Portable Propane Heaters

Winter camping can be miserable, and I’ve winter camped in Washington State in the snow and the wet and the cold as a Boy Scout. Now I’m camping in Georgia year-round with my son’s Trail Life Troop, and “below freezing in Georgia” is just as miserable as “below freezing in Washington.”

There are two schools of thought among the adults who provide some level of safety for our troop. One is “I need to be able to carry all my kit long distance,” and the other is “What the heck, I own a truck, and I’ll carry my gear from the truck to the campsite.” The first group doesn’t use any artificial heat sources, and the second group does. At the last campout, the second group was more comfortable than the first group because they had bigger, roomier tents. In two of those tents were Mr. Heater Portable Buddy Heaters, and I got to enjoy them simply by being there.

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In Use

First observation: even the smallest Mr. Heater product is plenty for a tent that a single person can pack. The advertisement says “up to 225 square feet” which I think is a bit generous for most tents, but in a well-insulated room or small cabin it would make sense.

Second: plan to use one 1lb bottle of propane per night, or six hours of burn time. You can get an adapter to use any size of propane bottle you want if you need more than six hours of heat production. 

Note: while commercial locations won’t refill most 1lb propane bottles, you can buy adapters to refill them yourself.  This is obviously discouraged by single-use propane vendors, but there are  refillable bottles on the market.

Pros and Cons

A Mr. Heater is a bit of a luxury item for camping in Georgia or Washington, even in the winter time. But as a survival/resiliency prep it has a few things going for it. 

1. If you have a gas grill and adapter hose, or a few 1lb propane bottles on hand, you have a safe indoor heating in a pinch. 
2. A heat source can be used to heat food. One YouTuber I watch routinely opens canned food and gently heats it using his Mr. Heater in the depth of Canadian winter, and toasting frankfurters or marshmallows is very similar to using a campfire.

Is it perfect? No, not really.

1. It takes up space when not in use. Not much, but some.
2. Unlike a rocket stove or Solo Stove or Kelly Kettle, it uses a fossil fuel that may or may not be easy to get in an emergency. If you live in an apartment where wood or twigs aren’t plentiful, that might be a positive rather than a negative.
3. It’s big enough that I wouldn’t bother keeping one in a full size van unless the van had been converted into a small camper. In a large camper, a Mr. Heater makes quite a bit of sense.

Should You Get One?

I’m not in a hurry to go out and buy a Mr. Heater of my own, but if I see a good sale I’ll probably snag one. They run very quietly, and in an elevated deer stand in the winter where I sit still for hours on end, it might be really nice to not feel the cold so deep in my bones.

Also, don’t underestimate the value of the “nice to haves” in a situation where you have to rely on your preps and not public infrastructure. The little luxuries can make all the difference between a miserable experience and a merely inconvenient experience.