Mr. Heater "Buddy" Is Not Catalytic, But IS Safe Indoors (With Proper Ventilation)

hey everybody today i want to talk about my buddy heater it is a fantastic space heater i absolutely love it but when i was shopping around for space heaters i was actually looking for a catalytic heater that was safe indoors and i kept finding this heater and while it is safe indoors it's not actually a catalytic heater and there's a lot of misinformation out there floating around about this buddy heater so today i want to do a little bit of a review of it i want to talk about how it works why i like it and all that good stuff and then i'm going to sit down and explain how it actually works i've done some research into this and it is very clearly not a catalytic heater and that will become obvious as we start discussing it so first of all i need to clarify that i'm not being sponsored in any way there's no financial consideration for this video in any way shape or form i am however an amazon associate so if you make any purchases using the links i provide below i do get a small percentage of that purchase but that's got nothing to do with the manufacturer or sponsorship or anything else i'm talking about this heater because i really like this heater so it's basically a simple propane heater this little pops out you unscrew your tank and take it off you can also get one of the adapters that uh you can put a hose to it and then run it to one of the big 25 pound or 20 pound tanks that works just as well to start it and actually let's turn some lights out here so we can see what we're doing to start it you're going to turn your knob to where it says pilot and then you're gonna push down and hold it for just a few seconds there's a heat coupler in there to make sure it's lit and i'm hoping you can see that pilot lighting lit in there it's also got an anti-tip protection so it just shut itself off because i leaned it too far forward so we'll light the pilot light again once the pilot lights lit you turn it all the way around to full and then you will start to see that front plate turn orange let's turn it a little bit at an angle here so we can maybe see it in the darkness a little better so once that front plate starts turning orange if you want to remove it back to low you can just push down and turn back to the low position and you will get slightly less heat and orange color coming off of there but even on the low position this thing puts out a huge amount of heat i can't believe how much heat comes out of this thing i actually take this outside with me in the winter if i'm going to be standing around in one spot and i just set it on the ground next to me and it feels like i'm standing next to a small campfire it keeps me warm outside now you can't really use it in real high wind because there is open flame as we're going to discuss in a minute and the flame can flicker in high wind see i just blew it out just by doing that so not really good for using in windy locations or outdoors but it is safe to use indoors and like i said we're gonna go ahead and sit down and talk about that for a minute but that's the basic function of it it's the basic review it does have a tip over protection um it's got other protections in there too it's got a protection for low oxygen but we're going to talk about that when we talk about how it actually functions so that's it that's the basic functions of it you've got a pilot light you push this down get the pilot light lit turn it to high till it flares up you can start it by turning it to low it just takes a few more moments for the uh tile to start glowing orange and for it to really come up to full functionality it depends on that tile glowing orange to provide you with the infrared radiant heat which is what this is a radiant heater not a catalytic heater all right now as i said when i was shopping around for an indoor safe space heater i was specifically looking for a catalytic heater and i quickly found out that those are really expensive so i knew just by the price point that this buddy heater was not going to be a catalytic heater i watched a lot of youtube videos that gave demonstrations of them and showed them how they were safe indoors and a lot of people tested them and a lot of misinformation was given out in those videos the general conclusion was that they are indeed safe indoors and they are we're going to go over that but a lot of confusion was out there a lot of people seem to think there's some kind of hybrid you know a combustion end catalytic sort of hybrid or a lot of people thought they were catalytic and a lot of the confusion stemmed from these little units right here this is a co or a carbon monoxide tester if i say co2 uh in the future in this video i'm talking about co carbon monoxide i keep catching myself saying co2 because i keep fish and i talk about carbon dioxide a lot but in this video we're talking about carbon monoxide which is co so please remember that if i say co2 we were talking about co so these little meters will tell you if you've got excessive carbon monoxide in the air and i've seen a lot of tests done where people will set up one of these buddy heaters in their camper or their tent and they will use one of these little monitors to see how much carbon monoxide puts out and that little reading says zero the whole time and so therefore they say look it's not producing any carbon monoxide these are not carbon monoxide monitors these are carbon monoxide alarms they don't tell you a running count of how much carbon monoxide is in the