Tech Talk: Working Undercover

By Malcolm Street

I was talking to a colleague in the RV business the other day – the RV journo business, that is. We were pondering the weighty matter of campervan and motorhome designs, mainly internal layout.

It’s been my observation of late that a few design ideas are sliding through which seem, in some respects, just impractical. Take for instance the humble washing-up sink and drainer.

To the best of my knowledge, most people wash up after a meal. There are a few upmarket RVs around that have dishwashers but they are still only a few. Most people do the washing up in their campervans and motorhomes, although there are some people who don’t – usually if the caravan park happens to have a camp kitchen with a large sink and, or, if you are in New Zealand, where almost every caravan park has a camp kitchen.

So why then, we wondered, has there been a trend in recent years for some manufacturers to supply a washing-up sink but no drainer. Where does one put plates and cutlery to drain? I have seen one or two aftermarket drainers supplied, that clip on to the side of the sink, but not many.

Where do manufacturers expect the drain water to flow? From a design point of view, given space constraints, sinks sans drainers are a much easier prospect to install. In some campervans it’s certainly que sera sera – a case of design necessity – but even in small motorhomes there really aren’t too many reasons for not having a sink drainer.

Mixed grills

Still in the kitchen, it’s surprising the number of motorhomes that have a three-burner cooktop but no grill. Some have no microwave oven either, so one does wonder what sort of meals the RV manufacturers think are going to be cooked on the road? I’m something of a lazy chef, particularly when travelling for work, so I favour the grill for quick simple meals. Ditto the microwave oven.

Now here’s another issue. Regular readers will know that one of my favourite subjects of comment is the location of microwave ovens in an RV. Often it looks like an afterthought; in one particular motorhome, the microwave oven is over a dinette seat and in my opinion, is an OH&S issue waiting to happen.

Not everybody uses a microwave oven, though. Fellow MHG journo Chrissy Eustace tells me she doesn’t use one at all. In recent times, there have been a few European motorhomes arriving in Australia and most of them don’t have microwave ovens either.

Design rules

While we are talking about European motorhomes (I include British ones in that category), anyone who has looked inside several of them will know that Europeans are very good at using space effectively. This may be principally because most of Europe’s roads are narrower (once off the autobahns and motorways) and smaller motorhomes are simply more practical.

By default, motorhome designers have to be very clever at getting all the features motorhomers desire into a smaller space. An interesting example of this has been the recently arrived Hymer B-Starline – an A class motorhome that is less than 22ft (6.7m) long

Bill McClintock, an old hand at motorhoming and a friend of this column, gives motorhoming talks at RV shows and the like. At the Brisbane show in June we wandered through quite a few motorhomes looking at design layouts.

Some were very good and have obviously had the benefit of careful thought, user experience and, dare I mention it, female input. Others, though, were a little different. An interesting example was a kitchen bench that had six drawers.

On the face of it, it was excellent for storage, yes, but not really because the drawers were all the same size – you don’t need the same size drawer for both cutlery and pots and pans.

Another recently introduced design had a slide-out section. It is an excellent idea for increasing living space in a motorhome but in this case, the way everything was set up, it really wasn’t usable space and the slide-out actually wasn’t necessary.

I could be wrong here but I suspect that the rising cost of fuel may cause a few changes in the way we travel; one of them may well be that motorhomes become slightly smaller but more space-efficient.

On a different note, if you don’t own a motorhome or want a brief cheap motorhome holiday in Australia or NZ, then check out the website www.standbycars.com.

It offers one-way relocation deals for cars, campervans and motorhomes – in some cases as little as $1 per day for a six-berth motorhome with fuel money thrown.

How good a deal is that? Of course you may have to pay insurance excess cover and be fairly flexible with short term planning but it is certainly worth a think about if nothing else.