Have I got a water leak?

• Wednesday, 11 March 2009
• Amy Hodge

An annual service should include a damp meter test.

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There is moisture trapped between the inner and outer panes of the front windows of my Bailey Senator. When I took the caravan in for service the mechanic said that this was a sign of a water leak around the front windows and then gave me an enormous quote for stripping the windows out and resealing. I can’t understand how water can leak into the caravan body and then get into the windows.
Mr. K. Martin, Leicester

MIKE SAYS
I had to contact Mr. Martin to make sure that I understood his situation fully. The Bailey Senator was an old one, bought privately. The service engineer is a one-man band with very limited facilities and perhaps rather a limited knowledge of the ins and outs of caravans.

His pronouncement that water in the windows was a sign of water leaks into the body didn’t make much sense to me, and made even less sense when Mr. Martin told me that he wasn’t aware of the service engineer doing any sort of damp meter checking.

My advice to Mr Martin was extremely straightforward. ‘Go somewhere else.’ Reputable dealers and engineers do a damp test automatically as part of an annual service and inspection. Only if they find a damp area do they suggest that the consumer needs to have further work done.

For Mr. Martin to be told that he needed extensive work done was ridiculous under the circumstances and may be a symptom of the fact that the workshop happened to have too little work to do that week. It might fix the problem, but it’s the caravanning equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.