Why do we recommend Truma Gas Heater for your caravan?
Would you like a heater for your caravan? There’s always going to be a discussion. What’s better? The diesel room heater or a gas room heater? Now, they’ve got their pros and cons for each. But we recommend Truma Gas Heater. In this video, we will tell you why.
Diesel Heater Pros and Cons
The diesel heaters are quite inexpensive to use and also to buy in general, but we don’t think they’re going to last as long because the fins in that get gunked up by the diesel. You also have to carry some diesel along with you to run it. It doesn’t use stacks of it, but that’s part of it.
Gas Heater Pros and Cons
The other one you can buy is the Truma gas heater, the Vario Heat. They’re great but quite expensive. But they don’t use the loads of gas. On the maximum, it’s only 10 megajoules an hour. And most of the time, it’s just maintaining the temperature.
Case Study
Our customer brought in this van and we have just put a Truma Gas Vario Heat in under the bed. Had a few little dramas to get it all right, but we’ll just show you how we stuck it in and hooked it all up. It was an absolute success.
We show you inside how we set it all up. When the owner originally came to chat to me about this job, he said that he wanted to install it under the bed. His friend had one where they just put it under the bed through that cupboard and out, outside the wall there. So we said that should be fine.
Extras
Then it went out to the gas bottles. The hoses were really stiff. So we told them that they’re on the way out so it’s good to get them changed over. We also asked if they wanted it swapped with the new connector. He agreed as it was following a new regulation. The hoses were well over five years old so let’s just get rid of it while we’re here. It’s so much easier and take so much less time if we do it all in the one hit.
And also he kept taking the bottles out and sticking them for his barbecue and having his barbecue out. So we put a bayonet in for him as well all at the same time. So that’s what we did for him.
Other Issues
There’s also a gas pipe inside a cupboard that goes to the hot water unit. The hot water unit’s on the other side. We show you outside where that vent would’ve come out. So the vent would’ve ended up being somewhere here in the cupboard. Now the vent has to be 300 mil away from any air intake. And this is considered an air intake for the exhaust and that, so we could try and get it in there, but it would have to be at the very front of that cupboard. And that means it sucks up a bit of room.
The other trouble is if you look underneath here, that’s a power cable. And just going straight up inside the cupboard there, they got two powerpoints that were just there. We would’ve had a good chance of it being right on that wire. So we thought, no, that’s not going to work. So we went around the other side of the van, did some measurements as well and we could see that the vent here could come out here, which is fine cause there’s no combustible materials.
And here is the annex wall that you want to put it in. So obviously we couldn’t have it in here. You can’t have it blowing into your annex because they could seal it off properly, nice and tight. And then you’ve got this gas going in there. If some of the grandkids sleeping out here, they could pass out and never wake up.
So this was probably the only option they had because one thing with these trims, you can’t go through the floor and out here that would be great cause then we could just have it out the bottom. But you’re not allowed to do that.
The Set Up
So this is where we decide to install it and we’ll show you how it goes through the cupboard now. So inside the cupboard, that’s ducting that’s come through. It’s actually got two tubes. One outer tube, which the air gets sucked in to make the combustion. And then there’s a smaller inner tube that goes out, which is the hot air that blows out. So as the cool air’s coming in, it’s cooling the hot air. So it’s pretty safe. It’s not really hot to touch or anything.
Measuring
One thing, when you’re drilling through cupboards and stuff, see it just looks like that wall and this wall and this wall are all the same level, but they aren’t because this wall here and this wall here are the same. But then the cupboard kicks back about 30 mills. You can see down there how far the gap is. And on this side it’s hard up against it. So measure a hundred times guys before you drill a hole because if we were to punch it into the back of the cupboard, there could be some wires behind there or something like that. So anyway, we got that through.
Truma Installed
And then this is where we stuck the Truma gas heater. We put it on the angle like that. So this could feed in nicely so there’s no tight bends or anything. And also the hot air duct that blows out would go out on a nice angle and hold it up. So you still got stacks of room around here to put stuff under the bed.
Here’s the vent that comes out the front. This is all adjustable so you can blow it down around whichever way. Here’s a gas that goes through the floor. There’s a chassis beam right here. So we just had to measure a couple times to miss it. Make sure your isolation valve is shut off when you don’t use it. Very important. And these have their own regulator cause it’s got to be very precise. It’s got to be set to between 1.8 and 2.2 kPa. So pretty precise. And our mate next door, Glenn, has done all the wiring for it.
And this is the other vent that we can use to go through. So what’s meant to happen when the bed’s down, it pulls air from here and the air goes into here, heats up and passes out through the cupboard. So yeah, turned up really good. Still got plenty of room and he’s super happy with it. And Glenn’s sort of run the wire through there and he stuck it up there. And then you can see when the bed’s shut, this is where the heat is, where the heater controller is right in the bed. So when you feel cold at night, just turn it on, which is great. And then that little thing there on the other side, you see that black little thing, that’s the temperature sensor. He’s put that, so it’ll suck it off the floor level so when the floor gets to 24 or whatever it is, it’ll shut down or turn it back on again. So that’s where he put it. That’s how it all worked out. Pretty happy.
Bayonet etc.
We’ll just show you the gas bayonet. We tucked up underneath there. So that runs through and then it’s all welded up underneath there. All the tees clipped nicely and stuff. All our tees are welded. That’s all great. And there it’s got the very important dust plug that we’ve still got to put in. And then here’s the brand new regulator that we put new hoses with the new connectors. These are really easy to put on actually. So yeah, that’s how it all sorted out. So very good.
Interested?
So if you’re feeling a little bit cold on those winter nights and you want to put a gas heater in, just call your local plumber, get them to have a crack at it. Or if you live in Perth, give us a call. We’d be happy to help. Also, mate, if you guys want to do all the ducting and stuff yourself, make sure to keep it to code and everything because we won’t be able to connect it otherwise. And we can just do the gas side of things, which is easy too. So happy to help you out anyways.
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