Cheap Heat for Van Living

hello everyone welcome back to my next video today we're going to talk about heat now some of you that's really really important its November 4th 2017 and I just saw on the news the other day that Seattle got snow and the Northeast had also gotten snow up around the Great Lakes and it was gonna hit New England so some of you in the middle of November are already dealing with cold and that's kind of normal it could be cold it's winter November is winter so dealing finding heat in your van is a really important issue for a lot of us and so we're gonna do we're gonna be talking about heat we will be doing a video on the mister buddy heaters which is a standard answer for a lot of you we will have a video within RV using an Olympian wave 8 cattle attic clear heater and so we're gonna talk about heat because it's really important I spend my winters in the desert southwest I am a Snowbird so heat is less important to me than it is to a lot of you but it's still important because the desert can be surprisingly cold in the winter it's never going to snow I've never seen snow in the desert where I go but it can get into the teens I have seen it into the teens and even worse I can get caught in between so I can be up in the high country how that happened to me this year I was in I was in Colorado in September and and I got snowed on and it was cold and we had some really cold wet days it was it was very unpleasant so wherever you are you're gonna have to deal with some cold and you have to have some heat if you are for some reason forced to be in cold areas you got to have it I mean you just got to have heater you'll be miserable the whole time now so we're talking about the mr. buddy when you're talking about the Olympian however there's a third option and it's one you may never have her to have you may never considered you may thought was too dangerous and quite simply the third option is right here it is a standard Coleman propane stove this is what I use for heat I've owned several mr. buddies in my life and I've gotten rid of them I don't like to mr. buddy I don't ever intend to use a mr. buddy in my van and I'll go through a list of reasons so I don't use the mr. buddy I love the Olympian however there is it room really in here I can fit an Olympian here there's no make no mistake you can fit an Olympian this smallest Olympian in a van if I had an RV I would for certain have an Olympian heater but I don't find that I need it as a Snowbird on the in-between times if I got to get caught in the snow in the cold country in high country I run this I run my Coleman 1 burner stove when I get to the desert there aren't that many cold days again if it's cold and I'm inside and I and it's too cold for me just to put on a sweater and maybe a light jacket I will turn this on and run my stove for the evening and that will keep me plenty warm so that's what we're going to talk about the cheapest easiest least obtrusive source of heat you can possibly have is simply a Coleman propane stove and I'm going to show you how I do it I have been using a stove like this in my van for 10 years it's my it's been by essentially my only source of heat for 10 years and I think it works extraordinarily well Lemmy's first begin by telling you why I don't use a mr. buddy the first reason is a mr. buddy's too hot even on its lowest setting which on the middle-sized there there are three sides of mr. buddy's there's the little buddy the buddy and the big buddy the mr. buddy is too big in a van you turn that thing on if you have any insulation at all in five minutes ten minutes the hand will the van will be at a hundred and hundred degrees the second thing I don't like about them is the requirements around it there has to be a certain amount of space around the heater every heater or that doesn't get hot the mr. body puts out so much eat any of them any of the three of them that if something is too close if something is four inches in front of it it will get so hot it will literally catch fire and I know that for an absolute fact I have seen things catch fire that were set too close to an Olympian heater every heater ever made will come with a list of clearances around it and you must read the clearances and obey them if you do not you will you'll your life is at risk you can die so the clearances are critical and with the mr. buddy it's harder to get the clearances in a van because there's just not enough space now this is a specially a problem if you're in a car and people write me all the time and say Bob I live in a car what kind of heater can I use and I'm afraid the answer is none because they all require clearance and there's just not enough room in a car to give that heater the clearance it demands it's life and death so that's two the two big issues in a in a van they're too hot and in a car they require too much clearances the next thing is it's expensive it's 80 bucks at for those for the the middle sized and about 50 to 60 70 on Amazon for the small so they're expensive but here's the problem it's not so much the except the money it'd be worth it their failure problem and I just got to tell you I get so many letters from people saying my buddy failed and can I fix it and my answer is generally no I have on my website a page that describes how to go through and fix them when they break and sometimes it works and usually it doesn't they're very failure prone I know so many people have bought the things and then they stopped working they require a filter and so most the first thing I always ask is you tell me your your your heater is broken I say well did you use a filter most of the time people know about them and say yeah I've used a filter every minute it's ever been on and it's still broken they are failure prone and that's all I can tell you too hot too much clearance failure prone their waste of space in other words if you use most of us now if you're in a cold country I lived in Alaska I used a heater for five four five six months out of the year the other six months even in Alaska I never used it it just took up space in the van that I never used for most of us you might only use a heater two or three months out of the year the other seven or eight months a year it just sits around it just takes up space so they waste space and I took waste a fair amount of space whereas this never you waste space because I use the stove all year another final reason that I I'm not really recommending the mister buddy is they use more fuel