Using propane heater exhaust as a outside heat source?

As others have said furnace needs to be unrestricted and CO is poison gas that KILLS people ever year in homes let alone a small area like an RV.

Besides the obvious fact of the possibility of killing your family. The smell of the exhaust from the furnace and hot water heats smells.

I can't even leave my kitchen window open when the hwh is on because of the smell of the exhaust coming up thru the window into the coach.

Pipe that under the entire belly of your MH and it's going to stink up the entire coach to high heaven before it ultimately does kill someone. :R

A. CO is a killer

B. If you cool the exhaust gasses, you wind up with water. The heat exchangers in high efficiency furnaces are designed to drain that water off: under your RV (assuming the CO doesn't kill you, see A above) that moisture would ruin a lot.

Doug

You could "Rube Goldberg" a design using 2 heat exchangers, small pump, and antifreeze. You could hang a transmission size cooling radiator in front of the exhaust on the outside, have 2 flexible insulated lines running to the inside, to another radiator/heat exchanger with a small fan moving air over it. A small pump to circulate a non-toxic coolant and you would have a heat source in the basement. Wire the pump and fan to come on with the furnace relay.
As others have mentioned you cannot restrict the exhaust heat, so I wouldn't cover it or box it in.
My opinion only

With the typical efficiency of RV furnaces running about 80%, not a lot worse than many residential furnaces, the heat loss isn't as great as it seems.

The simple reason RV furnaces are not more efficient is space- you need a large heat exchanger to extract more heat from the exhaust- if you didn't mind sacrificing an entire closet for the furnace, you could get that 90%+.

Other than the obvious CO issue, the combustion air intake and exhaust are adjacent to each other so that any wind will affect intake and exhaust equally. If you move one or the other, you make it much easier for high wind to affect the flame, with bad results.

It's basically a good way to get CO poisoning when a leak develops in your piping system.

My bet is the average RV furnace runs less than 5days per year so not a lot of benefit in manufacturers trying for exotic high efficiency ideas that add cost and take up valuable space.

I don't think I would mess with the outside outlet of the Furnace... I would put more effort is doing a positive air flow thru the cabinets and other areas by installing pass-thru air vents and the use of a temperature controlled vent fan.

In my OFF-ROAD CAMPER all of the cabinets are lined up around the walls of the trailer. I have added a small vent between all of the inside cabinets walls. Having a large vent close to my access door door I can circulate air through the whole thing... Adding a thermostatic controlled blower works wonders here... This way I don't have to open cabinet doors to allow heating of water pipes etc...

Got this idea from one of the full time RV'ers Don or Mena...

Roy Ken

transit 94 wrote:
Have you some one in mind to collect insurance on your death.Please do not even think of such a thing. Carbon monoxide is a killer it is quite but it gets the job done.

CO is a quiet killer...silent and quite the killer too...so quit while ahead

Have you some one in mind to collect insurance on your death.Please do not even think of such a thing. Carbon monoxide is a killer it is quite but it gets the job done.