Complete newbies, but here we go! Today we collected a Troll 552GT with Thule Omnistor 1200 (I think) fitted, plus one side panel and one front panel. Great for a couple/hot country, but we ideally need to fit a dog crate and two daughters in the awning so it needs to be enclosed. So, what to do? Remove the Thule and sell it plus side panels to fund a new air awning? Buy an inflatable awning that, as I understand it, could be mounted into the Thule leading edge but also leaves us with the Thule canopy as another option? Go for a Thule residence or Quickerect tent or extra panels? Opinions of those more knowledgeable please!

Welcome

An idea


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That would work well for the daughters, but the dog would definitely jump over 😂

It’s clamped to the awning rail

On the offchance, you mention dogs, a Ferplast Atlas Maxi dog crate wouldn't be of interest, would it.

We used to use it for our two bearded collies. It has a removable divider down the middle so each can have their own space.

We're now down to one beardie and the crate isn't a good fit in our new car. So we're going to move from a Maxi to a Large size. It's the same width as the Maxi (1m), but not quite as tall, or deep and without a divider should be fine for Miss Pippin on her own.

So the Maxi is available if it would suit your operation.

https://www.petsathome.com/shop/en/pets/...og-carrier-maxi

When we bought our '05 Troll it had a Caravanstore (sunshade in a bag) fitted to the awning rail. We removed and sold it and used an NR full awning (NR were still trading then). It was much more work setting up the full awning, but more robust, fully enclosed and stood really bad weather.

I don't think the nirvana of caravan awnings exists, because it's a trade off between ease of erection and totality of function. So much depends on the weather, how much weight you can carry, how much effort you can, or want to put in, what security you need and how quick you need to be in erecting and taking down, plus, overall, what you feel comfortable with and fits your caravanning style.

The NR awning was as near perfect as it could be. Best bit was that the frame could be built away from the van, walked up to it then the canvas just zipped on to a little strip that went into the awning rail. We let ours go with our PuckL, wrong decision.

Thanks all. We're going to have a play around with the Thule this evening and see what we think. Speed of set up is definitely important, as is weight as I'm only 5'2" and it's hard work manoeuvring things above your head.

If we decided to remove the Thule canopy, where does the drive away awning fix to? The gutter rail (picture attached)? Do I need an extra fixing kit?