Fully serviced pitches

[WilliamLX]

Hi, this Saturday I am heading to a caravan site with a fully serviced pitch (ie EHU/water/Drain). I was hoping to run a waste pipe directly into the drain to avoid having to worry about the waste hog. However I just wondered would the length of the pipe and the fact that some of it would be running along the ground mean that water will not drain form the caravan properly. Just asking what peoples experience of this would be?

 

[FrintonMike]

when I have used full service pitches I have positioned the van almost over the hole for the drain and the pipe goes straight down into the hole which is usually just large enough for the pipe to go into. The pipe does not go along the ground

 

[Zafiral]

Not all sites are you able to park with the pipes over the drain, two sites we have been to (CC Maidstone & CC Seacroft Cromer)) have the drain at the rear of pitch so our side drain van (Pageant) has to have a pipe running under the van. While water will sit in te pipe, it drains out of the caravan. Just becareful when you pack up that the caravan end of the pipe is kept high to avoid spillages.

 

[MikeA]

As Zafiral says, not all fully serviced pitches have suitably placed drains. In fact I can point you to at least two sites in France where the drains were at the highest point of a sloping pitch.

I always seek fully serviced pitches if they are available, being basically a lazy person. The kit I have ended up with is a total length of drain hose that is about 10 metres long (and yes I needed all 10 metres last Summer on a site at Lake Garda - the drain the site owner pointed me to was on the terrace of vans below ours). The hose is cut into five different lengths ranging from

 

[Zafiral]

As Mike says, I have multiple bits with a couple of joiners so I can make any length I need.

If the drain is a distance from your waste outlets, reduce the chance of flow back by placing the 'Y' connector at least a metre along the run.

Also if you have a Aquaroll mains connector get a extension kit (ensure food grade) as the std pipe is always just too short, our new van has the water inlet under a front bed box rather than under the rear side dinette seat on our previous Ranger S5 470/4. Lets hope one extension is enough.....

 

[WilliamLX]

Thanks for the advice. I have stayed on this site last year (when I was using my in-laws motorhome. The drain is at the front of the pitch built into the bottom of the bollard which also has the water tap and EHU. I am fairly sure I will have to run pipe along the ground, so I will lengthen the twin pipes before my Y connector as advised.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

I think there is a prescibed format for UK pitches so that the service points are always withing a certain distance.

Nothing like what we've found on continental sites.

Outlets and inlets on caravans and campers are all in different places, getting a drain under your outlet is just luck!

 

[AndyR]

As Mike A says, sometimes the drain is at the highest point of a pitch so it's tricky (Mike was this Logis du Breuil by any chance?). What I plan to do when there this year is to raise the caravan with a levelling ramp under each wheel, to give a bit of extra height, so draining OK. Having the right length of pipe helps too, so you don;t have to coil it up too much.

It always amazes me why there aren't more full service pitches about. I always use them when available. I know they're costly to install, but surely people would use them, given the choice. Then again, a lot of people don't use their caravan showers or kitchen sinks - but that's another well debated topic!

 

[JohnM20]

Two CC sites that I recently visited had some serviced pitches but because the sites were completely full these were being used as 'standard' pitches. In total, between the two sites, ther must have been about thirty of these serviced pitches but we only saw about half a dozen caravans with water pipes in and out. Whether these visitors had to pay the serviced pitch fee I don't know but it meant that anyone arriving with the necessary kit couldn't have a serviced pitch even if they wanted one. Having said that, it must be a nightmare for the wardens trying to allocate these pitches when required.

John

 

[MikeA]

Hi Andy,

No, they were Domain d'Arnauteille near Carcassonne and Camping Bois Soleil at St Georges de Didonne. In both cases, they managed to find us a pitch with better geography when I pointed out the problem.

In fact at Domain d'Arnauteille it prompted their handyman to an impressive burst of work in baking heat (it was the Summer a few years ago of 40 degree heat in France) to spend the next day and a half digging out a 20 metre length of blocked drain on an adjacent pitch to clear it. I got the impression that they didn't get many people using the outlets.

Cheers

Mike A

 

[WilliamLX]

I bought 3m of waste pipe which was just a nice length, and if anything the water drained better than it usually does when it is into the waste hog. As it happens the site has been modernised since last year and we had a brand new electric/water/waste bollard with a light on top, very nice. I was surprised that with a fully serviced pitch being only

 

[foshy]

All,

Also consider your mains water top up pipe. You may need two lengths of blue food grade pipe with suitable joiner depending what side the tap is and where the Aquaroll will be. This caught me out a couple of years ago. As for the waste, like others I carry lots of small sections and join to suit. But enjoy - a service pitch is far better and worth the extra costs.