Baby, it’s collllllllld outside! No, really, it’s cold! (Well, lots of places, anyway.) When using your propane furnace, how quickly (or not) does it heat your RV?
Does it heat your RV very fast? Slowly but works well? Slowly and doesn’t work well? Is the whole darn thing just worthless? Please tell us in the poll below. Thanks, and stay warm!
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Don’t have a propane furnace. Our coach has a diesel-fueled Aqua-hot hydronic heat system. It’s VERY effective, and will bring the rig from pretty cold up to toasty in just a few minutes. Plus it provides endless hot water and will pre-heat the engine on frosty mornings.
BUT: it stinks to high heavens when running, and sounds like a miniature jet engine from outside the rig. So we try to limit its use when we’re in a crowded RV Park.
Never use the furnace. I have a Mr. Heater that works great. Quiet, heats a lot faster than the furnace, more efficient.
Always depends on the outside temperature and the thermostat temperature. If overnight temps are above 45 we use the electric fireplace. Below that we turn the furnace on to 72 degrees. It then becomes more a question of how many hours of fuel use do we have remaining. We’ve never camped in temps below 28 degrees for which our furnace keeps the 40 ft 5th wheel toasty warm.
We don’t have propane, we’re all electric in our motor home.
Our New Aire is all electric with no propane onboard. Our hot water and coach heat may be operated off of electric or a diesel fuel burner. Or both together.
I haven’t used my furnace in years. I have a propane powered catalytic heater it’s great
Doesn’t it throw a lot of moisture in the air?
It helps a lot to put on a robe and stand over those dirt collecting floor vents.
We have Aquahot. In our prior RVs we had the Suburban furnaces. Our RVs were good quality, so they heated well, but we we also did a lot of insulation work since we winter camped in MN.
We only use the furnace to take the initial chill off. Since it’s fan forced, it distributes the heat throughout the trailer quickly. We then switch over to a ceramic space heater and a small fan to move the air.
I wish there was a way to keep the furnace fan on without the furnace running to pull the warm air from the space heater through the vents by directing the heater towards the cold air return. There is no fan only setting on the furnace. I know I can use the AC fan, but its noisy.
Same process we use. A small 12 volt fan solves the distribution problem.
Our electric tower ceramic space heater has its own fan and also oscillates. So it needs no additional fan when used in the bedroom or in front of the theater seats. And I think it only cost about $40 at Walmart.
We have an Aqua Hot in our coach, which is a diesel fired boiler system and it works great! Heats 3 zones and the coaches bays. Any and all zones can be selected, which makes it really nice! Once you have this system, all others are not even considered! This system works off of diesel or electric or both!
When my furnace is working, it does it’s job quickly! Unfortunately, in the past 6 mos, I’ve had it in to have the sail switch replaced, the burner repositioned, and now its got to go in again for who knows what! Thankful that I’m either plugged in to shore power or have my trusty Buddy heater!
Our Suburban furnace heats our 5th wheel very rapidly; after which we use the elect fireplace to maintain.
I would also guess it’s a matter of just how cold it is outside – and how cold it is INSIDE.
Other. Our RV is all electric; we have no propane and no propane furnace.
I use “cheap heat” which converts a propane furnace to electric central heat. Now I only use the propane as backup in a power outage. I haven’t used propane in 7 years of full timing. It runs on 120 ac. Easy add on conversion. Uses same thermostat.
Furnace that services my small bedroom heats it up very fast. The large living area has another furnace but because of the large space it just never gets it warm.
Other. Our RV is all electric; we have no propane and no propane furnace.
My 39′ Super-C has TWO propane furnaces and TWO heat pumps. I rarely use either. I DO use two ceramic heaters (one up front, one in the rear) set on the LOW (750 watt) heat setting. I’ll put on a “hoodie” if the inside temp drops to ~ 60 degrees (I’ve ALWAYS preferred cold weather to hot).
It definitely depends on how cold it is. At 50degrees it does fine. At 30degrees not very good.
Many RV’s at 40 Ft or a bit smaller come with only one furnace for heat. We had our 40 Ft DP coach built with two furnaces to go with the normal two AC’s. Our coach is built with a mid entry separating the living area from the bedroom and main bathroom area. One furnace and AC for each area. The furnaces and the AC units are very efficient to heat or cool their respective areas very quickly. While on the road when first waking up, if necessary we use the furnaces to heat our coach before turning on the generator and using electrical space heaters to take over. Just our way. Stay safe, Satay well and Happy New Year to All
We have a heat pump in place of the rooftop AC unit, plus a propane furnace, in our 25′ Sprinter Class C. So, when it is so cold (ie., heading for “Snowbirdland” from Colorado in January), the heat pump is handy for quickly distributing the heat.
Our 35ft Georgetown has a decent heater but the heat isn’t very well distributed. The floor vents only run from midships to the bedroom in the back, relying on the chassis heater to keep the cockpit warm. When the furnace is on, it gets the back warm quickly, but we only have one vent to the front, and that runs through the kitchen slide to a small wall vent. Unfortunately, the flexible hose has been ripped open several times over the years. I ended up replacing the hose with a sturdier aircraft quality hose, and added a metallic joint right where the hose gets beaten up by the cabinet in the slide. Haven’t had any issues in the two winters since that repair.
I never use it. I have a ceramic heater that was added and does a nice job of heating up the rig.
but we use it sparingly opting instead for either the overhead heat pumps and/or our portable electric space heaters.
We have two Suburban propane furnaces and two heat pumps. In a campground where typically there is no additional charge for electric we run the heat pumps if the temperature is 40 deg F or higher and propane for lower temps, it works very well. In our long term site electricity is more expensive than propane so long as I take the tanks to the fill station. Therefore, even though I have a 30 gal built in tank I use Extend a Stay hose to run to 7 gallon tanks (the heaviest I am comfortable moving when full). At present we are running through two a week with the temps running in mid 30s to mid 40s overnight and highs ranging from mid 50s to mid 60s – terrible SoCal weather. Coach is a ’12 Phaeton 36QSH.
We are all electric, no propane.
Heat? It’s 75 outside. A/C is more like it.
We have an aqua hot
I would not say it is fast but it is not “slow”. And it maintains the heat in the trailer pretty good
I plug in my EdenPure infared heater and that keeps my rig evenly warm! At home, too! The cost of running them is pretty low cost 🙂
21 foot trailer and man does that heat up the trailer. Sometimes I cannot get it right and it runs for ever. But once I get it right I leave it or mark it. Like toasty not charred.
I’ve never fired mine up. Just used a small electric one to keep it above 60.
It works well but if hooked to shore power we use a infrared space heater.