Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
I've got a LWB Tranny Connect and I want to start kitting it out it for the occasional overnight mission. I'm not doing a full camper conversion and I wouldn't bother with a skylight but unfortunately I've got one of those builder-spec, spinning extractor fan things. Upon investigation, it fell apart and I could see where it had cracked and been glued back together.
I need to remove this noisy piece of crap which makes my van look like it's wearing a tiny, wonky top hat. Rather than just rivet a piece of steel in place I started looking at vents and skylights.
How do you know what to buy? Does anyone have any recommendations? I want something relatively cheap and basic but I'll pay extra to avoid anything flimsy or fragile.
It's very hard to get an idea of the quality from pictures so I don't want to drop 80 to 100 quid and receive something like a cheap toilet seat with a window glued in.
Any consumer advice much appreciated.
Do you want a vent or a skylight then because I can recommend a motorised vent but not a skylight
There aren't that many really.
Anything above 40x40cm gets very expensive, but I chose 2x MPK VisionStar Pro for 2 reasons
1) It has a lot of positions - I find this very useful for getting ventilation without rain.
2) It's not seitz/dometic/fiamma/etc who I've tried to avoid wherever possible as I don't like their monopoly position and way of buying up companies and then removing niche products.
It's been in for 22 months so far with no problems.
The default choice for many is the Mini Heki from Seitz
Thanks, those Visionstar things look alright and I hadn't come across them in my search. They look pretty basic and solid.
40x40cm will be fine. We won't be spending much time in the back of a small van. I just want it to be reasonably quiet and robust.
Do you want a vent or a skylight then because I can recommend a motorised vent but not a skylight
Motorised vents sound expensive. If we had a spare washing machine I'd probably remove the bowl from the door and use that.
I had an mpk in the living area of my van it was crap and failed quickly. The "clear" plastic yellowed and the plastic round the anchor point for the hinge failed. It also leaked but that was as much down to the "professional" fitter than the equipment
I swapped it for a Fiamma it's been much better
I also have a seitz mini heki - it's the best out the three for many reasons but not least of all because integral blind....both mpk and fiammas offerings are poor on that front and it was important over the bed.
We have a Fiamma Turbo Vent above the bed in ours, great bit of kit especially in the summer
Just note that when fitting, most will need a certain amount of roof thickness (based on motorhome and caravan walls I guess), so you'll need to glue on some wooden battens and suffer the loss in height.
Also - if your van has ribs on the roof, you'll need to make it flat. I inserted PVC, some rely on thick mastic.
See my build thread for what mine looked like:
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/xlwb-campervan-build-what-im-learning
Also – if your van has ribs on the roof, you’ll need to make it flat. I inserted PVC, some rely on thick mastic.
This. The pros tried to use a thick bed of mastic .
I used pvc sill to built the ribs up and make a flat area. Using sikaflex 512
Fitted one of these (or very similar) to our van 9 years ago, silaflex to stick and waterproof it. No problems to date except for kids poking the bug net and pulling the opening winder off repeatedly. Didn't get a fan and don't find we really need one. If it's hot at night open the vent and a window gives enough through draft.
We decided to go for the fiamma turbo vent. As others have said it requires a certain depth so we have a wooden frame but it’s only as thick As the ceiling ribs anyway so works with our cladding. We leave it turned on when we leave the van as it runs off the leisure battery and keeps the dog cool on warmer days which was why we wanted it. As it’s directly above our king sized bed we added on the blind afterwards as the light was waking us up even earlier than my usual pre 7am time. Only problem is you can’t leave it open when it rains so if it’s warm and wet it’s one or the other.