Space Heater Mount

McNutty195

Greetings all,

Just got back from a weekend trip in blustery Hocking Hills, Ohio this weekend. The wife isn't crazy about winter camping, but she tolerates it for me!

Given that, I felt that it was time to try and upgrade our heating system. I'd love to replicate some of the awesome upgrades that WilliamA has posted on here, but alas, most of those are either over my head, or too time intensive for me at the moment. Which leads me to what I was trying to upgrade from. Up until now, we have been using a rather shody space heater that is supposed to have temperature control, but what that really means is the heating elements don't turn on until the temperature dial is half way up, and at that point it will never stop trying to burn you alive until you shut it off. The placement of this heater hasn't been ideal either. We've kept a small storage bin inside our T@G XL on one corner of the bed for shoes ever since we've had it. Given that this is one of the few semi non flammable surfaces that the heater fits on, that is where it lived.

My hope was to accomplish two things with this upgrade:

1. Get a "nicer" space heater that actually has a thermostat, and more importantly, actually listens to said thermostat. It would be really great to just set it to a given temperature, and never have to touch it again until the end of the trip.
2. Create a better spot for the space heater to live during winter camping trips. This will make things both safer and more convenient. While I'd love to say that the safety aspect of this was the main concern, I think we all know what got this to actually happen.

Enough said about that, BEHOLD:

The bracket is 3D printed in 5 pieces and then assembled with some small nuts and bolts that I had laying around. I feared that the support stretchers would be too weak in my first iteration... This proved to be 100% true, and that version never even made it out of the garage. Luckily, I was able to beef up the necessary parts and reprint just in time to install for the trip.

The bracket is secured to the wall with three 12lb rated velcro command strips. I could screw it to the wall, (which would remove the small amount of play the command strips introduce) but I don't really like putting holes in things that I can't easily patch. I will more than likely stay with the command strips.

The new heater works great. Heats the T@G very quickly and maintains the temperature on the low setting. It has an oscillating feature, though that doesn't work with the way I designed the mount. About the only thing I don't like about it is that the temperature display reads in degrees celsius. I wish I could change the display in some way, but sadly based on a quick email to Amazon support it is what it is. However, this is a minor critique as it requires one phone lookup to set it where I want it, and that is that. The heater is also lacking the tip over protection thing, but I'm not too worried about that since I am mounting it to the wall. I would have probably ended up disabling that feature anyways because of the use case I had in mind.

This seems to be one of those Chinese products that there are a million different sellers selling the same thing. The listing I bought mine from a couple of weeks ago is already unavailable, but here is another one with the same heater:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JWBN45T/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?pd_rd_i=B07JWBN45T&pd_rd_w=IhBDj&pf_rd_p=45a72588-80f7-4414-9851-786f6c16d42b&pd_rd_wg=39Rth&pf_rd_r=H48TTWKTN03W6GT3ES96&pd_rd_r=34a5a352-e14d-40c8-82cf-d3c04c5a6321&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExMzRUMUdDMkQzRVRRJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzg1NDY5MlFJM1ExSDBNNFpQQiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMjM0MDc0MTc0TVNNMFVaRU1XRyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2RldGFpbCZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1

Some of the reviews are a little negative, but so far my wife and I love ours.

Overall, I am very happy with how this turned out. I may make some more changes to the mount to make it a little more aesthetically appealing and clean up some things that got left behind since I didn't have much time to crank it out, but that's for another time!

WilliamA

Mcnutty,

Thanks for the kind tip of the hat! I appreciate it! As to your heating solution, what works works. I sympathize with you on your desire to be out camping while wrestling with the cold. It's a tough but to crack. As I write this I'm sitting in front of the forced air wood stove trying to coax it into motion for the day. My first duty of each cold morning. Sigh...

I really like the printed mount and think you made a wise choice not drilling the asdel (sp?) For screws. Whatever it claims to do well, holding a fastener isn't one of them.

I have used a space heater for my T@G and still have it in there as a backup. Guess that now means I have 3 heat sources! It's a cheesy small freestanding electric heater I picked up at Target. It got plenty of use til I put in my electric furnace. It's mounted on the wall and has a fan only setting I can use in summer, which I suppose is why it's still there. I surgically removed the tip-over switch so I could mount it sideways.

I should get a 3D printer.....No. No I shouldn't. I'm dangerous enough as it is.....😎

WilliamA

WilliamA

Oh...yeah....I was going to go out for a spot of winter camping myself, but it's -18F right now and looks to stay there for a couple more days. Think I'll wait....

WilliamA