Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I been an Espar user for decades. Models D1L and X-2. They are great heaters, But can be fussy at high altitude. I still have several NOS from 1980s in the shed... The Chinese have basically copied them and are insanely cheap nowdays.
Presently my teardrop uses no heat. My 19' Airstream I use a Sigmar 100. Completely silent and no electric requirement.

Interesting discussion. I am surprised that a super small pellet stove isn't already available for small trailers. I did a search but the smallest I found was a wood stove that was about a foot in each dimension. The unfortunate news about the latter is that the clearance distance around it meant that you need about 9 sq-ft of floor space to use it.

Not sure how much heat is needed but I have successfully taken the worst of the frost out of the air in tents by burning a couple of UCO candle lanterns. That may be enough for a small, well insulated teardrop.

Kevin

H.A. wrote:My 19' Airstream I use a Sigmar 100. Completely silent and no electric requirement.

Thanks for posting this. I looked them up and they're really simple. I probably couldn't use one in my current build but I'll keep it in mind in the future.

There's some irony in this thread being revived yesterday. I had to use the RV furnace yesterday. I should have taken a picture. I wish I had.

Yesterday morning, I awoke about 2 hours early to a very cold house.
Thermostat was working and showed that it was heating. The furnace blower motor could be heard running.
Perhaps there was a power outage and the furnace is trying to catch back up now?
No. No signs of a power failure elsewhere in the house.

I went down to the furnace and saw the blinking light of doom. "Great, we've got another igniter or flame sensor failure. Six flashes, here we go..." methinks.

Blink-blink-blink-blink. Blink-blink-blink-blink.

Four. Where's that chart? What does four mean?
(Of course, the fault chart is upside down and hidden around a corner inside the furnace cabinet.)
"OPEN ..." -scrub some dust off the sticker- "... LIMIT SWITCH ... " -contort body in terrible ways, while pushing wiring out of the way to read more- "... OR IMPROPER ... VOLTAGE."

Okay... A transformer failure is very unlikely, and I would have to replace the whole control board for a voltage regulator failure. So, ...where are the limit switches?

And thus began about 5 hours of chasing my tail, as all parts were testing good, but the error code was different every time I reapplied power to the furnace.

In the mean time, the house was about to drop into the 50s (F). For humans, that's annoying. But there was a more pressing issue. My wife has a bearded dragon that is only kept warm with heat lamps and ambient temperature in the house. We have no 'heat stones' or other heaters for the prickly reptile. That lizard needs 60+ F, and 65 F is better for a 'low' temperature. Lucky the lizard needed heat.

I knew my electric garage heaters wouldn't be able to heat the open space in the house while I was occasionally cycling the furnace and redistributing the warmer air throughout the house.
But... But! Yea, I know what might work.

I dug the RV furnace out of its box, shoved the rear end (intake/exhaust) through the cat door that leads outside, slipped on the exhaust pipe that I don't intend to use (I have two), propped the front up, hooked up the propane (and leak-checked), hooked the power wires up to a 12V power supply from my parts bin, alligator-clipped the thermostat wires together (so I could cycle the furnace without twisting and untwisting wires), and let 'er eat.

It did pretty well. By the time I got the house furnace working well enough to feel that I could walk away from it, at least for an hour or two, the little RV furnace had gotten us back to about 67 F, and it was heating about 1,800 square feet.

Unfortunately, the house furnace is still questionable. I can touch almost any wire inside that cabinet and cause a fault that shuts it down. There seems to be a major issue with loose connectors, or actual wire breakage inside the insulation (my brother had that happen). It's 30+ years old and would certainly be replaced by the average home owner. But about 50% of its parts are also new, and I know this dumb furnace pretty well at this point. I'm still debating whether or not to replace the whole wire harness, wire by wire or pigtail by pigtail. (Replacement harnesses are not available for this furnace.)
Whatever I do, I'm going to nurse it along as long as I can - hopefully until spring - so I don't have to worry about working in short windows of opportunity.

I dug the RV furnace out of its box, shoved the rear end (intake/exhaust) through the cat door...

I like your McGiver thinkiing.

T

Thread necromancy...

An electric mattress pad and/or electric blanket work pretty well and are relatively gentle on the batteries. Figure about 50 watts for a 12v blanket, so you'll use up ~400 watts overnight. A 100 ah "car battery" should have ~1000 watts, meaning you'd be half discharged if you run the blanket all night (fine so long as you charge it up again).

Hot water bottles work pretty well too. The large euro style ones have been awesome. You can heat up water before bed then snuggle up.

Anything else is going to require propane.

You can heat up water before bed then snuggle up.

It's a lot easier to reach in and turn on the Propex thermostat while watching the fire burn down.



It takes about five minutes to bring the cabin up to 72º on a cold night.

I couldn't resist.

Tony

A snuggle buddy and thick covers is the most fun.

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A snuggle buddy and thick covers is the most fun.

Dang! And you've got that damn cool bottle opener....

Tony

tony.latham wrote:

A snuggle buddy and thick covers is the most fun.

Dang! And you've got that damn cool bottle opener....

Tony

Yes Sir! I am blessed.

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I WAS going to use a Vevor diesel heater, but I am trying to reduce the number of fuels I am carrying onboard. I went ahead and ordered, should ship this week a Velit Camping gasoline heater. Kind of the same thing as the Chinese Diesel heater but much higher quality build, thicker components, massively upgraded everything and it uses the same fuel my camper does..

FWIW, my camper is a Ford E250 Sportsmobile pop top that I am working on designing an interior refresh using foamie and wood cabinets for weight reduction and improved durability.

and it uses the same fuel my camper does..

You'll be burning gasoline in it?

Tony

tony.latham wrote:You'll be burning gasoline in it?
Tony

Velit has a gasoline heater, a couple of guys on the Transit Forum have installed it. It has altitude compensation so it's supposed to work at high altitude. I've got my eye on the thread, I might change out my diesel heater to a gas version someday. The Velit is less than half the price of a Webasto version. BUT, Velit is a new company by guys in Seattle so I'm waiting to see how well it pans out.

Velit Heater

Ford Transit Forum Velit thread

Bruce

Velit has a gasoline heater...

I'm wondering about the safety of having that combustible of a fuel inside? But I guess I'm the guy with a propane heater.



Tony