About

Who runs Vanopedia

Vanopedia is run by Joris on behalf of CFO Rent BV, a small Belgian company. It started from a very practical frustration: standing next to a campervan in a campsite somewhere in Europe, with a heater that keeps blinking, a fridge that will not cool or a leisure battery that is empty in the morning, and having to dig through a dozen forums, half-translated manuals and long video comments to find out what to check first.

Vanopedia is free to use. There is no account, no subscription and no paid tier. The site is financed by a limited number of clearly labelled advertisements on longer help articles, never on the search screen itself.

Why it exists

Most campervan problems are not mysterious. A blown fuse, a closed gas valve, a low battery voltage, an air lock in the water system or a blocked fridge flue explain a large part of what owners run into. The knowledge exists, but it is scattered across manufacturer manuals, dealer bulletins, owner groups and forums in many languages. Vanopedia brings that knowledge together and turns it into short, safe steps you can follow on a phone, in your own language, without needing to know the technical name of the part that is failing.

How answers are built

Every answer is grounded in a knowledge base of fault descriptions and guides. Each entry records where its information comes from: an owner's manual, a manufacturer knowledge base, a forum thread or an owner group. That source is shown with the answer, so you can always check the original yourself. Entries can be marked as verified once they have been checked against a manual or confirmed by experienced owners.

When you describe a problem, Vanopedia searches this knowledge base, ranks matching entries by how relevant they are, how helpful other owners found them and how reliable their source is, and then writes a short answer that stays within those facts. It does not invent costs, part numbers or procedures. If nothing reliable is found, it says so plainly instead of guessing, and offers an optional online deep search that is clearly labelled as unverified.

Safety rules

Some problems are dangerous: a smell of gas, smoke or fire, a carbon monoxide alarm, brake or steering faults, fuel leaks, an overheating engine or a swollen battery. When a question mentions any of these, Vanopedia shows a safety message first and tells you to stop, ventilate and get professional help before anything else. Answers never encourage working on gas installations, high-voltage systems or brakes yourself.

Corrections and contact

Owners improve Vanopedia every day. Each answer has a thumbs up and thumbs down button; a thumbs down lets you say why the answer did not help, and answers that are reported as unsafe are taken out of the ranking until they have been reviewed. If you spot a mistake, know a better fix for a specific van or appliance, or want to suggest a source, please write to joris@ofinra.be. Corrections are checked against the original source before they are published.