You may well wonder why I am raising such a topic when we are experiencing one of the hottest summers on record. Well we have placed an order for a new Rockabilly Troll which won't be delivered until Nov at the earliest. The van comes with a gas convector heater with an internal electric element. Will this be sufficient or should we order blown air heating as an extra? We currently have Troll 420 which just has a gas convector heater an this is fine .

I've had blown air heating similar to that you describe on the Troll and toured the French Alps and Angora in the midst of winter.

It was extremely cold outside.

I found however that I preferred the heating without the 'blown air' aspect switched on and that it was more than sufficient.

I wear twin hearing aids and found the noise of the fan distracting.

We always switched the heating off before going to sleep and although in the morning there was frost on the outside we were never cold inside.


If that helps.......

Cheers

Ian

It depends,

The ducting and fan option isn't all that expensive, but also not all that effective, unless used at high settings for both heat and fan running. Obviously heat and fan power is lost on the way to outlets. However using the heater alone means its casing gets hot, which can be a problem if you have kids or dogs. The other thing to consider is that often when using heater only, without ducting, the under bench storage can remain cold, whilst with ducting some of the lost heat actually warms the under bench lockers. This can be imprtant of you have onboard water tanks for instance.

If they only mean you to run it at '3' and 'auto', why on earth bother with other settings for both the element and the fan? So other alternatives are available.

It is possible to have Ultraheat fitted to vans without blown air.
Also the Truma Therme hot water boiler is designed for the blown air trunking to pass through it thus giving a bonus to the water heating.

I've always thought that by the time the warm air reaches the centre of the Therme boiler it's so cool it makes little difference, if any to the water heating. Indeed I suspect that when the water is up to temp., it actually passes some warmth to the air in the trunking, rather than the other way around.

Quote: steamdrivenandy wrote in post #5

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If they only mean you to run it at '3' and 'auto', why on earth bother with other settings for both the element and the fan? So other alternatives are available.

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I have become a little confused by the replies. The water is to be heated by a system which works on gas or electricity and I believe is separate from the gas convector designed to heat the van. I would still appreciate further thoughts on if the gas heater for the van will be adequate without the blown air option. Can any other folks assist ?

I agree and some of our best times have been in a caravan in winter with no heating at all...just body heat to keep you warm....
...but then we were a little bit younger and had a greater inclination towards other ways of keeping warm and it wasn't a warm cup of cocoa

Cheers Ian

I think I will leave things as they stand and just do with the gas heater which I know works well in a Triton and after all the Troll isn't that much bigger. All that blown air business sounds like one more thing to go wrong and really not that necessary. Thanks all for your input.

I have a Familia 320, with the Ultraheat element without the blown air. We had it transferred from our previous Familia into our recent one so it is now seven years old. We tend d to use this as our main heating and find it sufficient in such a small space, the gas is used briefly to blast the van and then the element is turned on...

We had Truma blown air in our MH. Hated it - after about 30 mins you'd wind up with a sore throat from the dry air and a horrid taste in the mouth....never again!