Furnace Propane Furnace

Sherry,

A bit of trivia: The pink plastic flamingo originated in 1957 in the small city of Leominster Massachusetts about 25 minutes from my home. Since 2007 they are made in the adjacent Fitchburg MA. Leominster has a "Plastics Capital of the World" sign at the city limit on the highway. The large number of plastic companies there originated plastic hair combs (vs hard rubber) and invented injection molding.

A man from Leominster also claimed in court to have originated the Smiley Face. Although his claim of "first" is not certain, he does have some hard evidence.

In the 1700s, Leominster was the birthplace of John Chapman. Although a Minuteman and Continental soldier under Washington, he is best known as "Johnny Appleseed" for his later adventures in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Interestingly enough the area east of Leominster today has several commercial apple orchards (unrelated).

And to top it off, my new girlfriend teaches at a middle school in Leominster but not the "Johnny Appleseed" school.

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On original topic:
I store chocks and outdoor power cord in the tiny front storage compartment of my 560 with furnace. It is good for dirty & wet things.

 

And Johnny Appleseed was certainly an interesting character. Apple trees are propagated through grafts, cuttings, etc. because apple seeds don't breed true. You could sprout a bunch of apple seeds and not get an apple tree with apples worth eating. What you would get are trees that produce large amounts of apples that are perfect for cider. Hard cider. Cider was the most popular fermented adult beverage back in the early days of this country. In fact the old saying,"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" didn't refer to eating apples. They referred to drinking apples.

So good old Johnny Appleseed spread cider trees all around the country.

 

Bear,
I have enjoyed reading about your experiences and adventures. I don't have my trailer yet but any information you are willing to share will be filed away in my brain to be used appropriately.

 

Bear,
Good to see a post from you. Are you currently camping? Does your journey on the road continue? Most of what I know of the furnaces in the CI's I have learned from your posts,which is why I was concerned about getting one. I don't forsee putting one through the rigors that you require but you never know. My main issue is space. I've come to the conclusion that with the furnace in we will have a place to put a pair of gloves and a small lock! That being said I'm sure it will be a small price to pay for the freedom from electic outlets and generators when the weather is cold.
MDP
Mike & Denita

 

As I see it the furnace was a good purchase. I live in Oregon but am currently traveling all over Arizona and it can get cold at night. A few minutes is all it takes. You lose about half the storage space. I put tools along with a hatchet for the tent stakes and the jack tool.

I think it would prove useful for the day sell it. It would be hard to add.

Dave

 

We've had our 560 for only a few weeks. We're on an extended shake-down cruise in FL, where the weather has been great, so we don't have a lot of experience with the furnace. We had a couple of nights in northern FL that were cold and rainy. The furnace was very nice to have; just a few minutes of use heat the cabin right up.

As a side note, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the overall propane usage. We have used the furnace only a few times, so that hasn't been much of a factor, but we've used the stove a fair amount. We boil water for coffee every morning, heat water for washing dishes up to 3 times a day, and cook on the stove occasionally (we use grilling, a toaster oven and a crock pot more often).

After 12 days in the TD, I was thinking the propane was probably running low and planned to re-charge it before heading off to the Keys. While we were packing up at the campground in Ft. Myers Beach, a truck came around selling propane on the spot. After filling the tank, the guy refused payment. He said he hardly put anything in it. He said we probably had at least 3/4 of a tank before he filled it. So, at our current usage, an 11 lb tank should last us about a month. That's much longer than I thought! Of course, frequent use of the furnace would shorten that quite a bit.

To take the guess work out of it, I bought a 25 lb fish scale so I can weigh the tank to gauge the quantity. Now I have one less thing to obsess about

 

Thanks Jim, Very helpful information to help a newbie figure out what to obsess about. Or not obsess about.

