mr. heater Big Buddy and Buddy Heater review and how to run on 20 lb propane tank

hi today we are not going to be talking about climbing okay and i do apologize for everybody that normally watches my channel we do have a climbing part and this is coke season so we tend to talk a lot about climbing this time of year but this is a video i've wanted to do for quite a while now we're going to talk about heating your home without power so this has been really important if you're watching the texas problem they had these heaters that we're going to be talking about today were not available anywhere you could buy them for 500 bucks and couldn't get a hold of them so we're going to be talking about the mr heater buddy and big buddy heaters those are kind of the ones i've used i really like they have a lot of features for being able to use inside and all around a great heater for what you need to use it for so the ability of the heater each one of them can run off of a standard 16 coleman propane tank uh the big buddy will take two propane tanks but it's very limited okay we're talking hours instead of days so what we're going to talk about most for us for the people that are planning on being out of power maybe for a couple days the 20 pound propane tank is what we're mainly going to be talking about today so the ability and what really you get out of being able to switch over to a 20 pound tank and the advantage you have with this i'm gonna go ahead and have tyler pull this one down but this is the tank we're talking about the standard five pound or five gallon twenty pound tank that you put on your barbecue or your grill or anything else like that these work really well for that so we're going to go ahead and pull them down but a couple of these they're easy to move most people can move them around inside the house they work great so for that we're going to kind of talk about i'm going to talk about mainly these two heaters and i've used a bunch of different versions out there i've had all the different versions and these are the two i like okay now let's talk about our budget friendly version okay this is the buddy heater you if they're in stock you can get these at walmart for like 75 bucks really reasonable another 19 for the hose what do you get for this guy this is a great all-around heater comes with an a you know an actual igniter system that actually works really well you know just by pushing it you're gonna go ahead and ignite it no match is needed great system okay now what are some of the issues one it only has one tank and with one tank remember this one has a 4 000 and 9 000 btu setting okay that's gonna be important in a minute when we talk about the math so four thousand and nine thousand btu settings so a high and a low if you're on if you're on high so what you're going to basically get um on this one is you're going to get about two and a half hours out of a one pound tank so a full one pound tank running continuously about two and a half hours you're going to get about five hours on low okay that sounds like a lot but if you're having power edges for a couple days those tanks are really going to get expensive you're going to spend about five dollars per one pound tank and that really can get expensive over the time that's you know 70 cents or 80 cents per hour of use now when you get into these guys they only have the one tank but what they really can do and what i do recommend is that you use it with the mr by our mr heater buddy hose now this hose can be used on your barbecue grill or your two burner coleman grill whatever you'd like they really work well and because you're buying the brand name and this is one thing i do recommend only by the the mr heater version of hoses they're specifically set up to run their heaters and they don't have an oil and if you you watch there's a hundred videos online we'll talk about it being um that the oil inside some of the cheaper hoses and you'll find those all over the internet for about half the price will clog up your your heater and they they tend to not they won't light then they won't run they won't do all the things you needed to do so for about 20 bucks about 75 bucks under a hundred dollars you've got a great heater that will run quite a little while now here's the fun part putting a 20 pound tank on there now we're getting um 81 hours on low and 36 hours on medium so the 9000 btu burner setting you got 36 hours you know that's quite a little while and then you got 81. now remember you don't have to run these continuously or even all through the night maybe this is just something you're keeping your house going and a lot of the houses in texas they have their just because they have their heat out they were able to stay alive because they were able to bundle up things like that but they had pipes freeze because literally there just was not enough heat to keep the water from freezing inside the pipes so easy fix hundred bucks definitely recommend this a little smaller a little lighter if uh if that's a plus for you huge advantage okay now the one i do recommend has a lot more features and a couple other uh abilities that the smaller unit won't for about double the price okay so we're getting this guy like i said 20 bucks and this guy will just screw right into the hose that's already here so you're actually going to literally screw it into the tank and what i really like about this guy is that it opens and it pulls away so as you can see that hopefully you guys can see that it will open up it will unscrew and because there's a regulator built in you can go ahead and just use the standard hose okay it's a little more difficult to have to twist it on than just clip it on but still a great setup okay now when we get into the other version we have here the big buddy we get a few more features one we get a blower possibly if you're buying the right one now one thing i will show you is that when you're purchasing they do come in two different versions one with a battery-powered blower and one without now if you look on the back of them this is kind of what you're going to see here the back of them with the blower unit this is how you'll see it on online if you're looking at it one there's a switch up here in the upper corner of the back that switch the on off switch kind of tells you it has the fan the other thing you're looking for is the battery door on the bottom here that shows the batteries okay so the batteries are fairly difficult to get in but it does have the ability to run off a dc cord so i had a friend a few christmases back had their heater go out during christmas and couldn't get anybody to come out for a week it wasn't the end of the world or anything else but they did not have