Wild Camping

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Hello All.
We are new to motorhoming but have caravanned for more years than I care to remember, we are thinking of having a night with out 240 v supply, does anyone know will the leisure battery cope with the space heater on for several hours?
We have a Elddis Evolution 175 with a solar panel on the roof, which should help during day time.

Kind Regards
Malc
 
malcav said:
Hello All.
We are new to motorhoming but have caravanned for more years than I care to remember, we are thinking of having a night with out 240 v supply, does anyone know will the leisure battery cope with the space heater on for several hours?
We have a Elddis Evolution 175 with a solar panel on the roof, which should help during day time.

Kind Regards
Malc
Click to expand...
Simple answer .... Not a chance.
 
Very much depends on what you mean by "space heater" Malc if you mean a Truma gas heater with a fan then several hours will deplete most single batteries, gas-only with no fan and it'll run til the gas runs out, if you mean a 240v domestic electric space heater then unless you have an efficient inverter and a large battery bank not very long at all.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Very much depends on what you mean by "space heater" Malc if you mean a Truma gas heater with a fan then several hours will deplete most single batteries, gas-only with no fan and it'll run til the gas runs out, if you mean a 240v domestic electric space heater then unless you have an efficient inverter and a large battery bank not very long at all.
Click to expand...
Pudsey gives a good, and more complete, answer than mine, as I just assumed an all-electric heater was proposed.

I thought I would provide a bit of info on how much power the fan on a Truma Trumatic S3002 (a very common Caravan/Motorhome) heater might use when running on gas but using the fan to distibute the heat ....
5 Fan speed settings in manual mode. the screenshot below with added info shows how much current each fan speed pulls over the general baseline current of 0.95A

Truma_Fan- Power by David, on Flickr

Fan Speed 1 - 0.3A
Fan Speed 2 - 0.5A
Fan Speed 3 - 0.7A
Fan Speed 4 - 0.8A
Fan Speed 5 - 1.0A
So say you have the fan on the middle setting of 3 for 7 hours ... you would take 5Ah out the battery.

So actually not that bad (I thought it would have been more)
 
That's what we have but only use the fan to get the van warm then turn it off and the heater to low, if the doors and windows are closed then the ambient is quite good, if not get the duvets out if it's night time, if day time more clothes
 
Pudsey Bear said:
That's what we have but only use the fan to get the van warm then turn it off and the heater to low, if the doors and windows are closed then the ambient is quite good, if not get the duvets out if it's night time, if day time more clothes
Click to expand...
I recently found the ducting was mostly off the fan outlet so the fan has not been having much impact. Not sure how long it has been like that - could have been before and for all the time I have had the van (a bit over a year)?
Fixed now and away tomorrow for a few days so will get a better idea of what I need to run the fan at. (I do tend to like it warm and think I used the heater just about every day when away for September).
 
The fan should blow over the ally heat sink first or you wouldn't get much heat out of the vents, need to check mine.
 
The fan should also operate with no heat to give a bit of cooling.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
The fan should blow over the ally heat sink first or you wouldn't get much heat out of the vents, need to check mine.
Click to expand...
Put the heater on max (electric and gas) after I put the ducting back in place .... toasty vents :)

Pudsey Bear said:
The fan should also operate with no heat to give a bit of cooling.
Click to expand...
Not been warm enough to need that this year but I think that will be useful indeed :) Needs to be in manual mode of course. Auto only for when used with heater running.
 
More circulation than cooling anyway, the bottom of the heater is over a quite large rectangle in the floor so should drag cooler from under the van in the shade.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Very much depends on what you mean by "space heater" Malc if you mean a Truma gas heater with a fan then several hours will deplete most single batteries, gas-only with no fan and it'll run til the gas runs out, if you mean a 240v domestic electric space heater then unless you have an efficient inverter and a large battery bank not very long at all.
Click to expand...
Hi. Thank you for the info, it's actually a Whale underfloor space heater. I'm going through all the other posts which like yours have been helpful, I think I will give it a test tomorrow for a couple of hours and see what happens. Thanks Again
Malc
 
wildebus said:
Pudsey gives a good, and more complete, answer than mine, as I just assumed an all-electric heater was proposed.

I thought I would provide a bit of info on how much power the fan on a Truma Trumatic S3002 (a very common Caravan/Motorhome) heater might use when running on gas but using the fan to distibute the heat ....
5 Fan speed settings in manual mode. the screenshot below with added info shows how much current each fan speed pulls over the general baseline current of 0.95A

Truma_Fan- Power by David, on Flickr

Fan Speed 1 - 0.3A
Fan Speed 2 - 0.5A
Fan Speed 3 - 0.7A
Fan Speed 4 - 0.8A
Fan Speed 5 - 1.0A
So say you have the fan on the middle setting of 3 for 7 hours ... you would take 5Ah out the battery.

So actually not that bad (I thought it would have been more)
Click to expand...
Hi. Thank you for the info, it's actually a Whale underfloor space heater. the posts which like yours have been helpful, I think I will give it a test tomorrow for a couple of hours and see what happens. Thanks Again
Malc
 
What amazes me is that there has as yet been no reference to battery capacity! Very difficult to give a meaningful response without that basic information.
 
TJBi said:
What amazes me is that there has as yet been no reference to battery capacity! Very difficult to give a meaningful response without that basic information.
Click to expand...
Going to get battery details tomorrow, just pleased to get some response to my post and any help is appreciated meaningful or not
 
TJBi said:
What amazes me is that there has as yet been no reference to battery capacity! Very difficult to give a meaningful response without that basic information.
Click to expand...
Not really correct.
For example if using a 240V Heater, the battery required to run that for any useful length of time, the answer will always be no unless the poster has an unfeasibly large battery bank and the likelyhood of that is very remote given the question asked (if you have spent many many thousands of extra battery capacity, you would know why you did that).
Similarly with the fan on a Truma Trumatic.... taking 5AH out of a battery in 7 hours is noise compared to other loads such as a TV (5AH within an hour) for example and within the capacity of any likely battery fitted to a Motorhome.
 
wildebus said:
Not really correct.
For example if using a 240V Heater, the battery required to run that for any useful length of time, the answer will always be no unless the poster has an unfeasibly large battery bank and the likelyhood of that is very remote given the question asked (if you have spent many many thousands of extra battery capacity, you would know why you did that).
Similarly with the fan on a Truma Trumatic.... taking 5AH out of a battery in 7 hours is noise compared to other loads such as a TV (5AH within an hour) for example and within the capacity of any likely battery fitted to a Motorhome.
Click to expand...
I did not ask if my leisure battery would supply 240 volts, I'm not that stupid, I just wanted some idea of how long the battery would supply the heater while on gas and keep the fan running. Tomorrow I will do it and find out while the motorhome is on the drive and I can recharge the battery.
 
malcav said:
I did not ask if my leisure battery would supply 240 volts, I'm not that stupid, I just wanted some idea of how long the battery would supply the heater while on gas and keep the fan running. Tomorrow I will do it and find out while the motorhome is on the drive and I can recharge the battery.
Click to expand...
You might be surprised just how many people DO ask how long they can run an Electric heater on battery.
 
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