Cheap ways to heat your van!

[Applause] [Music] hi guys well today i'm going to show you some cheap ways to heat your van and yep this rock is one of them [Music] okay so a lot of people out there are gearing up for the winter time and uh especially if they're first starting out and they're probably wondering how do i heat my van or i don't have enough money for these fancy you know diesel heaters even the chinese ones could be a couple hundred bucks you know and when you first started out sometimes that could be a lot of money um or if you're like me and you're having to pay for dental work you really don't want to have to buy you know a couple hundred dollar heater so what do you do what do you do to keep from freezing to death well last year i put up a video about how not to freeze to death in a van um and that one got a lot of views but most of it was just a few little ideas that have to do with um you know some of my candle heaters and also um some clothing that i wear and things like that but this video i really wanted to get into more detail about some of the things that you can use just as like a straight up heater um and a lot of these things are going to be kind of passive heat and what i mean by that is they rely more on radiant heat so they heat themselves up and then the heat comes off of them you know the object that has been heated up and that's where your heat comes from so some of them take a little while to heat up the van so what you want to do that is have those in combination with something else that um can heat up the van a little bit faster like say your butane stove or a heat collector that goes on top so we're gonna get into a little more detail on that so um sit tight guys and hopefully this will all make sense i'm gonna do my best to put this together to where you guys can understand it um but if not you can always ask me questions all right here it goes okay so i put my stove over here because the lighting is bad over on the other side and i want you guys to be able to see what i'm doing here so basically what we have here is my butane stove and it really works to take the chill off of the van in the winter time you just light it up there you go you got a flame and that works pretty good um but as some people have put in the comments you know you could lose a lot of heat you know that way with just an open flame and you're going to be wasting a lot of fuel to get the same amount of heat after a while so what i have found um and i got this toward the end end of the winter so um i haven't gotten to use it very much but i do know that it works pretty well um with candles and with the stove and what it is is just a little chinese heat collector you set it on your burner and the flame goes up inside of here and all these little layers that has inside see it's like a double walled can with a bunch of holes all this steel collects the heat and then it radiates it out so the heat doesn't dissipate quite as fast and then you get to have a more efficient heat source and it works pretty good this one i have to um take it outside and burn it off because whatever paint they put on here uh anytime you get it too hot it starts to really smell up the van and i've even put candles underneath and i put two or three candles and two candles is too much it starts to make it stink so putting it on the stove is really going to smell bad so within the next few days or so i'm going to have to take this outside and just let it burn off but it's got like a real thick layer up here too and this kind of reminds me of a stove almost it's you know it's almost like a burner and i'm imagining too you could probably take this outside and put it on a small twig fire and literally use it for an emergency stove if you had to so stuff like this is pretty versatile i found this on amazon i don't know where the link is to it anymore because there were several kind of weird obscure sellers that had this and it took me a long time to get it because it actually came from china but i really wanted it because i wanted to try it because i knew it was a heat collector um i don't even know the brand name of it it's not even on the box or stamped anywhere on the thing it's just some random thing so you're going to have to do a google search on it if you want to find it um and it's just you know basically a random heat collector but i think i pay like 11 bucks for it or something crazy like that it's like really cheap so it's probably worth um you know finding something like this especially if you are like me and um you don't have much money and you have to basically use candles or a stove and like i said you know this thing is pretty versatile because you could put it on here or you could put candles underneath of it it also comes with this thing and let me get it it's this thing that um well i don't know where it went but it's this little metal thing that holds you could put it underneath here and then take it off the stove if you need to i don't recommend doing that that's why i probably i end up losing it because i don't use that i just leave it on the stove and turn the flame off and let it cool down that's just safer because it's it's going to be hot down here and i don't know where you're going to put it you know what i mean so i just never take it off of anything that's hot i just let it just cool down you know get rid of the flame and just let it cool and then um if you guys watched my last video this thing i featured in it and it's very it's awesome this is a tea light and the reason why if you never knew the reason why tea lights are called tea lights is because for thousands of years the japanese have been putting candles in these cast iron little things here and they put the little grate over the top and they put their teapot on it and it keeps their teapot warm and it keeps it at the perfect temperature because i've tried it i whether it's just hot water or tea it's great um so it has that special use but also it does the same thing as a heat collector it's it collects heat within itself because this is cast iron and then it radiates the heat out into the space that you're trying to heat so it's really cool and it has these holes in it so it can breathe and all that and since it's cast iron i haven't tried it yet but i'm pretty sure you can set this on the stove as well and put the flame underneath it and heat it up that way and have even more heat than what this could probably collect because this is cast iron and it's thick and it's almost like ceramic and in that where it will actually radiate the heat for a very much longer time than something just made out of stainless steel so even after you turn the flame off or after the candle goes out in one of these things it's still going to be radiating heat for quite some time another trick you can do is put a cast iron skillet or you know a teapot or something on your stove especially if the teapot has water you can heat that up and leave it on your stove even with the flame off it's still going to radiate heat but i really like this thing because it has you know we always talk about a dual use items well this is like a triple use item because not only can i put the candles in here and let it be like a freestanding heater by itself but i could also keep my hot water or my tea warm or i can use it on top of the stove like this so i really like something that has like a triple possibility especially when you're living in a small space these are very cheap as well this one goes for about 18 i think on bed bath and beyond and it's a way cheaper than even these candle heaters that you find for you know for heating rooms and stuff if you want to you know buy one yourself so i would look this up it's called a a t warmer or a japanese tea light warmer or teapot warmer and i really recommend this and i just got this not too long ago like i said before and i wish i would have had it last winter because i think that