3 Best Electric Heaters for Teardrop Trailers (Plus Thermostat)

so the misconception that some people may tell you small camper owners is that you can't run a heater off grid because it just takes up too much power but they're thinking 1500 watt space heaters we're going to talk heaters today that can use less energy than running three 60 watt light bulbs this video is sponsored by squarespace the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business thank you squarespace hey guys welcome to playing with styx my name is drew we take out small camper trailers throughout the state of alaska sharing with you tips and tricks we learned just to help you have a more gratifying and simple camping experience that sounds like you make sure you subscribe below in today's episode we are talking about the heaters that we've been using for years that have helped us have a great night's sleep and we're going to share with you three different heaters ranging from 170 watts up to 350 watts also the addition of an external thermostat that can hook to these heaters and a heater that has a built-in thermostat of its own so let's get into that first heater now so i'm just going to be more efficient and compare two heaters right off the bat for you guys this as you all know is my lasko my heat heater that we have raved about for since we started this channel this is my newest heater this is the honeywell i think it's called heat bud ceramic heater i i'll lose track of the names of these so i'll just throw them up on the screen for you and put them in the description this heater beats this heater over here in so many ways but what i can't guarantee is how long it will run because i've only owned this for what six to eight months now and i've only used it maybe five times this is a 200 watt heater but with my tiny teardrop trailer i still found that this was a little too much most of the time you know fall spring camping season and i was looking for something smaller so that's where this guy came about this has 2 watt settings there is a high watt at 250 watts which i love because 50 watts more than this doesn't sound like much but if you want a punch that's a lot more heat and then there's a low watt setting and that's coming in at 170 watts and what's even better when i run this through a kilowatt and find the actual wattage it's actually running 150 to 160 watts so that's really low and especially for those of us who want to run these all night i'm going to talk soon about a thermostat that you can add to these to allow you to bring that temperature up turn those off while you're in your sleep and then come up again and we'll talk about safety features too that will allow you to possibly use these in your sleep the first thing i want to point out to you about all these heaters we're going to talk about today is yes they run in that 200 range but don't forget that when you turn these on they surge and they start strong so we're showing 322 watts this one's already at 240 some 254 on this guy so if you're going to use these with a portable power station instead of an agm battery make sure that power station has enough watt hour rating that it can handle this now when i talk about the surge it's not that bad because it only surges for maybe 30 seconds and then it will come down to its base wattage now when you hear run times of like two three hours that doesn't sound like much so people in the community what they typically do you come into your small camper trailer you heat it up right before you go to bed and then you turn these off and depending on your insulation if you have a well-insulated trailer and you have a way to not let that heat escape through the windows the temp holds pretty well in there and then when you wake up in the morning same thing you're going to turn this on right before you get up and change your clothes or get your coffee but just know anytime someone's coming in and out of the door this isn't what you want to be running you know if you're in there and your family is out this is when you want to move to the electric blanket and for those of you who cannot make it a whole night without going to the bathroom outside you know again this is not a time you want to heat up the cabin of your trailer to just lose all that air but i have found lately a toilet that actually works outside and can work inside for you too so you can relieve yourself and keep that warm air in so this one here i couldn't figure out why would you not want this narrow profile why would you want one with the legs sticking out but they're both very sturdy compared to our other toilets but to me really when it comes down to it it's about packability right so my friends and i just sat around for about 20 minutes just kind of joking why you would want this toilet and in the end we actually found out a legitimate reason and it may benefit a lot of you and that is when you put these down many of us in our teardrop trailers do not have room to go to the bathroom so check out this one if i was to put a bag under here which lika did provide so i'll put this in the description too they gave us biodegradable bags if i was to put that under me in my teardrop and sit on this i'd basically be sitting in my own urine and right this one it's actually high enough that you could line the bag in there go to the bathroom and you wouldn't be pushing on the stuff that is going out it would actually work pretty well so i think this is actually kind of a genius idea to have one like this yeah you're losing about an inch and a half maybe of depth but you're gaining a toilet that can be used in your little teardrop so both of these run very quiet and that's what i love about these heaters but don't forget if you have