well guess what folks it is winter the snowflakes are flying there's snow on the ground it's cold
and it's only gonna get colder it's the reality of living in the northern hemisphere that you
have to put up with a few months of cold winter weather unless of course you cheat you go to like
here they go down to Florida or Arizona I don't know in Europe I guess you go to like what Spain
or Africa I'd love to go to all of those places however I am in New Brunswick and I'm not camping
right now I'm in Dry Dock but I try to Camp as much as possible I camp at least several months
of the year I don't camp every day but I camp as much as I can and seasons are not going to
stop me so the reason I'm in Dry Dock right now is to prepare my camper for the winter and I did
get a good start I got the the foam underneath the floor so the floor is going to be a little
warmer this winter but there's one major thing that I have to contend with and I seem to contend
with it every year for over seven years is: how am I going to heat my camper in the winter?
Well most people know that when you buy a small camper like this especially if you live in a Northern
climate you'll already have an onboard heater and this particular one has a propane furnace
propane is stored right up front and it works well it does keep my trailer warm however in the winter
time it's a little bit more of a challenge and the reason being it's not the fuel it consumes
it's the amount of electricity because I tend to Camp Off Grid and for longer periods of time
I can only use the electricity I can produce and I produce my electricity from these two solar panels
so I was looking for something that wasn't just such a pig on electricity
now what's the problem with this propane furnace? in the first place first of all current draw it uses far too much secondly
it cycles on and off and on and off however long you have it and you're using it if it gets colder it just keeps cycling
drives me crazy I'm crazy as it is I'd like to be a crazy person and at least get some sleep at night
but the worst thing is when it's quiet maybe you're in the middle of get some sleep at night
the night you're asleep and it decides to turn itself on this is what it sounds like
[Loud motor noise]
Not exactly a lullaby!
it uses at least 35 maybe 40 watts of power every time it's on now I I'm on the grid right now
like I'm parked and I've got an extension cord to 120 Outlet so I'm fine now I can do so many things
but when I'm really camping I'm off the grid so I don't have these luxuries but when I am on the
grid I've got to take advantage of it so right now I'm not using this onboard heater I'm
just very simply using a ceramic heater like the kind you pick up at Walmart 120 volt 1500 watts it
will heat a little trailer like this but because it's 1500 watts it's no good for off-grid camping
so what are my other Alternatives well you know oh and the other thing that I should mention I forgot
to mention that I do not want a heater that puts moisture in the air you know like the "Mr Heater Buddy"
I once did a video on the Buddy for winter camping although it's quiet reasonably priced
and uses no electricity it consumes just as much fuel as my onboard propane furnace but its biggest
drawback was that its open flame concept with no venting meant the heat came with lots of moisture . not good
the propane is combusting directly into the air and the byproduct of combustion is not only heat
It's water it makes the inside of your trailer soaking wet and if you can't dry it out
you can't if it's minus 20 out. you can't just open all the windows you'll lose all your heat it is
a problem. so I do not want any kind of system that puts moisture in the air and I know the ones that
the people that use the Olympia Wave sorry it's efficient but it still puts moisture in the air
speaking of moisture you might have noticed this little guy here it's a Pro Breeze dehumidifier
it's just a little one a tiny little thing they're not expensive they're about 60 dollars
I think I got this off Amazon and uh you can see underneath that's where the water goes and
I'll just shake that I think you can see the water in there it's it's perfect for a little
camper like this I can't use it Off the Grid because it uses too much electricity but when
I'm plugged in this is perfect it's really quiet you know it's just a gentle purr but it'll fill
that up in about you know maybe three or four days like right now it's about maybe a quarter
full you can see the water there and it shuts off when it's full so you don't have to worry about it
leave that running when the trailer is not being used and it'll stay dry and fresh in here
so back to the heater issue what is the best choice now now I had brought this question up
many many times to my viewers and I got a lot of recommendations
and the two that most people said like the top two were the Dickinson P9000 and the Propex HS2000 now I looked into both
of these they're both very expensive which I have to take into consideration because I
am in a budget I'm not going to spend a lot of money especially at over a thousand dollars in
in at least one of these cases for something I'm only going to use maybe a quarter of the year so
uh I looked into these and they do seem efficient that's the good news they do seem reasonably quiet
and the Dickinson P9000 I believe you can regulate the flow of propane so you
can have it just low which is what I want because I don't want it to be 70 degrees or 20 degrees
Celsius all the time I want it to just be above freezing that's fine with me uh the problem with
the Dickinson is it has to vent out and it has to vent out vertically and that means I'd have to put
a hole in my roof I really don't want to do that as far as the Propex HS2000 goes well there's one
thing I'm not crazy about uh well including the price is that it only has one speed it's either
on or off it's regulated by a thermostat and that's the ones that I'm really trying to avoid
you know on off on off um they didn't seem to have any way of controlling the amount of propane
they're okay for consumption I think one pound of propane I think they claim three hours which
is pretty good uh but they do use electricity as well and when they're on about 17 Watts
What I was looking for is something that would heat my trailer at least keep it above freezing but
not demand a lot of electricity that is why I wanted to try a diesel heater
I started an experiment with a parking heater for my fiberglass trailer and initially it showed a lot of promise
but things just didn't go as smoothly as planned
I wasn't really using it for its intended purpose and that's important
I wanted something portable I wanted something temporary and that's why I tried this particular heater
and it's hooked up inside I've got it hooked up to my Jackery and I've got it at a hundred percent charge right now
you don't need a lot of diesel that's the good news
but the bad news is I don't know I don't like diesel every time I tried to pour it
I would spill it if it ever shuts down yes you do get the stink of diesel in the trailer
