Builder Offering Hydronic Heat?

RoyB wrote:
I have been contemplating abandoning the noisy propane heater in my OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer for some time now. It is way too big for my small foot print trailer and a couple of others have come up with a pretty simply hydronic system to replace it with...

This is the basic concept


I would come up with something like this to produce heat from my on-board hot water heater.


I would probably use this heat exchanger with 12VDC axial fan blowers.


Here is a couple of google photos where something similar was built up in small floor plan TT trailer.


I believe this would be just the thing for my small one room POPUP trailer layout.

A bigger trailer you could run several zones using the same idea.

Roy Ken

The problem with this is the typical 6 gallon water heater is only about 8,800 Btu's input or about 7.200 Btu's output. So most furnaces are on the size range of 30,000 Btu's input or about 24,000 Btu's output. While this causes them to cycle on and off a lot, running only about 10 minutes at a time, the furnace will provide a lot more heat than the water heater can hope to produce.

Most of the time when I am in a campground I use fairly quiet electric heaters. When dry camping, I rarely use the furnace, but use a Olympic Catalytic heater instead. If above 55F, I just shut the windows and leave the furnace off until morning. IF below 55, I will open the roof vent and kitchen window, and run the 6,000 Btu Olympic heater.

Fred.