If you’re thinking about the purchase of a caravan, there are a lot of considerations. One of the big considerations is where you’ll store your caravan. Some people store their caravans at home, but most caravanners store their tourers at a storage yard.
In this caravan storage guide, I’ll discuss where you can store your caravan as well as where you should store your caravan. Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of caravan storage options available to you.
Where can you store your caravan?
Before I explain every option in more detail, where can you store your caravan? There are a few options.
- At a CaSSOA registered site
- At home
- On a seasonal caravan pitch
Most caravan owners will store their caravan as CaSSOA registered sites, which probably doesn’t mean a lot to you at the minute. I’m going to explain what a CaSSOA registered site is, as well as why you should store your caravan at one. I’ll also explain how you can choose the appropriate site your you.
What is a CaSSOA registered site?
Many caravan owners store their caravans at CaSSOA registered sites.
CaSSOA stands for Caravan Store Site Owners’ Association. CaSSOA represents caravan storage site owners across the UK. CaSSOA registered sites are awarded one of three accreditations:
- Bronze award
- Silver award
- Gold award
CaSSOA is all about minimising caravan theft through effective security, so that’s how the accreditations are handed out. The more secure the storage site, the greater the accreditation it is awarded.
Sites are independently assessed for security features and access control and are then rated on a points-based system. Here’s a breakdown of what storage sites have to have in place to be a certain level.
BRONZE:
- Access control:
- Full movement records
- Entry/exit gate:
- Manual system
- Natural surveillance
- Some lighting
- Fire protection:
- No combustible material stored within 20 metres of the caravans
- Danger notices:
- When and where there is a known hazard/danger to visitors
- Vermin control
- There must be no danger from:
- Falling trees
- Flooding
- Storm damage
- Public liability insurance
SILVER:
- Perimeter fencing
- Access control:
- Full movement records
- Entry/exit gate:
- Manual system
- Part site CCTV
- Entry/exit lighting
- Fire protection:
- No combustible material stored within 20 metres of the caravans
- Danger notices:
- When and where there is a known hazard/danger to visitors
- Vermin control
- There must be no danger from:
- Falling trees
- Flooding
- Storm damage
- Public liability insurance
GOLD:
- Perimeter fencing
- (BS1722) relative to Palisade and Welded Mesh Fencing
- Access control:
- Full movement records
- Site to be laid out as per CaSSOA guidelines
- Automated entry/exit
- Full site CCTV
- All round security light
- Fire protection:
- No combustible material stored within 20 metres of the caravans
- Danger notices:
- When and where there is a known hazard/danger to visitors
- Vermin control
- There must be no danger from:
- Falling trees
- Flooding
- Storm damage
- Public liability insurance
As you can probably tell, your caravan will be very secure if you choose to store it at a CaSSOA site. And that really is one of the biggest benefits of storing your caravan at one of these sites. Do you really want your expensive investment to be unprotected against caravan thieves?
Did you know that storing your caravan on a CaSSOA accredited site could reduce your insurance premium? Some insurers actually ask you to store your caravan on a CaSSOA site for a better insurance premium. I think that the reduction in insurance premium makes it worthwhile storing your caravan on a CaSSOA accredited site considering how much caravan insurance can cost on new caravans.
Why store your caravan on a CaSSOA accredited site?
There are several reasons that you should store your caravan on a CaSSOA accredited site.
- Guaranteed security: If you store your caravan on a CaSSOA accredited storage site, the security of your caravan is pretty much guaranteed. Rather than storing your caravan at home and risking theft because of poor security, the owner of a CaSSOA site will look after your caravan for you.
- No-hassle storage: Storing your caravan at home can be a massive hassle. That’s a hassle you can avoid by storing your caravan at a CaSSOA accredited site. Once your caravan is at the storage facility, you don’t need to worry about it again.
- Lower insurance premiums: The location that you store your caravan affects your insurance premium. It’s very similar to car insurance. If you store your car on a drive, your insurance might be cheaper than someone who stores their car on the side of a busy main road. If you store your caravan unsecured at home, you’ll pay a higher insurance premium than someone who stores theirs in a secure facility.
At Home
Of course, you don’t have to store your caravan on a special secure storage pitch. Instead, you could store your touring caravan at home. There are numerous ways to store your caravan at home.
- On your drive
- In your garage
To be honest, storing your caravan in your garage might be impossible. After all, the average height of a caravan is 2.6 meters. It could prove challenging to fit such a tall tourer into your garage depending on its dimensions. Furthermore, let’s also consider the fact that caravans are often between 3 and 6.5 meters long. You’ll need a mighty large garage to store your caravan within it!
So the most practical option is to store your caravan on your drive. However, is this really a good option versus storing your caravan in a secure facility? Well, there are obviously pros and cons of both options.
I personally store my caravan in a secure facility. However, it’s easy to see the benefits of storing your caravan at home. First and foremost, you have your caravan nearby. Further, you’re not spending for storage because you can just store your vehicle on your drive. In some respects, it’s the dream to wake up one day and just decide you’re going to go on holiday. If you’re storing your caravan on your drive, this really is a possibility.
Here are all the benefits of storing your caravan at home rather than a secure facility:
- Easy access to your caravan: If you wake up and decide that you want to go on holiday, that’s possible when you store your caravan on your drive (providing your place of work don’t mind!). If you’re storing your caravan in a facility, you’re a little more restricted in terms of when you can pick your caravan up and use it.
- No storage costs: If you’re storing your caravan at home, you don’t need to worry about any storage costs. Storage can be quite expensive depending on where you’re storing your caravan. To give you a rough idea, I pay £500 annually to store my caravan at a CaSSOA gold site. Storing your caravan on your drive, there are no extra charges to worry about.
On the other hand, there are also drawbacks of storing your caravan at home rather than storing it in a facility.
- Higher insurance premiums (usually): If you’re storing your caravan on your drive, your insurance premium will be higher than it would be if you stored the same caravan in a secure storage facility. It really is as simple as that. Do the cost savings of storing your caravan at home outweigh the extra you pay for your insurance? Only you can determine that.
- Greater risk of being targeted by caravan thieves: It’s natural that there’s a greater risk of being targeted by caravan thieves if you store your caravan at home versus storing it in a secure facility. You have to make sure you have really obvious security to protect yourself if you’re going to store your caravan at home.
Following on from my second point about greater risk of being targeted, here are some tips for keeping your caravan secured at home.
Security considerations if you’re storing your caravan at home
If you’re storing your caravan at home, you need to ensure that it is as secure as possible. Storing your tourer at home is cheap and convenient, but there’s also a higher chance of someone attempting to steal your it.
With that in mind, here are some security considerations if you are storing your caravan at home.
- How accessible is your caravan? If your caravan is easy for you to access, you can bet that it’s easy for thieves to access it too. Although it seems counterintuitive, store your caravan in an awkward place where you can’t easily access it. Make it as hard as possible for any potential thieves.
- Do you have CCTV? If you’re going to store your caravan at home, you want to make sure your property is as secure as it can be. One way of ensuring the security of your property is by installing CCTV. CCTV is an obvious form of security and any thieves who notice it are likely to be deterred from trying to steal your caravan.
- If your caravan isn’t at home, do criminals know you’re away? This is something that a lot of people really don’t think about. But if you normally have a caravan on your drive all year round and then you go on holiday with it, thieves are going to know that your house is empty.
If you can secure your property, storing your caravan at home makes a lot of sense. However, one wonders whether or not simply paying for storage might be the best idea to avoid all these security issues I’ve mentioned above.
I hope that this blog post has helped you to decide where you should store your caravan. Please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.