Radiant heat?

[CynAndJuni]

I'm going to be gutting and remodeling my '76 Sovereign next spring and am looking for cleaner heat options than my current propane furnace. This has been, and will be, my full time home in Northern Mn, so heat costs will be high no matter what I install.

Does anyone have experience with electric radiant heat in their Airstream? Pros, cons?

[Isuzusweet]

There are many ways to go that can improve your heating bill and give you greater comfort

1) Platimun Cats: These are a vented propane catalytic heater that uses very little propane and very little electricity to give you infared heating surface. No condensation or carbon monoxide to worry about.

2) Precision Temp has a water heater/ muffin fan radiator heation system that seems to work very well. It pipes hot water to small radiators placed in different areas of your trailer and the muffin fans force air through the radiators to move the heat.

3) In-floor heating grids. These work well, and as the saying goes; if your feet are warm, so are you.

There are many others, including marine wood stoves and heat pumps, but the three that I have mentioned do work.

You will find that combinations of different heating methods work best. I fact if you had all three of the above OR just numbers 2 and 3, you'd have a very toasty stream.

Cheers
Sidekick Tony

[TouringDan]

Not sure how to put this, but I think you are delusional to plan on living in an Airstream in northern Minnesota in the winter. Too many single pane windows and not nearly insulated well enough. Remember it is made of aluminum, a good conductor of heat and electricity.
Next, using electrical baseboard heaters is nuts also. Even if you had 50 amp service, this probably won’t be enough to provide adequate heat to keep you warm. I can’t even think about the cost.
Sorry to be the first to burst your bubble.

Dan

[AtomicNo13]

As posted above....
Youre going to be cold, very, very cold!

[TheGreatleys]

Welcome!

I suggest running your space through the BTU calculator. Use "poor" for the insulation level, which is a pretty good representation of what you get in an Airstream.

http://www.calculator.net/btu-calculator.html

I think you'll find you need more BTUs than most radiant electrical heaters are going to provide. We have a wood stove and love it, but chopping a 10" diameter hole in your roof is not for everyone. Whatever you choose, you're going to need powerful dry heat.

You'll also need a means to keep your tanks liquid unless you're planning on winterizing the trailer and overwintering "dry." The propane furnace should have some ducting into the tanks, but if you're not using that as your primary heat source, it won't be heating your tanks. Electric heating pads can help, but those also have their limits.

While most of us would not want to live in an Airstream through a Northern Minnesota Winter, it can be done. It's just not going to be easy for a lot of reasons. You'll find most of us full-timers prefer to use the wheels for climate control as much as possible.

[LiLNomad]

Dickinson makes propane as well as a wood burning heater. Its much smaller and the hole is 3 inches. Ive seen threads on this and am considering this as well..heres a few...
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...er-165601.html
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...ed-115194.html
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...ew-126474.html
LilNomad

[TheGreatleys]

Originally Posted by LiLNomad

Dickinson makes propane as well as a wood burning heater. Its much smaller and the hole is 3 inches. Ive seen threads on this and am considering this as well..heres a few...
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...er-165601.html
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...ed-115194.html
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f427...ew-126474.html
LilNomad

The larger of the two Dickinson Newport propane burners, the p14000, tops out at 5500 BTUs.

http://dickinsonmarine.com/product/n...p12000-heater/

Definitely nice for some supplemental heat and ambiance, but not going to cut it as primary heat in a cold climate.

[CynAndJuni]

Thanks for the input everyone! I realize now that I didn't specify that I'm looking at in-floor electrical radiant.

The Platinum Cat heater looks great! I'll probably look into that as a supplemental heat source and do in-floor as the main heat.

The Dickinson heaters would work better for a smaller space, unfortunately, the larger model might be a good backup plan if I can't get a catalytic heater though.

As to the naysayers, I'm not new to Mn winters and fully know what I'm getting into. Due to the housing market and high property taxes, this is my only choice if I want to stay. There is a large community of winter RVers up here, thanks to their support and advice I am confident in this venture.

[TheGreatleys]

There are in floor radiant heat pads designed to be used under floating floors. I don't see any reason why those couldn't work, but again, it's not going to be enough to supply your primary heat. In floor heat is fantastic, but it would work best as supplemental heat for your purposes.

