The Scamp Gets a Heater

It's winter, and there are Scamp trips on the horizon.  Which means it's going to be cold.  Last time I slept in the Scamp in the cold was a few years ago in Flagstaff, AZ, when I spent a long weekend in the snow and sleet during the Overland Expo.  We had a small, Mr. Heater catalytic heater that ran on propane, and it actually kept the trailer nice and toasty.  Problem is, when propane combusts the by-products are carbon dioxide and water vapor.  It's the water vapor that is the problem - it condensed on every surface in the trailer, and pretty much everything was soaked by the time we left.

Not wanting to relive that experience, I hit the internet and found the Propex HS2000 heater.  The cool thing about this unit is the air for combustion is piped in from the outside of the trailer and the exhaust is routed outside the trailer so there won't be any water vapor to form condensation on the inside surfaces.  Air from inside the trailer is pushed by a fan across the heat exchanger and blown back out.  And it's all controlled by a thermostat.

We had an Atwood furnace that used a similar process in our pop-up trailer when the kids were young, and it worked great - except when it kicked on it sounded like a jetliner during takeoff.  I was a little worried about noise, but the Propex is very quiet.  There's a soft sound of blowing air when the heater is on, but that's about it.

This heater is manufactured in England, basically for vans and it's very popular here in the states in VW Westfalia builds, where it directly replaces the gas heater that these vehicles generally come with.

Basic installation is straightforward, especially after looking at how Isabelle and Antoine (foroutride.com) did theirs.  Installing it in the Scamp took a bit of thought and adapting.  The best location for the heater is inside the starboard side settee, but that's also where the water tank is located, so I built a bracket that would allow me to mount it on its side ( you can mount it on its side, but you can't mount it vertically).

Here's a better view of the bracket:

The intake and exhaust pipes are routed through the floor.  I was a bit concerned about the heat from the exhaust pipe causing problems with the plywood floor. An email to Isabelle and Antoine allayed my concerns, and after using some red Permatex sealer to keep the pipe insulated from the plywood, everything works great.  I may wrap the exhaust pipe with some hi-temp insulation in the future if it turns out that it's creating excess heat under the seat.  We'll see how it works.

With the seat back in place, things look quite good.  Testing the heater, it works really well - things heat up quickly inside the trailer, and the noise level isn't anything significant.

The thermostat mounts up higher - I placed it on the wall of the large closet.

All in all, this install came out really clean, and ultimately didn't take up any significant storage space.  Placing the heater next to the water tank just used up some space that was otherwise unusable.  Routing the heater duct to the bottom of the settee leaves the top open for a drawer (coming soon).  The Scamper is now a fully functional, all-weather, all-terrain base camp!