The caravan I first bought was a ABI Marauder gold the front had a leak from the awning rail, I removed the awning rail, took the left hand seating out and stripped the wall where the damp was, put new timber in re-boarded the wall and put the rail back on, have used it all summer dry as a bone now and a lovely little caravan. The only problem was the battery not holding the charge, so we took a trip to our local caravan dealer, and of course you have to look round at the vans. This is where we saw the Elddis for spares only, we got the keys and had a look.

My original plan was to strip it out put the contents in my shed and break the rest of the van and look for an old camper without an interior, my better half had another idea, because she really liked it and I must admit it is a good quality van, I said I would go ahead and take the furniture and fridge out of the area that had the damp, and if I thought it was restorable I would try and do it,
fortunately because it was off a dealer it came with a full damp test with all the affected areas clearly marked.

So we paid the money and towed it home must admit it towed really well and all the lights worked.

	Looks good The only way you could tell the caravan had a major damp problem was because the dealer had done a full damp test		No bad smells Someone had fitted a wood effect board above the front window and screwed into the roof suppoets, obviously from this it pointed to something wrong		Condition All the units where in very good condition, the cushions had no wear on them	End Bathroom Think this is what the better half liked seperate shower and toilet.		Problem unit Below this unit you could tell something was amiss, more photos of this below.

Once it was set up at home the first thing was to test all the electrics and gas fittings everything worked, including this did surprise me, the central heating, warmed the caravan in minutes. The reason for doing this is if it doesn't work when you refit it you know you have done something wrong yourself.
The main reason I decided to put all this info was 1 It may assist someone else who is trying to sort out a damp caravan and 2 For very little money I could have hid the above defects quite easily and so long as a potential buyer hadn't got a damp meter they would not have seen the damp. This applies more so to this style of caravan, simply because of the central heating, the seats have base boards in them so you cannot see under the seats and the backs of the seats have panels with a gap for the heat to rise, if you had a good prod round you may have spotted something, but its a bit awkward to be to rough when your viewing to buy.

Board off 1st thing I did was to remove the board someone had fitted and cut a piece of the ceiling away to have a look.	Well rotted The wood on top of the window just crumbled away.		Removing the facia This took some removing the buttons where nails but very easily damaged, had to put me big hammer away and be a bit more subtle	Nails out All the nails removed and just couldnt figure out what was holding the ends. Sorted after a lot of head scratching 2 screws from the outside before the awning rail was fitted.	Side off Removed all the rotted wood from the top and the side of the windows	The problem unit The base of this unit had sunk at the backe leving gaps as you can see in the next photo.Worth pointing out here there are two scrws behind the plastic trim that screw into the top of the unit.	This puzzled me for a bit. The side of the unit had caved in due to the damp this was hidden by the bottom board in the seating unit next to it and where the fridge was fitted.and as you will see later the floor.
Stripping out All the front furniture had to be removed also the cupboard that has the fridge in it. Not as quick as I thought because I had to remove the central heating pipes to get at the fittings, presume this is put in after the furniture is fitted.	Heating water pump I wanted to take out the wood effect board under the window, so I removed the water pump	Side of window removed Suprised that this board had nothing behind it, just fastened on each side of the frame.