Community Forums

TravelingJ · 09-29-2010, 10:19 AM

I had a friend that put one in his travel trailer a few years back, but they were out of my price range at the time. Last year my sister in law put one in her basement and raves about it. This year, we are thinking about one for our RV. We full time in an a rig that is most certainly not designed for it, and winters get very very cold. I'd like to reduce the furnace usage is possible and use more of the electric to heat instead of the propane (for obvious cost reasons).

Has anyone used an infrared space heater in their RV? What model did you get? Thoughts and suggestions on them?

bigskymt · 09-29-2010, 11:30 AM

We've had our best luck with small fan forced heaters that can be moved around as necessary.
The portable infrared heaters seem best at heating an object thus allowing a lower ambient temp.

Chandler Bing · 09-29-2010, 11:52 AM

the Eden Pure is the most fantastic and safe heater we have ever used in our rv or the house!!

wa8yxm · 09-29-2010, 04:07 PM

The problem with infra red heaters is this.

Imagine a lamp in a large room.

If you face the lamp you see light (Feel warmth on your frontside)

If you face away from the lamp your front side feels no warmth (you see no light)

You have to either have several of them surrounding you or enough heat reflection that like in a small room painted white. The light (Heat) bounces.

Heat and light are like two FM radio stations... Different wavelengths (Or frequencies) of the very same thing.

WOODYDEL · 10-01-2010, 07:09 AM

I'm getting ready to install this:

STEP Warmfloor™: The energy-efficient choice for electric radiant floor heating

RV specific page:

http://www.warmfloor.com/content/view/40/94/

If you call them they will FOR FREE do a complete workup of what you need. All you need to do is send them a floorplan, window sizes etc. It's easy to do.

It's safe and you see nothing and they have models with various electrical requirements.

If I were going to full time it, this is the way I would go. You can do it yourself if you're a little handy. Have an electrician do the final hookup if you're nervous about working around electricity.

This is another product which should be offered in MH no matter the price range as an option.

WOODYDEL · 10-01-2010, 07:18 AM

Not all radiant (infrared) heaters are the same. Here's an example not a recommendation:

Qmark Radiant Ceiling Panels

I think I talked to these people before the Step Warmfloor decision. What was nice about the panels is you can put them anywhere, walls ceiling etc.

paz · 10-02-2010, 05:07 AM

IMO, a forced air heater is better than radiant because forced air makes the whole room feel warm. Radiant will only warm the part of you that is facing the heater.

We use a forced air heater by Vornado. Their heaters are a little pricey, but they are very good at distributing the heat, and they are very quiet.

We rarely use our furnace. Even though the campground where we spend our winters in central Florida has metered electric, we still use the electric heater. The heater is MUCH quieter than our furnace, and we don't have to worry about running out of LP gas. With an increase in electric rates at that campground last year, heating with electric was slightly more expensive than with LP, but we still used our electric heater because of convenience and because it is so quiet.

Brigadoon · 10-02-2010, 08:52 AM

We have 2 ceramic heaters. One in the living room area and one in the bed/bath area of our rv. They work great. They have 3 heat ranges. We seldom use the high range. Low uses about 560 watts, medium 980, and high about 1380.

The model we use is the Dayton 1VNW9. They are about $50.

Our two heaters have paid for themselves many times over. In '09 we were in New England for one of the colder summers in recent years. We used the furnace just about every night and went thru 3 1/2 tanks (32 gallon tank) of propane. This year we spent the summer in the Rockies generally at 7500 feet. Lots of cool to cold evenings. Using the ceramic heaters, we did not use the furnace once. That savings alone more than paid for the 2 heaters.

But wait, there's more. We bought the 2 heaters last November, just as the coldest winter in decades was starting in Florida. We ran our heaters in our Florida home all winter. One in our bedroom and one in the family room/kitchen area. Normally we would have to run the inefficient heat strip in the air conditioning for heat. The air heat strip uses tons of electricity to heat. Last year we rarely ran the heat strip due to the use of the ceramic heaters. Checking past electric use with this past winters electric use revealed a savings in excess of $100 per month for 3 months and a $50 savings in a 4th month.

These heaters are one of the best purchases we have ever made.

TravelingJ · 10-03-2010, 07:14 PM

Thanks for the replies! I'm not sure what we will go for, but last week we went and bought a top notch down comforter! haha it's already making a difference.

Good to know about the heat strips, I had been considering putting one of those in-I guess now I won't waste my time. We've had the ceramic heaters in the past-they helped a bit, but never seemed to do all that much for us. Maybe I need to look into a bigger version of those. I'll keep the Vectors in mind.