um not a lot I've got mixed feelings on whether or not I would actually recommend it and I'm really
getting cold I'm going to put my gloves back on for somebody that's willing to experiment um it's okay
now I do admit that setting it up outside made things more complicated but
its shortcomings convinced me that it was not worth installing indoors either
so here's the bad news it just wasn't for me
now another alternative that I had and I tried a few times was a wood stove more specifically a pellet stove
now isn't that cool
no electricity needed it generates its own from the heat
unlike the propane furnace and the diesel heater which actually consume electricity
this one actually generates it
it's a little stove that could and it did
well here it is the little stove that could and it did it kept me warm several Winters I'm really proud of it because I made it myself I had no guide or
anything like that and it worked fantastically but why did I never make it a permanent installation
and one reason's pretty obvious it's when you make something homemade and you bring it into
your camper there's a certain amount of risk and then this there would be a lot of risk nobody no
regulatory body would approve this and I could see some Warden knocking on my door looking on
this and say shut it down there is a risk and I'd have to buy a commercial product in reality
to make it work for this camper but the second reason was more about the fuel now the nice thing
about this is it could burn almost anything in an emergency situation you could always find
something to burn in a wood stove however with my personal philosophy is when I'm out traveling
especially with when I'm out in the woods I leave no trace and I also take nothing thing
and I was not comfortable when I go out into the travel especially in a national park or somewhere
away from where I live um I didn't want to start cutting down trees or even harvesting dead wood
I would have to bring the wood with me or buy it I would have to store it and let's face it
this does take a considerable amount of fuel even this small little thing when I was using
the pellets and the pellets I had to have you know a big bucket to take with me it just wasn't
practical as much as I love it as much as I think it was great as a temporary little bit of warmth
it wasn't the final answer and when it got down to it I like the fact that I made it work but the
big attraction for me was that soothing flame if I could just get that I have exactly what I wanted
But looking back at the stove and the heating experiments so far what would I recommend it's going to be something different for everybody
certainly an onboard propane furnace is the most reliable diesel to me it was the most annoying
and uh wood stove it's certainly the most soothing but it's also the most dangerous so
now I've thought long and hard about this and I really did my research in a perfect world
I'd find something really inexpensive maybe even something I could make myself which was safe and
it wouldn't affect the insurance or anything else I and you know what I just couldn't find it
there are no guarantees and not only that even if I did come would come up with something I made myself
what's gonna happen when I present it to you when somebody tries it and they make a mistake and they
burn up their trailer well I'd be responsible for that so I'm not going to do it it had to be
a commercially available product it had to fit within the confines of the small trailer it had
to be low on fuel consumption and low on how much electricity it needed it was not going to
produce moisture inside my trailer
and that final requisite that it be within my budget
now I had to go back can revisit what I'd already talked about because at the beginning of this video
I said that this trailer already had an on-board furnace why don't I just simply switch it out to something that was more efficient and quieter
so I phoned Trillium up to see what they're using these days on their Outbacks because this one's older and it turns out that they did get rid of the
noisy furnaces they've got something completely different they now use Dometics and I have heard
the Dometics before they are quieter it would sort of be a simple switch out same footprint
same location ah seemed like a good compromise so I asked "well how much is it going to cost?"
and that's when I figured out of all the things that I require I have to make a compromise and
that compromise is going to have to be budget
I just can't find something at a real low cost there's going to be quality
and then it's going to last you know I'm going to be doing this every year
unless I bite the bullet and spend more money
now the Dometics were about fourteen hundred dollars Canadian which is about eleven hundred dollars U.S plus installation so I looked into it
and although I was happy with uh with how quiet it was uh one thing I wasn't really crazy about
is that it still uses a lot of electricity it used about 35 Watts when in operation and so um but now
that I've changed now that I've said okay well I'm willing to spend a little bit more money it gave
me an opportunity to go back and revisit what some people had suggested and what I did my research on
and it turns out there was one heater that was quite outstanding
and that's this one
I got it upside down just to fool you!
here it is
the Dickinson P9000.
it is 14 inches high by eight and a half inches wide by five and a half inches deep weighs 15
pounds it has a two and a half inch OD double wall flue and the fuel consumption this is very
important five to seven hours per pound that is really good that means one pound of propane can
last seven hours it can last the whole night
but it's most outstanding feature to me was its power consumption to run the fan it only used a mere 0.17 amps which is about 2 Watts
uh heat output 3200 BTU to 4500 BTU that's not bad that is in the low range I know there's a lot
of on-board heaters furnaces that are probably closer to like the 10 and 15 000 BTU range but
in a small camper like this you really don't need that you know even if it's like 20 below
as long as you've got good insulation you should be fine
so we have the instruction manual which I will read before I do anything
okay there's another box here okay oh
Dinner Bell HAHAHA! right on
okay there we go get this out here if I don't cut myself
upside down yep here it is the Dickinson P9000 so now you know this hopefully is going to be the
best little heater for this camper I won't know until I install it but I got it that's a start
now I know some of you really hope to see how well this performs but it's gonna take me a while to
set up and I still have some parts that haven't arrived yet it's the holiday season everything's
delayed so in the New Year I'm sure to give you a performance rating on it this is my Christmas
present to myself I got a new toy woohoo I hope you enjoyed this video check out my others as well
so please stay tuned for updates as I progress through the installation and testing
almost makes me forget that it's snowing outside
in the meantime stay warm out there