Blown air heating

Liverpoollass

Liverpoollass

Joined
Jan 22, 2017
Posts
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Location
North wales
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Ace Napoli (Swift)
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Since February 2019
Hi we are looking to buy our first MH
and are interested in an Autocruise Starspirit..it fits our layout requirements but we plan to wildcamp a fair bit, it has no gas fire but does have blown air heating.
Can anyone advise me how good this is and if it will be any good whilst not on hook up?
Also how much gas is it likely to use.

Thanks in advance
 
Never had it in a motorhome but had it in a bessacarr caravan and it was worst than useless if cold, never used off grid and had to use electric fan heaters on hook up to compensate for such poor performance

Personally I would never buy a MH with blow air heating unless it was diesel powered
 
What year is it? I had a 2005 Starburst and that was fitted with a diesel heater..Gas heating is quite a heavy user of gas but if your camping off grid its either gas or diesel.BUSBY..
 
busby said:
What year is it? I had a 2005 Starburst and that was fitted with a diesel heater..Gas heating is quite a heavy user of gas but if your camping off grid its either gas or diesel.BUSBY..
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It's 2004. Thank you for your quick response..
 
We have a 2008 van with blown air, it's excellent but heavy on the battery if off grid..

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We find blown air heating perfectly adequate. Gas usage depends on how cold it is and how much you use it. Most vans you look at will have blown air, I don't think you will have much choice.
Jim
 
Lanerboy said:
Never had it in a motorhome but had it in a bessacarr caravan and it was worst than useless if cold, never used off grid and had to use electric fan heaters on hook up to compensate for such poor performance
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As I said Sandra, if it’s a summer van it will lose a lot of heat, more than a winterised van with a twin floor and the more it loses the more you have to replace to keep warm so heavier gas use. Most vans now don’t have a “fire”.
 
The newer blown air heating in the vans we have had has been very good however if used constantly it will gobble up the gas.(y)(y)(y)
 
I've got a Propex 2000 in my old Mercedes converted 7.5t, I bought it as a make doer until I've worked out what I want, so don't know what the insulation is like. Last month I used a 47kg bottle to run water, heating, cooking, and fridge. It's toasty warm all the time, I'm not sure, and don't care if that's good or bad.

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Truma Combi 6E is what seems to be common in the larger vans, I think its a 4E on the smaller ones. It works very well and heats up the van, even the large garage in the rear, but will use lots of gas if the fan is on high, and temp set to 21 plus for any length of time.
My tip would be get some refillable LPG gas bottles on board, and as others have mentioned a fully winterised van (double floor) would be helpful if you plan ski trips to the alps etc.
Aldi wet heating is the best of the bunch, but not available on many vans.
Les
 
Our first van was an autotrail with Truma boiler and blown air. I don't know how that compares with what is installed in the van you are looking at but now we have a Burstner with Aldi liquid heating. I will never have a van with blown air again having experienced both! Forget the gas usage that will not be your problem but you are very likely to have problems if off grid a lot with leisure batteries being unable to cope with blowing the air around the van, without which your heating is useless. You could overcome this with a generator but do you really want to go down that line? There really is no contest
 
Depends how well insulated your van is.
The secret with blown air is leave heating on and let the thermostat do the work so its just ticking over.
With adequate battery power and solar, shouldn't be a problem.
The nice thing with Alde heating is warm floors.
Whatever heating you get will use a lot of gas.
 
Maximum current draw on our Truma blown air heating is around 5A which is significant over hours, but once it reaches the preset temperature it reduces considerably. Probably uses less electricity to have it on all the time rather than having to keep heating up from cold.
Uses a lot of gas but that's pretty cheap on refillable.
 
Many of the Autocruise's had an Eberspacher diesel water & heating unit . There was also a diesel & electric one.

My friend has an Autocruise Pioneer RenoirLtd edition 2006 ( think it is a 'posh' Starburst?) which has that & it works extremely well. His is up for sale if you are interested I'd pass on his number.
Slightly different layout in full width bathroom across back, hab door towards rear, with full kitchen opposite . swivel driver & passenger seats with 2 full length sofas along each side which make up the bed. -On an alko chassis,2,2 Peugeot.
Any model you like the look of if you put in google the make & model it will show you all types of layouts & you tube walk arounds(y)

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gus-lopez said:
Many of the Autocruise's had an Eberspacher diesel water & heating unit . There was also a diesel & electric one.

My friend has an Autocruise Pioneer RenoirLtd edition 2006 ( think it is a 'posh' Starburst?) which has that & it works extremely well. His is up for sale if you are interested I'd pass on his number.
Slightly different layout in full width bathroom across back, hab door towards rear, with full kitchen opposite . swivel driver & passenger seats with 2 full length sofas along each side which make up the bed. -On an alko chassis,2,2 Peugeot.
Any model you like the look of if you put in google the make & model it will show you all types of layouts & you tube walk arounds(y)
Click to expand...
Thank you..but we have decided on rear lounge
 
gus-lopez said:
Many of the Autocruise's had an Eberspacher diesel water & heating unit . There was also a diesel & electric one.

