Driveaway awning advice please……

[GeoffAnd]

Hello all. We’ve had our 2024 Cali Ocean for nearly 9mths now and loving it so far. Having tested it out a number of times, we’re now looking at going down that rabbit hole known as the driveaway awning! By way of background, there’s only 2 of us so we’re not looking for extra space for sleeping, merely for a bit of extra space to leave a bit of stuff in during the day if we need to head out in the van (yes..so far we have always stayed on CAMC sites and no, we wouldn’t leave stuff in it if we weren’t on a ‘proper’ site!), plus a bit of shelter if we wanted to sit outside/cook. We don’t need anything with multiple rooms; we probably only need one living area and a porch.

So, the questions I have are…

What awnings do you currently have/recommend?
What do you like/dislike about them?
Have you found any issues/pitfalls with having the sliding door on the ‘wrong’ (right!) side?

Any feedback/info would be greatly received!! Thanks.

 

[The Little Red Cali]

I know it’s not a driveway awning but have you considered the awning room. Takes up a lot less space than a driveway awning and it’s easy and quick to put up and take down. We use a pop up utility tent to store bits when we go out for the day.

 

[Up10]

We too, have just gone down the awning room route but of course, you cannot leave anything in it when you drive away.
We own a vango tolga air which we used on our converted VW Transporter with great success. We just marked the position on the other side of the van using a length of rope with tent pegs marking the centre of the wheels. We put this about 50mm from the wheels so we could see it as we reversed in. It also helps to loosen the guy ropes when relocating the kador strip, then retentioning after connection.
Our driveway is currently for sale if you are interested or if you want to have a look at the style. We are not far from you.

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[Up10]

Oops, try again! Vango Tolga air driveway awning.

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[Hawthorn37]

I’d use the search function on the forum “advanced search” and “drive away awning” as the subject. There are dozens of threads on this.

Here’s one ..

New Cali & Awning Query

Hi, We will be getting our new Cali Ocean soon, which fingers crossed, will be built at the end of August this year. This is our second Cali, our first being a 2012 model, which we very much regret selling. We still have our old awning, purchased from Nick at Comfortz Leisure, which are...

vwcaliforniaclub.com

 

[sticky1]

I’m really pleased with the Dometic Hub
It’s a super flexible system we purchased the specific VW connector which can fit on either side of the van.
Because you can choose where you have doors or windows you can set it up to take advantage of the spot you are in.
The other thing we like is that is has a removable floor, we sometimes leave our bikes inside with a screw in ground anchor that you can chain a lock to that won’t unscrew once you put a lock on it.

 

[Sad]

Our experience has been that, unless you're on a site for more than 5 days, the extra packing volume a driveaway takes up in the van is not worth it. If you're leaving 'just a bit of stuff', I'd consider just a little pop up tent instead.