Electric heaters

Hi greenrvgreen,

Actually -37 c (-34 f) in the day time.

What you do to pressurize the plenum is replace the return air grill with a dual window fan. Mine uses a whole 27 watts.



I have it connected to a mechanical thermostat right beside the water pipes in the cabinet. Since I'm in a class C, when I drive the furnace stops running because of heat from the cab. I tried putting a 1500 watt heater inside the cabinets--I still had freeze ups. Since I added the dual window fan unit there have been none.

greenrvgreen wrote:
Of course Tuna is dealing with night time temps down to -30f, and I frequently camp down to zero--sometimes in a tent (with electric). I am a big fan of electric heat but my point was that currently only the LP heater is putting heat through the basement plenum, and on many RVs that is the only source of heat for the tanks.

My question is, if you don't use the cheap heat, how are you going to heat the plenum?

Of course Tuna is dealing with night time temps down to -30f, and I frequently camp down to zero--sometimes in a tent (with electric). I am a big fan of electric heat but my point was that currently only the LP heater is putting heat through the basement plenum, and on many RVs that is the only source of heat for the tanks.

My question is, if you don't use the cheap heat, how are you going to heat the plenum?

pianotuna wrote:
Hi,

The "cheap heat" system is, in my opinion, the worst possible choice, particularly if you need redundancy.

If the power goes off, it doesn't "fail over" to the propane furnace.

It can not be run in series with the propane furnace, so it can not be used to reduce the heating bill from propane.

It can not be run safely on a 15 amp circuit which eliminates using it at most private homes.

If you want heat through the duct work, replace the return air grill with twin window fans.

I agree with this. There are other shortcomings as well, they don't disclose all the necessary tech. info. needed to make a decision and some of their info. is misleading like upgrading from 30 to 50 amps can be done "for a couple hundred dollars". I spent a career designing electric heating systems and I've never seen such a lack of tech. info and misleading info. Colossal waste of $$ IMO - two thumbs down.

There is a far better way of installing permanent heat in an RV. I know because I've done it. We never use the furnace anymore and heat our 30 amp 29' TT solely on permanent recessed electric heaters right down to freezing temps. It's VERY quiet, it's VERY even throughout, it's unobtrusive and it automatically temporarily shuts off when high load appliances are turned on.

I use 1 heater and run a separate extension cord to the 20 amp plug in the box. You might consider this for 1 of your heaters to take the load off of the trailers circuit.

This is what I do. 2 Cheap 1500 heaters, run a heavy gauge extension through the slide and go right to the pedestal and I run that one on high. The other one I just run on low/med and plug in to the rv.

Hi greenrvgreen,

If you are heating with propane, running an electric heater can significantly reduce use. The "only game in town" for winter camping where I live does not meter electrical use. So the more electric heat I use, the less I pay for propane. If I had to heat with propane I'd have to refill the fixed tank in my class C every 3 days, during the coldest part of the winter.

Tonight the low will be 2.8 C (37 F), and I'm parked beside a client. I can manage to keep warm on a single 15 amp circuit at those temperatures. If I had cheap heat--I'd not be able to run it at all.

As to "fail over" see my reply above.

Hi wa8yxm,

I heat 100% electrically. I leave the propane furnace thermostat about 6 degrees below the electric thermostats. If the 120 volt power goes off the system "fails over" to propane heat.

In the -30 range an Rv can freeze up pretty darn quick.

I too run muiltiple space heaters at differing power settings depending on the site.. Up to 4 on a 50 amp site.

You mentioned "Fails Over".. A term I've not heard before.. First time I read that I saw "Falls over" all my electrics turn off if that happens.

Tuna is bashing the Cheap Heat rather harshly, IMO. Apart from its ridiculously high price ($500-$900 for the unit, 5 hours HVAC labor to install), it seems to offer some substantial benefits.

First of all, is there any heating system that "fails over"? Certainly this can be a desirable feature under certain circumstances--and if your power system is prepared to handle it--but what heating system out there does this currently?

I also would wonder why you would want to run the cheap heat in series with the propane heat--and I would also wonder if that many btu's in your ductwork is safe.

AFAICT, the attraction of the Cheap Heat is that it will get electric heat into your basement and hence warm your tanks. Apart from that benefit, I would say that the AC heat strip (at about a hundred bucks) or a built-in electric wall heater (maybe two or three hundred bucks) would be more attractive options.

The OP asked about higher-watt electric heaters, and there are a variety of built-in wall heaters available running on 240V that have substantially higher wattage draws, as said.

On 30 amp shore power I've run as many as two of the 1440 watt portable plugin heaters on high--in a pinch. That's 24 amps just for the heaters, and then another 3-4 amps for background stuff (fridge, computers, etc) and that gets darn close to 30 amps.

In cases where I did that I basically sat there and stared at the heaters until the cabin had warmed up--and turned dow the heat as soon as I could.

In my experience the really cold weather is when things start to snap and break unexpectedly. So even though colder wiring is less prone to overheating, I'm more paranoid when drawing 28 amps at ten below zero than I am at 90 degrees.

The real beauty of running two electric portable heaters is that each unit has two or even three settings, so unless you really want 24 amps of heat you don't have to have it--you can adjust the heat dow rather granularly. There is no equivilent setting on the cheap heat, and that may also have been Tuna's point.

Good grief and here I thought only oil type baseboard heaters were sold these days. Living in the tropics I should recuse myself from the subject :)