heat in their house for christmas and we were able to go over there and heat up their house even though they had electricity they didn't have any have any heat we were able to go over there loan them some heaters got them going again so not always is it the end of the world that you wouldn't have electricity but maybe you just don't have heat because your heaters broke down in the middle of winter this guy allows you to be able to plug right into the back and turn the blower on now the units that don't have the blower you'll sometimes find a little cheaper but if you look at the back there's no battery compartment no switch and no hole for your dc converter there or adapter so kind of keep that in mind now some advantages you get with the big buddy heater on top of that is one more setting up so you get a four thousand nine uh nine thousand and an eighteen thousand btu burner on this it actually has dual burners now it can run on one propane tank but it takes two to run it on the uh on the full size of the full high setting of 18 000 btus you need two tanks now these tanks actually clip in through the sides here actually i'll use this one over here if it's got tanks in it so they clip in on both sides so you have a tank on this side and a tank on the opposite side that allows you to be able to do that what's really nice here is you'll notice there's a cut out down here on the bottom that is for your hose when you run your hose out and if you look um if you look on these guys there's an actual setting to hook it up to your hose and we'll show you that kind of in a second here with this other unit so i'm going to go ahead and put this one down again auto ignite really easy to use really simple now all their heaters that are made for indoor use and again this is used at your own risk but these are designed for indoor use they have knockover sensors meaning that when you you're going to be using it you can tip it over and it will turn off so if i if i have a child or a dog or something like that run up to it and tip it over it instantly turns off two if the pilot light gets blown out it turns off and three if we it has an auction sensor in there that says if the option in the room is depleted you want to always crack a window in the house so we can keep option in the room if the auction depletes down to an unsafe level it turns off so you don't have to worry about sleeping around them again at your own risk but an emergency situation i've used these in my house they work very well i haven't had any problems with that saying that that is just my opinion and you definitely should refer back to the company on any information you want for using indoors so let's talk a little bit about how they how they work okay so this particular one we already have it hooked up here to the tank and you'll see here there's a quick disconnect right in this area here and the hose runs out the bottom and goes through the little notch in the door that quick disconnect you let the gas bleed out pops right off pops right on so really easy i have a lot of arthritis in my hands and i have a hard time screwing that valve up in there tight enough to actually seal it always recommend spraying a little you know windex or leak you know tester in there to make sure you've got a solid connection all the time good idea to check that once you got that done like i said it pops out the little groove in the bottom and you're set to go you turn on your tank now i will tell you with a 20 pound tank it takes a while about a minute minute and a half that i've experienced for the gas to actually get through and bleed all the air out of the system so what you're going to do now this one we've already bled out because we don't want to have you just wait for that but i usually sit there i'll twist it so i'll push down to get the burner going and then i'll go ahead and fire it and i only have to hold it for just a couple seconds and then it will stay lit now this is kind of hard to see but we can actually see the pilot light and that's all it takes it's not like lighting your hot water heater where you have to hold it for 30 seconds 5 to 10 seconds usually is enough to get this one working once you've got it lit you'll have three settings so you kind of push it in it will fire up the first one i'm going to go ahead and you'll see the first one kind of go up i've had problems with this particular setting out in the wind so when it comes to out in the wind usually about medium is about the lowest i can set it for and remember your first two settings are only going to be the burner on your let you know the side you're looking at will be your left hand side so this burner over here and there's a ton of heat coming out of the top of this so what's really nice is the blower unit actually forces the air into the room it is a little noisy if you're trying to sleep with it it might bother you but any kind of they also make a fan that you put on like your wood burning stove things like that there's a lot of videos out there kind of modifying that feature and then you'll see this one start to glow here you know we've got our we're on medium now and then if we take it and turn it one more notch we'll see that second level heat up on the other one here in just a second now when it's heated heated all the way up we're at 18 000 btus that is a really powerful heater in a room like this i mean even the room we're in now you know four or five hundred square feet and you're gonna you're gonna feel this heat you know it heat up the room quite quickly now normally i only use that high setting just to get the room warmed up and then i go ahead and turn it down to medium if not all the way down to low and allow it to run on low if i'm indoors outdoors like i said i've had a real problem with it basically blowing out with on that 4000 btu setting okay so we'll go ahead and let this guy cool all the way down and it just turns off so no electronics no battery needed you don't have to have the batteries in the unit to run it the batteries just run the forced air unit and i actually buy the adapters for d cell batteries and i put the double a's in them so that's what i have a lot of double a's because i shoot a lot of flash photography so that's what i use them for so for this unit really really great really like that and i still even it's a little heavier it is about double the price you're going to spend anywhere from 150 to 200 dollars mattering where you get them from now i have seen them in really killer deals at a bunch of different stores and we are not sponsored by these guys at all i had to buy all these these are all my personal items you're gonna spend like i said 150 to 200 on the unit itself about 10 to 15 dollars