Tent pitchers - Gas or Electric?

[Pints]

How do you do your cooking and lighting (torches excluded) once you've pitched your tent?

[Meeja]

Electric for kettle, toaster, mobile phone charger, DVDs for kids, and fridge. Lighting all LED battery stuff. Gas to cook everything, and a small BBQ pot from time to time.

[Simes205]

Meeja said:

Electric for kettle, toaster, mobile phone charger, DVDs for kids, and fridge. Lighting all LED battery stuff. Gas to cook everything, and a small BBQ pot from time to time.

Surely this lot spoils the idea of living under canvas??

[YorkshirePudding]

Hook up for lighting/cool box/heating and gas for cooking.

[Meeja]

Simes205 said:

Surely this lot spoils the idea of living under canvas??

Perhaps for some, yes. But it works for us.

[Pints]

Meeja said:

Simes205 said:

Surely this lot spoils the idea of living under canvas??

Perhaps for some, yes. But it works for us.

+1

We cook with an electric 2-plate stove for breakfast and a disposable BBQ in the evenings (naturally!)

Electric kettle for a brew.
Electric toaster.
Plug in mini-fridge to keep the beer and cheese chilled.

[Meeja]

Just noticed "generator" as an option on the poll.... In some circumstances, that can be fine.... But not on a camp site.

Even the so called "silent running" ones are a PITA when they are left running all day....

[JM]

It all depends on where, when and who with.

But it'd either be gas, petrol, or fuel tablet stove with a barbeque/fire for heat(ing) and either a gas lantern or candle(s) for light along with head-torch or normal torch and possibly some led lighting.

[matty_doh]

Methylated spirits burning Trangia stove for cooking or a BBQ.
Battery/Dynamo powered torches & lanterns.


If going away for a while I sometimes take an electric coolbox and an EHU cable.

[aw51 121565]

Left to me, battery-powered lights and a gas cooker with two rings and a grill run from a (4.5kg?) standard CampingGaz bottle.

Left to SWMBO, using an electric hook up to power a lamp as well as the battery-powered lights plus a fan heater, but the same gas cooker & bottle. Oh, and a chemikhazi for those visits in the small hours. The "electric hookup" kit plus the portapotty takes about a quarter of the available boot space ; I don't see any need for either of them...

The fan heater has a certain charm, but I'd rather put on an extra layer or two meself.

I don't use the camping khazi because I can brim it in three liquid visits, and I'd rather not/have better things to do than visit the "chemical point" every day .

[Lady Summerisle]

For us it's gas for stove, proper BBQ for when it's nice, gas and parrafin tilley lamps for lighting and a leisure battery for re-charging the modern technology. We rarely camp in places that have hookup so have a set up that reflects that.

[StoatInACoat]

Gas for cooking, lanterns, fire/heater thing for the permanently chilly missus. Fold up barbie if it isn't raining and doubles as a fire pit later in the evening to keep warm and dispose of fags ends etc.

Batteries for radio, netbook thing which can charge mobile phones and hold plenty of films/music and stuff it the weather is rubbish. We have a leccy fridge that can run off the 12v in the car or mains but we never want to leave it running off the car and never get access to a hook up.

[Bill]

When I used to camp rather than camper van or motorhome I used petrol for cooking mainly because I was often in out of the way places abroad.

[Chrisgr31]

The way people vote will presumably depend where people camp. If you camp on sites with electric hook-up, then using gas for lighting or heating is just daft, as you have paid for the electric to do that so might as well use it.

If camping on sites without electic hook up then gas is the way to go. Using a generator is just a no-no!

[jds32]

We use gas for all our cooking. We have got an electric hook up but havent used it yet. We have a small solar charger with various adaptors that we use to keep phones etc topped up. And if they go flat they get charged if we go out in the car via the 12v supply.

[Pints]

Chrisgr31 said:

The way people vote will presumably depend where people camp. If you camp on sites with electric hook-up, then using gas for lighting or heating is just daft, as you have paid for the electric to do that so might as well use it.

If camping on sites without electic hook up then gas is the way to go. Using a generator is just a no-no!

I won't go to a campsite that doesn't offer electric hook-up.
However, these sites almost always also have non-electric pitches.

[Pints]

StoatInACoat said:

We have a leccy fridge that can run off the 12v in the car or mains but we never want to leave it running off the car and never get access to a hook up.

That was one of the reasons we began using a hook-up.

I had a 12v coolerbox running in the boot for a few days. It was no surprise when the car failed to start due to a dead battery.
D'oh!

[Meeja]

Pints said:

That was one of the reasons we began using a hook-up.

I had a 12v coolerbox running in the boot for a few days. It was no surprise when the car failed to start due to a dead battery.
D'oh!

Same here - I bought a coolbox (like a beer fridge actually) from DABS.com about five years ago for a ridiculous £29.99 during one of their promo sales - someone on UKCampsites.co.uk had linked to it.

When we bought it, I ran it off the car battery just to see how long it would last before the battery wouldn't start the car. Based on the result of that experiment we decided to camp with hook-up, and run it from the mains.

It holds a 4 pint milk carton, pack of marg, cheese, packs of bacon, sausages and chicken breasts, salad stuff and still has room for the obligatory four pack of beer (me) and bottle of wine (her). Honestly, it is like a tardis! Although on one of our regular sites, there is a stream that runs past the back of the pitches we try and pre-book... the beer goes in a net that is pegged to the bank, and is submerged in the stream. Works a treat!

To us (family of four, with two young children) it makes a huge difference to have milk that hasn't gone off... and it saved the daily ice pack changing faff.

Once we had hook up, it made sense to use an electric kettle and toaster, using the energy that is paid for in the hook-up charge, and saving gas. The DVD thing is something that we used for the occasional days when weather is appalling, the children were happy to sit and watch a film (with sound levels quiet obviously!), whilst we read books. Now they are that little bit older, we could do away with it.... more force of habit than anything else.

[Cotty]

Gas to cook and lighting and a BBQ

[muppetdave]

Gas to cook, BBQs when possible, and electricity for lighting, charging phones, running the coolbox etc.