Heating - how much time does it take to heat fifth wheel?

It's all dependent on the inside and outside temp. I can tell you with the Cheap Heat this am it was 55 inside this am and with in 10 minutes or less it was 68.

I have a small class C. Fired up the heater and hung a wired digital thermometer 'Outdoor' pigtail in the vent (right at the heater I think). Temp got up to the themo's limit of 160* at which time it went to -----. Doesn't help with how long but might give you an idea on 'how hot'.

I just went out to mine, it's only -10C here right now...I set the t Stat to 25c and sat down...

At 15 minutes the chill was gone
At 20 minutes condesation began to form on walls and windows
At 30 minutes could sit on couch in t shirt
At 45 minutes walls were showing signs of drying off
At 50 minutes the pink stuff began to drip from kitchen faucet, table top was cool but not cold , upstairs was cozy and walls dry
At 55 minutes I made coffee on the stove
At 60 minutes all faucets were wet with pink and walls were much warmer to touch
At 75 minutes I crawled under the covers...Frikin COLD. ...but cozy
At 80 minutes the floor was cool, inside of drawers awas cold silverware was ice cold inside cupboards was the same and condensation was still on walls inside cabinets..left all cupboard doors open...
I left the camper to go talk to my neighbor. .. at 2 hours the camper was 25c and the furnace was cycling normally

I would say a 30 min/1 hr to get the thermostat to desired temps but several hours to rid the unit of cold soak without the heater continuously cycling.
However as others mention one size don't fit all as some units may have a R7 insulating value with a dozen single pane drafty windows vs a unit with 5-6 double pane windows and a polar/arctic pack.

And of course outside temps and wind speed are other players in how fast the heater gets to a certain temp.

Sunnysunny wrote:
Thanks djgarcia. My fifth wheel is taking much longer....more like minimum 5 hours! Just wanting to see what others experience is.

You must have some ducting thats not connected somewhere. Thats way, way too long. We have a 28' 5th wheel and as of right now it's about 34* out. We're not in it but my best guess would be that if I turned on the furnace and closed the door to the bedroom that we could reach 70* in 30-45 mins. I would then open the door to the bedroom and let it warm up. Probably another 30 mins. We only use the furnace as a starter heater. It's just too much for the small area we have. We have an elec heater that we run. It's quieter and maintains a better heat.

How are you determining your inside temp?

Sunnysunny wrote:
On average how long does it take to get the interior of a fifth wheel trailer from 32f to 70f? Assuming a 2016 model with a 30,000 btu furnace. Any experience you've had and would like to share would be appreciated. Just trying to figure out what a reasonable amount of time is to get the unit to a comfortable temperature.

Not sure, we set t-stat at 60 degrees when we leave home, takes about 10 minutes to get to 68 once on site.
The one thing I have noticed is that it really takes about 24 hours to really heat up our 32' 5er. Yes we get to 68 which we are comfortable at within minutes of arrival, if you pay attention to the furnace it cycles more often the first day to truly get heat into the structure.
Also once on site, we may switch from 30,000 btu input (23,400 btu output) gas to 5,000 watt electric (17,060 btu) and this has kept our 32' 5er at the set 68 degrees down to 20 degrees.

My Carriage C-Force toyhauler runs about a 15C difference between interior temp and basement temp when heating with the 1960's technology rv forced air furnace, so it doesn't waste excess heat to the basement.

The furnace is "35,000 btu".

When the trailer is cold soaked think warming a rock up with a hair dryer. It takes hours to come up to temperature depending how cold it is outside. Oh the air gets warm and stuffy fairly quick, like forced air does, but the moment the hair dryer shuts off the cold is felt, and the cold air blowing / roaring starts again :).

It's all done at about -12C in calm weather - basement is at 0C and interior about 15C wear a sweater furnace is running pretty much full time.

RV furnaces like to stop just long enough so they can blow that cold air on you till the burner fires ...

If I add about 8000 btu of electric oil filled radiant heat all of a sudden it's getting comfortable - which speaks to the efficiency of radiant heat (like the sun) vs forced wind like a hair dryer...

Except when the radiant heats the interior with it's nice steady warmth then the basement isn't getting heat without the hair dryer running - except for radiant passing through the floors eventually (radiant doesn't go "up" it travels in a straight line and heats materials it strikes - like heat from the sun) ...

I'm thinking about a designing a radiant living area system with separate stand alone controlled heat for the basement to hold it above freezing.

It really depends on if you RV is cold soaked. If our MH has been sitting for days and is cold soaked, I open all the cabinets and keep the slides in while pre heating. It takes several hours minimum for all surfaces to be warm to the touch.

I don't have a 5er, but some things are basic and common to all types of RV that makes warm up time different for each one.

First is outside temperature. If your camper is not warmed up at all and you are heating it from scratch, it will take much longer to warm to 70 degrees if the outside temperature is 10 degrees (F) opposed to 60 degrees (F). The colder it is outside, the longer it takes.

Second is the amount of space it takes to heat, even with the same square footage of inside space between campers. For example, is your basement in the 5er heated? If so, it will take longer to heat the living quarters. Is the underbelly heated? You'd be surprised how MUCH heat goes down there, robbing the heat from the inside living area.

Next is the interior height of the ceiling. Face it, more space takes longer to heat and more energy. If your 5er is very tall, there's a lot of space up high that needs to warm up first before the heat moves to a comfortable temperature at the floor.

Third, is also a space factor, how many slide outs do you have? Face it, with slide outs in the extended position, you have more space to heat. The same furnace will heat the same camper with the slides in much faster, then open one slide at a time to keep the heat up. If you have only 1 slide, it will warm up much faster than if you have 5.

Fourth is the construction of the camper itself. Some campers are just sealed up better and will hold heat (and air conditioning) better than others. Breaks in seals around slides and windows will let heat escape and cold in. And how well insulated are the heat ducts in floor, AND how much length of run are the heat ducts in the floor. Longer campers have longer distances to run heat, and then pumping heat up into a second level floor is VASTLY different between 5er and 5er also. All of these design elements are factors factor that drastically differentiate between camper to camper.

So, the exact same furnace in different camper can take longer or shorter to warm the inside of the unite to the same temperature, depending on the camper itself. All these factors are unique for each camper. Outside temperature, amount of space, and construction of camper.

We loose a lot of heat to the underbelly, so I found out by playing around with the furnace duct work in our TT. When I disconnected the ducts from the furnace at the furnace and let it blow air from there, the camper warmed up much, much faster than when all the ducts were connected. I then realized how much is blowing or warming under the floor. My camper is suppose to have the "polar package" so now I know what they mean by "polar package." The underbelly heats up before the living area.... really!

One trick you can do to warm your camper faster is to fire up the furnace with all the slides in. This will warm up a smaller space first. Then expand the slides and it will seem to warm the rest up pretty fast. When temperatures are between zero (F) and 32 (F), and the camper has not been heated, this is how I always start the heat up, with all slides in. Less space, faster heat!

I spent few hours on working on the ducting on my camper. Making sure all joints
were not leaking, straightening some of the runs, making sure more heat was going to the living area and restricting heat to the bedroom/bath room. Re-directing the ducts to the area where we spend most of our time.

Made a huge difference to the comfort of the camper. My 27ft camper takes about 15 minutes to feel comfortable and another 20 minutes to get to 70.