Quite often I hear of vanners complaining about how little heat is produced by their caravan gas cook top – that its hard to get the pan up to heat, or it takes a long time to boil a jug of water. Sometimes owners report a very small flame, or none at all on one of more of the burners.

There can be a variety of reasons that cause these issues

1. Some cook tops have very small flames by design. This is especially true of some of the drop in types (normally 2 or 3 burner models, that are just the cooktop mounted in the bench top).
2. Burner jets are blocked. This is the most common issue. The “jet” is the final outlet of the gas pipe, where the gas mixes with air ready for combustion. The hole that the gas comes out of is tiny – smaller than a pin head, and can easily get blocked from debris in the gas pipes, or more commonly, debris/corrosion from the burner area. Quite often a pot or pan will boil over and water/mess will get into the bottom of the burner area. As all these fittings are metal, it is easy for corrosion to occur, and the jet to become blocked.  To fix these issues, we remove the burner section to access the jet, and remove, clean or replace the jet. Much of the time, due to excessive corrosion, it is not possible to remove components without breaking them. Therefore, it is important that identify such issues as early as possible as a quick and inexpensive resolution is possible early on.

            Caravan Cook Top Gas Jet Example

3. Gas system issues – the entire gas system on your caravan may have issues. This includes the LPG bottle valve, regulator, pipes, taps etc. We pressure test your entire gas system using a manometer to determine whether this may be part of the problem.