End bed heating
We recently picked up our Sprite Quattro EB and went away in it last weekend. We found that hardly any air from the heating got to the vents in the end bedroom, even with the vents at the front closed, they didn’t really close and most of the air flows through them still. If we blocked up the vents at the front the bedroom got more warm air and started to warm up. I’ve seen reference to reducers for the front vents but can’t find them anywhere. Does anyone have any advice?
Thanks!
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It sounds like the balance of air outlets is not set up correctly in your van, I afraid its time to question the dealer about your heating system. Ask them if it is correctly installed and set up?
The old truma heaters have a balance control which diverts air between two outlets front to rear. The new Truma 4 e fitted to your Sprite doesn't appear to have this. There are 4 outlets from the heater. To get a balance I would guess they would need to restrict, reduce or baffle the air to the front lounge / kitchen area. Maybe these have been omitted in the build?
Additionally Your combi boiler is probably at the front offside. This makes it a very long run to your bedroom area outlet, about 4.5 metres plus. So this will present a high resistance to air flow. Your lounge area outlets are immediately adjacent the boiler presenting a low resistance hence the need to possibly add reducers to the front outlets. You probably have 2 of the 4 of the boiler outlets feeding the lounge / kitchen area, one feeding the bathroom and one feeding the bedroom (I maybe wrong here!) but anyway get the dealer to check all is correct.
hope this helps
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agree with the above....
looking at various photos, the combi is situated under front offside seat, and another picture shows the underbed piping which appears to come up from under the floor within the underbed area...
obviously, pipework rinning outside the van in winter (when you need the heating) will loose heat in its travels...
to me, this van should.have the combi 6e, not a 4e, however, this won't make a difference if you are only using electric....they are got the same in this department....1800w.
this may not be enough to get heat all the ay back. even with the fan set to 'high'.
you should definitely have vents with 'flaps' to help control the heat, but you should try the heating on mixed mode.....gas and elec 2.
this will supply 2kw of gas heat to supplement the 1800w of electric, making 3.8kw which will,be a significant improvement.
as the van heats up, the gas supply will gradually diminish (on its own, no need to change any settings) and then rely on the electric to maintain heat levels....
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If the pipe work from the heater is at any point run under the van rather than inside it will be very difficult to get any decent heat to where it is wanted ,we had that problem on one of our previos vans, when i contacted both the van maker and the heater makers they must have had a "conversation" as a conversion kit was supplied (foc) to bring the pipe inboard, it was installed by our dealer ,so make waves
ps they tried to "improve" it before by increasing the insulation of the external pipe but it was not to our satisfaction
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Odd that the bedroom pipe goes outside the van, generally this only happens if the entrance door is in the way of the pipe run. Not only does running externally reduce heat transfer to the desired outlets but the route is more tortuous in terms of bends, this will reduce flow further. If you have very low or no airflow from the bedroom vents the room will never reach the desired temperature irrespective of boiler heat output.
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Thanks all, really helpful answers. The pipes do indeed run outside and it’s a very long run with lots of turns in it. It would make sense to need some kind of reducer. The only time I really managed to get any heat to the bedroom was to run the boiler in “boost” mode with the temp set to max, it was like sitting on a beach in the Med in the lounge and just about comfortable in the bedroom.
I will go back to the dealer and see what they say.
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we have a Sprite major 6 TD, same problem as you, we lagged the underfloor pipes and that did help a bit. When (as most times now) there are only two of us it is not a problem but when the occasional (freeloading) guest appears then doing what has been said above works or we bought a 400W oil filled radiator and that did keep the end part of the van quite warm with the 1Kw setting. Next van will have Adle heating!
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Electric blanket any good for a bit of extra warmth?
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We just use a small oil filled radiator, as mentioned if you turn it up the lounge becomes to hot even if you block some of the vents. We have a rear bathroom, the pipes run inside the van 6.2m but the bathroom is nowhere near as warm as the main body of the van, so we either leave the bathroom door open, to equalise or pop in the small radiator.
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