Water heater heater

I must confess, I did not read the entire linked thread!

What is the rating of the Water Heater in BTU/Hr?

Edited to remove the word "Hot."

OK, being a former plumber for the record they are not HOT WATER HEATERS they are WATER HEATERS because if the waters hot why would you have to heat it?? Sorry had to get that off my chest.

Colo Native wrote:
OK, being a former plumber for the record they are not HOT WATER HEATERS they are WATER HEATERS because if the waters hot why would you have to heat it?? Sorry had to get that off my chest.

But if the OP is referring to a heater to heat the trailer, the heater uses hot water, so it would be a hot water heater. A lot of houses have hot water heating systems.

Link not working, at least on mobile.

So you've built a hydronic forced air heating system for your teardrop trailer?

The two words in there that jump out at me are "Boondocking" and "water heater".

Water heaters are notoriously inefficient.

However being that you're talking about a tear drop trailer a couple of candles would just about take the chill off. ;-)

THere used to be a home/office/shop water heater that doubled as a room heater.. Many (over 50) years ago.. I think the make was HiPoint (Actually made by Roan and Kunzl Corp in Marshall MI.

So.. I think your idea may work Not sure how well as the water heaters in RV's are not all that powerful.. but it just might work, especially on propane.

I don't intend on reading a 21 page thread on another forum to get the story.

I think hydronic heating will become more common to replace the very inefficient forced air furnaces.

Here is a system that is already used in some RVs;
Alde hydronic heating

I guess water heater rating is not known...

I read the whole 21 page thread. All of the experimenters that are using the water heater and a heat exchanger, no matter how sophisticated (PWM pump speed controllers, fan relays, plenum engineering, etc) are seeing some success from using the water heater as hydronic heaters.

I've discussed this a few times on this Forum (I know Roy B is contemplating it) and there are few experimenters. SMKettner uses a pump for water recirculation purposes and a few others have tapped into the water heater for various reasons. None have reported heater failure or any disturbance of the rest of the hot water system.

I'll probably be trying this as I do some other mods. I don't plan on a small heater core supplying enough heat to keep me comfortable in a 22" trailer (that would be awful nice, though) but as an adjunct to the main system, especially heating the forward dinette area that is more chilled than any place else.

To Shadow Catcher,
Can you give any tips or capsulize any salient points of the heat exchanger use and installation? I'm mostly looking for do's and dont's that you may have encountered, not super-accurate heat transfer figures.

Small heater cores are very efficient in cars as they get 180F coolant.
Typical water heater operates about 120F, so the set will give less btu.
In case you need pump for re-circulation - Mercedes is using electric pumps in their models starting from 1970's so you can find them on junk yard. Pretty ingenious pump that can last for 20 years and with magnetic clutch can take pretty big abuse.