Blown air heating

[two]

I don’t think you should find the Truma combi to be overly heavy on 12V but that will depend on how well-insulated the van is and how hot you want it to be inside. 12V is needed to distribute the heat. If the leisure battery is in poor condition, you may find that the number of days you can last will be limited.

 

[Neil Bedwin]

We were away in Scotland last week. Woke up to heavy frost on the ground and snow on the hills but we had to turn our Truma 4E down as we were too warm! The MH is a Swift if that helps.

My wife likes the blown air heating as it makes the bathroom quite warm!

 

[Minxy]

Hi we are looking to buy our first MH
and are interested in an Autocruise Starspirit..it fits our layout requirements but we plan to wildcamp a fair bit, it has no gas fire but does have blown air heating.

Can anyone advise me how good this is and if it will be any good whilst not on hook up?
Also how much gas is it likely to use.

I assume it's either a Truma 4E or 6E, either will do the job nicely IMV. We wildcamp all the time and find our Truma 4E is more than adequate for our 6.36m PVC so I can't see you having a problem with it in a Starspirit. We had Trumas in previous coachbuilt MHs and never had any heating issues, and that included a 7.24m Rimor! If you don't buy the Starspirit and see one with a fire with blower on the rear don't touch it with a barge pole as that sort of heating is woefully inadequate IMV - we had a Swift with it (2001) and the heating was abysmal and it was the main reason we sold it 18 months later.

So yes the Truma system is good and wildcamping isn't a problem assuming you have 2 leisure batteries and possibly solar (depending on when you go and for how long in one spot). As for gas usage - difficult to say as this will obviously depend on the time of year and where you go and how much use you make of the heating etc. Some people leave the heating on all night which will use a fair bit of gas, we don't and have good thick duvets instead!

 

[two]

The advantage of the old Carver heaters was that they could heat the van without using blown air and thus being a drain on the battery. The disadvantage was that they were only about 2kW output, so took longer to do the business.

 

[ceejayt]

This is our second van with Alde heating, but this week is the first time we used it. I’m sure I will get used to it, but it seems to take a long time to heat the van. We are not on hook up very often so I am conscious of power usage both gas and electricity.

We had diesel blown air added for this reason in our last van. Alde is great but takes a while so the blown air for 20 minutes or so and all cosy whilst the Alde caught up

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