My friend has an Autocruise Pioneer RenoirLtd edition 2006 ( think it is a 'posh' Starburst?) which has that & it works extremely well. His is up for sale if you are interested I'd pass on his number.
Slightly different layout in full width bathroom across back, hab door towards rear, with full kitchen opposite . swivel driver & passenger seats with 2 full length sofas along each side which make up the bed. -On an alko chassis,2,2 Peugeot.
Any model you like the look of if you put in google the make & model it will show you all types of layouts & you tube walk arounds(y)
Click to expand...
Best van i ever owned until a German wrote it off for me back in 2009,,BUSBY,,
 
My traumatic gas blown air system is lovely,,
On a 99 hymer,, Takes two or three mins to warm place up and works a treat!
 
This is our second van with Alde heating, but this week is the first time we used it. I’m sure I will get used to it, but it seems to take a long time to heat the van. We are not on hook up very often so I am conscious of power usage both gas and electricity.

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Liverpoollass said:
Thank you..but we have decided on rear lounge
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I’m sure you’ve considered this already, but just in case not, if you have a front/mid lounge (e.g. long bench seats), in most vans the front cab seats will fully rotate to then become part of that lounge, this optimising the space.
 
On our 3rd van with Truma Combi's always found they work fine ours have always been gas only suits us as we hardly ever use EHU.
WillH said:
We have a 2008 van with blown air, it's excellent but heavy on the battery if off grid..
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A bit of a mith, they only draw around 5.5 -6 amps on full blast & when the vans up to temp it drops to 1.25 - 1.5 amps.
Size of van and insulation level determines how long it runs at full blast, also with a howling gale blowing it sucks the heat out of even a well insulated van.

rod_vw said:
The latest versions are more economical on electric consumption.
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They are bit better if you have the CP Plus controller as it controls the temp & fan speed more precisely. They still take 5.5 - 6 amps on start up but once the fan speed drops it's less than 1 amp.
 
We have only one battery and if there's no sun two or three nights max at this time of year, a bottle lasts three to four nights. The heating is excellent though.
 
If you can afford Calor prices for gas, you shouldn't be worried the amount you use. Get a refillable system (s/h) and be warm.
 
This is my first van with Aldi heating. I have never been unhappy with Truma but having experienced Aldi I wouldn't go back. With blown air it is difficult to keep the cab area warm and (my wife says) it's noisy at night. The Aldi system on mine has radiators behind the seating, underfloor heating, a radiator in the shower, a blower radiator in the bathroom if needed, two radiators under the extended A class dash, a radiator next to the water tank, an engine coolant heat exchanger, and an Eberspacher engine pre-heater that, with the heat exchanger, can pre-warm the central heating and automatically turns on the cab blower when used. The heat exchanger fully operates the central heating when driving. So, especially as it came with the seconď-hand van, it probably isn't fair to compare it with the Truma systems I've had in the past.

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TeeMyob said:
We have had 4 Motorhome. Three Had blown, one was ALDE wet.

Much prefer blown air and never had any problems. Unlike the ALDE
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The Aldi system is a small and simplified domestic central heating system and should be just as reliable? I know the cheaper of the two pump systems can give trouble (the one in the header tank) but a pump swap to one next to the boiler cures that.
 
We've got blown air heating, been in morocco for 2 weeks, heating on for an hour in the mornings and an hour and a half every night, fridge is on gas as it the cooker, we have used two thirds of a 11kg gas bottle so far
 
tonyidle said:
The Aldi system is a small and simplified domestic central heating system and should be just as reliable? I know the cheaper of the two pump systems can give trouble (the one in the header tank) but a pump swap to one next to the boiler cures that.
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Yes, know it inside out.

Even converted ours from Gas & Electric to Gas/Electric/Diesel and waste engine heat. But lots of problems.

I also don't really see any benefit.

I just prefer the blown air.
 
We’ve just been away for 6 weeks in the UK from the beginning of December to mid January. We have a Truma 6 on gas only and a Truma CP panel. It kept us warm running day and night with many frosty mornings. The van is well insulated with double heated floor and we rarely had to set the heating over 19 degrees. Most of the time we could hardly hear the fan so it must have just been ticking over and it didn’t seem to take much out of the batteries.
With heating and cooking and the fridge on gas when not on hook up, we used an 11kg bottle of gas a week. We have 2 x 11kg refillable bottles so it cost us very little.

Our last ( 21 year old ) van had a Carver gas fire with a blower behind it and warm air outlets. It was never very efficient with cold spots all over.

Blown air heating is much better in my opinion.

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