Caravan Choices

Ensuite or not? How are you coping presently? One of the problems of having an ensuite is you will be reluctant to go back.

The closest I have been to ordering an ensuite was pricing a shower on the outside. We ended up deleting it for three reasons, $3k5, the space the water heater would have taken up and the loss of living space.

You say you are limited on the ATM you can tow. You will be able to shoehorn bunks plus a shower/dunny cubicle into a van of your dimensions but that will severely limit your lounging and dining space. We appreciate the excellent living space in our van and are prepared to erect a shower tent when necessary. The more space you allocate to your ablutions the more cramped you will be in your van.

Hi Scott,

You need to ask yourself what best suits your family's needs in regards to ensuites, bunks etc. Are you prepared to take the child/children to amenities blocks and so forth. New verses old. You have asked a lot of variables and I'm sure you will get a lot of answers. But as I said it should all come down to what best suits your family,s needs.

Cheers and happy investigating

Steve

Ensuite is the go with kids.

Hi Scott,

Depends on your budget and where you want to go. I have had a van, a camper trailer and now a full off-road cross-over camper. It has a full ensuite plus outdoor shower, beds for 4 (queen, bunk and table bed) but only has outside cooking. After having both inside and outside cooking, the outside with roll-out awning was a prerequisite when I got this van. But the ensuite was also another must-have for SWMBO and wouldn't be without it now.

Cheers

Captain

Yes go for the full Ensuite.

The Cook loves the ensuite and washing machine.

The extra money outlayed is well worth it.

Cheers

Scott M3
We have just gone through this (well over the last 7 months) we ended up ordering and taking delivery of a Coromal 20' van with external shower (we already had the shower tent from camper trailer). Our van is the P611 which has double bunks at one end and the main bedroom other end, with this configuration when the tin lid grows up and leaves us alone we will have the bunk area converted to an internal en suite as this is how Coromal do their en suite version (plus 6" in length). Oh we too have a Prado and was limited by weight off 2.5t but the Coromal fitted our requirements to a tee.

Good Luck

A lot depends on how you intend to use your van. If you will be mainly staying in well set up caravan parks with decent amenities blocks then you don't really need to lose the living space an ensuite takes up. A bathroom also adds a lot of weight. A dirt road van with bathroom and bunks and a reasonable amount of storage and living space for 3 or 4 people would test the limits of your vehicle.
If you plan to bushcamp or generally go to fairly rough campgrounds then it is a great benefit to have your own bathroom - especially for young children who may freak at a drop toilet and toilets are likely to be far from your camp site! Also you can camp where there are no facilities without worrying about causing pollution problems and digging holes! This does mean carrying more water though and does add to weight. Solar panels for camping also add to weight.
We managed for years with a porta potti for nights and a shovel for day but there is now more and more requirement to be self contained and 'leave no traces'. Our new van has a full ensuite and, as said, we would not do wirhout it now. But it is a sturdy dirt roader set up for two people and the Tare is about 2,2000.
Enjoy your search. I am sure you will get many suggestions. This topic has been widely discussed on caravanersforum. Lynne

It really depends what sort of camping you do, in saying that we do some beach and some bush camping and our next van will have the ensuite because sometime we are a good distance from the amenities even in parks so it would be convenient to have facilities at hand, we don't live in our current camper van, but tend to sit outside so internal space is not a priority for us.

Good luck.

The Cook and I have just done the same thing, camper to van, and asked ourselves the same questions.
We decided as we were going for a small van so we could still get into most of the places we've been before, that no ensuite was the way to go. We've used a shower tent and Primus 12v shower for years and find this is by far the easiest way to control water usage.
Recently we met a young couple who had the same van as we were buying and were using well over a 100 litres of water in 3 days with an ensuite.
That's ridiculous and not sustainable if you want to keep away from so called civilisation!
Plus having a dump next to the table or bed is just not on. I don't fancy that with my bacon and eggs.
AlanTH.