This year Barb and I decided we wanted to be far less dependent on the need for electric hook up, partly because its more economical, but also because we prefer sites which are a bit quieter and closer to nature and these generally tend to have limited amenities.
Our biggest energy dependency was on heating, so our first project was to install a Gas Blown Air Heater. The two most widely used RV heating systems seemed to be Truma, which uses gas, and Eberspacher, which uses diesel from your van fuel tank. Both these systems cost between £700 – £900, which at the time was beyond our means. We’d also found a few references which stated that some of the Eberspachers could be quite noisy, not great when trying to keep warm and get some sleep on those cold wintry nights.
After a fair bit of on-line research we settled on a Propex Heatsource HS2000 which cost us £420 supplied with flue, ducting, gas fittings and temperature control panel included.
The next big problem we encountered was where to position the heater. Our two main aims were to minimise loss of storage space and have clear space under the van to route the air intake and gas exhaust pipes. Owing to the location of the Leisure battery, the water storage tank, the water heater, the plastic fuel tank, and the prop shaft running down the middle of the van to the rear axle, the only suitable location available to us was in the cupboard under the ‘kitchen’ sink and cooker.
In order to get en
ough access to drill the required holes through the van floor we had to strip out the cooker unit and the shelf which it rested on.
This also gave us access to the main gas supply pipe and enabled us to take a gas supply to the heater via the existing 3 way gas manifold.
The hardest part of this job was drilling the holes through the very tough floor of the van. I strongly recommend you use new sharp drill bits to do this, we didn’t, it took ages, and the resulting holes were not as tidy as we would have liked leading to a fair bit of follow up filing being required.
With the heater being situated next to the rear wheel arch we were able to route the heater exhaust pipe alongside the vans engine exhaust pipe with the air intake being routed in the opposite direction secured at a couple of points to chassis cross struts.
Once the heating unit was connected to the gas supply and screwed to the floor it was a fairly straightforward job to route the internal intake and output vents into the van via the water tank and water heater storage area and connect the unit to the heater thermostat controller unit.
Next job: adding a solar panel.