a power station anything that's running ac over 100 watts on a larger power station is typically going to turn on that fan on the power station but just take note of that in case you are a light sleeper these will turn on those fans so the big downfall i found on this i had no idea i had been using this for about four years and i thought it had a tip over feature where it would turn itself off to protect you know me well a week ago or two maybe i was out camping and this thing fell over i typically keep it very steady so i didn't even know there was an issue it fell over and it kept going and that's where this thing is great it has a tip over switch in here so when it's engaged when it's flat it runs when it starts tipping at a certain angle and this lifts up it turns off the fan and the heater keeping you much safer and especially for that thermostat i'm going to mention soon for those of you using a thermostat in the middle of the night to regulate this heat if that thing tipped over when you're sleeping that could be a bit scary so having this as a backup is a very nice feature and i've mentioned that the electric blanket and the heaters for us are the best combination that's how you're going to save the most energy and keep yourself the warmest if you haven't seen our video i have a card up here and i'll link it in the description below this is the new fun heater with all the bells and whistles so this is called the minitom 350 the mine tom the mini dom i have no idea what this thing is called but i will post it in the description for you so you can find it what's the first thing you notice first off do you see any long hanging cords no and that's the coolest thing look at this little adapter here so it flips around so this thing can be upside down right side up what's so great about that is with the other heaters those cords get in the way in a small camper trailer especially if there's two or more of you but the other thing that makes it really nice is that the other heaters it's always hard to find a place to set it where it's not near a source that can catch on fire this can plug into your trailer wherever your outlet is and then it can swivel like i said to fit right so it's not touching the ground now the biggest feature on here that i'm still not quite understanding is that this has a built-in thermostat and there's two issues i'm finding with this issue number one it only goes down to 60 degrees now in the winter i like to sleep at about 40 to 50 degrees but no i have to stay at 60. and this runs from 60 to 90 so it has a 90 degree threshold but the other thing i'm finding when i get it set to 60 it comes on the first time when it gets cold but then once it gets up to temp and it turns off i'm not sure when it comes back on the other night i had it and it dropped all the way down to 44 maybe almost down to 30s and it didn't come back and i just gave up so i'm gonna test that out and see if it even works uh in two seconds you'll know yay or nay in here so yay i plugged it inside for the last couple days and it works perfectly what the issue was i was plugging it into my power station in the teardrop and the heat coming off the power station was interfering with the thermostat so don't plug it into your power station all right let's move on the other great feature about this let's say thermostat doesn't work it doesn't really matter you get a timer in this so you can set it to one hour all the way up to 12 hours in one hour increments so before you go to bed you can set this on a one hour timer to turn off and another neat feature i really like it has a turn on timer so you can set this to turn on in eight hours so when you wake up everything is already cozy and warm waiting for you and at 350 watts compared to the other ones this thing feels more like a home uh space heater this thing pushes the fan's louder it pushes heat hard i mean it gets when i put this on i have to turn it away from me because it's just too much dry air coming at me so this is the digitin digital programmable thermostat what they're used for is for greenhouses and keeping chickens and home brewing and things like that so i grabbed this one but i didn't know i mean this one's a little larger because it heats and cools they make much smaller versions of this just for heaters and those ones are coming in at 18 so i'll put that in the description below so what you do is you set a temperature and then you can set a threshold of how far north and south that temperature goes so for example let's say i want to sleep at 45 is kind of the sweet spot i can set the threshold 10 degrees above and below so once the heater kicks on it will go all the way up to 55 then it turns off and then it'll go all the way down to 35 before it kicks on again so the larger you make that threshold the more efficient really your heater's going to be because it's not going to be turning on and off so quick and those surges that i talked about that's where you're wasting your energy it's pretty neat because if you think about it you can be running this all night long and if you have the tip over protection and if you have enough power this isn't going all night but you don't have to regulate it you don't have to wake up freezing like i do in the middle of the night to turn on that heater now that is part of the fun of winter camping just kind of the survival part of it but if you're looking for more comfort this is pretty cool but there's another feature on this that i stumbled across that i'm loving even more than the heating aspect itself and that is there is an alarm built into this that you can have initiated whenever your camper hits a certain temperature as you know i'm taking out a lot of lithium with me now