Heater?

First: TOO EXPENSIVE though the "Footprint" may make it very attractive.

Many 1500 watt heaters make fantastic claims about effiency and how well they heat but the fact is they all put out EXACTLY the same amount of heat, EXACTLY, all are EXACTLY 100% efficient, can not be anything else in fact.

And in many cases the standard wiring on an RV is not really up to a sustained 12 amp load.. I often smelled "hot wire sent" when we used the standard RV outlet... Since I installed special heater outlets (15/20 amp, this one has a "T" shaped neutral slot) with 12 ga wire, properly BENT AROUND A SCREW and tightened, and one outlet to a circuit breaker for the feed.. No odd aromas.

Very happy.

That should put out less heat than running your toaster or you could light a couple candles..425 watts equals about 1475 BTUs. Your RV furnace will put out 35,000 BTUs. So if you bought and used 23 of these you would have about the same amount of heat output as your furnace..

B.O.

I use a 1200w radiator style electric from Costco.
More heat, less money, still just 10 amps max so no plug burnout.

ALL electric heaters are perfectly 100% efficient.
Only thing more efficient is a heat pump where you would get twice the heat from the same electric.

I didn't look at the specs but 425 watts is not much heat.
I use a little 1500 Watt electric heater that has a tip safety switch and it does a fine job.
I think we paid $19 for it about ten years ago

Jack L

A minor nit, but electric heaters with fans are not quite "100% efficient". A small amount of the power drawn is converted to mechanical motion rather than heat.

Dutch_12078 wrote:
A minor nit, but electric heaters with fans are not quite "100% efficient". A small amount of the power drawn is converted to mechanical motion rather than heat.

The mechanical motion creates heat, so it all ends up as heat. Now if the heater created light and some of the light found its way outside the camper, that would make it less than 100% efficient in heating the camper.:h

So, no one has ever tried or had one?

Dutch_12078 wrote:
A minor nit, but electric heaters with fans are not quite "100% efficient". A small amount of the power drawn is converted to mechanical motion rather than heat.

You are quite mistaken.. Here is why.

While it is true that the motor that turns the fan (if it has one) is less than 100% efficient the difference is expressed as HEAT, and the conversion of the rotary motion of the fan blades to moving air is also less than 100% but again the difference is HEAT, and as the air moves around it rubs up on stuff slightly warming them due to friction (This continues till all the energy imparted by the fan is blead off) so once again we have HEAT.

So all that "Lost Energy" fed to the fan motor, Is recovered as HEAT.

And the heater is once agian 100% efficient.

You should know I have studied this kind of thing.

Nope, never owned one, but, have looked at their design in big box stores. I considered one to add some auxilliary heat to our bathroom in our sticks and bricks, but, decided to go with, even in the S&B, a bigger, higher output, fan forced unit. I use fan forced in the RV to bring it up to temp, but, then rely on oil filled radiator types to maintain the temperature while we relax and sleep for the quietness the oil filled type provide.

It would appear, after reading the specs, that it may be OK for maintaining a temperature, as long as there are no drafts (not likely in an RV), for a very small trailer. The specs say:

"Heats Room Size – 130 to 150 square feet"

That isn't much space and, I would imagine, toward the larger side, in a draftless room of 150 square feet, it would take quite a while for much of a temperature rise.

Given the "draftiness" of RV units with slides and roof vents, and the abundance of windows in a trailer, the unit will prove rather anemic for heating an RV. To heat a medium sized RV with drafts and windows, a fan powered unit of greater than 475 watts would do far better (temperature rise and distribution) and for much less cost. Its claim of heating for 50% less $$$ is based on the fact that it has 50% or less of most other electric heater's output (475 watts vs 1000 to 1500 watts) and not its build or efficiency. If you like it for "safety" reasons (i.e., anchored to a wall and low current draw), then a couple may suffice in a small trailer (with no slides and one roof vent) to maintain the heat overnight, but, IMHO, a bigger fan forced unit would be the better choice and those can be had that are equally safe, though, not attached to a wall.

Just my thoughts on this particular heater, which was the orignal question.

If we happen to be in an area with electrical hookups during colder weather we will run a small space heater hooked to a wall timer. Usually have it set to run a few hours before bed and then set it to turn on a couple of hours before we get up. Really easy and efficent.

We run something very similar to this:



It wouldn't be a great option to heat a large space in really cold weather - but for our fall hunts it works really well warming the trailer up before we get out of bed.