Mr Heater Buddy

[jornvango]

I just saw a YouTube video promoting the Mr Heater Buddy to keep your RV warm while boondocking in winter.

It supposedly works with the small Coleman RV bottles and doesn't use the RV's battery.

Does someone have experience using this? I'm wondering how long the small RV bottle lasts and how good this heater is to keep your RV warm.

[rjsurfer]

I have a Mr Buddy (small one) and it keeps my small 25' camper toasty, and with the bedroom up front much of the heat travels up there and we're nice and warm.

I hooked mine up to the low pressure line feeding the campers heater so no small bottles to worry about.

BUT, you still must circulate some heat into the underbelly by running the stock gas heater in conjunction with Mr Buddy in the camper. If not you could wind up with frozen tanks and water lines.

I have been giving some thought to that issue and may install some fans that will direct coach heat down into the basement without the need for running the furnace.

Ron W

[Strabo]

We have a brand new Mr Heater, plan on using it soon. I think I'd rather use it with the small bottles only cause i don't want a large 20lb tank inside our hauler, even tho we have the setup for the larger tank. Let's see how it works. I'm still worried about safety with a stand alone heater running while we sleep that's not the haulers built in.

Quiet operation is the advantage here. Cost of propane and battery draw is not important to me.

Safety is.

[jake2250]

We use one. No problems so far. you gotta leave a vent cracked open just in case. They do produce allot of extra water vapor inside, but nothing thats a big deal. A bottle will run almost six to eight hours on low and four to five hours on high.
We have a 23 foot trailer and Low will keep us snug at freezing and above, have been in below freezing, but nothing below 30 degrees and the Mr Buddy works great for us!
With that being said,,it is a open flame heater and we do NOT go to sleep with it running, we use it to take the chill out and run the furnace when sleeping.

[Witch-N-Wolf]

We have owned and used the BIG BUDDY 2 panel heater hooked to either a 20 LB or 30 LB tank for 6 years now. Heats our Stick home and also our older 33 foot camper. Never had a problem and the LP last many days on low heat setting we have never used the high setting. Be lost without ours. Best of Luck

[navegator]

I have the Big Buddy with the hose and hook it to the Barbeque 5 gallon bottle, it heats the whole house in a flash, never use it in the RV the heater in the RV is more than enough for the 24 foot C, the house is 3200 square feet and it warms the house in 15 to 20 minutes depending on the out side temp, if you do get one get the hose and the adapter for the house current, saves on batteries, they are worth the money.

navegator

[Son_of_Norway]

I have the Big Buddy model which has two heating elements and a fan. It takes two small propane bottles. Using both elements it will get the entire front area of my coach comfortably warm within minutes, it seems. But using both elements is too much because the propane will only last about 3 hours and the coach gets way too warm, so one element is really enough for the front area. The heat does not reach the back bedroom as well. I keep the driver and passenger windows open a crack for ventilation and I have two CO detectors in the coach. We also use it for ice fishing and usually wind up just wearing t-shirts while we sit in the shelter. I'm very happy with it.

[Isaac-1]

I have one of these small heater buddy heaters, a 1 pound propane bottle will last about 4-5 hours on low. On high the bottles will tend to freeze up after 1-2 hours when the are still 1/4 full.