The Rain Saver Gutter will leave your site dry when the heavens have opened
When we walked around a caravan park and saw a rollout awning that had a gutter at the lower end to collect and direct rainwater, we immediately loved the idea and wondered why we hadn’t thought of it earlier. Needless to say, we had to have this product known as the Rain Saver Gutter, and we’ve found it helps extend our free travelling experience – provided it rains, of course!
The Rain Saver Gutter is a lightweight and compact kit that comes with everything you need to collect rainwater from your awning so that you can divert the water elsewhere. The standard kit contains a bucket for funnelling the water, a hose adapter, some Velcro, and we opted for a kit that also comes with a leaf guard filter. But the standout item in this kit is the cleverly designed UV-stabilised polycarbonate valance clips that turn your awning’s valance into a gutter. There are 10 clips in the kit, but you can purchase more if you need them.
With the water running off the awning now being collected into a gutter system, it’s simply a matter of directing where this water ends up. Attach a hose and you can have it topping up your onboard water tanks, filling a jerry can, or merely directing the water away from your campsite to prevent the water from running back under into your dry awning area.
The process is quite simple once you’ve learnt the knack of how to roll the clip to retain your valance, which forms the gutter. Our tip is to start in the middle and use a rolling action to feed the valance into the clip while rolling the clip at the same time. Continue working either side of the awning’s centre by spacing clips around 500mm apart. Finish off with clips at either end of the awning.
Once the clips have been fitted, drop one side of your awning by around two clicks to create a run-off. Then attach the bucket funnel on the lower side using any of the attachment methods that work for your RV. Screw in the hose adapter supplied, and it’s then a case of attaching any of your RV’s hoses to direct the water to where you want it to run out. We found it best to have a smaller length of hose to prevent kinks in the hose when directing it into our tanks.
You may have another idea on how you collect water and/or direct it away from your site, but it’s not so easy to form a perfect gutter without the Rain Saver Gutter’s special clips. That’s where this kit works well. We have a kit that travels with us in our caravan; it’s great sitting outside watching the rain fall, knowing we’re collecting the water while keeping our awning area dry at the same time.
While the kit we have is specifically designed for a caravan awning, we recently acquired another kit which comes with a strip of canvas and Velcro sewn in. We plan on attaching it to our camper-trailer’s verandah awning, so we can catch that valuable fresh rainwater when we’re out camping.
The Rain Saver Gutter is a simple product, but clever in its design and manufacture. And when it takes just a few minutes to set it up, it’s a fantastic way to collect water for free simply by using your RV. RRP starting price of kits – $50.
