Boxed-in clever

So here's how the heater outlet has been looking for the past two weeks; not pretty, but strangely ideal for grabbing the end of the hose and directing hot air straight into the cab - quite a luxury!

And here's how the outlet looks now after another trip back to The Campershak:

 

All looking pretty neat I think you'll agree. The centre piece of the outlet is directional and therefore we can direct the heat either slightly left, right, up or down. The top of the boxed section ends just out of sight leaving a large enough gap for the heater unit to be serviced or removed if necessary.

A warm welcome

Today was the first cool day of Autumn - a perfect opportunity to give the heating a blast. Here's the system showing +8ºC external temperature:

And showing +16ºC internal temperature:

I'm still looking forward to a night's camping where we're getting closer to zero degrees - if not below! We're hopefully off to York for a spot of Christmas shopping the second weekend in December, fingers-crossed for some frosty evenings...

The heat is on...

At last, no more cold nights and chilly mornings - the Eberspacher heater is fitted:

Above is the view from the driver's footwell showing the air-inlet end of the Airtronic unit.

And here's the view from the rear of the seat base showing the hot air ducting exiting the unit. The benefits of mounting the unit here are threefold; it is inside the cab away from the elements, the amount of ducting required is reduced and therefore the unit is more efficient, and the unit can be flat-mounted as oppose to side-mounted under the van - this increases efficiency and reduces the chances of failure.

Here's a shot of the 'extra' ducting they've supplied:

We're back at Campershak in two weeks to have this reduced and tidied-up to look something more like this:

Here's where the magic happens:

We went for the seven-day timer due to our early starts five days a week - there's nothing more depressing than spending 20 minutes warming a van up in the cold and scraping ice off the windscreen just to go to work! So far we've worked out the thermostat control and set the clock - next is working out the programmable days and on/off times - reading the manual everything seems fairly straightforward.

Initial reports are that the unit is very quiet after it's initial start-up period, quiet enough to sleep through. And on full-power the air is very warm! Probably too warm!!! But its good to know we can get a good amount of warmth quickly after being out in the elements walking or biking.

Speaking of noise, we also went for the extra silencer, this sits above the plastic undertray - again, away from the elements. Here's a shot of the exhaust:

It should be quiet enough not to bother any neighboring campers - I'm now looking forward to the temperature dropping to put the Eber to the test!

Time to warm things up

As regular readers will know, I'm a big advocate for being as comfortable as possible whilst camping. Years of camping under canvas in the rain have taught me to keep things as dry and warm as possible - once you start to feel cold and damp it's already too late!

Camping in the depths of winter in the UK comes with some great perks -  the campsites are generally quieter, the scenery is as equally stunning as Summertime, Christmas shopping trips are cheaper than finding city hotels and, most importantly; it fights-off that 'hibernation' feeling when only camping from April to October.

So to complement the insulation work (one of the first jobs done on the van), time has come to think about comfortably camping in the van all-year-round.

After a few phone-calls, we made our first visit yesterday to Ribblesdale Auto Electrics in Preston to discuss the fitting of an Eberspacher Airtronic D2 kit.

The Airtronic seems to be the tried-and-tested route for heat in many motorhomes. Excellent quality, reliability, warranty, after-sales and service make this unit the obvious choice. Having seen a few of these already fitted to T5s we knew it could be done.

We chatted with Graham, a friendly and knowledgeable chap at Ribblesdale, who suggested the unit be fitted internally under the driver's seat - the advantages being that there is less ducting of hot air, therefore more efficient heat and the unit is sat 'upright' as oppose to on it's side when fitted under the vehicle (the unit can be side-mounted but again, doesn't run as efficiently), internally-mounted also has the advantage of keeping the heater itself clean and dry, away from the elements - potentially increasing the lifespan and lengthening service intervals.

So, we're booked in. For the end of October - they've said one full day for fitting and testing, but to be on the safe-side we're letting them have the van for two days. We've gone for the full package which includes a 7-day timer (just like your central heating at home) and an extra silencer so as not to annoy any neighbouring campers.

I'm so looking forward to reporting back after a toasty night away in the depths of Winter!