T&T: Portable space heaters

[C. Marin Faure]

 >Any thoughts about or experience with non-electric portable space
heaters operating on small propane bottles or kerosene?

Our GB spent its whole life in San Francisco Bay until we bought it  
and trucked it north.  Consequently, it never had any heat of any  
kind put on it.  We hope to add "real" heat to the boat someday but  
so far other projects have taken priority.  We boat year round, so  
need something to take the edge off when we're out in the winter.  We  
use a "Buddy" portable propane heater from "Mr Heater."  Available in  
most sporting goods stores.  It does a reasonably good job of keeping  
the aft and main cabins warm enough to deal with.  It's not toasty by  
any means, but it's tolerable (for us, maybe not for other people).   
Of course our winters in the PNW are pretty mild most of the time---  
temperatures at night in the 30s and days in the 40s.

The portable "Buddy" is inexpensive--- less than $100 as I recall---  
and it uses the readily available propane canisters (the green ones),  
or you can hook it to a full-size propane tank if you so desire.

Now..... the downsides.  A unvented propane unit like this inside  
generates a lot of moisture which condenses on the windows when it's  
cold outside.  The unit theoretically has an oxygen sensor that is  
supposed to shut it off if the oxygen content in the air gets below a  
certain level.  If it actually has one, I wouldn't trust it as far as  
I can spit, so we treat the unit as though it doesn't have one.  We  
keep a window open an inch or so in the aft cabin which is where we  
normally run the heater (this heats the aft cabin and the hot air  
rises into the main cabin).

Safety--- This heater has no tip-over protection.  So we never run  
the heater when we're underway.  We never run the heater when we go  
to bed.  We never leave the heater running when we leave the boat,  
even for a few minutes.  When we shut the heater off to leave the  
boat or go to bed we remove the propane canister and place it outside  
on the deck.  We store the canisters in the sailing dinghy we carry  
on our aft cabin top (we have a swim-step mounted dinghy for everyday  
use, so the sailing dinghy doubles as storage for crab pots, outboard  
fuel tank, etc).

So our rule is we never bring a canister inside unless we're going to  
mount it on the heater and run the heater.  When the heater goes off,  
the canister comes off and goes outside.  If ti''s not raining we'll  
sometimes put the whole heater outside (turned off) when we leave the  
boat during the day.  But since it rains pretty much non-stop up here  
we usually just put the canister outside.

We would NEVER recommend this form of heat over a genuine diesel or  
properly vented propane heater.  It is a stop-gap measure only.  But  
if used with a rigid set of safety rules that you ALWAYS follow, it's  
perfectly safe.

Friends we boat with have a 36' lobsterboat.  They have Red-Dot heat  
but there's no heat on the boat when they're not underway.  So they  
bought a "Buddy" heater, too.  They tend to run it on the higher heat  
setting (we use the lower setting), and I'll tell you, when four or  
five of us are sitting around the big table in the main cabin playing  
games or eating, that heater gets the cabin WAY warm.

Our friends used to use a free-standing (round) kerosene heater.  It  
put out tons of heat (often too much), but it filled the cabin with  
that kerosene-heater smell, and over time it put a layer of soot on  
everything.  And this was one of the so-called "clean burning, no  
smell" heaters.  And it took up a lot of space.  A year or two after  
we met them they ditched the kerosene heater in favor of the "Buddy"  
propane heater.


____________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington