Leaking Pegasus Ancona

[TrickyLancs]

My wife and I have been away for a long weekend in our 11 month old Pegasus Ancona. So far we have been really pleased with the van and the quality of it, the van is booked in for its first sevice at our local agents at the end of the month.
We woke up this morning and were amazed to find the upholstery in the front of the caravan wet through, upon lifting the cushions the floor in the locker underneath was wet through as was the wall above it

. When I looked further up the wall of the van I could clearly see water dripping in from behind the overhead locker (3 drops every 10 seconds) The wood veneer where the speaker and reading lights are also wet and the veneer is lifting, that would indicate that it has been wet for some time. The water was dripping in past the housing for the blinds when you close them and then running down the walls.
I would like to say thank you to my local dealer in Blackburn who did not supply the van but who have rectified a couple of other small issues previously and are due to do the service in a couple of weeks.We rang them first thing this morning and they let us put the van under their covered area on the sales pitch until someone can look at the van tomorrow.

Anyone got any ideas? One of the main reasons we went for the Pegasus was the fact that it is supposedly built so well using new technology and fabrication methods, the last thing I thought it would do is leak!

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Tricky,

There have been a spate of damp related posts on the forum, and sadly the same basic answer applies to all of them, Untill the problem has been properly investigated, the cause and the extent of any solution is a mystery that no-one on the forum can accurately predict

.In your case, at least your caravan should be coverd by the manufactures guarantee.

I hope it can be sorted with no permanent detriment to your caravan.

 

[ncmorgan]

hi have you had any feedback to fault to your van i too have a three week old ancona and you are the second person to
say they have water coming into the van
thanks

 

[TrickyLancs]

HI, a quick update re the problem on our van.
The service manager at my local dealer said heavy condensation is a common problem with alu tech vans, he thought this would be our problem to and assured me there would be no leaks.
48 hours later I got a call saying they had fixed the problem and that it was a faulty window seal that was letting water in, all fixed under warranty. I will see how the wooden veneer is when I next go down to the storage compound and if there are any signs of lifting I wil ask for it to be repaired also.
I do wonder about the build quality though, we have had this problem, my parents own an 18 month old series 1 pegasus, so far they have had the following problems.
1) Faulty pump on toilet flush.
2) Faulty heater
3) Faulty gas regulator, started leaking when they were away filling the front locker with gas (good job he spotted it)
4) Heki rooflight was faulty.

Our toilet has also packed up and is due to be fixed this week when its serviced.

 

[Dustydog]

Hi Tricky
The four problems your parents experienced arose out of third party manufacturers parts. Any make of caravan could be fitted with these parts. It really is about time the major caravan manufacturers got to grip with their suppliers and insisted on improved quality at the outset.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Dusty,
I worked for a major caravan appliance manufacture for many years, and whilst it may seem like blowing our own trumpet, I believe our products were well engineered and provided many years of good service. We were the first company in the caravan industry to attain BS5750 and later achieve both ISO9001 and QS9000 accreditation, and not just on caravan products. Our production lines were working towards zero defect, and the level of testing meant we had very high confidence the product was fully functional as it left us.

However designing and making good product is only part of the story when it comes to failure in the field. Our products all had to be installed into caravans, and the poor handling and storage of our product at the caravan manufacturers sites often led to whole pallets of stock being returned as faulty. It was common to find pallets of stock had been left out in the rain, dropped, run through with the forks of a lift truck, parts robbed from appliances whilst still in their packaging, appliances having apparently fitted but with fixing threads stripped or ripped out. One manufacture simply stock piled all their problem goods, and returned them en-mass - One returned drop was worth in the region of £50k of goods. after investigation about 80% of the items were faults created by the manufactures storage or handling of the product. and of the remaining 20% most of them were probably manufactures issues but there could be some doubt. None of these were end-user returns!

As the appliance manufacture we had no control of how the products were fitted, and we were often called to dealers sites to check appliances that did not appear to work. This was often due to incomplete connections, the wrong routing of pipework or supply wiring issues.

On one occasion (25 years ago now!) I was asked to visit a manufacture who claimed they had a batch of product that wasn't working. Before setting out I checked the reported symptoms and had a fair suspicion of what was happening so I contact the manufacture to talk them through the possibility, thier response was "We've been fitting these for two years now and we know how to do it so what your suggesting has to be wrong". So I gathered the test gear, and set out - A four hour drive. Got there and it was exactly as I had suspected, a new fitter was doing the job and was crossing a pair of wires, sorted in less than 5 mins. I also spotted some other installation issues with other manufactures products which would have probably come back as warranty repairs.

Regardless of how good our products were and regardless of how many training days we gave to manufacturers on how to design and install our products, often it was not the product that proved to be faulty but the installation. It just showed how little care or inspection the caravan manufacturers were putting into caravans, and how much they rely on there dealers to final check their products.

The last time I saw a manufactures workshops in action was around 1999, and frankly very little had changed from the preceding 20 years. The potential for mistakes when constructing a caravan are mirriad, and there was little pride shown by the workforce, Screws missed out, screws and staples miss placed so they don't engage with the wooden battens. its these sorts of lack of care that can detract from what could be a good product.

Now i'm not saying that OEM suppliers can't do better, there is always opportunities to improve, but until the caravan manufactures start to really embrace the importance of customer satisfaction and the methods of achieving it by instilling a caring attitude in the work forces, then all the best work of the OEM suppliers may be thwarted.

 

[ncmorgan]

hi we are getting water in the wet lockers when caravan is in use , more left side to be fair ,we have had a lot of rain and i have checked at the storage when it has stopped a bit and found everything to be all dry , iam now thinking it is condensation rather than
a leak , its going to the dealers next week for a few things to be done under warrenty and will let you know what they say