 

JimT
On a side note where did you stay in Ft.Myer? Was it tear drop friendly? How far from the water? I have friends and family there and in Naples. Plan on going there on our first Flordia trip.
MDP
Mike & Denita

 

We stayed at the Red Coconut RV park on Ft. Myers Beach. It is one of only a few campgrounds in FL that is right on the beach. It is crowded, but yes, it is TD friendly. We were surrounded by big rigs, but we were the hit of the campground. If you want more details, PM me and I'll fill you in.

 

Thanks for the info Bear. Glad you are still out there and hope our paths cross at some point. You have set my mind at ease on the furnace. Also encouraging is your description of the storage area. Although I belive Cary said the space is slightly smaller on the 560 it does sound like I'll be able to get all my locks and more in there no problem.
MDP
Mike & Denita

 

"If you are the kind of person that always camps in a campground (which I try to shy away from) get yourself a little space heater and forget the rest. A small enough space heater rests just fine on the lower cabinet doors."

This describes us. And we do like to camp with no hookups most of the time.
If one had a small 200w space heater like this with an inverter (and perhaps solar panel)
http://www.amazon.com/Lasko-102-Pe.../ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I wonder if this would this be sufficient for the small space? Anyone ever tried a heater this small?

 

We have 2 of these Lasko heaters and they have worked well for us in temps down to the lower 30's. We have used them when we have had electric hookups at a campground. Depending on how cold it is, we use only 1 of the heaters the majority of the time - both if real cold out. They are very quiet when running and sit well on our cabinet doors. When temps are frigid we also use our double size Grizzly sleeping bag. I think any larger size of a heater would be too much for us inside our 560.

 

I think any type of heater on an inverter is going to be pushing the envelope of what's feasible. I doubt that you could find a solar panel that could keep pace with the setup. However, I'm by no means an expert and could be wrong...

 

if it's cold enough to need a heater, I doubt the campsite would be getting enough sun to charge the battery (during the DAY) so that the battery is "full" by the time you need to turn on that heater (likely at night)

I guess it's possible you could be some place that is very sunny during the day, but very cold at night. Desert camping, for example.

(My solar panel would have been worthless at each campsite I've occupied in 2014. All trees, no sun.)

-Al

 

drjenk

The little heater you linked to looks sweet. Small in size and energy consumption. One big issue to me is it doesn't have an automatic thermostat. That would be a deal-killer for me. You will be surprised at how quickly a small space heater will warm up the small space.

 

... power management...

I KNOW the heating pad, 12v, drains the battery at around 3am...
It has happened every time I've had it on.

Possible alternative would be an additional battery, which might help through the night, but would probably be less than charged.

Electric is a tough one without hookups... IMNSHO that is..
down quilt is my suggestion... 750+... and possible insulation pad/foil under the mattress on top of the flooring.

 

Yes this would definitely not be something to run all night, I think we'd have appropriate bedding to address nighttime. I'd imagine we'd only have it on enough to bring it up to 60-65 or so if needed, to be comfortable while going to bed and maybe even at times during the day when we want to get warm. I do wonder how many actual watts are output by a 120w solar panel on an overcast day, that would be an interesting piece of data. Because what I figure is this is a 200w heater at 115v and according to this site:
http://www.fridge-and-solar.net/amps.htm
it would draw ~10A. So if on for an hour straight it would burn 10Ah. But if we have it on for say 10-15 minutes before sleeping, it would burn ~2.5Ah, of a 55Ah battery, roughly 5% of it, if I am calculating this correctly. Now in the daytime, if having a solar panel, I would imagine this is recoverable, but to what extent I'm not sure because I don't know what actual power is supplied by a given solar panel under worst case cloudy overcast conditions. But I will find out.
Regarding the lack of thermostat on this unit, I was thinking something like this would work:
http://www.amazon.com/Elitech-All-...467708&sr=8-1&keywords=temperature+controller

I'd just cut of the ac plug and wire it to the heat output terminals. This unit itself consumes ~3w.

 

The pieces of history we aren't taught in school. Thing is, medicine in his day was mostly alcohol and ...plant extracdts.

Cocacola anyone?