on the adapter cable this is like i said neat if you've still got power or you have generated power or battery power and don't have enough battery power to maybe run your heater but have enough power in the house to run the blower unit so that's kind of a neat feature so i do recommend these to all you know i install batteries for a living for solar batteries and i always recommend these as a backup to a heating unit if you've got a heat pump that's not going to run on your battery or you've got a bigger you know combo unit that won't run unless you have 240 volts this is definitely something i'd recommend now when it comes to the hose the hose comes with a regulator on it and the quick disconnect again by the mr heater brand all the complaints i've seen online is from using the wrong brand of hose you'll have to do your own research but it is not worth it so these hoses go from about 54 bucks all the way up to about 65 on when you can get them i definitely recommend buying them now when it's the summer versus the winter because these were unavailable during the texas crisis so i was trying to order one this happens to be my father's version i have another one version just like this and we were uh we were testing them but we could not get the hoses when we were running them i ended up using it for a party at a wedding and we burned through the tanks too fast and i said this is not going to work for long term our test really kind of told us hey we need to go ahead and switch over those 20 pound tanks this is a lifesaver and again quick disconnect and it has a 12 foot hose so if you are using it let's say in a tent and you can put the tank outside so if there was a problem with the unit you could turn off the tank outside or away from it versus trying to worry about it burning up on the uh unit itself get away from it turn off the gas and do what you need to do if there was a fire that's a huge feature to me also just being able to put it outside your tent so it's not inside the room taking up room if it's in a small area like that always always have ventilation okay so as we talked about uh this unit is a four thousand nine thousand and eighteen thousand btu burner so talking about what it will run so if you were running one tank again you'd have the five hours on low two and a half hours on medium and about 1.2 hours per tank on high so with the dual tanks this is why i really recommend getting this version because you have the two tanks it does give you a lot more time so you're almost 10 hours on two tanks you're about three hours on medium for two tanks and or uh sorry five hours for uh two tanks on medium and then about three hours three and a half hours matter where your elevation all that kind of thing is on the two tanks on high so and like we talked about five dollars very expensive to run those little tanks so where is the advantage the advantage is going to the 20-pound tanks you go to the 20-pound tank now for a 20-pound tank and we kind of reference these to about 15 gallons the reason is because most of the tanks you pick up at like your home depot whatever lows are not fully filled they're about 80 percent so we kind of set all our standards on what they'll do based on that 15 pound tank not a full 20 pound tank so going on that we have about 81 hours on low we have 36 hours on medium and 18 hours on high so if it's a really cold massively bad thing we're gonna get really almost a whole day on high which i've never had to run it on full blast even when it's really really cold now we are in california some of the other states may have to run them that really way and they may have to go to a bigger tank they may have the ability to run maybe the 50 pound tanks or 75 pound tanks that would allow you to do that now the way we kind of came up with this for money wise is we look at that about five five dollars per one pound tank or fifteen dollars for a fill on a five gallon tank so just kind of put that in in mindset so you get twenty one thousand btus out of the one pound tank so 21 000 or 324 000 btus out of the larger tank for only you know two times the car you know cost you're getting you know a ton more time and a much cheaper tank to run so and again this could be a tank you have on your barbecue this could be a you know you have a few tanks sitting around because you have a barbecue out back it's an easy switch over to this guy you got a few friends around that has it you know able to do that now again these are designed for emergency use meaning that you want to microclimate your house pick a room get everybody in that room the natural body heat in that room will automatically heat it up getting it to putting a tent up in your living room that will help heat that area and actually micro climate that area now if you are going to run it inside of a tent make sure it's a tall tent because there is a lot of heat coming out of the top here and make sure it's not going to melt your tent putting the batteries in there will actually help that force that air into the room that is a huge feature you can save a month a little bit of money if that's not as big a deal for you maybe you guys are thinking about putting one of the uh wood stove here you know fans the thermal fans on this you know they're 50 60 bucks putting one of those on there you may not even need it saving that going to a version that doesn't have the blower on it you may be able to cut get one of these as low as 100 just remember make sure you check and make sure you get the one you want again a couple hundred bucks 65 bucks for one of these is kind of what i'm seeing them at when they were when this was during the texas crisis i saw these as high as 450 online and these guys were going for over a hundred dollars for the hose so it's definitely something we want to do now if you are going to do the little cylinders totally fine plan on buying a few and making sure you know you can fill them there's all different kinds of things out there there's lots of videos out there on how to do that that again at your own risk but for what we're doing for the ability we have to use the larger tanks that's going to stretch that out for much much longer and make your family a lot safer for a less you know for quite a little bit less money so as always guys have a great day please like and share tell me what you liked on the video tell me you hated the video that's totally fine too but tell your friends about it share it and as always guys have a great day

Channel: Blackbear Prepper

Views: 224,925

Keywords: mr. heater, Big Buddy, Buddy Heater, propane heater, heating house without power, prepping, zombie apocalypse

Id: elpXj8szabU

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021