This is a short post by way of an update now that winter should have turned to spring.
It has been too cold and wet to feel the urge to move the van forward with some of the modifications we planned as a result of using it last year. One of my children bought us a more compact, more functional portable toilet for my birthday which has brought about a bit of a rethink on how best to use the space the old one has occupied.
It is one of those with a flush tank sitting above and connected to a sealed waste storage tank below. The increased space this offers above this loo begs to be used by building a storage unit to fill the space from behind the drivers seat to the end of the bed.
The potty might then be stored away below this unit when not in use and provides the opportunity to fit a miniature kitchen above it. We have no intention of making "the van" a mobile home. Setting up a camping style kitchen at the back as we did last year was cheap and easy to do but does have the disadvantage of having to cook outside. That includes simply boiling a kettle for a cup of tea and making cups of tea was by far it most common use last year.
There will be enough new space above the new loo for a "worktop" with a single gas burner and a small sink. We could then make a cup of tea without getting out of the van. Fitting this with a larger gas bottle would also save money and the inconvenience of having to find or carry spare gas. One 6kg bottle should give us around 30+ hours of tea making on a single 1.2kw ring.
There's little point in planning beyond this as an idea until I know the exact dimensions of the stove I need to build a storage unit / small kitchen for so I bought one by way of a test.
Love Amazon Prime. I found the one I have tested in this post for £38 including delivery. What's not to like about that? Depends on if it is fit for purpose or not and it is not.
OK. It clearly states on the description and packaging that it is "an outdoor LPG camping stove" so I was aware of this before it arrived. Neither the instruction or description tell one what type of jets are fitted but it is described as being suitable for use with Propane. I already had a hose and regulator for a propane gas torch so didn't need to buy that bit. I just removed the torch and connected it to a new 6kg propane bottle I bought for the purpose.
I'm glad I did a bench test as it is possibly not fitted with suitable jets. The stove was not easy to light. It partially lit a small section on one side of the burner but refused to light evenly around the whole burner plate without the flow of gas being increased. There was a VERY fine margin of adjustment between being partially alight and fully lit.
For any gas burner to be burning efficiently and safely it needs to be consistently burning with a blue flame. Any sign of a yellow flame is a bad sign.
Achieving this during the short test I gave the stove seemed impossible so I gave up and have sent the cooker back.
It may be cheap and it may be fine for "outdoor use" but it is not refined enough to be used safely in an enclosed space.
It may also work better with the propane gas I use if some adjustments were made to either the jet or the distribution plate. Perhaps it works well with Butane gas.
I will never know as I've now ordered a replacement which I'll also post a review on shortly.
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