Monday, November 18, 2013

Hipster hunter

Here's a picture of our hunting camp as we left one morning in the jeep to hunt. (I retain all rights to my photography so please dont take them without asking or I'll hunt you down)
And a picture of me hunting.. I'm not exactly a hipster hunter,.  The latest thing in hunting I guess.  Seriously,.I heard it on the CBC. I'm not even sure I'm hip,.. Those are deer tracks BTW.

I almost got a big buck though, just didn't get a long enough look at it to shoot.  There'll be no deer skin man purse for this hipster..

Friday, November 15, 2013

Buddy heater for camper

I have an old Bell slide in pickup camper that I use mainly for hunting. (not to be confused with our Aristocrat travel trailer seen in the pevious post)  Here's a pic of the Bell on the Ford.



For years I've been nursing the old Hydroflame furnace in the Bell camper.   I'd take it apart and clean out the orifice where the gas comes out into the burner.  It's a little hole that gets clogged up.  Then the burner won't burn properly.  I used an old guitar string for that task.  And that worked for quite a while.

Finally after several years of cleaning it out, the thermostat on the Hydroflame quit working so this year I decided to try a Buddy portable heater as a replacement.  

There are thee kinds. Big Buddy, Buddy and Little Budy.  The Big Buddy seemed to big for my camper, and the Little Budy too small as it just screws on the top of a propane canister.  But the Buddy seemed just right for this brown bear.  I tested it out the other night when it was freezing outside and inside the camper was in the mid 60s F with the heater set on low.  It only has low and high.

I didn't want to keep screwing the little propane canisters into this thing as they seem to be sort of an expensive waste to me, so I bought the propane hose and also the filter that you need to use with the hose.  That way I can have a regular propane tank outside of the camper and the heater inside. I'm able to feed the hose through my electrical cord access panel.

These heaters are safe to use inside but they do consume oxygen so you have to keep a window open.  So far this has been a good solution for replacing an old heater.  I'll let you know as I'm going to take this to late hunting camp soon.

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Update:


It worked great! The temp dropped down to 21 deg F this weekend at hunting camp and the buddy set on low kept the camper in the 60s.  It was actually a little warm so I kept a few windows open a bit.

We figure it will go 128 hours set on low with 4 gallons of propane. (what you usually get in a regular propane tank) And it will use one of those green propane canisters every 4 hours on low.  But I just have it hooked up to a regular propane tank that sits outside of the camper.