[TouringDan]

I wouldn’t consider not using the original propane furnace just because it isn’t “clean”. As I said in my original post I don’t believe there will be enough electrical capacity in your Airstream to feed your infloor radiant heaters. I would plan on using both plus possibly a cat heater.

I would also suggest using an electric blanket on your bed. I used one years ago when I lived days at a time in my Airstream when I went skiing in West Virginia. I used the electric blanket plus an oil filled electric heater plus the propane furnace to stay comfortable. I had a campground bathroom to use so I didn’t use the plumbing in the Airstream.

Let us know how it all goes after spending a winter in your Airstream.

Good luck, Dan

[TheGreatleys]

Originally Posted by TouringDan

As I said in my original post I don’t believe there will be enough electrical capacity in your Airstream to feed your infloor radiant heaters.

I think there is plenty if electricity available, which is partially why I don't think this will make a good solution for primary heat.

Take this product:

https://www.thermosoft.com/en-US/rad...ngineered-wood

The largest 120v pad is 3' x 12' and only consumes 2.7 amps. Since you would only heat the portions of the floor you stand on (not heating under cabinets/bed/etc), you might end up using around twice that in a 31' Airstream, so maybe 5.4 amps tops?

My small tabletop electric heater draws 12 amps and won't keep my 27' overlander comfortable lower than 40 degrees F or so. 5.4 amps isnt going to produce nearly as much heat as my small space heater. That goes to TouringDan's point, that there's probably not enough electrical capacity in a 30A trailer to keep up with your heating needs in the middle of Winter using any type of electric heater.

The radiant heat pads simply don't draw enough power to produce the kind of heat you'd need for Winter in a cold climate. Subtract the heat lost through the subfloor, and you're probably not adding much heat to the air at all.

Now, I had radiant electric heat under tile in my house, and it was glorious. There's nothing that will warm you to the core quite like standing barefoot on hot stone. So, there certainly is some value to keeping the floor warm in the Airstream. But it's not going to radiate a significant amount of heat into the living space. You're going to need a furnace or a wood stove or a vented catalytic heater or some other major source of heat, or upgrade to 50A service if you want to use all electric heat.

[TouringDan]

I have said there isn’t enough electrical power coming into your Airstream to heat with electric radiant heat without providing any numbers. Let me now try to provide some numbers to support my statement.

Your 76 Sovereign probably has a 30,000 btu/hr furnace. The efficiency is probably about 75%, so the output, into your trailer, is about 22,500 btu/hr. This won’t keep you warm in a northern Minnesota winter. I estimate that it will take about 40,000 btu/hr to heat your Airstream adequately. Based on 30 amp service, this will provide 3,600 watts or 12,000 btu/hr of heat, about half the output of your original furnace. Even if you upgrade the electrical service to 50 amps, this will only provide 20,000 btu/hr of heat. This is still less than the output of your original furnace and only about half of the 40,000 btu/hr of heat that I believe will be needed to keep you warm.

The only way to adequately heat your Airstream is to upgrade the insulation and heat using a new propane furnace, with a higher capacity than the original, plus radiant heat in the floor plus some 1,500 watt oil filled electric heaters plus a cat heater plus an electric blanket.

Dan

[TheGreatleys]

Originally Posted by TouringDan

I have said there isn’t enough electrical power coming into your Airstream to heat with electric radiant heat without providing any numbers. Let me now try to provide some numbers to support my statement.

Your 76 Sovereign probably has a 30,000 btu/hr furnace. The efficiency is probably about 75%, so the output, into your trailer, is about 22,500 btu/hr. This won’t keep you warm in a northern Minnesota winter. I estimate that it will take about 40,000 btu/hr to heat your Airstream adequately. Based on 30 amp service, this will provide 3,600 watts or 12,000 btu/hr of heat, about half the output of your original furnace. Even if you upgrade the electrical service to 50 amps, this will only provide 20,000 btu/hr of heat. This is still less than the output of your original furnace and only about half of the 40,000 btu/hr of heat that I believe will be needed to keep you warm.

The only way to adequately heat your Airstream is to upgrade the insulation and heat using a new propane furnace, with a higher capacity than the original, plus radiant heat in the floor plus some 1,500 watt oil filled electric heaters plus a cat heater plus an electric blanket.

