RV LP Furnace Efficiency?

memtb wrote:
It would be great....if someone would offer a high(er) efficiency furnace for an RV. Auxiliary heat ( electric, catalytic, etc.) is fine in warm ( above 25 to 30) camping, but forced air is needed to heat underbelly and basement areas, when cold. It’s considerably worse if you do “cold” ( near zero or colder) boondocking....where battery consumption rates are high.
Kinda makes me think of the expression,”If you build it...they will come!” I know that I’d be interested in a high(er) efficiency, retro heater for our unit!

Higher efficiency furnaces come at a cost.

They cost more to make, more complex safeties and like 90+ home furnaces you would have to deal with condensate which adds an additional problem of how to get rid of without the condensate freezing in the drain pipe.

They WILL require MORE SPACE which takes away from your interior.

In order to squeeze out more heat BTUs the heat exchanger labyrinth needs to be vastly increased in size. I suspect you would have to double the size of the furnace cabinet to really have much of noticeable change in the efficiency.

Upsizing the heat exchanger size most likely would require a more powerful exhaust inducer requiring a second motor instead of sharing the inside fan motor (common shaft).

All this increase parts and materials will vastly increase the price RV furnaces already are not cheap.. Price them out if you don't believe me.. I was felt lucky to find a new scratch and dent 30K BTU furnace for a scorching $350. Without the scratch and dent price I was looking at $500 and that was about 10 years ago..

So, how many people here would like to lose storage space and pay a huge premium for a device that most people will never even fire up?

RVs in general are built for the masses, the majority of the masses often never winter camp. Many of the ones that do winter camp often camp in southern places (aka snow birds).

Then you have a smaller subset of winter campers that do camp in extreme cold, those campers often rely on portable unvented heaters (I am not a fan of this but there is a strong vocal group that do this and still live, but there ARE inherent potential hazards with this type of heater if you fail to follow instructions) or finding places that don't meter the electric.

If OP is not moving for a while, they CAN check with a local propane supplier to get some pricing on 100 lb propane tanks. Propane is one of those items that gets cheaper in bulk.