Would going gas-free be a worthwhile conversion?

[PaulW2]

My van (6m PVC) is quite reliant on gas. Boiler, hob, 3-way fridge.

I will need to replace my 2x11 kg Gaslow bottles in about a year.

I have wondered (at this stage only idly) whether it would be worth thinking about switching to a diesel Truma heater, compressor fridge and induction hob.

The space that presently holds the gas bottles could then presumably be repurposed to hold a large battery bank which could be connected to my existing leisure lithium and B2B setup.

Is this something that others have done? Is it worth considering?

 

[Just smiffy]

Worth considering….

Late last year I took my 3way gas fridge out and replaced it with a compressor fridge, before my 30ltr gasit tank used to last around 16 days with the gas fridge, I’m coming up to 3 months in Morocco now and I’ve still got just under half a tank left…

 

[Tigger-Tim]

It's what I plan on doing if I still have my current van when it gets to ten years old.

 

[MisterB]

Strange coincidence. I asked RogerIvy for an estimate for a truma diesel this morning.. lol but I hadn't decided what I would do with the gas locker BUT as I still want gas, I won't be electrifying it ...lol

 

[BillandHelen]

My new van is gas less, Truma diesel for heating/hot water (it’s fantastic), 2 ring induction hob and a combination Samsung oven/microwave all powered by a 3000w inverter and 60amp lithium. So far all working well, have a month in France in June so that will be a good test.

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[MisterB]

My new van is gas less, Truma diesel for heating/hot water (it’s fantastic), 2 ring induction hob and a combination Samsung oven/microwave all powered by a 3000w inverter and 60amp lithium. So far all working well, have a month in France in June so that will be a good test.

Hope your lithium is bigger than 60 Amps ..

 

[Jev88]

My new van is gas less, Truma diesel for heating/hot water (it’s fantastic), 2 ring induction hob and a combination Samsung oven/microwave all powered by a 3000w inverter and 60amp lithium. So far all working well, have a month in France in June so that will be a good test.

Sounds a very good setup but surprised at only 60AH battery?

 

[DBK]

and 60amp lithium.

Is that a typo? A 60Ah battery won't do much, you probably need 360Ah as a minimum.

 

[oldiesontour]

We can do a week off grid ..no starting ...no sun with gas hob and water heating ...air fryer , microwave, compressor fridge freezer,lights,TV etc,diesel space heating...doubt we could without the gas ,so would not consider no gas

 

[BillandHelen]

Ha, fat fingers, 600amps seems to do the trick ……

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[jumar]

I increased my Solar and battery capacity...reduced my gas storage...but haven't gone 100% , a few cloudy days can be a big drain on the batteries..
I can see that going full electric is possible...but being self sufficient could be testing, this may need regular EHU usage....

 

[Shrimp]

I can see pure all electric being good and relatively easy abroad in countries where there is, almost, endless sun but what about countries such as UK?
At some point you may have to find EHU!

 

[Lenny HB]

I can see pure all electric being good and relatively easy abroad in countries where there is, almost, endless sun but what about countries such as UK?
At some point you may have to find EHU!

Agree, just not practical in the UK if you want to be off grid in Dec & Jan.
Even if you had 2000Ah of batteries you have still got to recharge them.
The bigger the battery bank the more problem recharging them.

 

[L' Hobo]

My van (6m PVC) is quite reliant on gas. Boiler, hob, 3-way fridge.

I will need to replace my 2x11 kg Gaslow bottles in about a year.

I have wondered (at this stage only idly) whether it would be worth thinking about switching to a diesel Truma heater, compressor fridge and induction hob.

The space that presently holds the gas bottles could then presumably be repurposed to hold a large battery bank which could be connected to my existing leisure lithium and B2B setup.

Is this something that others have done? Is it worth considering?

Personally, I would be VERY reluctant to rely upon just one form of fuel!
Yes you can cut back and fit a smaller cylinder or get an underslung fitted but I like the spontaneous control of cooking on gas which, in an emergency with all the precautions taken, can be also used as heating.

By the way, Just smiffy are ALL gas driven fridges hungry on fuel?
The two I have, one in the VW the other in the Murvi, have both been VERY frugal on gas only. Lasts for many weeks but are not compressor.

 

[David M]

Personally, I would be VERY reluctant to rely upon just one form of fuel!
Yes you can cut back and fit a smaller cylinder or get an underslung fitted but I like the spontaneous control of cooking on gas which, in an emergency with all the precautions taken, can be also used as heating.

