Habitation Service - How often is worthwhile?

[StuartO]

Just had mine done this morning - all well apart from discovering the Fire Angle smoke alarm battery had died prematurely, so a replacement is needed.  Ordered from Amazon and will arrive tomorrow, guaranteed!

 

I used a mobile caravan service engineer.  Difficult to know how qualified and diligent these guys are but I'd seen him doing a neighbour's MH and he seemed to know what he was doing and certainly looked thorough. He charged £125.

 

I get the MH serviced at the garage every year but my MH is now 11 years old so I reckon habitation checks are really quite important too, to pick up any problems (especially damp) so they can be nipped in the bud.

 

[Charles]

I bought a damp meter and check it annually myself. The rest of the equipment is checked everytime we use the van. I do like to do things myself as I don't trust "tradesmen". I also service the engine annually.. properly.

[Steve928]

Personally I only have a habitation check done as it a condition of maintaining the warranty. I can do everything that the mobile engineer does myself - except stamp and sign the service book

2 have been done now by at a total cost of £300 but if my own ongoing damp checks are fine at the end of this third year then I probably won't bother with any more; I'm not a fan of purchasing extended warranties and if I don't need the habitation check for any other purpose then this is basically what it amounts to for me.

 

Both times that the guy has turned up I've told him that all I'm interested in is a thorough damp report and having my book signed and that for that alone I'm resolved to paying the £150 fee. The rest of the boxes that he ticks (I'm not even sure what he does..) are of no interest to me and I make it quite clear that he can sit and drink coffee or pack up and leave if he wishes - but I think his conscience means that he tends to work through the rest of the stuff in the couple of hours that he's here :-)

[Caddies104]

Hi

Think for me it's the Damp and the Gas that's important to check, at least I would feel safer as long as done correctly..

 

[Charles]

I feel the same way as you Steve, but I suppose I'm more of a gambler. Our van is 3 years old in July and I haven't had any official damp checks done. What really put me off was that if there is a repair needed Elddis contribute to it less and less as the years go by, so at 10 years if a repair is needed they only pay 50 percent of it anyway.. if you're lucky.. So I'm £300 up already towards any repairs needed and if not I'm quids in.

[Robbo]

I've never had a Habitation service because I prefer to do my own maintenance and be able to sort problems myself when on the road.

 

Gas leakage is checked every time I turn on the gas bottle via a Gaslow pressure gauge. The fridge probably needs a service but that would be an "extra" to the cost of a habitation service.

 

I do reluctantly have a damp test annually (£120) to keep the 10 year water ingress warranty going but only really as a resale bonus point. I would purchase a damp meter if I wasn't forced to have an annual checkup.

[StuartO]

It's understandable that DIY-types will feel they can cope with habitation maintenance themselves but the danger is that they do do it all regularly and thoroughly, and at £120 I think it's good value once every couple of years or so.  If you do it pre-season it serves to recommission the MH for your first outing too.

 

Our mobile technician did check that the fridge worked on all three energy sources as well as damp and gas leak checks and he did mention the need to replace the high pressure gas hoses after 10 years, which means ours need doing this year.

 

Our refillable gas bottles are supposed to be hydraulically tested at ten years too but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get that done.  It's easy toforget or neglect this sort of thing unless you've got someone to remind you.

 

[watty55]

Having bought our "first" motor home last autumn its first habitation check was due last month. because it was only a year old my wife and i debated about having it done thinking that could it really get damp in so new a vehicle, especially the way they are now constructed using the latest materials. However, we thought better of it, more so to keep the warranty going and took it to Edwards Motors, our nearest dealer from our home in Gloucester, thank goodness we did, they found three rather concerning faults, a) Engine oil leak, b) Main gas valve faulty, c) Tophat/cover on the the fridge flue pipe missing. Luckily they were rectified under warranty (Fiat sorting out the oil leak), but without sounding too dramatic the habitation service saved us money, our Motor home and possibly our lives. Habitation checks are worth every penny.

[RogerC]

IMO if having a hab service is part and parcel of maintaining the warranty then it is worth every penny.  Keeping ours up to date using the same dealership (not the supplying one as it is too far away) has meant over £3000 worth of damp rectification work done under warranty and a few minor jobs done as goodwill gestures by the company which alone would normally have cost in excess of £500.00

So yes.... yearly is what 'we' would heartily recommend and we intend to continue having ours done regardless of the fact that it is now well out of warranty.

[StuartO]

When our imported Hymer was new there was a manufacturer's requirement to have an annualdam check by an approved Hymer Agent to maintain the water ingress guarantee.  You had to get a sticker in the book to prove it had been done.  We could take it to any Hymer dealer but in UK there was only one at the time, Brownhills, and they were a real pain.

 

First of all they charged double the price charged by a Belgian Hymer dealer. Secondly they made no secret of the trouble they would take to make you wait and to make as many difficulties as possible for you if you hadn't bought from them.  (Our MH was imported for us by Bundesvan, a really helpful firm.)

 

And after we'd been putting up with Brownhills' nuisance and exploitive tactics for three or four years they told us that the water ingress warranty only applied to leaks at panel seams, so they would obviously have been awkward if wehad needed to make a claim.  At that point I gave up and stopped having the annual Hymer checks done; they had never yielded any hint of dampness - but would Brownhills have told me even if they had?

 

Brownhills subsequently lost the Hymer franchise and there are now multiple Hymer dealerships in UK, so it's a different scene altogether. (To be fair to Brownhills they went through a real bad patch a few years ago but have subsequently downsized, restructured and survived to live down at least some of their customer service reputation.)  But I think my experience shows that relying on the supplying dealer or on a sole UK importer with an axe to grind for damp checks has its limitations.  Fortunately for us Hymer build quality (at least up to 2006, when ours was built, it was a few years later when they had a bad patch)  ensured that after eleven years of ownership so far, we have had no dampness problems in our MH at all.