The new Troll 535 now comes with the Truma Combi 4 as standard, no choice, you have to have it. Now, this is all gas. To upgrade to include the electric elements during building at the factory (not able to be fitted retrospectively, so its now or never) is an extra £465!

Now, what would you do? pay for the electric elements or use the money and install a gaslow system instead? We don't want to be reliant totally on gas bottles we can't exchange when we are out of the UK for long periods or spend lots on expensive gas from non refillable bottles to keep warm. We have never had anything other than the Truma fire before, and no hot water, so we are not sure what to do and we only have a very short period of time to make up our mind!

Hmmm. Difficult one that. We thought about going for the gas/electric but only thought and went for electric heated hot water. Like you we mainly use sites with EHU and if we stopped 'off grid' it would only be for a stopover so boiling a kettle wouldn't be too arduous. If I could I think I'd say, 'Ouch' and have the electric option which you'll be paying for an way. On the other hand the extra cash would buy a lot of gas. Does the new big fridge run on gas as well as electric? We've always used Gaz in Europe and just replaced them in local supermarkets - didn't know about the other options mentioned - more research to do!!!

Yes, I know but it has proved convenient for us.

We are due to collect our recently sourced Troll 550 later this month. It has blown heating and hot water, which for us wasn't a pre-requisite, but to have them both I see as a bonus. I asked AL if the blown heating meant that we would also automatically have the electric element in the Truma - I was a little surprised to get the response that the sales agent would call me back following his holiday! I'm not too miffed about that, it's either in there or not, but I thought I would have received a clear answer from arguably the country's largest dealership of Eriba's?
We mainly tour on EHU, so it would be "nice" to have the 240v option, especially as we aren't afraid of a frost or two, but in the overall scheme of things, the extra gas won't be too painful. We cook on electric, so once on site, it's only the Truma that will use gas (I think). When you consider that we intend to use Camping Gaz, the direct cost of the Gas can't be too important to us I suppose - mad fools I hear you say. Part of the reasoning is that the camper runs on Gaz, so we could quickly swap bottles in an emergency. We have the pigtail and adaptor for Calor, if we change our minds. Also we intend to go to France next year and I believe Gaz is readily available there and is quite a bit cheaper than here. Weight and particularly the extra space in the front locker is also a consideration.

Hi Colin,

We have an oil filled radiator (or two), as until we have an Eberspacher fitted, we use one in the camper. As you said, great for backround heat, but something else for me to fall over! I really like your slim panel radiator idea. Maybe I was reading a pretty old post about Gaz costing less than £20 in France. As I said, convenience not flat cost is ruling the thought process here. I'll offset the extra cost on Gaz (compared to Calor etc) against the cost and quality of the Rouge while in France. I can justify anything if I put my mind to it.

Cheers

Magpie, the fridge in the 535 is now electric only, no gas backup. I think we only used gas for the current fridge once in 3 yrs in current van during a power cut and we always stay on EHU, so the lack of a gas backup didn't put us off. There's no fire in the 535 either, just the water/blown air heating boiler.

AL had to ask Eriba/Hymer if we could acfually have the electric element added to the 535 spec, as they didn't know (I could see on the Truma website that they were possible). Hymer took some time to get back to them and we had to wait again after that for a price from Hymer as they didn't have the option on their system! So I guess not high demand so far.

I worry that with the fridge on electric, using a portable halogen hob most of the time plus electric kettle, laptop, fan etc etc, that we'll trip the electrics all the time with hot water and heating on electric. I think it's probably a lot to expect for the heating to be effective on electric only but you can set the gas and electric model to favour electric, if it can maintain the temperature you want. People who have them say they need the gas to get the van up to temp from cold and then it switches to electric to maintain temperature, but these are mostly motorhomes without a draughty poptop to eat the heat. We are likely to use the new van more in the cold than we do now, but that's likely to be mostly in the UK where campsite electrics are more dependable.

I think I'll just leave it for his lordship to decide!

Good idea! I asked about the fridge because if it did work on gas presumably it would chunk through it! It does mean though that you always have to have an EHU if you want to use it (which is what you usually do). Daft then, in a way, for Hymer to fit a heater/boiler that only works on gas, as standard. That fridge does look good though!

We paid extra for gas and electric to heat the boiler on our Troll 540. We did notice that it was so much quicker to heat the water with the gas & electric. The electric only seemed to take an age to get up to anything like hot.This was on our drive when we were testing the system.

We got it from AL and Cameron and I were of the view that it was probably an unnecessary luxury.However we were overruled by Kath who deemed it a necessity. We had a slight problem with it at first but Adventure at Tebay sorted it for us. However we have yet to use it at all on site!!!!!!!!!!!!! Instead we have always used the sites plentiful hot water that we have paid for.

My view is now that unless you are doing a lot of off-grid camping the hot water boiler is an expensive optional extra. I know that there are a lot of people on the Forum that disagree very strongly with me. We could have spent the money on something more useful. MikeT

Jennie, with regards to the fridge running on gas it is a very frugal system with low gas usage as the flame is very small, just like a pilot light really.
TonyP

True, but that 90L fridge in the new 535 only works on electricity so you have to park on a site with EHU. The water/blown air heater as supplied in the 535 on works on gas - not good if you are already paying a standard rate for the electric and a hefty price to upgrade that heater to gas and electric. We are going to stick with the small (3L) electric water heater. Apparently it fits in conveniently under that cupboard thingy in the 540.

Oooh Jennie, have you made your mind up?! How exciting ☺

I have to say, with all the permutations, I can see why so many people have had multiple Eribas! We did use to be outdoors and anywhere campers, who really only slept in our vans and we've never used water, hot or cold, in the Eriba or the T5, or heating, but we must be getting old as we'd now like these things and, as we now always stay on campsites, we'd like to make the most of the EHU. We also want to do more in the UK and out of season, so heat/hot water more useful in the cold obviously and we wanted more room inside when its horrible outside (and more room in the fridge for beer and ice!). We still haven't made our mind up about the electric elements in the heater! Yes it's a hefty upgrade for the heater - if we could have opted to have the fire and a small water boiler we would have done, but we couldn't with the layout we wanted. It's all a compromise for certain things I guess.