SWMBO has decided that we would have more choice of CL/CS sites if we could do without electricity for a week-end. My questions are : How much more gas would the fridge and water heater use over the course of a week-end and would a fully charged 110amp leisure battery be enough to keep the lights going?
With the fridge on all the time , and the water heater only turned on half an hour before water is needed , you'd use very little gas . And if you fully charge your leisure battery before you go you should have no problems keeping the lights / water pump etc going . The only way to run out of gas or battery life is use it too much .
Easily!
We've done a weeks rally without hook-up, with no problem, and that was before the days of LED lights.
However I will say that we never take a TV with us, which some seem to consider unthinkable.
We did 4 days over Easter on gas & battery. We had the use of showers & toilets on site so only needed to heat water a couple of times a day for washing up. Our new 110amp battery kept the lights going & ran a portable dvd player for a couple of hours on two nights, and we had the radio on for a few hours during the daytime too. We didn't need heating at all but I don't think the fridge used very much gas and I would've have used the gas fire if I needed to
I'm very pleased with how much we could do without EHU & will certainly be going without so that we can attend more meets.
I very rarely use EHU and find I can get through about 2 7 kg calor bottles in a year. I am guessing that is an average of about 5 weekends to a bottle.
That is running the fridge, water heater and occasionally the gas fire and barbecue from gas. You should easily manage a weekend on a 110 a/h leisure battery. We just did a long weekend on an 85a/h battery. You do have to be a bit sensible with your battery usage though, switch off lights when not being used etc but we had a good few hours watching TV through an inverter over the weekend and had the lights on late at night playing board games. Halogen light bulbs are a bit heavy on power, our old caravan was using fluorescent tubes which are more efficient than halogen. We have just changed caravans and are off next weekend with no electric. We have all halogen bulbs in the new caravan, so we could be in trouble with the battery. Fortunately I always carry a spare leisure battery. I have ordered some LED bulbs from eBay, but I don't expect to receive them for a while from China.
I find when running fridge (highest setting as hot weather), water heater on gas & cooking using the hob I get about 6 days out of a 6Kg bottle. Hot water alone, about 12 days. So they both use just under 1/2Kg a day each, the rest on cooking.
With a good quality, well maintained battery you'll have no problems. Start with a weekend, see how you go. We use gas for cooking, fridge and hot water (heating in colder months), and battery for water pump, lights and tv. I do tell my lot to turn lights off when not using them. Before you know it you'll see being able to go without EHU as an advantage not a hinderance, becasue all of the extra places you can go.
I do have a distinct memory though, of our first trip without electric, met up with some very good friends with their van. My mate and I are outside sorting bacon butties on the bbq in the morning, and my darling wife knocks on the window. In her hands shes got her hair dryer and is shouting"Its not working!". I think rather cruelly we've never let her forget that, whenever we meet up , she's always asked if she's got her hair dryer and straighteners.
We attend many rallies throughout the year, some just for weekendends and some as long as week with the majority without EHU but we found that we use more gas if we heat up a tank full of hot water. It's fine if you need to take a shower but for just washing up and generally for having a wash etc. it's a lot of water that goes unused that you have unnecessarily heated up by gas. Therefore we learned a tip two years ago from a friend to only heat up the water you need in the kettle, that way you only use the hot water required and of course much less gas. We found out that this is quite true as we only used one and a half 6kg. cylinders last year which is about half to what we normally use throughout the summer season. The fridge uses very little gas and will go for weeks running on gas. The battery depends on how much consuption you use as some folk will take a TV or laptop which will drain your battery quicker. We have neither of these gadgets so our consumption is mainly to run the water pump, lighting and radio. Regarding the lighting, always try to use flourescent lighting at night as if you use the lights that contain a bulb such as the awning light or overhead spot lights they will drain the battery rather quickly if left on for long periods. If we have the awning erected I usually plug in a 12 volt flourescent light that clips on the awning pole then feed the wire through the side window and plug into the 12 volt socket. For longer periods we use LED lights as the small batteries can be replaced without any use from the caravan leisure battery at all.
we have never camped with electic yet we run the firige of gas and that allso means it helps keep teh chill off the van. we allways cool or freeze stuff before we go so the fridge is cold on the trip out . we dont bother with a watre heater we have a kettle for washing us and pots and use showers on sight and have a colloction of led lights most from the £ shops that ahve lasted years first with the tent and now the caravan we have a big one above the kitchen to smaller ones over the seats one in the tolet and one in the awaning keep AA batterys last us a week easy. we dont have a caravan battery at all so would not know who long they would last but never found we needed one This year we have a few solar lights that we have in the window and have been trying them ut and found they give a good 4 hours light in an evening they were £shop buys aswell
------------- Dyslexic not stuped
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Topic: No Electric sites