this one will use much less fuel just because it's low when I put this down on simmer on low it's just barely burning anything so it will use less fuel in this van so even a mister buddy in a van on low still uses a lot more fuel than this will and it's still too hot so those are all reasons why I choose to use this the next question is is a safe it says right on it not to use this indoors that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me if this were a natural gas stove in your house would there be a sign on it that said don't use this indoors of course not that's silly a natural gas stove or a propane stove in a house is this exact same thing just in a house I can't think of an any reason whatsoever why this is unsafe here and so I have been using one of these for the last ten years but let me make this very clear I have magical powers and that's the only way I have stayed alive if you run this in your band you will die instantly because you don't have magical powers like I do so I will not recommend to you that you use this in your van I will just tell you that I have for the last 10 years and I will continue to do so until the day I die and can't live in a van anymore as far as I can tell this stove is exactly like the propane stove in any RV sold in America with a propane stove I don't consider this any risk to run this for for as far as carbon monoxide I just don't think that's any risk at all but again use proper ventilation you drop your two front windows a quarter of an inch you've got all the ventilation you could possibly need so there is a really very severe danger with doing this and that's you've got an open flame even on low you've got an open flame now let me tell you what's going to happen let me give you a little demonstration so I'm gonna I'm gonna stand up and you can see the stove and I'm gonna I this is a wall over here and I'm gonna go over here and I'm gonna get something and I'm gonna bend over because I'm gonna bend over and get my fridge out my fridges on the floor i have to roll it out it's on wheels and what have I done I've set my butt up that's what I've done I just set my butt on fire the risk with this stove is like any open flame I can drop something on it I can I can back up into it I can just not be watching it and set something on fire fire is a huge risk with an open flame I have devised this cool little thing this is what is this this is a horribly expensive and heart impossible-to-find thing it's actually a splatter guard designed to go around one of your burners so if your bookie cooking some meat and it's splattering you put this on top of it and you can buy you know the mesh round spiral guards that would go on top and then it would keep all the splatters and keep your kitchen clean well they're just this is eight dollars on Amazon I bought this one I literally bought this one 10 years ago I think far as I can remember I bought this 10 years ago and I've been using it ever since it's not very scientific but boy does it work so it just sits here and it's this cheap metal and it just I just bent it around I bit this hinge back can you see that there and and it sets down over the arm and works really really well I've been using this for a long long time another big disadvantage to this heater of this tight using this is a heater as now all the heat rises and pools up at the top that's also a huge problem with the mr. buddy I then this I devised this this is a really fancy piece of equipment here I'm really into fancy this is cheap RV living remember that and so running your stove for heat with a dollar this is a $40 Coleman stove on Amazon this is eight dollars on Amazon and this is probably 50 cents worth of heavy-duty aluminum foil and so it's just heavy-duty aluminum foil the wide and then I went back and forth a million times I think is probably ten layers and it just goes on here all around it comes back here you see all this and I just push it in and now the heat doesn't rise anymore I mean I can this is not uncomfortable on my hand because the heat rise it comes forward now it still rises hot air rises and you can't make that not happen what I'm gonna do most nights in the winter by 5:00 it's usually dark or are almost dark Suns gone and it's Twilight so you've got the whole evening to go without light without heat and in the desert and it's like that when the Sun Goes Down it's getting cold I'll make a meal and if it's gonna be a really cold night I'll make a long cooked meal by that I might mean I'll fry hamburgers and maybe I'll make spaghetti that means frying hamburger warming up the sauce boiling the noodles well that's like a 45-minute burn between those three things it's going to be completely toasty warm in here and then you turn it off normally in the evening it might get cold again say seven eight o'clock it'll get cold again well maybe I'll put a pot of water on and get hot water and I'll clean up for the night or I'll make hot chocolate or tea or and say it turns cold again bye I'm saying go to bed at ten and at ten o'clock it's cold yet well at 9:30 I'll I'll put on another pot of hot water I'll get a a hot water bottle and fill it full of the hot water because now I'm taking that hot water to bed with me I'm putting it in the pan it's getting the warm bed warm and then I'm gonna go to bed with a hot water bottle at my feet and that's really really nice it so I've taken the heat this thing creates and I've saved it and stored it overnight this is a such a multi-purpose device if you have a car this might very well be an option because if you do what I've done here with the with the things around it then your clearances are pretty good so I really recommend this for all of you with natural powers and if you do not have magical powers then do not do this because it breaks all the safety rules but it has worked super well for me of course I couldn't run you can't run not this sit overnight you can't run anything mister buddies you can't run this you have to be here aware of this it's an open flame an open flame is a severe danger okay so I think that's it I'm gonna stop there I'm just gonna say this has worked for me and I'm happy with it if you got anything out of this like us on YouTube subscribe to the channel and just remember you can have a whole new life there is a super cheap way to have a whole new life and you can have it okay thanks a lot I appreciate your watching we'll talk to you later [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 1,373,368

