need to heat boondocking

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

jimmy87903

Member
Joined
May 6, 2015
Posts
24
My 12v heater fan will run on 12 volt off battery power,can I run this boondocking for heat in the winter?I have a attwood 8520IV.DCCP heater and understand it will only power my heater as long as I have battery power,but this is ok to do?that is my question.I have a generator to charge my battery,but this is in a generator free zone campsite after 10 pm,and I will be camping in janurary.Just want to get some info that this is alright to power off my 12 volt battery without destroying my heater.
 
All RV heaters will run off the battery (plus propane) so you're fine there. However, in very cold weather the furnace will run a lot and the blower draws a lot of power. You'll want to look at the power draw and assume the furnace will be running 75% of the time, then take your house battery capacity and divide by two and then see if you have the battery capacity to run the heater through a cold January night and still have reserve for some lights. It's quite likely the battery will be quite low in the morning.
 
The heater will be fine. Just make sure you have enough battery capacity (amp-hours) to run it all night. The furnace fan draws several amps, so a single small 12v battery may possibly run down before morning. It won't harm anything if it does, but the furnace burner will shut off even though the fan continues to run [at a slower speed].
 
In addition you may want to consider a propane catalytic heater as they consume no power, just propane.  Not cheap but we have used one for many years and thought it made a big difference in the amount of time the RV heater ran at night.  We have used it in below zero temps and were well pleased.

Just a thought,
 
We camp in temps well below freezing (low to mid 20s) on a pretty regular basis in the spring and fall. In most RV the propane heater also heats the water lines in the belly to keep them from freezing. As long as temps are above freezing during the day, you can use other heating sources, but freezing temps mean the regular heater in the RV so your pipes don't freeze. In our 24' (interior) trailer, we have two 6v batteries with a total of 220 amp hours of capacity. On a really cold night (low 20s), we will use a bit under 1/2 of the batteries. Milder nights are about 1/4 of the capacity. That means a generator pretty much every day for at least a couple of hours. As others have said, check your amp hours and see how long you can go. You never want to exhaust your batteries more than 1/2 because their life will be significantly shortened.
 
UTTransplant said:
We camp in temps well below freezing (low to mid 20s) on a pretty regular basis in the spring and fall. In most RV the propane heater also heats the water lines in the belly to keep them from freezing. As long as temps are above freezing during the day, you can use other heating sources, but freezing temps mean the regular heater in the RV so your pipes don't freeze. In our 24' (interior) trailer, we have two 6v batteries with a total of 220 amp hours of capacity. On a really cold night (low 20s), we will use a bit under 1/2 of the batteries. Milder nights are about 1/4 of the capacity. That means a generator pretty much every day for at least a couple of hours. As others have said, check your amp hours and see how long you can go. You never want to exhaust your batteries more than 1/2 because their life will be significantly shortened.

I was thinking the same thing.
 
Jim Godward said:
In addition you may want to consider a propane catalytic heater as they consume no power, just propane.  Not cheap but we have used one for many years and thought it made a big difference in the amount of time the RV heater ran at night.  We have used it in below zero temps and were well pleased.

Considering one of these to save battery power boondocking - furnace kills the batteries. Problem, I don't have any open wall space for mounting except one spot with a recliner in front of it. Any such thing as one on a hose that could be set out in an open area while in use?

What's the CO situation with these? Can they be used without opening a window? (Opening a window on a 30 degree windy night would pretty much defeat the whole purpose.) I assume they also have O2 sensors?
 
We've had a Coleman portable catalytic propane heater for several years and we love it. Ours is plumbed to run off the coach's propane tank, because it'll go through one of those disposable propane bottles in about six hours. That may seem like a lot, but it's a LOT less propane than an RV furnace uses - and it consumes no power from the RV's batteries. You can move them around as necessary, I believe all of them have "tip-over" and CO shut-off switches and they're designed/approved for indoor use. We leave a couple of vents cracked open and our CO detector has never gone off. They're also very quiet compared to an RV's propane furnace.

One down side is, they exhaust a fair amount of moisture when they're running - another good reason to leave a vent or window partially open, Our coach has an Aqua Hot system, but we almost never need to use it for the furnace, especially since we rarely camp in "really cold" conditions. The Coleman does a good job of heating the room we're in, but it won't heat the entire coach.

Kev
 
Kevin Means said:
We've had a Coleman portable catalytic propane heater for several years and we love it. Ours is plumbed to run off the coach's propane tank

Kevin, what model is your Coleman and did you mod it to attach to the coach's propane or does Coleman have optional hoses etc?

 
Back
Top Bottom