No electricity, how to heat small trailer

Ventless propane heaters when installed properly are 99.9% efficient.
Anyone with a brain would have carbon monoxide detectors in their home when using one.

What BlueJuniperFarm said.

Get a good sleeping bag. Some sweaters and long underwear. Really shouldn't even be inside during the day, so daytime heat isn't even needed.

Or, if he's a 'slow starter' in the mornings, sleep with no heat... stay inside the sleeping bag till its time to get up. Turn on a small propane heater to warm up your bones first thing in the morning... just turn it on for a few minutes when you really need it. The "Western" way of sleeping in 'warm' homes, burning precious fossil fuels, is a terrible waste. {Wait!!!! I make my living selling fossil fuels to people that are 'cold'... Belay what I said earlier... burn as much propane, or better yet, natural gas as possible... make your home like a tropical sauna....}

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Unfortunately, brains aren't required for buying propane heaters... or maybe it's that .1% that does all the trouble...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Get a spare battery to hook up to his vehical, then run a 12 volt electric blanket at night?

............A 300 pound "Electric Scooter " Mama from Wal Mart will keep him warm all winter ! lol , fordy

I have a friend who chooses to live in an 14' x 60' mobile on the outskirts of a city (in an old MH park). During winter he layers up. I asked him what he does for sleeping when it gets really cold. He said he just adds another blanket to the bed.

He can do this

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green...e-Trailer.aspx

That article is fantastic!

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Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

One could also set up a wood stove outside with steel pipe inside to make a hot water heater for the camper.
If the stove is slightly lower than the heat exchange radiator in the camper the water will circulate by it's self. But it must be an open to the atmosphere system with a water expansion/contraction tank.

With open flame in a small area, co2 is a problem yes, but oxygen depletion is an even bigger problem. One mistake on how much window to open and your dead.
jim

Thank you all so much for your input and ideas! I'm passing on all this info and have learned a tonne about the pro/cons of propane heaters and such.
We are on an island not to far from vancouver BC and the winters are grey, wet and soggy. Generally its rather "mild" temp wise although last winter hit-17 blow zero for close to a month, so you never know???? He basically is looking to be moderately warm while he sleeps and then is out of the "house" first thing. Again thank you all!!
corry

Work at night, sleep during the day.

The MEN article makes you wonder. Instead of wasting all of that time and money why didn't they just build a garage to park the camper in? They basically built on their camper which will have to be torn down when they finish the house. Makes more sense to build a barn/garage that you would use later and just pull the camper out.

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I do agree with you on that Beeman ..... although he can scrounge lumber and windows to make it . If he can scrounge then it won't cost much .

I have a friend who lived in a small travel trailer for a couple of winters and his heat was a small catalytic propane heater designed to run on one of those throw-away sized cylinders, the kind for a hand torch. He got an adapter to run it from a bigger cylinder of LP (100# tank) and it worked well for him, here in Western Wisconsin. Quite a few nights of -10, -20, and -30 degrees.

I use a propane heater in my kennel building (or at least I did until I expanded the kennel building and put in a larger one- and someone leaft a leak when they hooked it up). The kennel building is insulated but kennel doors stay open so dogs can come in and out. It was enough to keep it over freezing even with the doors open. I would turn it to low and close all the doors if the weather was going to be below 0 and that kept it probably about 50 in there. The heater I use is the comfort glow blue flame. BTW the kennel was 12 ft by 32 ft and the one I used was the GWP20TB I went to a larger one after I expanded to 48 ft long. http://www.masterdist.net/glowarm/bl...ers/index.html

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Willowynd Collies
"A breeder is at once an artist and a scientist. It takes an artist to envision and to recognize excellence, and a scientist to build what the artist's eye desires."

That's the way to go. A ventless kerosene stove will make you cough if you use it all the time, but propane is pretty clean. If you're going to use a ventless propane heater be sure to allow 50 cubic feet of living space for each 1000 btu/hour of maximum gross heating capacity, and use a CO alarm to be sure (Walmart carries them). Consider the small Mr. Heater.

http://www.jcwhitney.com/jcwhitney/p...&redir=k232270

I got mine for around $50 on sale at a local ranch supply store.

For economy and convience, you might want to get a 12' hose that you can run outside to a large tank. The 1 lb bottles (less than a quart) are around $2.75 even at Walmart, but you can buy bulk propane for less than that per gallon. Here's the hose you'll need.

http://www.amazon.com/Heater-12-Foot.../dp/B00005LEXM

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Just as credentials for the advice I gave earlier...

One of my brothers lived for two or three years in an 18' travel trailer in Tok, Alaska, where it can, and does, get down to minus seventy degrees F.

My mother and step-father lived for about twelve years in a succession of old travel trailers, without using the furnaces because my step-father is paranoid about propane in a trailer, in Eastern Oregon (Christmas Valley and Plush) where it can, and sometimes does, get down to minus thirty degrees F.

I've lived briefly in a travel trailer myself, but not clear through the winter. (Just in a tarpaper shack for a few years in above-mentioned Tok.)

You don't NEED the propane heater in the Vancouver Island area! And he'll be a lot safer without it! (My brother did use the heater in his trailer -- have to, at those temperatures -- and still had ice on anything less than three feet above the floor when it was really cold out. But he had a good sleeping bag and some blankets, and slept with wool socks and a stocking cap on.)

I looked at the TMEN article; I'd read it before, at least twice. The people were planning to convert the structure into a garage or something when they no longer needed it to live in, so it wasn't going to waste. My brother's cabin in Alaska (that we lived in while he was living in his trailer) was the same kind of deal, although insulated and sided. He had built a 20' X 32' structure around an old 30' travel trailer, and used the trailer for kitchen and bathroom facilities mostly. We eventually tore a hole in the wall, tore down what was left of the trailer, and removed the frame, then fixed the hole and put in a floor where the trailer had been sitting. It would have been better if my brother had planned on the structure being permanent from the beginning; he built it intending to tear it down in a few years. It way outlived his expectations, but was built out of particle board covered with tar-paper and eventually had to be torn down. The lumber was re-used, but still, a waste of time and materials.

Kathleen

What is he going to use for power while building the cabin? Go ahead and get the building elect service in {if the have it there] and use a heavy drop cord to use ceramic heaters. Sam

What I did was to setup a battery & inverter system while I built my cabin. I was running the generator all day to operate power tools, so I had a 40 amp charger pumping power into the battery bank all day while I worked. That was sufficient power for lights & a few hours of TV each evening.

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i would go for a small propane heater with proper ventilation as long as he already has propane..a small wood stove would also be good but will require lots of room between it and anything combustible..and a chimney and in a 16' trailer that isn't much room

Are you trying to get this thead closed!

remember the super sized incident!