Newbie here :) Chilly nights, do you use the furnace or electric heater

[Snake Plissken]

Wow I feel stupid. We just use the furnace. It works fine, although it's a little loud.

[go wild]

I agree with the other comments here. A small $20 ceramic heater from Walmart works great when we've camped in late fall with 25F temps and strong winds. The tent ends are noticably cooler, but not to the point that it's uncomfortable.

[pm1stnau]

Originally Posted by Snake Plissken

Wow I feel stupid. We just use the furnace. It works fine, although it's a little loud.

I'm with you, Snake.....I have a ceramic heater and we use it a little,but the furnace is just awesome. Propane is relatively cheap as far as I'm concerned. Electric blankets are also in the heating arsenal. Freezing is not necessary!! Happy Camping!!

[s1njin]

I think there are some really easy ways to help with keeping warm and with helping to save your propane.

A. Camping w/o PUGs (PopUp Gizmos) and a hybrid is just tough cookies when it comes to keeping the tent ends a consistent temperature. Also, the PUGs help tremendously with condensation issues as they provide for another two insulating layers on top of your canvas (the air between your canvas and the PUG, and the PUG itself). PUGs shine in the winter, and they REALLY shine in the summer when you're trying to keep the tent ends cooler. http://www.popupgizmos.com

B. Those canvas windows you have? They are crying for Reflectix. You can get a roll of Reflectix for pretty cheap from the home warehouses or online from Amazon. Cut the Reflectix to match the window flaps of your ends, thus making a wonderful lightweight insulation insert for your windows. Drop these inserts in all three windows. You just upped your R-Value 3 fold - just enough to keep the tent ends from ****ing away all your heat in quick fashion. Helps keep your camper from those awful temp swings - works like a charm !!!

[eldermike]

Originally Posted by Snake Plissken

Wow I feel stupid. We just use the furnace. It works fine, although it's a little loud.

We use our furnace along with the electric fireplace. We set the furnace on 65F and it starts cycling on cold nights when the fireplace can't keep up.

[johnlehman]

Electric heaters are always best as we do not need to do any preparation for them. Just plug and play. They are inexpensive also in comparison to price of gas and electricity. One more thing we should consider here is that electric heaters are eco-friendly while gas heaters are not. When buying an electric heater please note that it should be power consumption efficient otherwise your electricity bill will be highly affected. You can purchase highly optimized electric heaters from electricheaters at a very attractive price. I am a customer of them and no complaints yet!

[yingpin]

I have never even thought of using an electric heater? That is why I bought a camper in the first place to have a propane furnace. We run the heater whenever we need it since we have little ones and a mother is cold during the summer. We camp in the winter and run a generator and have camped in 15 deg weather while keeping the hybrid just below 50 Deg.

An electric heater seems more dangerous to me than the furnace but what do I know, I am a simple guy who like running two propane bottles empty on a December weekend!!!!!

[marshvegasmike]

We camped Veterans Day weekend. Got a little chilly but we were prepared. We brought along an electric oscillating heater as well as an electric blanket. We would use the camper heater to take the chill out of the air and used the space heater to maintain comfortable temps. This worked well as we were semi-turtling. (Had one bunk end closed up) At night we would use the electric blanket along with a fleece blanket and light sleeping bag opened up as a blanket. We slept as the Eskimos do and were quite comfy.
(love the idea of the cushions, will keep it in mind.) In the A.M. it was camper heater to warm, space heater to maintain.

[yooperfan]

At first, we didn't have an electric heater, so the gas heater was used a couple of nights, until it ran out. After that, it made sense to make use of the free electricity with an electric heater. It took some trial and error to figure out how high (hot) was too high after tripping the breaker a couple of times.
If we ever set up on a permanant site with metered electric, I'm not sure what we would use, but I'm guessing it would be the electric heater so I don't have to keep refilling the propane tanks.

[DieselX]

We use mostly propane, it's 25* now and hitting 16* tonight. Typically we turn the heat down to 60* at night with the furnace on and then in the morning turn it up to 67-68* and open the window blinds. With a little luck the sun will be out and warm the place up!! During the day I will run the electric heater with the bedroom doors shut on each end to keep the heat in the center. Even when it's really cold a tank will last a week like this.

[bbrown]

I have a 30 amp plug so I will use electric heaters on low at each end (set to high the breaker trips) and the gas furnace is a back-up for nightime when the temp dips. Someone else posted this also...but keep in mind, each electric heater that is 1500-2000 watts, draws approx. 12-17 amps. If your plug is a 30 amp...you will max it out with 2 heaters and possibly trip the main...unless the heater has a low setting. The low setting draws fewer amps and could allow you to operate 2 heaters together on low and maybe even 1 of them on high. Set the furnace down low to compensate for when the electric heaters can't keep up.