Alde heating drain down and replacement fluid cost
I have had a few quotes for draining down my Alde heating system and replacing with new fluid. The cost seems to be about the £200 mark and takes about two hours. Is this expensive or has other caravaners had cheaper quotes?
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I've been quoted £180 provided it is done at the same time as the annual service, which is also the same price.
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IMO, if the fluid colour is "magenta" then you can rest pretty confident in it either being filled with a VW approved G13 or G12++ specification fluid, both in our application are totally suitable, and 5 year products.
The genuine G13 brings better environmental credentials, but here functionally and importantly their corrosion inhibiting, both are good choices.
All said, I being previously deeply involved in this field would like to know, and approve the actual brand used, for absolute total confidence.
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"With my retired engineers "hat on" having read DD's description of the complexity and time needed to carry out a regular maintenance on the system wonder if the system design is fit for purpose."
With mine on, I can assure you the wet system is very "fit for purpose", but that is no asset if you don't need it for that "purpose" but instead need a ventilation system.
The DD experience does seem a bit OTT but if they did not know what product was used previously, a wise one. Whilst a "regular maintenance" it need only be a 5 yearly one. Then we read some, even engineers, get away with not doing so for another two and a half times the manual's recommended change out interval.
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I paid £225 to have the glycol mixture changed by our local dealer in our caravan last month. When we picked the caravan up, they gave me a bottle of the fluid to top up, if necessary. Not sure, but I’m thinking that because we only have a 2 berth caravan, maybe there’s a standard size bottle of fluid to suit larger caravans and they just gave me the remainder?
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I doubt it's suitable but I know for sure it will invalidate any warranty you might have.
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Our large van's Alde system has about 13 litres of fluid in it, so changing it it our case requires about 6-7 litres of concentrated Glycol of the correct type, a smaller van would use less. It all depends on the size and the layout, there really is no standard amount.
I have changed the fluid in our system twice, we changed to the 5 year stuff at the first change, so we have a couple of spare bottles of concentrate and always carry one with us in case we need to top up.
Ease of changing will depend on the layout of the pipe work, ours does not tend to harbour air anywhere so the change was easy but time consuming with all the flushing out of the old fluid.
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Thanks. I understand it can be done as a DIY job, but my OH wouldn’t do it (suffers from impatience & wants to get anything done as fast as possible), plus we store our van in a compound on a local site as not enough room at home. In the long run, easier to take it to the dealer workshop and get a proper job done.
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[Deleted User User] that seems a very painstaking procedure and I wonder were you changing fluid specifications eg from 2 years (blue) to 5 years (pink) fluid which required such a clean out. I can see the need to drain completely when a fluid reaches the end of its life cycle but if replacing with the same fluid specification you would think just a simple flush followed by a complete matching fluid refill and then the usual steps to dispel air locks would suffice.
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