Rating: 4.8236198 out of 5

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, heat, heater, stove, coleman, btu, warm, cold, hose, adapter, water, propane, safety, safe, full-time, #vanlife

Id: WosMp5xG1e0

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/lennyflank]

Stoves and heaters are two entirely different things which work in entirely different ways.

Using a stove as a heater is also enormously dangerous, especially in the confines of a van.

Spend the money and get a good sleeping bag. Or a heater.

[u/Adan714]

Reminds me this: https://vodvore.net/prikols/prikol1850.jpg

[u/SasEz]

My RV is old and I havent been brave enough to try the furnace yet. I put a cast iron skillet or two upside down over a stove burner, and blow a small USB fan across the top of it. I do NOT do this while sleeping.

[u/[deleted]]

I do something similar and it works. It's difficult with the humidity tho. I have a big problem with that bc heating with propane makes the air even more humid and then u get mold and rust and stuff if u don't manage to get a good air circulation. The distribution of the heat is also not that good. But I do it and I'm fine with it. I can handle the cold at the places where I stay good anyways so I don't heat so much.

[u/TheSleepingBuffalo]

If you are caught between a rock and a hard place Bob's tips would work well but a standard Buddy Heater will be more efficient. I like Bob cause he always has tips for the people with very little

[u/synergicity]

If you do that, or any non-vented combustion heater inside, also get a carbon monoxide detector. Cheap insurance.

I love our Chinese diesel heater which has exhaust vented outside. No condensation from the heater.

[u/oskco]

I've got a high top, extended E-350 with XPS and sheep wool insulation. I found the Mr. Buddy to be inadequate for heating the van in below freezing temperatures, so I'd have to disagree with the idea that it'll get your rig up to temperatures of 100+ degrees. The Mr. Buddy was recently swapped out for a $100 Chinese diesel heater and I couldn't be happier.

[u/WeTitans3]

If you can afford it, and have the time money and space for it, I would jump straight to a Chinese knock off diesel heater. It will save you from having to redo things in the long run in your van and save you all the headache of having to deal with the typical headaches of propane heating. Those being; moisture problems, how many manage turn on the heat there on and off before you sleep and when you wake up, and overall diesel will be a lot more cost efficient than running propane delete your house. As well as it’s a bit harder to fill up a whole room with heat when you use a propane heater.

[u/c_marten]

This reminds me of when people fought switching to LED light bulbs for lights in houses because the old incandescent bulbs produced heat so they could keep the thermostat lower... or putting a bunch of tea light candles under a ceramic pot.

Outside of normal stuff like cooking dinner and filling hot water bottles, just being smart about which food you cook and when... using a stove for heat is probably the most inefficient, unless you've got something dense heating up on top of it. Get like a 1ft section of a steel i beam. Remove any paint beforehand.

It's a long video so maybe i missed something because i skimmed through most of it. I did watch all of it from 12:00 on.