook-up, connect the cable and flip the fridge from 12V to 220V mains
• If we have no hook-up, flip the fridge from 12V to gas and light it
• And relax!

Men: don’t be proud

As far as I can tell, it’s usually the man who drives the van – it certainly is for us. I think this is because men, like me, are all boys inside and we like our toys. There’s not many bigger toys than a motorhome. Us men are proud animals too, we can forage for food, brew beer, wrestle wild animals and wield chain saws. Can we see that tree branch above the van which is about to remove the solar panel though? No, we cannot. Neither can we see that rock which is about to rip open the waste water tank as we reverse, blind to it.

We’re in the habit of Ju leaping out the van as soon as I get into any situation I can’t see properly. We’ve sorted out some big, obvious ‘turn left, turn right, keep coming back, stop you fool, go forwards again’ waving hand signals. If I lose sight of Ju in the mirrors I stop moving until she re-appears. So far, touch wood, we’ve not hit anything.

And that’s it. Our short survival guide for new motorhome owners. Motorhoming adventures await! If you plan to head off for a week or two holiday, it’s worth squeezing in a shakedown trip if you can, but if you can’t don’t worry as motorhomers are a friendly lot and if you are unsure of something, just ask some of your neighbours for some help.

Cheers! Jay

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