By the way, Just smiffy are ALL gas driven fridges hungry on fuel?
The two I have, one in the VW the other in the Murvi, have both been VERY frugal on gas only. Lasts for many weeks but are not compressor.

I’ve only once had opportunity for a decent measurement (fridge on while vehicle stationary, no heating and no cooking). 25 litres lasted 5 weeks.

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[carolyn]

We have a PVC. Brand new last year. It has a 240 lithium under seat battery, compressor 80litre fridge and Truma diesel heater. We have 320 solar. We do have an underslung lpg tank for our oven and hob.

We were away for 8 weeks in Romania and Bulgaria last year. Mostly the weather was good so we were laughing and didn’t bother with hookup. There was one chilly spell , very wet. We experimented and used our induction hob, lots of kettles . Plus needed heating. After 3 days the battery was down to 67% which was fine but clearly in winter in UK 240 of lithium without hookup would not last too long without moving.

I thought this might give you an idea of use. For us what we’ve got is fine as we don’t really Offgrid in the winter in UK except for a couple of nights but some do.

 

[starquake]

Personally, I would be VERY reluctant to rely upon just one form of fuel!
Yes you can cut back and fit a smaller cylinder or get an underslung fitted but I like the spontaneous control of cooking on gas which, in an emergency with all the precautions taken, can be also used as heating.

By the way, Just smiffy are ALL gas driven fridges hungry on fuel?
The two I have, one in the VW the other in the Murvi, have both been VERY frugal on gas only. Lasts for many weeks but are not compressor.

No, the small ones only use 240g a day of gas (so a 6kg bottle lasts a very long time). Larger fridges with large freezers in comparison are 450-550g a day.

They do use more in summer though in both cases. So yes, a 6kg bottle won't get a week in summer with a large fridge.

 

[PaulW2]

I share the anxiety about relying entirely on batteries. Much will obviously depend on usage patterns.

If you have diesel-powered water and space heating and if batteries are used for lighting, the fridge and cooking, then I expect that the compressor fridge may be the achilles heel.

If you had (say) 600ah of battery power, and you were willing to draw down 500ah of this, then one should be able to calculate it.

If the compressor fridge uses say 30ah (?) a day, cooking another 30 and lighting maybe 10, then one would draw 490 ah a week. Assuming no solar contribution.

With a decent B2B an hour's driving can put back say 50-60ah.

Now compare with having gas. Typically with such a set up you would have a smaller battery bank. Let's say 300ah. If one then has a compressor fridge, as has become popular here, then using gas for heating and cooking one would still draw maybe 40 a day from the batteries, to give ... a week's independence!

Or have a three way fridge. Suddenly one has a much longer independence horizon. Correct?

 

[Bill-H]

My van (6m PVC) is quite reliant on gas. Boiler, hob, 3-way fridge.

I will need to replace my 2x11 kg Gaslow bottles in about a year.

I have wondered (at this stage only idly) whether it would be worth thinking about switching to a diesel Truma heater, compressor fridge and induction hob.

The space that presently holds the gas bottles could then presumably be repurposed to hold a large battery bank which could be connected to my existing leisure lithium and B2B setup.

Is this something that others have done? Is it worth considering?

You don't mention solar panels?

 

[Lenny HB]

are ALL gas driven fridges hungry on fuel?

Size matters in our last van 160 lt fridge/freezer used approx 1 lt a day, current van only has a 133 lt that uses about 0.8 lt a day.
On electric they would use about 200 to 300Ah day compared to a compressor fridge at 45AH

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[PaulW2]

We have a PVC. Brand new last year. It has a 240 lithium under seat battery, compressor 80litre fridge and Truma diesel heater. We have 320 solar. We do have an underslung lpg tank for our oven and hob.

We were away for 8 weeks in Romania and Bulgaria last year. Mostly the weather was good so we were laughing and didn’t bother with hookup. There was one chilly spell , very wet. We experimented and used our induction hob, lots of kettles . Plus needed heating. After 3 days the battery was down to 67% which was fine but clearly in winter in UK 240 of lithium without hookup would not last too long without moving.

I thought this might give you an idea of use. For us what we’ve got is fine as we don’t really Offgrid in the winter in UK except for a couple of nights but some do.

That is interesting, thanks.

I expect some people will be off-grid in the UK in winter for longer periods without driving/moving between sites. I guess that may be a fairly small part of the 'market' which may be skewed towards full-timers. That's not my usage pattern either.