air otherwise it wouldn't always say zero do you ever think about that it always says zero these always say zero until you cross a certain threshold usually 30 parts per million once you've crossed that 30 parts per million threshold this will say 30 parts per million and it'll start beeping and chirping and letting you know you're getting into dangerous levels of carbon monoxide and you need to ventilate or remove yourself to fresh air or find the source or whatever but these say zero up until there's a problem these are alarms they're not monitors they don't give you a running count of what's going on so for everybody that's done one of those tests and they said look it shows zero it's not producing any carbon monoxide that's not how these things work and it's not how this space heater works there's obviously carbon monoxide in the air there's carbon monoxide in the air right now it's just at enough low enough levels that it's not dangerous so the way these body heaters actually work is through combustion but it is a combustion of a very small amount of propane and it's in front of a specially designed ceramic tile i have no idea what kind of technology goes into it but it really really efficiently absorbs that heat from the fire and then re-emits it in infrared radiation which is why it glows orange like that and it puts out a ton of heat for a very small amount of flame and if you look at the packaging if you look at the instructions if you go to their website it says the same thing everywhere and that is that the buddy heater is safe indoors with proper ventilation that's the caveat that everybody always leaves out it's safe indoors with proper ventilation but a campfire is safe indoors with proper ventilation that's that's what a fireplace is it's a campfire that you have in your living room with proper ventilation so don't think that you can seal yourself up in a box with a buddy heater and not asphyxiate it does produce carbon monoxide it just doesn't produce a lot of it if you think about somebody that takes a bubble bath and has 30 candles around the bathtub that's a lot of fire and no one really puts in any kind of special ventilation to do that i know tons of people myself included that use hurricane lamps for little sources of heat i got a hurricane lamp in my office and that thing puts out a flame that's you know an inch wide and inch tall that's a lot of fire and i don't do any special ventilation for running a hurricane lamp or two and this is no different it's just a small amount of fire there is combustion it is producing co2 but it's just not producing a lot of it and as long as you've got adequate ventilation which is normal household conditions and i'm assuming if you're in a camper or a trailer or especially a tent that's got semi-permeable fabric then enough oxygen can get in and enough co you know carbon monoxide can get out and that is your adequate ventilation now the one thing that confused me was the safety device on this is not a carbon monoxide monitor it doesn't monitor high levels of carbon monoxide because that's where you run into danger you can have plenty of oxygen in the air but if there's also carbon monoxide in the air you can still run into danger so with this having a low oxygen sensor as its safety cut off that kind of seemed odd to me i didn't get it at first but when i thought about it makes perfect sense if it's not getting enough oxygen that means there's not adequate ventilation and it shuts itself off it's as simple as that it doesn't need to monitor how much carbon monoxide is building up in the room all it needs to monitor is the oxygen as long as it's above a certain point then it knows that fresh oxygen is coming in to replenish what's being burned off and if that's happening then you've got adequate ventilation if the oxygen is coming in then the carbon monoxide is going out and that is your safety feature as long as you've got adequate ventilation this will keep up and running it's got the anti-tip over device as we saw that works every time you lean it over a little bit it just goes off like a switch you only got to get about you know 50 degrees 45 degrees and it goes off and so no problems there again really really awesome little space heater but it is not a catalytic heater and it is not some kind of hybrid or whatever it's just a really really efficient heater i can run the thing for hours on one of these little tanks and i generally if i'm indoors i generally run it on load because it really does put out so much heat that it warms my whole basement work area within 15-20 minutes i'm usually turning it off and you know when the basement cools back down a little bit i'll turn it back on run it for half an hour but it puts out a ton of heat so great value for your money it's a heater i really really recommend i love it myself but again not catalytic safe indoors but not catalytic remember proper proper ventilation is the key to it being safe indoors so thanks for watching i hope that was helpful hope that cleared up any sort of misunderstandings about how this functions so thanks for watching hope you enjoyed i'll see you real soon in the next one

Channel: Everyday Fishkeeping

Views: 18,174

Rating: 4.9370785 out of 5

Keywords: Buddy Heater, Big Buddy Heater, Indoor Safe Space Heater, Propane Space Heater, Indoor Safe Heater, Propane Heater Safe For Indoor Use, Portable Heater, Space Heater, Radiant Heater, Infra Red Heater, I.R. Heater, Heater, Mr. heater

Id: _-v8vVnYm8A

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020