Hello everybody hope this does not come across as silly for all of you rv veterans out there.I live in Florida so I have used the heat once with electric hook up. My furnace is located on the thermostat which is electric. How would I use and control my heat if I am boondocking somewhere?

I believe both the furnace fan motor and thermostat work off 12 volts. Good luck,

That just makes to much sense. Sorry I wasted the space for that one.

thunder it's all good! Keep in mind that a propane furnace setup will use some 15-20+amp DC when running. This can be a pretty heavy electrical load depending on your setup, furnace run time, other power consumption, and battery state. A hydronic furnace setup (i.e. Oasis, AquaHot) will use around 5-10amp DC.

Many boondockers get a catalytic or ceramic propane heater and a much better carbon monoxide (CO) detector to cut their electric usage to zero volts DC. Plus these heaters are more efficient and use much less propane since they are radiant heaters and have no fans. But if you hang out below freezing a bunch you better have sufficient batteries to run the furnace all night because you need it to keep your bays from freezing, since radiant heaters won't heat the basement.  Since they are not vented you want a CO detector with a digital readout.

Note that ceramic propane heaters get flakey about 7,000 feet elevation and catalytic around 12,000 feet while most RV furnaces can handle these elevations.



-- Edited by bjoyce at 10:10, 2009-01-06

Thunder...keep in mind that on this forum there are no silly questions. The only thing silly is to not ask the question and go on not knowing the answer. Joe and Sherri