 

[Pausim]

Is it worth considering?

Yes but I would opt for doing it in stages. I already have a compressor fridge and it is a vast improvement over the 3 way we had in the last motorhome. It performs like a proper fridge and is not power hungry. Diesel heating is what I wanted but we ended up with gas because of delays getting the van we originally ordered. I am still thinking about making the change from gas to diesel heating. All this can be done with a modest increase in battery power under the drivers seat.

Going over to an electric hob might involve much bigger changes. A gas hob should run for a very long time off a single small gas bottle. A 6kg bottle of gas holds 84 kWh of energy, the equivalent Li battery would need to be 6,500 Ah at 12.8V.

 

[Minxy]

That is interesting, thanks.

I expect some people will be off-grid in the UK in winter for longer periods without driving/moving between sites. I guess that may be a fairly small part of the 'market' which may be skewed towards full-timers. That's not my usage pattern either.

It's not just the UK, due to the bad weather in Spain at the moment with no gas for cooking, they'd be having issues with low batteries.

 

[carolyn]

Yes but I would opt for doing it in stages. I already have a compressor fridge and it is a vast improvement over the 3 way we had in the last motorhome. It performs like a proper fridge and is not power hungry. Diesel heating is what I wanted but we ended up with gas because of delays getting the van we originally ordered. I am still thinking about making the change from gas to diesel heating. All this can be done with a modest increase in battery power under the drivers seat.

Going over to an electric hob might involve much bigger changes. A gas hob should run for a very long time off a single small gas bottle. A 6kg bottle of gas holds 84 kWh of energy, the equivalent Li battery would need to be 6,500 Ah at 12.8V.

That sounds like a good plan. We’d had our eye on a new van we really wanted and suddenly a 6.4 m Auto became available so we were able to order all the options from new and had the van on our drive in 10 weeks! I don’t reckon the LPG tank will need filling for years although I expect I’ll be doing quite a bit of our cooking in Iceland. Can’t imagine eating out will be a frequent event.

 

[Lenny HB]

I expect I’ll be doing quite a bit of our cooking in Iceland. Can’t imagine eating out will be a frequent event.

Only if you have bottomless pockets, BIL went there last year one meal cost them £300.

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[wildcampers69]

We went gas free on our murvi and to be honest discovered that we would have kept the hob and oven on gas, using an air fryer and induction hob always gave a big hit on the battery and left you wondering if the solar would be good the next day, without the cooking we could have stayed off grid for a very long time without worry, that said three months in sunny Spain was easy but conditions in the UK are not. Options are always good and a backup fuel can be a life line if things go wrong.

 

[Happy Jack]

I share the anxiety about relying entirely on batteries. Much will obviously depend on usage patterns.

If you have diesel-powered water and space heating and if batteries are used for lighting, the fridge and cooking, then I expect that the compressor fridge may be the achilles heel.

If you had (say) 600ah of battery power, and you were willing to draw down 500ah of this, then one should be able to calculate it.

If the compressor fridge uses say 30ah (?) a day, cooking another 30 and lighting maybe 10, then one would draw 490 ah a week. Assuming no solar contribution.

With a decent B2B an hour's driving can put back say 50-60ah.

Now compare with having gas. Typically with such a set up you would have a smaller battery bank. Let's say 300ah. If one then has a compressor fridge, as has become popular here, then using gas for heating and cooking one would still draw maybe 40 a day from the batteries, to give ... a week's independence!

Or have a three way fridge. Suddenly one has a much longer independence horizon. Correct?

Depends on fridge size etc.
We have a 12v compressor fridge/freezer which pulls average of 2.2Ah equating to 52.8 Amps in 24 hrs.

 

[Happy Jack]

Only if you have bottomless pockets, BIL went there last year one meal cost them £300.

Iceland the island or the frozen food chain?

 

[carolyn]

Only if you have bottomless pockets, BIL went there last year one meal cost them £300.

We’re hoping they’ll be so busy looking for booze they won’t notice the tins of corned beef. 100 ways with corned beef anyone?

 

[The Wino]

It sounds to me very much like should I change to an electric car in the early days when they typically had limited range and were a lot more expensive! I think at the moment a 3 way fridge sounds a really good bet as does an airfyer and diesel heater/ hot water not so sure on the induction hob and electric kettle. Maybe the thing to do is calculate sensible battery sizes and the assosciated charging/ solar required for each part of hab energy requirements and look at them. I suspect the hod/ kettle would add a lot to energy requirements.