Essential items for your caravan starter pack

Essential caravan starter pack items

Caravan Essentials Transcript

Chris Jefferies: We've all had that feeling, you're about to set off on a holiday but you can't shake the feeling that you might have left something behind and with so many gadgets and accessories that's doubly true for caravan holidays.

Today Caravan Times is in Norfolk to speak to Neil Greentree of Greentree Adventure Stores to find out what every caravan owner needs to take on their first holiday.

So Neil what should every caravanner take with them on their first caravan holiday?

Neil Greentree: Well essentially you've been out and you've bought your caravan first of all. Now that's the biggest purchase but there's other things you have to buy in some cases to make that function properly - so a starter pack essentially.

Okay what we have here we have a number of different items from gas bits and pieces to water containers to mains leads to security items, additional mirrors and other bits & pieces you need to get you essentially going.

Chris Jefferies: Now I see that there's quite a lot of items here to do with the water system - do you really need all of them?

Neil Greentree: Yeah, no look - these are essential items Chris so without these bits and pieces your caravan will not function to the best of it's ability.

So we have waste container, we have fresh water container. In this particular one - we supply bags with them so they don't dirty the inside of your caravan when you're transporting them.

Chris Jefferies: And you've got your toilet chemicals - tell me - why do you need two different with chemicals?

Neil Greentree: The pink fluid goes in your flushing side so fresh, flushing water smells nice and it cleans the toilet bowl. Then we have the real part that actually breaks down the waste ready for disposal - that's the blue or you can also get green fluid which is eco-friendly.

Chris Jefferies: And then of course moving on to gas you've got propane and butane here. Do they each have to have their own separate regulator?

Neil Greentree: Each system has a different kind of regulator you need to bear that in mind when you purchase it so when you going into somewhere to sort out your gas you need to be sure that you match your regulator with the type of gas you're going to be using.

Chris Jefferies: And what other items would you say are an essential purchase for a first time caravan owner?

Neil Greentree: The other bits and pieces - we're then on to mirrors - obviously a legality for towers and then other convenience items such as hitch covers to protect the hitch of your caravan, waste hose that you can connect it up to the caravan and then on to this more luxurious pack that we supply with new ones.

We have levels on there and then we have a higher quality of security clamp. Security is something that insurance companies now insist on and so therefore you need to choose what is the best security for you because here's hitch-mounts, there's alarms, there's trackers, there's wheel-clamps - there's all sorts. There's post-bars - you've got to pick what's best for you.

We tend to stick to the wheel clamp as that seems to be the most popular, but again make sure that you match the security you've got your lifestyle, your location and the caravan that you're buying.

Chris Jefferies: Is there anything else that you would recommend from a safety point of view that you would recommend on top of what we have here today?

Neil Greentree: Well - again we can't include some of these features in the pack but if we take a look at these - these are the two types of alarm that you can have in a caravan. Smoke alarm - I would thoroughly recommend that someone always has a smoke alarm, and a carbon monoxide alarm. Now these do different jobs but although we don't include them in the pack I do consider these essential items that every caravanner should have.

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About the author

Adam Summersby is a respected leader with 11 years’ varied experience in niche personal and commercial lines insurance, including caravan, site operators and excess reimbursement, with proficiency in leadership, sales and account management.