Dan

I mostly agree with your premise, but it's worth noting that 50A RV service has two legs of 50A for a total of 100A. Not saying that solves the problem entirely, especially since you need some electric available for other things, but it gets you much closer than a single 50A leg would.

[Hein]

We have electric elements under the floor in our Sprinter van. They won't heat the van but they are nice to reduce chill effect from cold floor. These are 120V elements that we do run on our inverter.

https://sprinter-source.com/forum/sh...&postcount=132

Consider installing multiple smaller units in areas where you are standing or otherwise occupying the space. Then turn on/off individual ones to manage power consumption.

All the best,
Hein

[TouringDan]

Originally Posted by TheGreatleys

I mostly agree with your premise, but it's worth noting that 50A RV service has two legs of 50A for a total of 100A. Not saying that solves the problem entirely, especially since you need some electric available for other things, but it gets you much closer than a single 50A leg would.

I am not sure if you are correct that 50 amp RV service (120v, not 240v) can provide a total of 12 kw power into the trailer, but I really don’t know. Maybe an electrical type will chime in. I do know that whatever power is used for any other purposes, except for refrigerator venting, goes into heating up the interior since it is a closed system. The problem then becomes how you heat up the air using 12 kw of power. I suspect the best way would be a 12 kw electric furnace. I don’t know if one is available that would work in the space available in an Airstream.

I don’t think electrical resistance heating is the best way to heat this Airstream anyway. If I were going to live in it and pay the heating bill, I would work with the original 30 amp service, install a 40,000 or 50,000 btu/hr propane furnace (or two 25,000 btu/hr units), install radiant heat in the floors, use a couple of oil filled heaters as needed and insulate the exterior walls and windows with some insulation that would result in this experience being both comfortable and affordable. The more I think about it, it sounds like an interesting challenge.

Dan

[uncle_bob]

Hi

If the objective is to heat the inside of the trailer to some specific temperature, it really does not matter a whole lot just how you turn the electricity into heat. The effect on the air inside the trailer is the same regardless ( = heat pumps don't work in the Minnesota winter).

The BTU's needed are far from a single static number. Get the wind blowing and air moving (under the trailer for instance) and the BTU's needed go up. There's also the fairly basic question of - is 40F an adequate temperature to heat the trailer? Maybe it is in this case.

Another issue is going to be moisture condensation. Depending on how many people (and pets) are in the trailer, this goes from some to lots. Toss in cooking with propane for three meals a day and lots gets even worse. Perish the though that you would ever take a shower ....

Lots of issues ....

Bob

[Lgebhardt]

Originally Posted by TouringDan

I am not sure if you are correct that 50 amp RV service (120v, not 240v) can provide a total of 12 kw power into the trailer, but I really don’t know. Maybe an electrical type will chime in. I do know that whatever power is used for any other purposes, except for refrigerator venting, goes into heating up the interior since it is a closed system. The problem then becomes how you heat up the air using 12 kw of power. I suspect the best way would be a 12 kw electric furnace. I don’t know if one is available that would work in the space available in an Airstream.

The 50 amp plug does indeed provide 12kw of power. http://www.dasplace.net/RVWiring/wiring.html

However your airstream may not be wired with any 240v outlets so you might not be able to run a single 12kw furnace.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

If you put in a furnace that uses 100% of the power available .... don't turn on the lights

Anything over 80% of the circuit's capacity is a bad idea, regardless of what rules you are following. Even then the 80% should apply to all the stuff you would have on in a normal case. Running the air conditioning and furnace at the same time may not be "normal" so you don't just add up everything.

Unless the system is always used when it's frigid outside, two heat sources at about 4KW each likely make more sense than a single 8KW unit. That way you don't get this massive hotspot when it's "only" 35 degrees out. (and for those outside the US, thats 35F ... ).

Bob

[SilverSunny]

https://cozywinters.com/shop/rug-hea...xoCOa4QAvD_BwE

[SilverSunny]

I have thought of ways to do the same for when I move up to the mountains. Hesitant as I may be to move to an area where it dips below 30 degrees for weeks, if not months, I am more likely to add better insulation to my flooring and look at ways to heat without added electrical draw.

My biggest apprehension, not fear, would be losing electricity for longer than a day or two. I am looking into a woof pellet stove or something similar, but I am also making sure to seal everything well and maintain my hearing sources - propane and wood heaters.