making changes

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danford50

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Joined
Jun 20, 2017
Posts
87
Location
North Carolina
currently I am looking and at a class a motorhome( newmar) wondering if you can make change to a gas  motorhome such as removing the propane and making the coach all electric,  has anyone done this  and will it affect your ride and add any extra weigh  to the chassis, have not make of my mind on when I plan to purchase, probably within  the next year or so
 
I am talking about the house, I want the convection stove top and all power awaning and the multi plex system
 
All electric coaches have become fairly common - mostly with later model, upper end coaches. If most of someone's "camping" involves hooking up to shore-power, all electric coaches are pretty practical. Not so, however, when boondocking. It's hard to beat LP appliances for extended off-grid camping unless you invest in a lot of solar and a larger battery bank, or you don't mind listening to your generator running several hours each day.

Can a coach be converted to all electric? Yes, but it wouldn't be very practical, and it certainly wouldn't be cheap. Tearing out the propane system and replacing all the electrical appliances, and the necessary wiring, would involve a lot of labor. It wouldn't affect the ride, but it would affect one's wallet.

Kev
 
danford50 said:
currently I am looking and at a class a motorhome( newmar) wondering if you can make change to a gas  motorhome such as removing the propane and making the coach all electric,  has anyone done this  and will it affect your ride and add any extra weigh  to the chassis, have not make of my mind on when I plan to purchase, probably within  the next year or so

For changing cooking to electric it wouldn't be TOO bad (though expensive), but if you include the furnace and water heater you'll need an awful lot of batteries too, unless it's a diesel coach that already has a hydronic heating system such as Aqua Hot or Oasis. The all-electric coaches that Kevin mentions do have one of those hydronic heating systems, so they use diesel for that rather than propane -- they don't use electric for that.

If you're looking at buying a new (or recent used) coach, it's much cheaper and much easier to choose one that already has those systems there, rather than ripping out propane and substituting a bunch of aftermarket electric stuff.
 
It certainly can be done. There are electric heat add-ons for an LP furnace, electric demand water heaters, and induction cooktops. The fridge will already be dual electric/gas, but it could be replaced with an electric only model. and electric fridges. For that matter, the water heater is probably dual electric/gas as well, so simply run it in electric mode all the time. You can leave the LP tank in place and simply turn it off, or remove it if you choose.

The only real drawback is camping off-grid. Without LP as back-up power for fridge, water heater and furnace, you need to use the genset a lot. You can also add batteries and an inverter, but a gas chassis coach is limited in weight capacity and maybe space for batteries.

Here is the RV furnace conversion kit for electric power:
http://www.rvcomfortsystems.com/
 
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