Your Tales Please Automatic Awning vs Manual

I had a manual awning on my 22' TT and the 24' C that we now have has an electric. I prefer the electric hands down. Since it is so easy to just hold down a button and watch it roll up nice and snug I never hesitate to do it. With the manual I sometimes waited too long before giving in and going through the hassles of manually rolling it up.

I have learned {the hard way}, to NEVER leave an awning, any awning, up over night or when we leave the site. The electric makes this much easier {and far more likely}, to accomplish. I would never trust {as in leave the site}, an automatic, wind sensing roll up device. I've seen too many of them fail usually with disastrous results.

As always.... Opinions and YMMV.

:C

Current unit has power awning and it is easy to deploy and retract. If you want one side lower than the other, or both sides lower then you need a step stool to adjust then again to retract. I'm waiting for the day when I go to retract and it doesn't.

If we have to move the chairs or other items due to weather it's not much more trouble to deal with a manual awning.

My preference is manual and have never considered it a two person job.

The electric is cool for sure but as far as the manual one being difficult....I would say that if that's too much for you then you don't want shade very bad. Wait two hours and when it's about 95 it seems like a really good trade off to do 5 minutes of easy, light labor to have nice shade for your beer. If my manual one were to get wrecked somehow though I would probably get an electric one to replace it.

I think it depends on the type of manual. I had one on a small TT that had to have locks unlocked and a long pole with a hook to pull out a ratcheting spring loaded roller, then the arms had to be locked and if you wanted to get the poles out of your way you unhooked the feet from the TT and set them out at the end of the awning and if you were smart you staked them there. The electric is far better than that one was but I have seen one that had a crank that took the place of the electric motor and you just spin the crank handle until the awning was out and you are done. That model would be fine with me.

I've had both. Both have their advantages and their disadvantages. I liked the manual because I could drop it completely down to the side of the camper for easy cleaning. But the manual REALLY is nice, touch of a button in the middle of the night!

Our previous camper:



Our current camper cannot do this at all.

So, each one has their pluses and minuses.

We have owned both. Our current Motorhome has an 11' Carefree Electric Awning. It is great. Ours does not have wind sensors, but that's fine. I would most likely turn them off or take them off if it did. Our awning is pitched enough to shed water. If when it is not pitched, it has an auto-dump feature. The only thing I'd like with our awning would be that it retracted a little faster.

Where we camp seasonally, it is right across from a farm. It is constantly windy, from a light breeze to 15 mph winds. We have awning tie downs from Camco with springs that attach to the anchor. The springs are really important and allow the awning to gently move with high winds. Or safely move with really high winds. Our awning survived a storm with 80 mph gusts. The National Weather Service was calling for a T-Storm with winds of 20 - 25 mph, but we got a much different storm. The 7" springs were completely destroyed. They expanded to over 2 feet long and were unusable, but the awning survived and still works fine.

All that being said, if it is really windy and I need to bring the awning in, it is a 2 or 3 person job. When wind moves the awning, it doesn't move symmetrically so there needs to be 2 people holding down the tie downs while the awning slowly retracts. It would be nice if it retracted faster. With a manual awning, it really only takes one person to retract the awning, even in high winds - assuming the rod can be held steady enough to flip the lever to retract the awning.

-Michael

We spend the winter in FL. Our awing was a manual one and I staked it down for the winter, and hung a sun screen from it. We faced the south so the afternoon sun got us real good.
A couple years ago we bought a new mh, this one has an electric awing. While it is easy to put out and in, you can't hang a sun screen from it when you need to bring it in every time the wind blows a little.
I'm think about seeing if it can be staked down.
I never had a problem with the wind with the manual one when it was staked down.

Dusty

Our manual awning works great for our winter stays staked out. I see many powered awning that cannot be staked out and are to high to give any shade if RV is getting sun on awning side. I know ther are adjustments to make awning be on more of a slant for shade. But nobody seems to do it.

ronfisherman wrote:
...I see many powered awning that cannot be staked out and are to high to give any shade if RV is getting sun on awning side. ...

Here's how we took care of that problem. Actually, we did the same thing with our manual awning also. This works great, lots of flexibility where and how to set them. We had the red one for about 15 years. We replaced it with 2 new ones, the grey ones. Having 2 gives us all kinds of flexibility for shade now.

Friend I visited yesterday has become a fan of power awnings. I've thought they were unnecessary till I thought of the strength it takes to deploy our 21-foot manual awning. I'm sure there'll come a day, and other RVers are already there, where a manual awning, especially a big one, is too much to muscle up and down.

Till recently, I thought of power awnings that fail to operate, especially stuck open, the trouble with that, and the motors are crazy expensive.