Date:         Fri, 09 Sep 94 18:52:08 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         DerekDrew@aol.com
Subject:      Winter Camping Heat & Water Tank

Paul, I am posting my reply to the list as well since some of this 
will be of interest to other campers. (Subject starts with where to install
vented 
6,000 BTU catalytic heaters.) 

>I have to get out and measure for feasability, but
>I'd consider sacrificing 6" of width in the wardrobe closet to mount the
heater 
>on that inside wall. Venting would then be down through the floor.

OK, so you mean mounting it along the inside wall pointing toward the
passenger side of the vehicle. That sounds not too bad. One could even cut a
cut-out for the heater in the closet wall to minimize the extent to which the
heater sticks out into the vehicle. 

But I wonder if this could end up burning the sleeping bag of someone
sleeping in the lower bed over night. I use my Coleman Black Cat catalytic
heaters overnight and intend to do the same with whatever new heater I buy.
It is easy to buy an alarm for oxegyen and for presence of bad gasses.

I have in mind an arrangement whereby you could "clip" the heater on to two
or three places inside the camper, depending on how you were using it. I
would make recepticals for it sort of like a slide in radio. 

>One question, when you refer to keeping the bus at 72 when the outside temp
>is 32, is that with the top popped or closed? If open, how cold can you go
>before too much heat gets lost out the top to stay comfortable? I know in
>our old Westy, we were pretty darn cold - even with the top closed - the
>time it got down to 15 degrees (and 40 mph winds), using an old Coleman
>white gas catalytic for heat.

Take my BTU figures with a grain of salt since I am going from memory and 
I never measured this with precision. Furthermore the Coleman Black Cat
heaters 
are rated for 5,000 btus but they are old and therfore have lost some
efficiency. 
In addition, they probably arn't as efficient as the units we are considering

buying. 

Here is what I think I remember about camping in winter with the pop top up,
a 
moderate breeze, the window cracked, and a target inside temperature of 
65 degrees. 

5,000 BTUs takes you down to about 35 degrees
10,000 BTUs takes you down to about 10 degrees
15,000 BTUs takes you down to about -20 degrees

>Also, have you had problems with you water supply freezing?

This is an extreemly important question. First, it takes a day or two to
freeze
the water in the water tank no matter how cold it is outside but freezing 
the drinknig water poses a risk to the tank because the water expands. I 
wouldn't want to risk this so you have to keep that water from freezing. 

A crude method is to boil water in a teapot on the stove and then pour this 
water into the tank via the giant screw-on top of the tank which you can 
get to by going into the left hand of the two food compartments under the 
table top. You will get tired of this fast, by the way. Another thing to do
is 
to run the rear heater all the time you have the car running hoping to get
this heat
to the water.

A better method is to buy a 12 volt heat blanket such as that 
sold by Camping World catalog (Bowling Green Kentucky; everyone with campers 
on the list should get this catalog by the way). The blanket 
goes around the drinking water tank and when it senses the tank is 35 degrees

it heats up and thereby heats the tank and thereby heats the water. The
trouble with 
this is that it is a major paint to install the blanket cause you have to
take the 
drinking water tank out to get in there to do so.

Anothre method I would like to use myself is to run some coolent from the
rear heater through a copper tube which is suspended in the drinking water
tank. I am 
thinking about this project but other projects are ahead of it. This would
involve a thermostat and a valve of some kind. Garth just figured out how to
do this with a neat design but it is possibly dangerous in winter cause
drinking water can freeze in and split the copper tubing in his design.

Aside from the tank, you have another problem because the drinking water line
is 
not a strait line from the faucet to the tank so some water tends to pool in
the line 
and then freeze even when the drinking water is not frozen. I recomend you do
what I did and reroute the drinking water line so it goes down hill all the
way from the faucet to the tank. That way, the faucet will always work
because the line will self drain.

Critical to all these issues is that in winter you must keep track of the
temperature of the drinking water so you know when it is about to freeze. I
keep track myself by means of a Radio Shack thermometer with probe (Cat No.
63-854). 

It is normal in winter for the water in the drain part of the tank to freeze.
This means that when you are done for the weekend you have to take off the
drain cap and chip away the ice with a screwdriver until you are able to
punch through to the liquid water, which will then drain out and melt the
remaining ice in the drain part of the tank.

While we are on the subject of the this part of the drinking water tank, it
is important to remember that this tank is always collecting condensation
which pools in the bottom. This condensation water will begin to make
bacteria so you should provide a way for it to get out when the tank is not
in use. The best method to do so is to have an alternate drain cap with holes
in it so condensation water can always drain out. Glue foam over the holes so
dust cannot climb back up through them into the tank. Alternate the factory
cap and your cap with holes in it depending on whether the tank is in use or
not. Drinking water in summer time should not be left in the tank for more
than a week or so due the fact that it gets dangerous as bacteria builds uup
in it. 

>Oh, and one piece of info. In your original heater post you said:

>>The heater consumes 1/4 of a gallon of propane per hour when operating at
>>full blast...

Oops, my mistake. It is 1/4 pound of propane per hour.

>According to the brochure I have, the heater consumes 1/4 pound of propane
>an hour, giving you (again according to the brochure) 17 hours of
>continuous operation per gallon. Your dual tank setup would give almost 85
>hours of continuous heat, perfect for a long ski weekend!!

I believe we have 10lb capacity tanks, otherwise stated as 3 gallon capacity
tanks. I am not sure how this relates to their math.

The 10 lb. at 80% max capacity would have 8 lbs in it. This means you could
run the heater for 32 hours on one tank, or 64 hours on my two tanks. Since
it only costs about $5 to fill a tank, this means 64 hours of heat for $10.
That sounds pretty good to me!

But it raises a more stunning question. If the dual tanks give so much heat,
and it is so hard to find a way for the catalytic heater to fit inside the
van, perhaps we *could* stand to buy externally vented non-catalytic heaters
even if they *are* only 60% efficient. This way, you don't use up so much
space inside the vehicle. 

I think that the non-catalytic method involves sacrificing the little closet
on the floor near the refrigerator and rear seat to the installation of a
heater. But I never found a non-catalytic heater that would actually fit in
that space. Furthermore, they seemed to consume significant amounts of
electricity running the fan so that became the limiting factor, not the
amount of propane. A Paul Sasserville of Maine, a non-internet person,
claimed he had found a heater that solved this problem but I haven't called
him on this. I think I will give him a call. 

(Paul, I sent you a little present of some propane plumbing drawings I made
to install my 2nd tank. You'll have to rethink them and recheck them but I
know you will be interested.)

derekdrew@aol.com