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We took our Hobby Premium Van to Bristol Caravans on Monday 7 August for a habitation check. The check was very thorough but at £195, was more expensive than previous ones.
It was found that our gas regulator, fitted as original equipment by Hobby, did not have a safety check valve which meant that the system could not be properly checked for leakage. A new regulator was therefore fitted for an additional £146. It is highly doubtful that the proper procedures were carried out at the previous habitation checks undertaken at Davan Caravans and Essanjay. Have any other Premium Van owners (Steve & Maureen, Peter & Christine) had to change their regulator?
A problem with the fridge was then discovered. The burner would not stay lit after the start button on the fridge itself was released. This came as no surprise as we had had a long-term problem with keeping the fridge going on gas. I thought it had been fixed after Dave Lawson cleaned the jet for me up at Ambleside in June. A new jet was fitted (I had to buy yet another as I couldn’t find the one I had bought in the Lake District) but the problem persisted. I was told that I needed a new burner assembly. Bristol Caravans could not do any more that day and I arranged to return the following day, Tuesday.
We returned to Bristol Caravans the next day, Smart car in tow, and left the van with them. I later received a phone call to say that a new thermocouple was needed as the one on the van had been crushed at some point in its life. The crushed part was located on top of the fridge so could only have happened either at manufacture or when the fridge had been removed. The fridge was removed by E S Hartley when the air-conditioning unit was installed before I took delivery, and again by Essanjay, in Poole, when a problem caused by the air-conditioner installation was fixed.
Bristol Caravans discovered that the Dometic fridge fitted in the Premium Van (RML 8330) is “not a model imported into the UK”, and therefore spares had to come from Germany. The thermocouple is apparently much longer than those used on other fridges. The parts were due to arrive on Friday 11 August and Bristol Caravans hoped to get the repair done (another couple of hours to put everything back together and test it) so that we could collect it before they closed. At lunch time I received a call to say that the parts had arrived, but the thermocouple was the wrong one. It would take another 4-5 days to obtain the correct part from Germany. This particular saga is not only annoying but promises to be mighty expensive to boot, with an estimated cost north of £500.
Our planned visit to Malvern is now in jeopardy. We are booked in from Thursday 17 August, but it is looking increasingly unlikely that we shall have the van back by then. We had to empty it to take it for the habitation check, so need to get it back home to prepare and load up. And Bristol Caravans is an hour and a half away from us, although only 39 miles in distance.
Trying to look on the bright side – Rick
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The whole system was tested but just the jet was replaced. Apparently you could see very easily how the hole was tiny in the new one in comparision to the old one. We’ve now been away and used gas only. Everything is running perfectly and the fridge has stopped its eendless roaring. We filled both gas bottles and they are both still saying they are full.
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Update…we are sorted. Knowing that our gas bottle was on red, so nearly empty, we have run the fridge since the engineer left at 2.30 yesterday (with us for about an hour and a half), to see if the replacement jet had fixed the problem. This morning the fridge is still running and it is silent. It fires up again once you adjust the fridge temperature, as it should. Previously we would have run out the little gas we have left so it seems we are now fine. The person who sorted us out is happy for us to pass on his details. Ray Swain is on the Approved Workshop list. He lives in Yeovil, Somerset (not at the address in the A.W. booklet). His contact details are 07917821947. We found him to be very thorough and with the added bonus of being a mobile workshop. He will be doing our habitation service when it is due in November. The thermocouple will go into his spares, so our cost was a very unexpectedly low £60 (including the cost of the new jet)
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Next instalment…..no gas leaks, burner burnt out and replaced but the engineer believes The problem is with our thermocouple! A new one is going to be ordered and we are hoping that the right one comes from Germany first time (unlike Rick’s experience). We are £60 poorer so far but another, bigger, bill to come. Our engineer believes he will need to take the fridge out to replace the thermocouple (all sounding very familiar).
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Dave, thank you for these very impressive calculations. Steve has tried to find the leak using the soap and water method but it eludes him. We have an engineer coming out tomorrow (and a cheque book ready). Having seen the vans being built in Germany we are hoping that it isn’t going to involve having the whole thing out. We will focus on the positives a. we are alive and b. our van is not in cinders.
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Hello Maureen and Steve,
I must agree with Peter that you have a gas leak. That is assuming that you started on a full 11kg gas bottle.
The calculations below would confirm that even if your thermostat was faulty and the fridge / freezer remained on full-time with both doors open, it would be impossible to deplete a full 11kg bottle in just two days.
The fridge is rated at 170 watts on both mains electricity and 12 volt battery. One would assume that the gas jet is designed to produce an equivalent amount of heat, in which case this would be measured as 0.621 mega joules (pronounced mega jewels). About the size of a gas pilot light.
1 kg of gas is 1.96 litres in LPG which has the capacity to produce 49 mega joules of energy over the period of 1 hour.
Therefore the fridge consuming 0.621 mega joules would last for 78.90 hours on 1 kg of gas.
Assuming that an 11 kg bottle is full to 80% which is 8.8 kg, the fridge would run for (8.8 x 78.90) = 694.32 hours, meaning 28.93 days.
Bearing in mind that both fridge and freezer doors are closed and the thermostat is normally working as expected, this figure of 28.93 days could easily be doubled.
All of the above assumes 100% efficiency which is not the case, so allowing 10% for inefficiency; the figures are not going to be drastically different. Without checking the specification of your particular fridge, I can confidently suggest that the majority of modern 3 way absorption fridges are reportedly 93% efficient whilst on LPG.
We have been through this calculation many years ago and it was confirmed by a member who rarely washes (in the van I might add) and rarely cooks in the van, who stated that he has had fractionally more than three months of continuous use of the fridge on one 13 kg bottle of propane. Admittedly, it was the smaller fridge with the freezer compartment within.
Conversely, if you had a flame to the rear of the fridge which was capable of burning 431.2 (49 x 8.8) mega joules of energy over a period of 48 hours, equivalent to 119.77 kilowatt hours, not only would you have seen and heard the flame, your van would now be cinders.
119.77 kilowatt hours would be similar to exposing the surrounding materials to the flame(s) of two and a half motorhome gas ovens for a period of 48 hours. -
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Hi Maureen,
Me thinks you have a gas leak in the system. I doubt it would be possible to use 11 kegs of gas via the tiny fridge jet in 2 days. I suggest you get the soapy water out and check every gas joint you can get to especially next to the bottle. If you cannot find a leak I suggest you get a gas check done on the system.Good luck
Peter -
This is interesting (and worrying) as our fridge is working but is gobbling up gas even when it is turned down low. We sense a call to Dometic needs to go on our To Do list. We got through a whole 11k bottle in two days. There wasn’t even any cordon blue cooking going on, almost no hot water and, despite the weather, no heating. It has to be the fridge. Deep sigh.
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Update: We collected the van from Bristol Caravans on Wednesday afternoon and returned home with it by 16:30. The rest of the afternoon and evening was taken up with preparation for our Malvern trip – filling water tank, washing the van and putting all our gear back inside.
We made it to Malvern on schedule and the fridge worked better than ever before. Even the heating seemed to be more efficient – possibly because the regulator was changed and the gas pressure was better??? Who knows….. The upshot is that we have a fully functioning van again and were able to enjoy our long weekend away at Malvern.
Rick
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