Portable Gas Heaters for Camping and Emergencies
Choosing A Portable Gas Heater
A good quality portable gas heater is designed to be small but create plenty of heat for its size as well. The fact that they run on gas and their small size makes them perfect to store away for any emergency or long power blackouts. Because of their size they're also great for taking on your camping trips.
You can get portable gas heaters in different sizes depending on the size of your tent. Hikers are able to purchase a unit that puts out just enough heat to make a one man tent comfortable. They are also extremely light and small enough to pack away into the backpack.
Portable gas heaters come in couple of different formats; radiant or catalytic. Catalytic gas heaters are perfect for tent camping as they don't use a flame to produce their heat. Most have safety measures built in so they automatically cut out when they are accidentally tipped over. Radiant gas heaters use a pilot light to heat up an element which radiates the heat. If you camp in a windy area the pilot light might have a tendency to get blown out.
Having a low oxygen meter is another excellent safety feature of a good camping gas heater. Make sure you either have enough ventilation in the tent to avoid the build up of carbon monoxide fumes or that your heater will shut off and sound an alarm if it detects a low amount of oxygen. Running gas heaters all night in a tent is not recommended because of this. Most campers will use them to heat the tent before sleep and for a short while in the morning. Take care when using heaters in your tent as carbon monoxide is deadly. It's odorless so you won't notice it building up to dangerous levels, especially while you are sleeping.
Catalytic converters are generally smaller in size and great for hikers or for people who are short on packing space. You won't get any carbon monoxide gas build up unless you damage the plate or it becomes contaminated. You will still get other by products from the chemical process which means that you still need to provide your living space with plenty of ventilation. Catalytic portable gas heaters generally have a lower heat output than radiant heaters but they are designed to run for a long time on a small tank of gas.
Top Rated Portable Gas Heaters
With the Buddy Portable you can have instant heat wherever you are.
Easily conserve fuel by using its lowest setting with an output of 4,000BTU's or ramp it up for maximum warmth at 9,000BTU's.
A low oxygen shut off switch keeps everyone breathing making it safe for use indoors. You can use it with most sized tanks and also have the option of connections for hoses.
If it's going to be a more permanent fixture you are also able to hang the Buddy on the wall as an extra safety precaution.
On a one pound cylinder you will get about 5 hours of use out of this heater.
For convenience the Mr Heater MH12T mounts directly on top of the tank.
For maximum efficiency or maximum heat you have a choice of three settings; low, medium and high.
On the high setting this unit will output a whopping 14,000BTU which is pretty toasty for a portable heater. Medium output is at 12,000BTU and low is 8,000BTU.
This heater is a fairly basic model with no shut off safety features so do not use in a non ventilated area. It does shut off automatically with a loss of flame.
What most people like about this model is it's efficiency and the amount of heat it outputs. It burns cleaner than a kerosene heater, is safer and will heat up a large room in no time. You can stay comfortable even on it's lowest setting and large tank of gas will last about 30 hours.
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Check out some more camping equipment tips and tricks here.