A gas cylinder supply change prompted a radical rethink for the Lomas family’s cooking set-up
Words & pictures ❚ Alice Lomas
Often one of the biggest worries for anyone converting a van themselves is the cooking facilities. Gas has been used virtually exclusively for cooking in campervans for decades, but this can be scary for a self-converter with obvious safety concerns. With improving technology surely there is another way?
When we converted our van five years ago, we went down the gas route. We did it as well as possible and then got it all checked and signed off by a gas engineer afterwards. Despite this, there was always a niggling worry about having gas while driving, living and sleeping in such a small enclosed vehicle.
We were forced to rethink our gas system when a popular bottled gas supplier discontinued our size of gas cylinder. Our system had just had its annual inspection by a gas engineer, but as a minimum we would have needed to change to a smaller gas bottle from another supplier, change the regulator and then get it all inspected again – a significant cost. We started looking at alternatives to gas and began to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each different solution.
To help decide what we needed, we looked closely at how we actually used our cooking facilities. We had a four-ring hob, grill and oven, which took up a huge amount of space in the ’van. Yet when we really thought about how it was used, we found we tended to favour cooking on the hob anyway and rarely used the oven or grill. In fact, most of the time, all this huge oven and hob combination did was boil a kettle! This, combined with the large gas locker under the bench, seemed a waste when space is at such a premium in a campervan. So, what were the alternatives?
We have heard of people using lovely wood-fired stoves and a few other options, but, for most people (ourselves included), the choice was between diesel and electricity. We are a family of self-converters and my parents rave about their diesel cooktop in their campervan. We invited ourselves over for a demo, and my dad proudly showed how it worked, but did warn us it stayed very hot for a long time afterwards. With two young children, this was a concern. The main downside for us, and I suspect for most people, was the massive cost. Starting at around £1,200 for a basic single unit, the cost soon rises to around £2,000 for a twin unit, with all the parts needed to install it – this would pay for a lot of meals out! And the most common use would still be to boil a kettle, which takes a long time on a diesel stove. S
