WAVE 6 catalytic heater review

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rbertalotto

rbertalotto

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Joined
Oct 1, 2015
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65
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South of Boston
Here is an article I posted a week or so ago when I decided to buy a Olympian WAVE 6 catalytic heater.

http://rvbprecision.com/shooting/olympian-wave-6-propane-heater-review.html

Now that I've been using it for over a week in near freezing weather out here in the Arizona desert I have some comments.......

FANTASTIC! Couldn't be happier.......Keeps my 20' trailer easily at 70 degrees when night time temps drop down to near freezing. Sips propane......Used it every night for 10 days and still have plenty of propane. Uses no electricity. If boondocking, batteries stay charged all night for use in the AM.

NO NOISE!!!! The trailers furnace sounds like a 747 taking off every 20 minutes. Totally silent.

Three temperature settings allows the heat to be very easily regulated. Never too hot, not too cold...Just right!

No condensation....The furnace created condensation on all the windows and the aluminum frame around my toy haulers ramp. ZERO with the WAVE 6. (now this most likely is because I opened the side vents on the toy hauler to give the WAVE 6 the needed fresh air it needed) 

Extremely fast heat up of the interior. Within minutes, the trailer is warm. And being radiant heat, sitting in front of the heater you are warmed immediately. No blast of cold air for a few minutes like the furnace did.

These devices should be the standard way that these small RVs are heated rather than a complex furnace.
 
Thanks for your review which really helps. Does the Wave produce and fume odor?

Reason I ask is because my wife and I just dry camped overnight at the beach in our 27' cl c where the wind was blowing like crazy and the temp dropped down to 34?. Being it was our first dry camping trip I decided to use a Coleman Powercat Propane Catalytic Heater Model 5053 @ 3K btu connected to a 20#tank, I did however set the RV heater thermostat just below 65? in case the Coleman didn't do it's job which btw didn't because the RV heater kick on during the wee hours so I'll need a large size heater.  At any event the next morning the wife commented that she smelled fumes from the Coleman (and yes I cracked two vents and a window).  Odd that I didn't smell a thing.
 
We use the Mr Heater Big Buddy, and there's sometimes a slight odor of propane when I light off one or both of the heating elements, but there are no odors at all when it's operating. It's a 3000 to 18,000 btu device, so it's capable of putting out a decent amount of heat.

For Seon, here's something to consider about the Coleman 5053... We used to use one of those in our RV, but it would go through one of those little disposable LP bottles in about six hours, which meant it was out of propane by morning. (When we wanted it most.) Like you, I plumbed ours to run off a larger LP tank, so it would run longer. (Our coach's LP tank.) That worked great, but it meant that I had to route a high pressure LP line into our coach, because the Coleman 5053 only runs off of high pressure propane - like what's in those little bottles.

A loose fitting, a split hose or a stuck shutoff valve could dump a lot of propane into the RV fast - real fast. There's a lot of pressure there. A lit pilot light in the oven, or a spark could cause a big boom. For that reason, I switched to the Big Buddy heater. Now I only need a low pressure LP line inside the RV. The Big Buddy puts out a lot more heat, it'll still run off those disposable LP bottles but it also has a fitting for a low pressure LP connection - the same pressure all the other interior LP appliances use. In my opinion, it's a much better way of getting more heat with less risk. Just food for thought.

Kev
 
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