Site wide power loss
We have just returned from our winter Xmas market tour on a non Club Site to visit the Bath Market,and then 1 night at a Club Site to see a light show.
On returning to the site, which was in complete darkness,and exit barriers lifted,it was apparent the site had lost power,returned into van which showed a temp around 12 degrees, so power had been off some time.
This got me thinking about the only other source of heating being gas and battery for lighting and fan for the heating.More by luck than judgement I had run our van on gas whilst at the storage site,before we left,and I knew I had a full second cylinder,but it does make you think about trying your heating and testing the battery,regularly,because you will never know when you might need it.
Site power was resumed after two hours,and the van was surprisingly toasty using the gas heating.
Comments
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We had a similar experience on Saturday gone due to Storm Daragh. My biggest concern was the fridge contents defrosting so switch over to bad for that and for heating the kettle and cooking dinner. Although was eventually returned to the site for some reason we had very low mains current, sufficient to keep the clock on the microwave working but not enough to recharge the battery or operate the fridge. Only solved the problem by swapping EHU able from our bollard to another in the morning. Thankfully we had a fully charged battery, having been on EHU for over a week.
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I would agree, definitely worth testing them now and then. Our two caravans, which we had over 15 years, only ever had there gas systems activated at the annual habitation service and once when I needed to run the fridge on gas I couldn’t get it going. However, now with a Motorhome and holidaying some what differently, the gas system is used regularly when stopping off grid. The fridge left on automatic will switch over even when parked up at a supermarket to restock. A few weeks ago during that few days of snow and ice we were at Chatsworth and experienced a couple of power cuts and switched the heating over to gas. Fortunately they were not that long and the habitation battery was fully charged as at this time of year the solar doesn’t provide that much top up. I’m not sure how much power the fans use but I suppose if it became critical the engine could be run to top up the battery, which would also provide heat.
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A couple of weeks before we go away in the caravan I check that everything is working as it should on mains electric, gas and 12v. I don't rely on the fact that everything was OK when we last went out. I also hook up the car to check all the caravan road lights and fridge. I've then got time to rectify any problem before we go. This follows an incident many years ago when we hooked up the car ready to set off on quite a long journey only to find a total lights failure caused by a bad connection in the car which took all morning at a vehicle electricians to find and rectify the fault.
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You do no show which storage site you use but all that I have come across ban the use of gas due to the fire risk. It might possibly be illegal, but is certainly not desirable.
You do use a lot of gas if heating with it in Winter so a second full bottle is needed for these contingencies.
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