Just when we think the heating is sorted, a radiator bleed valve breaks during bleeding and we’re stuck with no central heating again! This time we have to source replacement parts whilst in France, which is no mean feat, before our friends come out visit us and we then have to say goodbye to the mountains “our home” for another 9 months. Never a dull moment when you live full time in your motorhome.

Setting the scene

Our last blog told the tale of the heating failure at -7 degrees, in the dark. Thankfully by the end of the tale we were happily back “home” at the Aire in Montgenevre.

We were excited and looking forward to more snow that was forecast, Tim and Chris were due to fly out from the UK to ski and although our vanlife friends in the mountain were slowly leaving, it did mean a lot of farewell drinks. It promised to be a good few weeks.

In Gap, they had fixed the broken pipe and topped up the missing fluid and we were left to bleed the radiators to get rid of air and make sure the radiators were working optimally. The process is pretty much the same as bleeding radiators in a house and Toby had managed to do the first bleed successfully. We’d leave it a couple of days and then do a further bleed depending on how it was working. We’d now learnt so much about our heating system and the irony was not lost on us that we had a full service booked for the system in June in the UK!

“Sh*t, Sally help me”

Skiing resumed, and the temperature began to get colder again. One afternoon, we were in Beatrix and Toby was at the back of the vehicle. All of a sudden I heard swearing. This was most unlike Toby. The Sh*t word was on repeat, “Sally help“, “Sh*t”, “Sh*t”, “Sh*t”.

Dropping everything and racing to the back, I found Toby was at the radiator behind the cupboard, with kitchen roll and his hand seemingly stuck to the top of the radiator.

“What’s happened? What do you want me to do?” I said.

“I don’t know. I think I’ve dropped the bleed valve or it’s come off in my hand. There’s glycol leaking everywhere….Can you go outside and see if you can find the valve. Can you see if it’s fallen into the underfloor and also see how much fluid is leaking?”

I went outside and looked – not really knowing what I was looking for. I couldn’t see the valve. What I could see was leaking fluid dripping down into the lower floor. I got some kitchen roll and started blotting the leak in that location.

I returned inside, fluid was still coming out of the radiator at the top. We both suddenly thought about the clothes in the cupboard. Whilst Toby had his finger stuck in the radiator, I quickly got the clothes out to see which clothes had been leaked on. It’s a Toby cupboard and quite a few clothes had glycol on them. We bagged up anything with glycol because Toby is allergic to the stuff to get them washed. More kitchen roll mopped up the glycol – the only thing we could do was wait for the fluid to get below the level of the valve. It didn’t take too long!

Electric heaters keeping us toasty part 2

The smell of glycol was prevalent- however relatively quickly the glycol level reduced and stopped coming out the top of the radiator. We were again in the situation where we couldn’t use our amazing heating system. Luckily though we now had our own electric heaters to keep us warm. Knowing the garage in Gap carried no Alde spare parts we immediately googled where we could get a replacement radiator valve with our little heaters keeping us toasty warm!

Getting replacement Alde parts in France over Easter

Google is good if you know what you’re looking for! There was a company in the UK – who could get a replacement radiator valve with bleed to a UK address within 24 hours. Fantastic however when we told them we wanted it shipped to France they said it would take at least 10 days but that, in their experience, it may not arrive at all. Thanks Brexit!

We were not discouraged as at least it gave us an option.

We talked to Alde and got hold of their people in Sweden to see if there was a French supplier where we could get the part.

They recommended two companies. We managed to order the parts online. This was promising and could be a much easier solution. Knowing that not all things go to plan, we decided to order the part from the UK company as a back up and get it sent to Toby’s parents with the 24 hour shipping. Hopefully they could then forward it to us as an Easter gift with an Easter Egg!

Thank you to Montgenevre Tourist Information

At this point it’s worth mentioning the fantastic Tourist Information office at Montgenevre. We obviously don’t have a postal address to get the parts sent to us in France. So we headed to Tourist Information and explained our predicament and asked could we use their address. They were fantastic and said yes of course!

Top Gear challenge – which part would arrive first UK versus France

Now we just had to wait – it felt a bit like a slow motion Top Gear challenge – which part would arrive first?

Firstly, the UK part was hindered from the off. There was an issue at the post office and it did not arrive within 24 hours into Exeter even though we’d paid for the quicker delivery.

The French part was also delayed – it was in a hold pattern. When we logged onto the website the order status was “order received”. It hadn’t moved and there was no info about delivery dates.

I tried to call the French company. They were in Lyon and all I could get was an answer phone message. I couldn’t fully understand – but knew it said something about we’re not taking messages we’ll be back after Easter!

Toby’s Mum phoned us – the part had arrived with her and she would courier it to us as quickly as possible. Progress for the UK part. The date was 28th March, there were two Bank Holidays who knew when the part would arrive. No update on the French part!

UK friends and more snow

Whilst all of this waiting was happening and us using our electric heaters, our friends Chris and Tim arrived for a short ski trip. As last year although heading into April, strangely it snowed the night before they arrived and 3 days out of the 5 that they were here. There was fresh powder and as the boys had a car, Toby got the chance to ski Sestriere and Sauze D’Oulx. All of them had massive grins on their faces and they were exhausted when they got back. After a cracking break, Tim and Chris headed out just before Easter.

Although there was fresh powder the afternoons were sunny and warm and meant it was slush riding after 1pm. We were still skiing and it was fab.

The UK part arrived first and was fitted!

The UK radiator bleed valve arrived on 2nd April. We were skiing and got a call from Tourist Information that our parcel had arrived! Yay! We skied down and collected the part. Thankfully there was also a few mini eggs in the parcel for Easter! Thanks Mum!

Toby, being the engineer, looked at the problem first with a cup of tea. Then he made a plan, working out how to get the old valve off and put the new one on. It was easier said than done. As usual better tools would have helped however within 1.5 hours the new valve was in place. Our spare glycol was used to top up the system and once again we were back in business.

Goodbye Montgenevre and quick stop at Sestriere

As we were heading into spring and having to leave we knew we wanted one last experience of great food in the mountain. It’s becoming a bit of a tradition that thanks to Richard and Michelle that we love having Tartiflette at Les Terrasses.

On the 19th April, we said goodbye to Montgenevre and headed across to the Aire at Sestriere to see if that could be an option for some short stays next year! The resort was fully closed. We stayed for free at the Aire and now know how to get there and what the facilities are like. It would give us a bigger ski area to explore although the facilities are not as nice. There were only 3 motorhomes there and much less electricity points than in Montgenevre which was worth noting for next year!

The Frejus Tunnel

As we left Sestriere we had decided to try the Frejus tunnel. We’d avoided using it so far as officially our vehicle could cost about €400. Our friends Jigs and Lucy mentioned they’d used the tunnel and only been charged circa €70. This was much more in line with our budget! We asked details about how they went through whether it was a person or a machine and were told to go through the bus and car lane and that it was a manned payment.

We were very excited and only got charged €72.40*. It was a lot easier drive than the one we had been doing from Lyon to Gap and then across. There was an additional toll that we could have avoided, and we were soon formally on our route home to the UK after a fantastic ski season with some interesting heating experiences.

*we used our Revolut card to pay for the Frejus tunnel and did get a bit of a shock as we ended up being charged twice for the tunnel as one of the payments was “held” and ended up being that amount down until it was refunded at the end of the month. just thought I’d mention it as we went into minus figures on the Revolut card because of this.

That’s the last of the ski season ’24 tales. We hope you’ve enjoyed it – press like if you have and remember to follow us on Facebook and WordPress.

Sally, Toby and Merlin