Heating motorhome

To further allay fears the caravan we were in 7 years ago had blown air heating which kept the caravan at over 20c when temperatures overnight for a week were down to -14c. It would have gone warmer if required! I stayed below freezing during the day and the toilet block had 18'' icicles hanging of the gutters 

Jess, you may find this link useful. It’s from the Advice & Training tab at the head of the page.

https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/advice-and-training/technical-advice/mains-electrical-installation/

Remember that privately owned sites may offer an elecrtric hook-up of less than 16a.

I do not think if you have any 13amp sockets in your motor caravan depending how big it is there would not be a problem of running one or even two oil filled radiators of about 600watts each (one each end) or as we did put a 1 or 2 kw fan heater in the cab facing the rear of your van ,it depends where your sockets are

I have not used less than 10 amp in UK and have then run heating on 1kw as I like to use an electric kettle.  Only used such a site once when temperatures were around 5c and was able to cope and stay warm. Ran on 2kw without kettle until van heated initially.

all the above is good advice and will satisfy your 'back up' requirements, but, as you have gas as your primary system (which will be far better to heat the van from cold) it would be good if you can make this work better (and cheaper) for you...

If paying around £4 a night as part of pitch fee for the use of EHU then gas would not be my primary heat source and would be used as an addition in cold weather to speed initial heat up and then as a standby.

Agree with you there ET, refillable is fine if you are using it all year round and going off grid but it will take quite awhile to recoup the money.

Jess, we carry a 2kw fan heater but have only ever had to use it on 1kw to be honest its much better at heating the MH on 1kw than the vans own heater when set at 1kw, of course we can use the gas or turn it up to 2kw but the fan heater does a much better job if restricted to 10amps rather than 16amps. We also (in winter) carry a small oil filled radiator which we use overnight as it doesn't seem to 'dry' the air out as much and it of quiet. Hope you get sorted and manage to get away.

If you have no choice but to use additional heating I would tend towards  an oil filled radiator, perhaps one rated at around 1.5 kilowatts or 6.5 amps. They can punch out quite a bit of heat. The downside is that they are quite heavy and bulky so it will depend if you have space. I can see a number of people use fan heaters. However you do have to guard against anything falling on them, like clothing and bedding that could cause a fire. They can also be quite noisy.

If you have satisfactory gas heating but are worried about the gas not lasting you could investigate refillable cylinders which would not only provide more gas capacity but are cheaper per fill but as others have pointed out the initial investment is quite high.

David

Surprising that you have no electric heating system and also, presumably, no way of heating water on electricity?

Good advice above and you can run a 3kW electric heater on Club sites but if you are travelling around then a 2kW fan heater is fine for a 10 amp supply and would be more than adequate for most motorhomes. An oil filled radiator would make for good background heating if you don’t mind lugging it around.

If you are running a 2-3kW heater you just need to get into th habit of switching it off if you are using an electric kettle or microwave otherwise you may trip the supply.

If you are running a 2-3kW heater you just need to get into th habit of switching it off if you are using an electric kettle or microwave otherwise you may trip the supply.

Which is why I use 1kw on 10 amp sites and 2kw on 16 amp sites.

As with TG, I have found our 2Kw fan heater to be more effective at least initially for heating the van up than blown air and if it's really cold on arrival we have the fan heater on 1Kw and blown air on 1 kw then move over to the van's heating once it's warmed up.

Even on very cold sub zero nights we have found the van's heating on 1Kw  (well actually 0.9) is all we need to keep toasty warm.