The Official Unofficial Super Pacific X1 Camper Thread

Yeah, sure for Lil' Buddy, Mr Buddy and similar where you're burning and exhausting into your cabin. These will also kill you with Carbon Monoxide and/or fire if it gets knocked over and sets your gear on fire.

This is important to distinguish from a much nicer and more expensive heater that only transfers the heat into your sleeping area and exhausts to the outside, like @evdog has.

Some of the "expensive", safe and non-humidity inducing options:

• Propex
• Dickinson Newport P12000 Propane Fireplace (Evdog has this one)

 

I totally agree, but the person trying to use a cheap $20 space heater is not going to be able to afford a Dickinson for $1200+

You are correct though.

 

The cheapest is going to collect 6V old flooded lead acid car batteries for free/cheap from a golf cart, run them in a mix of parallel and series and then that $25 electric blanket. You can run them all night off a bed full of golf cart batteries.

 

yea, that's the spot on summary.

in short, you dont need "forced air" heat per se unless youre hanging out inside the camper. I've found that a 12v blanket and good bedding go a long way and don't use much power.

if you want something to heat the air, a diesel heater or propex are great. I went with the dickinson fireplace as to not use any draw off of my aux battery sans a small computer fan for circulation. if you live in a boat-heavy area like the pnw you can sometimes find the dickinsons for a decent price. I think i paid $400 for mine. all three of those options are externally vented and have an external air intake and thus don't produce moisture in the heated area if installed right.

from both my experience and some anecdotes from others you'll get approx 20-25F increase in inside temp vs ambient from any of those three heat sources, unless you insulate. Diesel might push out slightly more heat than that but you do also have to deal with the noise etc and it will most likely be running at full blast to get you there.

any "space heater" is going to be super inefficient and not run for very long at all, even with a huge battery bank. the heat is basically coming from a specifically designed inefficient electrical circuit creating the by-product of heat - think like when you wire something poorly and the wires start to get warm but on a more strategic scale. now if youre on shore power, then go full in with an electric heater - they work great as long as the truck itself isn't the power source.

priorities should really be ordered as below if you want to go down the winter adventure:
good bedding
12v blanket (i have a timer one that only runs for 45min at a time)
insulation
more robust heat source (externally vented) + aux battery

 

LOL!

 

maybe, maybe not - but chinese diesel heaters are close to $100 these days and paired with a jackery or goal zero you should be able to get a night or two of comfort out of one.

 

That's partly why I went with propane as well, plus I carry a propane fire pit in the rig as well so I can use it for both.

Dickinson doesn't require electricity but it helps, but you do have to cut a hole in your camper ha! Either way the electricity draw is pretty minimal relatively speaking for the Propex or diesel units - most of the draw is on startup to fire the burners up, beyond that it's a glorified computer fan pushing the air - maybe 5amps max.

I get 5-6 nights of heat out of $10 of propane via an 11lb tank. Propex heaters are slightly less efficient but not all that different.

 

A badass 0 degree two person bag that works just fine 90% of the time.. and a propane heater to take the chill out when really needed. Just be smart with the heater. My wife and I have ran this combo for years. Simple and effective.

 

I disagree that propane is an expensive fuel source. I used to have a Mr. Buddy, but the CO detector went off constantly unless we had the windows open, defeating the purpose. So, I installed a Propex to use in my wedge camper. We do have an insulation package, which allows the temps to rise 5-10 extra degrees bs non-insulated.

I went camping last weekend in Eastern Washington where the temps were low 20s at night and 40 during the day. We put the Propex on 55 deg at night and 65 deg. Since it was winter, we left the heater continuous for two nights and all the time during the day. So, 40 hours of heat.

After the trip, I refilled my propane tank for $3.50, just under a gallon. I am not convinced the Diesel heaters are any more efficient or cheaper than that.

 

You're right I guess I was only referring to cheaper propane heaters like Mr buddy that takes a 1lb cylinder and costs $4-6. But if you buy a nice propex or Dickinson heater you can definitely run them off an 11lbs propane take affordably.

 

Curious how people have been using their molle panels..

Anyone wish to share their setups?

 

fwiw you can run a Mr Buddy off of a larger refillable tank too

 

Haha, not me! I'm still on step 1 in @gnardoggie list. So far so good down to low 20's. No hardcore winter camping here though, just shoulder season at mid to high-ish elevations that can get chilly.

 

Maybe that was a nudge for you getting a Dickinson fireplace…

 

Thanks for the informative discussion. 12 v blanket sounds good, also may want a solution to warm up interior in the morning while making coffee, or if inside in cold rain/snow.

 

Haha, maybe!

A heater isn't really worth it for me right now, not enough time spent in cold weather and when I do I can get by with lots of layers, blankets and a warm sleeping bag. Lack of insulation in the camper/tent also makes it seem kinda pointless. It would help if hanging out inside but usually just getting out of the wind makes the temps bearable enough. Pics are from last weekend when it got real windy after dark and temps dropped. I usually sit outside at night.

I'd be interested in a heater if its power source could also be used for a water heater, realistically that means propane. Might look into it if my electric water heater doesn't pan out.

 

Lots of great heater discussion. I pick up my camper in a week(!) and do a ton of high altitude (>10k) skiing and camping in CO. I plunked down the cash for a propex HS2000, will be running it through the passenger bedside cubby off a full size propane tank. With the megamat 10 and warm sleeping bags I'm not super concerned about sleeping in the cold, more to make morning and evenings a lot more pleasant instead of being stuck inside your sleeping bag. I'll be camping and hitting resort and backcountry ski areas on my way back from Portland to CO to test things out.

 

Hopefully you have a way to keep your propane tank warmer. I had issues with an almost full 20lb tank in Ouray fueling my 2-burner stove.

Pv=nRT states that pressure (very important to propane) is relative to temperature.

Also, the temperature that propane liquifies varies with the pressure.

I found out the hard way about devices designed to burn propane in a gaseous state vs liquid propane.

Short story, you may want to keep your propane tank inside the truck bed and definitely not sitting on the cold ground outside.

 

Definitely something I'm hoping isn't a deal breaker!

Just to nitpick, Pv=nRT is a simplified equation for ideal gases that don't change states. The issue with propane is it takes extra energy to boil a liquid. The liquid propane boils and draws heat from outside, icing over the tank. The same thing happens with liquid nitrogen exposed to atmospheric pressure since its boiling point is very low at that pressure but high when it's in a pressurized container.

I've also found that 90% of my cold weather propane stove problems are actually related to the pressure regulator tripping when opening the tank valve too fast. Once the tank ices over from the state change of the propane then you are dealing with cold weather problems. I'm hoping the larger tank kept in the bed will have enough juice to warm itself up before icing up. I may end up having to run the heat overnight when the low is extra cold just to keep the tank warm for the morning.

 

An update on my water intrusion issue for anyone who's interested - early returns on sealing the interface between the white panel and the black extrusion around the roofline on the outside of the camper seem promising. It's raining a decent amount today here, and when I opened up the camper just now it was bone dry. I spoke with SP a bit about the issue, and it seems like @gnardoggie 's hunch about roof panel tolerances may be correct. At the very least, SP is going to be awesome about it and take care of us however they need to. They've since remedied the issue (if that's what it was in my case) on new models, so new buyers shouldn't be concerned about it.