Furnaces. Very inefficient!

The point is that in household design, you can save over $1000 every heating season on good quality furnace and good insulation.
In RV, where average furnace is used less than 100hr a year - the users don't worry about efficiency, so if you use $50 of propane instead of $20 the bottom users usually don't complain.
But it still make no sense to dump over 50% of your heating power straight into the woods

I have to ask.. What's the point.

I do own 93% efficiency furnace in my house and just recently I deal with furnace issue on my camper.
So far few points I noticed on my RV furnace:
- the interior air is circulated against outside furnace steel cover with no insulation
- the exterior air for furnace burner is suck into internal furnace compartment hat has no insulation
-the furnace has a duct that goes into bottom tank compartment, where oversize holes around the plumbing allow the hot air to go straight into the woods.
Being in California I don' use furnace a lot, but just don't like the idea about warming up park more than interior of my RV.
So I put foam insulation on furnace cover and install gate valve on duct pushing the air into under the floor tank compartment.
Since I camp in freezing temperatures like never, I don't need to pump energy to keep my waste tanks and surrounding park warm

I don't think there is anything wrong or inefficient with RV furnaces. Actually, they throw a tremendous amount of heat for their size. The problem is single pane windows, thin walls, drafts around slide-out seals, small holes, openings, sky light roof vents that are think plastic single layer, no insulated. Then consider many RV's are designed to heat space that is not livable, like basements, under bellies, and such, and actually, those small RV furnaces do quite a remarkable job!

I think the trick is not to need to use them, but let the wheels do the temp control.

I have a plan in my head of a way to make those RV furnaces much more efficient. I doubt that I ever try it. It would be nice to give it a try.

Dusty

ivbinconned wrote:
Seems to me that the furnaces in rv's are patheticly inefficient. There are natural gas house furnaces that are so good that the exhausts are plastic!

They are also big- if you want to take up an entire closet, you can boost efficiency. RV furnaces are a trade off, size for efficiency.