Furnace Using The Furnace

I ordered my 560 with a furnace thinking I would be camping in a toasty camper but from what I'm told people just turn them on for a few minutes before going to bed? That little furnace will warm the air up rather quickly but when everything inside is cold it cools down fast. It took an hour for everything inside to come up to temperature.

My 560 is outside and I left the furnace on at about 65 degrees. Is that safe? How long will the 11 pounds of propane last in 30 degree temperatures?

 

Dear Flash:

I can't answer your question directly, but I can provide some information from our experience.

First, we have a 550 which may use less LP than a 560 for heating, but I can't imagine it would be very much less. Second, we don't heat the camper unless we are using it.

We do quite a bit of winter camping, with highs ranging from 40 to 70 and lows ranging from (in the extreme) 5 degrees to 40 degrees.

Generally, we do our own cooking from scratch, probably much more than most. Generally, we kick on the furnace one or two times per night, or maybe three, to get warmed up. We use about 1lb of propane per day when using the furnace.

I hope this is helpful.

Lorie

 

In cold winter temps where we used the heater a lot, the tank lasted a bit over a week.

 

Thanks for the responses. I left it turned on yesterday just to make sure the fix worked. I'm going to post about sleeping it last night in the weather and coffee thread.

 

Thanks to all that replied. I had memories of the first night in the camper when it was seven degrees outside and getting into it cold and tired. What I'm finding is what everyone has been saying -it doesn't need to be that warm to enjoy being inside. If it is around 50 degrees inside that is about all that is needed as just body heat and lights will bring it up in temperature.

 

Not having the furnace and realizing I really like winter camping, I invested (heavily) in a Kickstarter rechargeable battery powered heated down blanket product. It has been almost a year and it has not shipped yet. Getting close, they are just waiting for the batteries to be released from customs. Comes with two batteries, each lasting a claimed 4 hours. We shall see, I'll report back after I use it.

The Rumpl Puffe-, A Portable Battery-Powered Heated Blanket

 

Great replies everyone.

I'm old school and used a lot of the same ways that Jenn and Bear describe here and in a few other threads.

Maybe I need to revaluate how much heat I really need.

.

 

Heat without shore power is the camping Holy Grail!

 

The air flow from the furnace sounded restricted but I was told it had enough vents for good circulation. The air vents barely had anything coming from it while the outside exhaust was just pouring out the heat. Tracking the air movement back behind the sofa I could see those two half moon holes it the doors was restricting the air. To actually use the sofa meant compressing the back even more up against those two half moons further restricting the air flow.

The solution was simple, just lower the two doors and let them hang down behind the back seat rest. The result was like night and day. Now I get plenty of hot air from the furnace and the outside vent isn't burning up. Is it louder? Yes by a lot but what good is a silent furnace if it doesn't produce heat?

I have a natural gas indoor fireplace insert that is 95% efficient at full fan speed. The instructions says that drops to about 50% when the fan isn't blowing like during a power failure. The same thing is happening with my trailer furnace except I think it is about 80% at best and barely 20% restricted.

I am now officially a happy camper.

 

Sounds a good trick/solution to heat efficiently. Nice

 

How so? I would like to learn as much as I can about them.