in the winter trying to see if i can heat my whole camper off electricity trying to eliminate the propane so when i'm transporting my teardrop to the campsite i heat it up to bring up the temp a bit but once i get to camp i turn off that heater and i wrap my lithium batteries because many of these power stations once the lithium drops so low or the temp they're not going to allow it to work to protect that battery and if for some reason my cabin drops so much that it's going to impact the lithium i hear that alarm when i'm out at the campfire or just hanging outside camp but it makes it so i don't have to waste energy keeping the temp too high all day pretty cool right huge thank you to the sponsor of this video squarespace.com now many of you have been sending us photos of your newest teardrop trailers and your most recent camping trips and we've been meaning to set up a web page where we could display these photos for the community to see but honestly we've been putting it off because we thought it would take too much time well i tried it yesterday and it took me less than 15 minutes to not only get the page set up but to get the photos uploaded as well for those of you outdoor enthusiasts wanting to carve out your own space on the internet one of the best ways you can do that is by creating your own website this doesn't mean you have to share all your photos with the world with just the click of a button you have the ability to set up password protected pages if you want to share personal travel photos with just your close friends and family squarespace is the go-to all-in-one website where you can claim your domain create your website set up your own online store and even advertise your website all within the same platform if this sounds like you go to squarespace.com for your free trial and when you're ready to share your passions with the world go to squarespace.com backslash playing with sticks for 10 off your first order of a website or domain so there's been quite a few of you who've reached out to us lately asking about our ac50s you know are you gonna do a review how's it working you all called me out i was wrong on something and i'm excited to share with you it's good to be wrong right when it when it benefits me and it benefits you and that is i said in a video or two ago that there is no small solar portable power station that can do it all and what i was meaning is i wanted a power station that charged fast on solar like this rock pals but i needed one that had regulated power like a jackery or a blue eddy and here it is i am not a rep for these guys i'm not an affiliate with it you know i love my rock pals this thing accepted 100 watts of power now that it's discontinued and you can't order it the similar replacements only accept 60 watts of power this guy accepts 200 watts of solar so this charges now at four and a half five hours outside off the sun it also charges fast from your wall outlet at home it charges about five to five and a half hours to get it charged up and this thing has all the things i thought the 1500 was missing so this 1500 amazing because it's huge but here are my issues with it so you only have this one large cigarette adapter 12-volt adapter but no dc ports for running your cpap and running your electric blanket and all that at once this clunky handle because it doesn't come off was hard to get into the cabinets of my teardrop trailer this guy here has all those extra dc ports it has all the usb ports and unlike my rock pals that only has one ac adapter this one has two these lights on the rock pals they always were coming on when i was not using it they would get bumped in the closet check this out that's the light button the only way the light can turn on is if this is turned on and can you see the difference do you guys remember i went out and bought a violite two videos ago because i needed some like softer ambient light these lights they're like tactical lights that is some diffused light in a lower setting there this is something i can actually use inside of my camper and not feel like i my eyes are just gonna so they're easy to fold up for transport and you know haul around even though you don't really need it when this thing is this tiny right but then it can fit now in people's cabinets in your cabinets and then the last feature which i didn't even know i needed but now i love it it has wireless charging it's amazing so i'm not going to tell you guys to all run out and buy it yet because i haven't tested it but to me on paper it has everything we've all wanted and for you mike i believe this even has pass-through charging if you haven't seen our electric blanket video check it out here i've also put it in the description but you guys you can go out there and you can use a mummy bag and you can dress a little heavier you don't need these items to teardrop camp in the winter we haven't like this is the first year i'm really trying to push heat and trying to find more comfort in the winter trying to get my family out because i do this mostly by myself guys it's been fun we will see you all in the next episode

Channel: Playing with Sticks

Views: 63,120

Rating: 4.9533362 out of 5

Keywords: best electric heaters, camping heater, portable heater for camping, best electric heaters for camping, electric heater, best small electric heater, car space heater, how to heat your car, best space heater, portable heater for rv, best portable heater, how to heat your car while camping, rv heater, best electric heater for rv, camping, teardrop trailer, alaska, best electric heater for camping trailer, playing with sticks, electric heater for rv, teardrop camper

Id: Hxt98bcmQTs

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020