Be prepared

When I first came into the caravan at the beginning of July we had several days of quite intense rain and as a result I came across a couple of leaks. I hadn’t had any such problems while the caravan was parked in my garden at Plazac, I think because then it was pretty level while now I’m sure it’s a bit nose-down and dipping to the left corner where the water has entered where the roof and wall join, probably because it made a puddle there.

As we’re expecting some more rain this evening and over the coming days, I bought some flexible mastic to see if I could make a repair. I really needed a ladder to see what was going on and do a proper job but mine is in storage and too inaccessible to get out and I couldn’t borrow one for reasons that I won’t go into as they’re a bit sad. So I started off by doing the ‘easy’ repair first, on the caravan’s rear where a handle joins the body.

Not surprisingly as I’m becoming more and more familiar with the effectiveness of French craftsmanship, there was already sealant there that was clearly useless because, once again, whatever had been used had become solid and inflexible. There was a fixing screw inside the caravan that I couldn’t remove so I left it alone in order to avoid doing any more damage to wood that was already softened and just removed and replaced the sealant on the outside. It looks OK and I hope that it will do the job.

Then came the more tricky repair, on the top left hand roof corner. I began by just moving my small trailer next to the caravan and gingerly climbing up onto it but that still left my head below the roof line. Nevertheless, just by feel I was able to remove some old sealant that had been applied there some time ago using alcohol on wads of kitchen roll and what came off horrified me. It was like half-sucked Jelly Babies, or Haribo Jelly Snakes for the non-Brits.

As I couldn’t see what I was doing, I removed what I thought was all of it, from the front corner of the ridge for about a metre and a half towards the rear. Then it was time to replace it with new material, a job that proved to be impossible one-handed from below without seeing what was going on. I then had the idea that I could stand on the pallet that my so-far un-erected metal ‘abri’ was delivered on if I stood it up against the side of the caravan and sure enough, this gave me sight of the job in hand, although I still had to apply the mastic one-handed while using the other to hang onto the caravan roof.

So I still had to do most of the job just by ‘feel’ and experience and doing it in yesterday’s more than 30 degree Celsius temperature didn’t help either, as the heat made the mastic ‘skin’ very quickly. Even so, I don’t think it turned out too badly as the following shot shows, although it was very difficult taking a photograph in such bright conditions.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, though. I’ll be dashing off to Terrasson after finishing typing this and on my way back I’ll buy a small plastic spirit level to get the caravan levelled up better than it is at present. Then it’ll just be a matter of seeing what happens when it rains…