This maybe a silly question but I'm worried about the safety factor of heating my swift challenger 5 beth.
We have three small children who are always sleeping out of their bed covers. Instead of wrapping them up with multiple layers is it safe to keep the central heating on all night? Does anyone use a fan heater with thermostat all night?
Thanks for any feedback
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Weavers
Only thing we use when the night`s get a bit nippy is an "oiled filled radiator" I might think a fan heater might be a bit noisy (never used one so i`m not to sure) in the van.But if your van comes with c/h I wouldn`t have thought that there`d have been a problem with it as long as its been serviced regular, then again I maybe wrong
With small children I would go the fan heater with stat to control it, a lot safer than gas heat source. You are paying for your EHU so why not use it.
Hang on ! That's a bit illogical!! Does one use gas central heating at home or a fan heater ?!!?
There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't use modern caravan heating systems at night. The heaters are 'room sealed' so there is no chance of fumes entering the van. All the burner system is outside of the van too, there isn't even a flame inside - unlike a fridge running on gas.................
------------- Caught in the crossfire between childhood and stardom.................
we use our heating gas if on a rallie or eletrical if on a site both are fine we have a 4 year old and use it with no worries when we had an older van we have used both fan heater (abit noisey) the beast thing we found was an oil fill ed radiator as teash sayed we when away for christmas one year and used it it was great
------------- "common sence is not so common"...Voltaire
Might look at getting a small oil radiator for those times when we are hooked up.
Reassuring to know that all the dangerous bits are outside the van for the gas heating though.
What about the fridge? Does that cause any danger of gas entering the van, never ran it on gas?
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Weavers
no problem as the fridge is vented to outside, but should th flame go out the gas does aswell do to a thermo coupling if it did go out you probably wont even know! i always walk around and check at least twice a day by putting my hand over the vent from the outside and if its warm then its working, as this is really the only way to tell unless your stuff starts defrosting! they can be a bugger to light though but it just takes practise and then wait for 10 mins and do the walk around again
Tentmad is right on all counts!! The flame is tiny and veted to the outside by a aluminium chimney. A fridge on gas is ace - IMHO the best performance is gained on gas.
[S]he is right about doing the checks though !! LOL I always check the flame in the fridge sight glass of ten during the first few hours/days on site and regularly check the vents and the chimney exit for warmth all the time!!
Though I have to say, the only time my fridge went out, I noticed cos the chardonnay wasn't cold on fridge exit - nothing to do with my reg checks!!
The lighting difficulty I have only experienced when trying to light for the first time after reconnecting the bottle: after travelling usually. I got over this by reconnecting the bottle then turing on a gas ring until I could smell gas, lighting my Henry [Cascade copy] water heater [auto] then attempting the fridge, safe in the knowledge that all air had been expelled from the gas line by the previous items having been sucessfully lit!! LOL
------------- Caught in the crossfire between childhood and stardom.................
There should be no reason that you can't run your caravan gas heating throughout the night , BUT i would do 2 things first , (1) have your caravan gas heater serviced (2) fit a carbon monoxide alarm or detector , the reason it's an extra safety device that would give you piece of mind .
Myself , i would buy an oil filled radiator and save the gas .
Caravans are well ventilated and should have little problems with gas build up, but thats no excuse for not hving it serviced. Care should be taken with oil filled heaters not to flamable material on or directly over it. Did you put a new battery in your fire detector this year. All heaters should have a good circulation of air and not tucked under cupboards.
Oil filled rads....you lot must have big cars to pull your vans. With all the rest of the stuff you need to take, how do you fit it all in? And then theres the weight aspect. Get an audible alarm and use your van heating.
We regularly leave our caravan (Truma Ultraheat?) system on all night. We run it on the leccy hookup and set it to 500w. We set the fan speed to low so that the noise is barely noticeable. We haven't needed to use it on gas so far.
Quote: Originally posted by Ulti-Mates on 08/08/2005
Weavers
We regularly leave our caravan (Truma Ultraheat?) system on all night. We run it on the leccy hookup and set it to 500w. We set the fan speed to low so that the noise is barely noticeable. We haven't needed to use it on gas so far.