Care and repair of rubber seals

The seals on your caravan windows, doors and cassette are often overlooked. Nigel Hutson shows how to maintain them

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IT MAY BE a cliché, but prevention is better than cure. That’s certainly the case where caravans are concerned, and spending an hour here and there on maintenance can save you a lot of time trying to rectify a problem later; and in some cases, a lot of expense, too.

Okay, so some of these tasks aren’t very glamorous, but they might stop a humdrum job turning into a nightmare.

Two things that come to mind here are jammed windows and external locker doors or toilet blades. Having a window that won't open is bad enough, but let’s not even try to imagine the scenario if you need to use the van’s toilet, and you can’t open the blade to the cassette...

A bit of basic maintenance work now should help prevent any of these situations.

Windows and doors

Let’s start with the windows. It could be that your caravan has been closed up for several months during the winter, or some of the windows haven’t been opened in that time, even if you have used the caravan. You might find that a window won't open - it’s stuck against the rubber seal.