When we bought our motorhome it came with an electric fireplace. I thought, “What a ridiculous thing to put in an RV!” It was so fake-looking and why would we use it when we could sit around a real campfire, with real wood, outside?
That was before I discovered its heating potential! Once I learned to work the remote, we were in toasty-RV business. This electric fireplace sure is nice on cold nights! However, I quickly learned that the only one getting warm was my husband in his recliner. All the heat was centralized around him and the ceiling … but definitely not the rest of the motorhome.
I added a simple, very small USB fan on the mantle above the fireplace and now the heat from the fireplace is distributed throughout the RV evenly. The inexpensive fan works great! (Editor: The fan Nanci uses is no longer available, but here are similar USB fans on Amazon.)
If you have an electric fireplace in your RV and find that it only heats certain areas (like right in front of it or just to one side), try adding one of these fans. It’ll make a difference and your cold feet will thank you!
Editor’s note: Good thing Nanci’s RV has this electric fireplace after she was just recently stranded in the scary Texas ice storms. If you missed her story about that, read it here.
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We have one of those fireplaces in our motorhome and it does help take off the cold in the mornings, but it works better if you use a small fan to circulate the heat.
I love my fireplace so much that when we ordered our custom built Dune Sport 5th wheel I had one added. We use the fireplace a lot and so far have never used our propane furnace this year in the cold AZ desert nights.
7 years ago while rv shopping, we laughed .
Soon discovered these are quite useful. We generally only run the furnace for maintenance purposes. Ours has a built in fan that’s quite quiet.
“Scary Texas ice storms” {bleeped}. We too, survived the “ice storms,” in Texas in our sticks an bricks home. At one time losing power for about 12 hours. We kept our furnace turned to 62 and used an electric fire place heater in our family room. My wife has control of the remote and her recliner is right in front of the fireplace. We were comfy with wiener dogs in our lap and blankets on our laps. I may add a USB fan but may not. Just got our electric bill for last month… $110. We can live with that and the temps don’t bother us. Better that the 109*+ we will get next summer.
The thing that made me wonder was lauding an electric fireplace in an emergency ice storm? I’d want the propane furnace, not an electric when power is unreliable?!?
Btw: How much do I avoid relying on electric? When power went out at my HOME, a 2KW RV generator ran *everything else* (lights, electronics) in my house except the hottub. I heat with wood and cook with gas. Adapting such a tiny genny to the proper transfer switch (110V to both phases of 240v) was the sneakiest part there.
And a third random detour: With crazy people like me putting small residential heatpumps into their RVs, why don’t RV manufacturers just make a ceiling mounted AC with the trivial valve change to add heat capability? Seems like it would be a hot ticket (punny!) item to have EFFICIENT electric heat in the RV, no?
Nanci mentions how fake they look. At least the one pictured is a model that tries to mimic some burning logs instead of the majority of them that just have blue marbles or some such glass in them.
Don’t the fireplaces have a good built in fan???
Personally, I’d rather have the storage space and use a small ceramic heater if a little extra heat in a small area is desired. Put the money into dual pane windows.
I love my fireplace for heat on those cool spring and fall days.