Use vehicles electric power to run a heater in a properly insulated camper and that would be rather effective.
he was asking about while driving which is no issue. Not going to drain it while engine in TV is running.tony.latham wrote:Use vehicles electric power to run a heater in a properly insulated camper and that would be rather effective.
DC is horrible for use as a power source for heating. You'll suck your battery down like a bucket with a hole in it. The one exception we've found is a 12V electric heater for pre-heating the bed. Even that uses about 4-5 amp/hours.
My suggestion is don't go to bed cold. If it's a nippy night build a fire, warm up and then hit it.
It's camping.
Tony
..there are 100s of thousands of cars out there using electric heat daily.
Think many here havent caught up with the technology these days.
no talking the electric cars out there. Internal combustion I would have said 10s of millionstony.latham wrote:..there are 100s of thousands of cars out there using electric heat daily.
If you are talking about internal combustion vehicles, they, of course, are using heat scavenged from the engine's cooling system.Think many here havent caught up with the technology these days.
But perhaps you're referring to how Tesla and the other electric cars heat their cabins. Here it is direct from Tesla:
"First, the heating. This is relatively straightforward. We replace the heater matrix, which would have had engine coolant running through it, with an electric heater that has 400 volts running through it. The clever bit of the design is to ensure that we have a safe system that also minimises the drain on the car’s battery pack (or Energy Storage System (ESS), as we call it).
So we use what’s called a Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) heater. It’s basically a resistor that increases its resistance as it heats up, thus limiting the current it can draw. That way it will never get too hot. Why do we use 400 volts for the heater? Well, unlike every other car, we’ve got 400 volts available, so we might as well use that — it means considerably reduced currents along the cables that run from the ESS at the back of the car to the heater at the front. And with the heater capable of pumping out 4 kilowatts, that should keep the cabin nice and toasty."
And I was planning to downsize my Group 27... But to get this thread back to Hamilton's thoughts: I see no reason you couldn't put a heating core and fan in a tiny camper that was properly plumbed from your cooling system --it'd heat your cold toes up! It would just be a matter of rigging it up with the proper hardware and interior design.
Tony
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests