I have come to the conclusion from reading many of your posts
that one of the best ways to keep warm on those cold nights in a PU
is to run a ceramic heater and sleep on an electric
mattress heating pad. What is the best ceramic heater out there
for this purpose. Please give brand name and model number if you
can! Also, what is the best brand and size for my so called king size
bed when it comes to buying an electric mattress pad? What stores
carry these items? Thanks for your help.
Models change from year to year, but I have been very happy with the Pelonis brand.
I have seen them at many stores, but I got mine at Home Depot.
I don't think there is a lot of difference in the brands. I bought one a few years ago and it works well. It has a thermostat so you can set a temp and it will shut off when it get warm enough.
Tracy is right, there are a lot of brands, styles and price ranges. These things are so much alike that it isn't really that important what brand you get. Just decide what you want it to do, how warm you want to be able to get and how much money you want to spend. We have one that we only paid $15 for, it works fine, and one that we paid $20 for, has a little more power. But, they don't have that many differences.
T
;)
You can also get a good ceramic heater at WalMart. That is where we got ours and I think I paid about $17.50 for it. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact name but it might be Emerson. It has controls for the thermostat and you can experiment with the settings to get it just right.
If I were buying one, I would get the Pelonis Disc Furnace. Pelonis invented disc heaters.
No matter which one you buy, you'll only get a max of 5,200 btu from it (the government limit on amperage restricts higher btu's). Also, make sure it has a multi-stage fan to circulate the air through the bunkends and has passed safety testing. Some of the discs in the cheapo heaters have been known to burst and cause electrical fires.
The oil filled radiators are a good choice for the trailers. One of them and a heater with a fan can yield 10,400 btu's (if you can plug them into another outlet on the power box) which, coupled with an electric blanket and sleeping bags, will keep you toasty on cold nights.
Stargazer,
There was a thread in mid October in this forum about matress heaters. VJM1369 provided this link for matress heaters at Walmart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=4045&dept=4044&product_id=1875479&path=0%3A4044%3A4045%3A4756
Bob
In case you are interested..... I just saw an ad at Target this past weekend. They are having a buy one get one free. Price is $29.99 for two ceramic heaters.
http://weeklyad.target.com/target/circular_browse_listing_detail.asp?storeid=2395434&pagenumber=22&rapid=34879&listingid=-2098423921&ref=%2Ftarget%2Fcircular%5Fbrowse%5Fpage%5Fview%2Easp%3Fstoreid%3D2395434%26rapid%3D34879%26pagenumber%3D22 (//%22http://weeklyad.target.com/target/circular_browse_listing_detail.asp?storeid=2395434&pagenumber=22&rapid=34879&listingid=-2098423921&ref=%2Ftarget%2Fcircular%5Fbrowse%5Fpage%5Fview%2Easp%3Fstoreid%3D2395434%26rapid%3D34879%26pagenumber%3D22%22)
We have been using a ceramic heater for years, and while all have the same maximum heat output, if you get one that oscillates, it will throw heat throughout the camper rather than just cooking one area.
The couple of times we've camped with electricity, I've used a Pelonis Disc Furnace with good results. I just purchased a Heated Mattress pad with dual controls and zoned incremental heating, (heats most at the feet and blow kness section, a lttle less at the Knees to stomach section and least at the stomach to head section) for my wife as she is always cold and I like a cold bed to crawl into, from J.C. Penney on-line for about $55.00 for a Queen size. Right now we are using it in the house!
It works great! She's warm, I'm cool!
We picked up a Lasko ceramic heater from Sams. $45 but it oscillates and has a remote control. It sits about two feet high.
We received a 12-volt ceramic heater yesterday that we'll test today. If it's any good it'll be in our store by the weekend.
The 12-volt ceramic heater failed our test. Too much current draw & not enough heat.
Boy, I was other people did reviews as fast as Dave.
Moose
Wow that was quick. Too bad it didn't work out. :(
We have one Pelonis and one Holmes. Both work very well and were under $20 each.
We've used the ceramic heaters on rainy, cold days, rather than the furnace, to keep the pu a little dryer. Of course, we can only do that when we have hooks ups, which isn't often. But we do keep the heaters in the garage and take them with us when we know that weather will be iffy and we'll have electric at the site.
Last winter I bought a really neat ceramic heater made by Bionaire. It is two cubes on top of each other. You can run just one or both and the cube rotate so that you can send heat in different directions. Great for getting heat to both bunkends. But right now I am using it in the house to keep my tootsies warm while I am on the computer. When I got out the old reliable little ceramic heater I usually use in here I noticed that sometime over the summer months some little teeth had been gnawing on the cord and now some of the wire is bare. So the DH has another thing on his "Honey Do" list.