Yearly Habitat check

[acompta]

Hi everyone

Being fairly new to the van life, does anyone take their van in for a yearly habitat check?
The company we purchased ours through informed us we should do it annually.

Besides checking the cooker, fridge, and gas bottle connections is it worth it besides the obvious safety reasons?

 

[Bigsidavies]

It’s only necessary if you rent it out.

Depends on how confident you are to check stuff, but it just seems pointless if it was done with copper pipe, bent not joined, and goes to a bulkhead regulator. All you need to do is check the tightness of the pigtail from the reg to the bottle. Unless of course you’ve got an underslung tank etc in which case it might be prudent to have it serviced occasionally by an lpg installer.
After my first year I did remove my seat and battery and a few bits and check all connections and all places where cables went through grommets in metalwork and found it to be all ok.
I’ve recently changed some stuff around and now put everything in the proper plastic conduit which probably wasn’t necessary.
I guess it depends on who did the conversion and how competent you feel to check stuff yourself.

 

[DXX]

I went down the diesel hob / heater route to avoid gas, I do wonder how many gas fuelled vans are out there without a safety drop out vent in the floor, a hazard when sleeping if there’s even a small leak. Combine that with some less than professional DC electrical installation and it’s got even more potential.

 

[Bigsidavies]

I went down the diesel hob / heater route to avoid gas, I do wonder how many gas fuelled vans are out there without a safety drop out vent in the floor, a hazard when sleeping if there’s even a small leak. Combine that with some less than professional DC electrical installation and it’s got even more potential.

Absolutely. Most people get hung up on buying a professional conversion and we’ve seen the state of some of those on this very forum.