it would have served me a lot better than even this thing i might not have bought this thing even though i think this thing is a good thing i probably wouldn't have bought this if i had already had this so yeah hopefully you know that's but yeah i just love this i i just and i love the design of it it's round it's compact okay as stated before and everybody talks about you know you can use your regular old candles to heat your your van too in a pinch you know vans are what 60 square feet 80 square feet at the most so you really don't need that much heat just remember though anytime you use anything with an open flame it's going to burn up oxygen and it's also going to make carbon monoxide so you're going to want to basically vent your van keep you know a window or two open just for safety and you know just be careful when you're you know using stuff with an open flame i always want to say that to people even though i know you guys are all grown ups and you know all this stuff okay so here's one of my favorite ones right here and this is just a rock that was carved into a candle holder and you could put a votive in there well not this one but um you could put any kind of little votive candle or um you could put you know a tea light inside of here and what happens is not only does it have a beautiful little light but it heats up the entire rock and there again you get more radiant heat i try to use one or two of these things at all times when it's really cold just so that i have a better heat base for the van i just think that something that can collect the heat first and then radiate it out gradually is going to be way better you know um for fuel efficiency and also just to make it feel nicer and it's also a drier heat that way because you know it's it's coming from the object not from the direct flame if that makes any sense so yes these if you can find a rock candle holder that's a really good one you they have them um the salt rock kind too but they're kind of messy but if you can find something like this that was carved out of a rock that's made into a candle um i bought this at a thrift store i don't know where to get another one it probably came in a package of two because there was probably a set of two but when i found it it was just by itself so but this is a very a good thing to have if you can find it just keep on look out you know at secondhand store stores or like maybe national parks um souvenir shops for stuff like this i know they sell rock things at like places like yosemite and yellowstone and stuff so you might wanna you know if you go into a gift shop at a national park you know keep your eye out for something like this they might have something like that um and then of course you know a big pillar candle those are always nice because they collect heat inside of themselves too plus have the open flame so they help uh quite a bit so i always have at least one of these going on a really cold day so as you can see when i'm heating my van on a cold day especially if i'm hanging out in here like i actually have a lot of candles going at once a lot of you know different options i start off with the stove and then i just start um and then i start up all my candles and then once the stove has taken the chill off the van then i turn that off and then i keep the candles going and it seems to help to maintain the heat a little bit now this one is another candle heater and this one i built myself it's made out of just ceramic and what it's got inside of here is an again another like layered thing that collects the heat inside of it and then it radiates it out and of course it's got to have holes so that the candle can breathe and that's why i put a chimney in there as well this is a a ceramic heat collector and then in the bottom this is just where you put you know and of course it's cracked because it cracked when i fired it but um yeah you just put your candles in the bottom and it's very beautiful and um the funny thing is i thought i'd design this i thought i i was the first one to come up with this kind of this type of candle heater but apparently the chinese were making them for thousands of years and i had no clue um but anyway yeah so yeah i just um keep it in the in a aluminum pie plate as well just so because the bottom sometimes gets pretty hot and i don't want it to um you know spark on anything and also the pan keeps other stuff you know from getting too close to it so i can put something up against the pan and it's not going to touch the heater and melt so that's why i have it like that but this thing is pretty durable even though i made it out of ceramic and it was only fired once um yes it got kind of dirty um over the past year but it's held up you know in the van pretty well because of its shape because it's round um but yeah it's um but it works really well i really like it um the problem with it though is you can only use it for candles it's not like the other ones that i showed you guys where you can use it on any kind of flame i thought maybe you could put a baby can of sterno in here but i kind of got afraid to do that after just putting two or three candles in here and noticing how it burned i don't think it could get enough air to burn something like that so it would probably throw off a lot of soot and you don't want that so as you can see there's a little bit of soot in here just from the candles and that's how you know when your candle isn't burning quite right is if the if it starts to get so you just you don't want to throw off soot because that's you know carbon and you don't want to be breathing that stuff um so yeah that's that's my one that i actually created and it's you know it's got my signature on there i made it in 2018 um so yeah i say i think it works pretty well i really like it but like i say i'm it's it's one of my favorites because i made it and because it's very pretty when it's lit up but um it's not as versatile as the others so um yeah but you know um teach their own they could probably you know you guys could probably come up with um all different designs of your own if you are savvy enough if you're talented um if you have access to your own ceramics kiln or whatever i started doing these as an alternative to the flower pot heaters because i don't think that they give the candles enough air again they get really and that could be very uh dangerous for your well-being so i just yeah i just decided you know in a small space you got to have the cleanest burning things possible and so that's why i redesigned it and made this one myself alright you guys that's what i use to help heat the van and remember don't use any heating source like that especially at night time it's not safe you could die of carbon monoxide poisoning or burn your van down or any other combination of bad stuff that you do not want if you need some tips and tricks on how not to freeze to death while you do not have a heater on at night watch my old video called how not to freeze to death in a van because it talks a lot more about clothing and blankets and insulation and slippers and all that good stuff that you need to know and then when you get up in the morning then you can do the heater thing okay guys so yeah if you got something out of this please like and subscribe and all that good stuff and i guess we'll see you on the next one thanks guys [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Sarah Tree

Views: 13,389

Rating: 4.8982387 out of 5

Keywords: Cheap ways to heat your van, Sarah Tree, using candles to stay warm, how I heat my van, Heating my van, how to stay warm in a van, how not to freeze to death in your van, vanlife heating solutions, staying warm in your van without a diesel heater, living in a van in the winter time, keeping my van warm in the winter, vanlife, van life, DIY campervan, RV life, nomadic lifestyle, nomad life

Id: FQDCtVisNI4

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020