Advice to a Prospective CL Owner

Mickysf - I see you're another early riser!!  Interesting point and we have stayed on one such site at Kirbymoorside where the owner is running two CLs, side by side with only a token hedge/fence to separate them.  In a very nice way, I asked him how he managed to have ten vans on site and he confirmed that he was running two CLs.  Since he provided all the usual facilities, EHU etc plus two toilets, he was hardly being greedy charging £11 per night!

However, friends who run a CS, not more than 5 miles away (same local authority area) have a problem in that if the weather is bad, tents tend to cancel and he is left with loads of spare capacity on a 2 acre site in two distinct areas of the farm.  He has attempted to get permission for a CL and CS together, two CS's or a CS and small commercial site limited to five vans (any more would spoil the atmosphere of the site) and has been told it's a definite 'no-no'. I know that Ryedale Council have a reputation for being very picky when it comes to planning applications, but is someone bending the rules?

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From my conversations with the CS owner (see above), I don't think either Club allows it.

You realise, that everything you quote does not actually require ehu?  To your list I would add charging points for the electronic devices we drag aground.  In my case add a mifi unit that allows me to work from home in the van.  I can have Skype conference calls with colleagues and customers arround the world, exactly the same as at home or in the office.   None of these actually require ehu.  

I have no intention now or in the future of roughing it when I go away in the caravan.

I would also agree with you that things have moved on in the last 10 years.  The decrease in price of solar has made the creation of power easier.  The increasing prevalence of LED’s both for lighting and in TVs has reduced the demand for power of these items.  

If you want to trip me up mention that you need to be connected to a hairdryer and microwave 24/7 I have no answer to this.  

But despite all of the above.   If I was setting up a CL, I would consider ehu pretty essential.   This is because most of your customers can’t see the diffence between a feature and a genuine benefit.  

Then,  I would also do my sums very carefully.  To see if a CL would be a worthwhile enterprise.   A calculation that I think that many CL owners are making because the number of CLs is reducing year on year. So opening one is probably swimming against the tide.

We caravan all year round and EHU is only essential during winter months as I don't want the heating to go off in the middle of the night as it might if the gas ran out. Our current and previous carvan have a solar panel which keeps the battery charged; nearly 2 years ago we spent a couple of weeks in the Lake District where it rained on many days (not suprising!) and had no problems with power.

We use CL's 99% of the time and our only critiria is that it must be at least 2 acres. 

We have been on sites where the caravans have been so close you can hear the conversations (and other noises!) from adjacant caravans and it's not nice!

Cliff

Cliff, Conside getting an autochange over regulator ours works brilliantly  as long as I remember to switch on both bottles.   Gone are the days of bottle needing changing a 3am or half way through cooking breakfast.  Ironically I got ours when the Truma regulator failed.  It was cheaper to buy the changeover regulator than a replacement Truma.  

Sorry thread drift. 

Thanks for that, Boff, but there won't be any warning that bottle 'A' has run out and you are running on bottle 'B' or even bottle 'B' has run out and you are then stuffed!

Cliff

Actually there is.   If you have two bottles A and B then you can select which you want as your primary bottle.  By moving the clear dome. (You can see the pointer on the picture.   When you open up that bottle the indicators go from red to to green.  When the bottle runs out the indicator goes to red but takes gas from the second bottle.  Trust me a lot better than getting up a 3 in the morning

“If you want to trip me up mention that you need to be connected to a hairdryer and microwave 24/7 I have no answer to this“

We have a small inverter permanently wired in and I’m able to run a hot brush. We took the microwave out & have a cavernous pan cupboard for real cooking 😉

Do you run your gas heater overnight? I’m a bit nervous about this which is why we use EHU during the winter months.

Apolgies Ian for going off topic...

To stop a thread going totally off track. I have opened a new one 

https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/club-together/discussions/welcome-hobby-talk/caravan-motorhome-chat/using-gas-overnight/