Now we’re cooking with fire!
The thing we missed cooking the most while living in our van is pizza. After a long stint of relying on little camping gas canisters, and an even longer stint of having no gas at all, we’ve finally converted our kitchen to run off mains gas. This means that not only can we have a two ring burner, we can also have an oven, and all the pizza we want!
The oven is a Flavel Vanessa, commonly used on narrowboats and in some motorhomes, which, as some of you may remember from our older blog post, we picked up from Wales on the way back from our first Eurotrip. The gas cooker is a double ring CampingGaz one we picked up for £30 from a local hardware shop.
What we wanted though was something a bit specialist, as we didn’t want a fixed cooker on the worktop using up valuable space, but rather something we could detach and store away when not needed. So we came up with the idea of using a bayonet fitting, a 1/2″ gas fitting and hose that can be securely attached then detached when necessary. We attached this to the side of the kitchen unit, and plumbed all the relevant hoses and fittings into the oven and the cooker, first using copper pipe which turned out to be weak and unable to stand the constant movement of the van, then swapping to rubber hose.
Rather than opting for one big gas bottle, we bought two secondhand 4,5kg butane bottles, with a regulator, for £10 from Gumtree (again, we cannot rate Gumtree enough for projects like this), which would store neatly in the cupboard underneath the oven. It was also necessary to drill a hole in the floor and install a vent to allow any leaking gas to escape, as well as purchasing a carbon monoxide detector. We hope this amount of gas will last us our entire second trip, but we also have a French gas regulator in case we do need to buy some new bottles.
With the gas installed and burning with no minor explosions, our final kitchen revamp task was to install a couple of drawer runners on the bottom of our fridge to allow it to easily slide in and out of the cupboard and be opened. It’s a small change, but one that has made a significant impact on the ease of use of our kitchen.
The only thing left to do was find a nice park up by the sea, crack open a beer and cook ourselves a delicious meal of spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. And neither of us ended up shouting or throwing saucepans out of the van (ahem, Ben...).
Follow the hashtag #Fromrusttoroadtrip to follow our van conversion project and our travels around Europe! 🌍
