5 AMP EHU’s on Aires

March Hare

March Hare

Joined
Jul 14, 2019
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UK
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62,410
MH
Hymer MLT 570
Exp
Our 1st Motorhome
I hope you all don’t mind if I ask another EHU question...

We have just enjoyed a two day stay on the Honfleur Aire in France. This was the first Aire we’d stayed on, so we were a bit unsure about the EHU box.

I’ve attached a photo below, but the EHU had a 5 AMP restriction and from the diagram showing what we could and couldn’t run off the EHU, it shows a radiator under the red column. Does this means the Motorhome’s heating system, or specifically additional plug in radiators? We did try running our heating system for a short while, but it didn’t produce much heat, presumably due to the 5 AMP limit, so we used gas for the heating and water heating.

Are 5 AMP EHU’s standard on Aires where EHU’s are provided? If so, is it best to just run the heating and water heater off gas, and the lighting and battery charge off the EHU please?

Many thanks ?
 

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If your heater was on electric you were lucky not to trip it out. On electric if the power required is too high the supply will trip out it will either work or not it won't just reduce in power.
 
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March Hare said:
I hope you all don’t mind if I ask another EHU question...

We have just enjoyed a two day stay on the Honfleur Aire in France. This was the first Aire we’d stayed on, so we were a bit unsure about the EHU box.

I’ve attached a photo below, but the EHU had a 5 AMP restriction and from the diagram showing what we could and couldn’t run off the EHU, it shows a radiator under the red column. Does this means the Motorhome’s heating system, or specifically additional plug in radiators? We did try running our heating system for a short while, but it didn’t produce much heat, presumably due to the 5 AMP limit, so we used gas for the heating and water heating.

Are 5 AMP EHU’s standard on Aires where EHU’s are provided? If so, is it best to just run the heating and water heater off gas, and the lighting and battery charge off the EHU please?

Many thanks ?
Click to expand...
HV
Hi March Hare. The previous respondent is correct, 5 amp will run a 1kw electric heater, but only in ideal conditions.
When you're hooked up to 5amp use it for charging the batteries and be ultra cautious using any other piece of electric kit. Check the appliance and its wattage rating,,, 5amp is max 1000 watts.
Keep your gas/LPG bottles topped up ?
Regards from Bigguspeckus.
 
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Thanks for both of your replies.

Sorry I should have mentioned that from the Control Panel, we started by selecting the Operating Mode as "Electrical Operation 900 Watt" (which the manual says is ok for up to a 3.9 AMP supply), then realised that the heating wouldn't be covered, so we changed to "Gas & Electrical Operation 900 Watt", to run the heating from the gas.

Perhaps we shouldn't have selected this Operating Mode, but fortunately we didn't trip the supply.

Thanks very much for your advice, we'll be careful not to overload the supply by using the gas for heating etc when on limited power supplies.

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You were probably lucky the time of year might have meant there were less people using the power supply. On an aire I always think any elec is a bonus
 
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If we stay there again we won't bother plugging in. Last time we did there were so many MHs the EHU was useless and caused our fridge to stop working properly. Joe ended up having to go out and unplug the EHU and put the fridge on gas. Had to get the fridge serviced as soon as we got back to UK to get it working better.

Denise
 
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March Hare said:
Sorry I should have mentioned that from the Control Panel, we started by selecting the Operating Mode as "Electrical Operation 900 Watt" (which the manual says is ok for up to a 3.9 AMP supply), then realised that the heating wouldn't be covered, so we changed to "Gas & Electrical Operation 900 Watt", to run the heating from the gas.

Perhaps we shouldn't have selected this Operating Mode, but fortunately we didn't trip the supply.
Click to expand...
Yes you're right, you were lucky. In that situation the heating should be in 'Gas Only' mode. The fridge takes about 1 amp of mains electricity, and the battery charger about the same, so there's not much left over for heating. The 5 amp supply is really only intended to keep the batteries charged and run the fridge, lights and TV. You can get away with a 500 watt fan heater or maybe 700 watt kettle, if you are careful.
 
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Some places have even lower limits. If you exceed it, the supply will trip and you'd have no EHU. You might even trip everyone else out, too. Only use EHU for the fridge and recharging the battery when the supply is limited. You may even discover that someone slips a splitter into your supply, so that you could be sharing the allowance with someone else.
 
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Most sites and Aires in Europe are 6amps but will increase it to 16amps at an extra cost...

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We were at honfleur over new year, the fridge struggled due to low voltage, do switched automatically to gas, but we ran the heating gas and electric on1kw constantly, which saved some gas.
 
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We had that problem Wh05apk when we were last there but because we were plugged in it wouldn't switch to gas so Joe had to get out and unplug so that the fridge could run on gas.
 
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denisejoe said:
We had that problem Wh05apk when we were last there but because we were plugged in it wouldn't switch to gas so Joe had to get out and unplug so that the fridge could run on gas.
Click to expand...
Surprising, I thought it should automatically switch over? Ours did.
 
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Echoing the above comments, frankly, any opportunity to hook up at Honfleur should be taken with a pinch of salt. At best they trickle about 3amps into the circuit and the whole aire is woefully undersupplied. Every time we've stopped by, there always seems to be a massive multi-way split convention going on with every man and his pooch trying to share the same outlets. Gas all the time for us :giggle:
 
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Agree, but this time of year it's useful just to charge the batteries.
 
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