Furnace and Heater Buddy

Oops, :-[ my error just read girl and jumped to conclusion. Try the Mr. Heater Web site www.mrheater.com/ they sell a lot of connectors, hoses and the like. We don't have Chuckee Cheese any more they went belly up around here. My kids are slightly older than yours 17 year old son(heading for college next year, school TBA) and 16 year old daughter. Both were brought up camping since they were 4 & 5. Still love it too. Good luch on the hunt for parts, sounds like you are about ready to roll!

Aaron

[Bill]

HappyTrails -

Do your tanks and hoses have the old POL fittings, or the new OPD valve? (The OPD valve has a triangular handwheel.) If you have POL, you are going to have to upgrade the tanks and hoses to OPD, and you probably should consider this at the same time you plan the modification projects you are considering. Otherwise, you may ending up buying some stuff twice.

FWIW, I think this whole changeover to ACME/OPD fittings is a crock, but we seem to be stuck with it. And DON'T buy the adapters that just screw into the POL fitting on the old tank. Most propane places won't refill a tank unless it has a REAL OPD device in it.

Bill

Bill, my tanks have the OPD fittings, but the trailer has the old style connections......(The new tanks take the old fittings). It does have a brand new regulator on it tho. Any thoughts? I did just get back from a trip in my TM, and did use the Heater Buddy quite a bit, it worked GREAT! Tho it didn't get that cold, just upper 50's, I only had to run it for a few short mins before the whole camper was warm for quite a while on the low setting! (Off of the little 1lb bottles). Any longer than that and it'd have run us outta there it got the TM so warm! Though I had the line to run it off the 20lb tank, I never even needed to break it outta the wrapper.....I would have to say my "Mr. Heater" investment was well worth the money. If I were ever in a camp ground that didn't allow campfires, and wanted to spend time outside chit chatting, I'd have to say it'd come to the rescue! Money well spent!

[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails..........[/glow]

[Bill]

The new tanks take the old fittings? I don't think I knew that! Someone was thinking after all - that's good news, as I have a bunch of hoses and adpaters with the old fittings.

If your TM is like mine, the regulator is a two-stage device with both stages built into one housing. In other words, there is no access to the midpoint between the stages. That means that you either come off before the regulator (full tank pressure), or after the regulator (low pressure for the appliances). If your Heater Buddy runs off the little one-pound tanks, then you want the high pressure connection.
As Aaron noted, this is NOT where your refrigerator line is hooked up - the refrig line is low pressure.  However, it is easy to put a tee in the high pressure line from one of the tanks, and run a new hose or pipe to your Heater Buddy location.  You just won't get the automatic tank-to-tank switchover, since that happens within the regulator, and hence after your tee connection.

This Heater Buddy sounds like a good deal. It would be particularly useful if you are dry camping and your battery runs down so the furnace won't run.  I noticed the other day that Home Depot has something similar, if not the same thing. Think I'll check it out.

Bill

Bill, yes, old fittings do fit the new style OPD tanks, they just screw into them instead of over them. My regulator is different than the one that came off of it. It's the one with the black switch at the top. It's also got an indicator on the very top that tells you when the tanks are completely empty, or shut off. It's a fairly common one, but I'm not sure how it works. I don't know if the switch is to switch tanks, or if it's just there to point to which tank you're using at the time. Anyway, here's a link to the Mr. Heater site if you were curious. The thing that separates this one from most is that it has an automatic cutoff if the O2 gets low.
http://www.mrheater.com/new/buddy.htm

[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails.........[/glow]

Happytrails,

I think I have the same type of regulator.

It will automatically switch between tanks, but the arrow tells you which tank is in use (unless the color is red).

Let me explain:

Turn on both tanks (starting with full tanks).
Point arrow to left (now youre using left tank)
Left tank goes empty and indicator turns red.
Regulator switches to right tank.
Youre arrow still points to left tanks and indicates red (empty).
Turn arrow to right tank and red goes away.
Now you can refill left tank without interupting gas flow.
When right tank goes empty repeat procedure...

Oilspot,
So you're saying the regulator will automatically change over uninterupting the gas supply, but the indicator is just showing it's empty until I switch the black knob? Or do I have to switch the black knob to have a gas supply?


[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails..........[/glow]

Mine switches automatically.  It happend for the first time at the TM rally (I'm still using the heck out of all the gas appliances to learn how everything works).  

So as I took down, I noticed that my right bottle was empty and the rascal had already started drawing on the left bottle by itself.  Pretty cool!

I imagine the earlier TMs came equipped with the same automatic change over.  You'll know when one bottle runs out....

That's good to know Oilspot, thanks bunches!


[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails.........[/glow]

[RickNewcomb]

I was camping in central Maine last weekend and there was a power outage that affected several towns. The power was out for about four hours from 10pm to 2am. Fortunately, the temperature was in the mid 40s so the TM didn't get too chilly. But it could have easily have been in the mid 20s.

Since I don't dry camp I hadn't really considered buying a Heater Buddy. But after last weekend, I will be buying a Heater Buddy as a back up heat source.