Heating your motorhome.

[Phantom]

We are full-timing and stuck in blighty for winter, but on electric hook up, so to save on gas we bought an electric fan heater about 3 months ago. It did the job but was not ideal so about a month ago we decided to get an oil filled radiator and bought a 1.5kw one which was on sale for under £25 delivered and has three heat settings 600/900/1500w. We have only been using it on 600w but it has made quite a difference. At 600w the inside temperature will be about 12c higher than that outside and on colder nights just an occasional blast of the 1kw fan heater soon tops it up. The fan heater is noisy but good for fast close up directional heat but on its own leaves other areas cold. The radiator is silent and heats the moho up quite evenly and expect it will be costing about 11p/hr to run at 600w. Ideally a radiator at each end should work very well but will stick as we are. Of course the fastest way to heat the place up from cold is on gas by firing up the combi blown air heating putting out 6000btu but we are only really using that for hot water. For us electric vs lpg heating seem to work out about the same cost though electric is currently more convenient as the heating is on for about 16hrs/day.
So that is what is keeping us warm!

Tech bit.
If using a BTU calculator and comparing a motorhome to a house lounge then our free space would require about 3500btu of heat which happens to be about 1kw of electric radiator so it seems about right in reality.

 

[Deleted member 86180]

We have a DeLonghi oil filled 500 watt heater. Really is very efficient and hardly taxes the genny if we don’t have hookup. We prefer it to the diesel blower as that tends to make the air too dry for us anyway.

 

[jeanette]

We bought a oil free radiator for our other van which was a bit bigger than the one we have now and it was brilliant at heating the van up and like you we have a fan heater and we also found it noisy (we’re not livaboard)

 

[Nesting Zombie]

Hi ya,
In all the Boats & Vehicles I’ve had over the years, I honestly think that keeping warm or Cool starts with Vehicle insulation & Airflow. Had ALL kinda heat sources fitted over the years. Hate hate hate the typical Gas heaters often wall mounted as standard in Caravans & Motorhomes, (Although YES I’ve had them as fall backs & got one fitted now).
Although the Diesel Blower heaters are often really really effective for heating, they can be problematic, are often noisy sound like a Jet engine for quite a distance to be heard by others.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED my Multi Fuel stove in ALL my boats & in my last Livaboard vehicle. Cheap to run, Silent, FANTASTIC heat, Back up for cooking, very little smoke if using the right fuel. But the discipline was Cleaning it out daily. (Yeah, am really missing it).
Now, I use Electric convection heating when I can. Silent, Cheap, But ONLY good when on EHU of course. Then the Blinking horrible Wall hung Gas heater when NOT on EHU. Again I have to say it’s Silent, Fairly effective & Fairly Cheep.
But the biggest comfort nowadays is my Comfy Snuggley Soft Electric Throw Blanket that I put around me if needed while sat in the Saloon area, then put into the bed under the Duvet for an hour before getting into bed. Very low power, Silent, Safe, Versatile & can be run for many many hour from my inverter when NOT on EHU & is used a lot.

That’s a MAX input of 180w on Full.
I run it on around Half for a few hours in the Evening via my inverter NO problem.

 

[colinm]

Have used them all except deisel.
Fan heaters are OK for quickly getting most areas of van up to temp, but the noise soon becomes tiresome.
Oil/electric rads are quiet but can take some time to get up to temperature.
Electric convection are quiet and quick to heat up, but I'm always concerned that in the confines of a van it's all to easy to accidently cover them.
The old style gas wall hung heaters (bit like a fixed 'super sur') I never used to like, I believe the newer ones are room sealed, so probably better.
Truma blown air gas is quick to heat up, in our case heats all areas of van including the 'garage', and not too noisy.
If I was getting a new van it would be with Truma gas/electric blown air, have used them before and been good, unfortunately our present van just has the Truma blown air gas, so if on EHU we give the Truma a blast to get up to temp, then use a oil/electric rad.

 

[molly 2]

When on hook I use ceramic fan heater with thermostat .you can hear it but only just ,.saves waring out the truma when on hook up , I find the truma isn't that hot on electric as it is on gas ,

 

[trevskoda]

I use a duvet and a 26 year old blond from Sweden for heat, then I woke up.

 

[Nesting Zombie]

How many tubes of Relgex & Viagra per hour does that take

 

[Penny13]

We like to drive to Spain or Portugal to be warm in winter
Not this year
Happy with oil filled radiator on hook up with diesel heating that keeps us at 20 degrees when we go to those minus numbers outside.