Funny, a guy comes in here asking about a heater and there are 3 pages of posts telling him to use a sleeping bag. He asked about a heater, not how you think he should go camping.
I do a lot of overlanding in the north east and always run a heater all night. I run a small Honda generator with an extended run kit and it powers a small electric heater inside the cabin, along with my Keurig, microwave, and other ameneties. Done this for years, and its very comfortable.
I have also outfitted the back of the truck with this guy. He retains a lot of heat.
I don't know where you all camp, but I do a lot of traveling in Maine in the winter, and its more ****ing cold than most parts of the country. I say eff heating stones and wookies and liners and all the other kungfu talked about in this thread. I run a heater all night thank you very much.
Funny, a guy comes in here asking about a heater and there are 3 pages of posts telling him to use a sleeping bag. He asked about a heater, not how you think he should go camping.
I do a lot of overlanding in the north east and always run a heater all night. I run a small Honda generator with an extended run kit and it powers a small electric heater inside the cabin, along with my Keurig, microwave, and other ameneties. Done this for years, and its very comfortable.
I have also outfitted the back of the truck with this guy. He retains a lot of heat.
I don't know where you all camp, but I do a lot of traveling in Maine in the winter, and its more ****ing cold than most parts of the country. I say eff heating stones and wookies and liners and all the other kungfu talked about in this thread. I run a heater all night thank you very much.
It was quite a while ago. If I had to guess it was Mid-2012. I've used it for about 30 nights and no issues. I would have returned it where I purchased it but I bought it from a low cost online retailer that made returns a PITA (o2outlet.com--they are out of business now).
Now if they can magically find a way to make the Megamat comfort in the Synmat size and weight.
I mostly car camp, and the megamat is awesome. Truly a great product for car camping. I tried the thermarest in the store. It was nice too, but the Megamat won out.
hmm yeah, I too have done my share of camping - Iceland in the winter, north Maine woods in the winter, whites, greens, Rockies and so on. Just because a sleeping bag could work doesn't mean I am going to make it work. It's car camping for starters, not the real "build a snow shelter and pitch a tent" style camping anyway. Which means I am going to make it comfortable!
Yeah, completely agree with you. To get through the sleeping hours stuffed in a sleeping bag is one thing, to get through the mornings before breaking camp when its cold/damp/frigid is entirely another. Waking up in the morning and sitting in the back of a very warm car with a warm coffee watching the sun rise is a simple pleasure.
As for food, the girlfriend is very good about prepping/pre-cooking the ingredients separately, and we use the microwave to warm everything up and throw em together. We do also do a fair bit of cooking on the fire itself, though we tend to stop doing that by late Sep / Oct.
Someone had asked where I setup the heater - I use one of the wheel wells to house the heater (its a simple walmart issue electric heater with 2 settings), Keurig, marine inverter and junction box / surge protector. The microwave sits right below.
The generator is the simple solution. No worrying about high gauge wiring, battery capacity, etc. etc. 2000W powers just about every camping convenience you can think of including a Keurig, which pulls a lot of juice. Yes, noise is a consideration (though the Honda units run pretty quiet). I usually run a 75 ft lead and stick the generator out in the woods away from camp site. My other overlanders / campers have never complained. If anyone does complain, I let my ferocious dog set them straight
Someone mentioned candles. I don't know, open flames in the car while sleeping sounds like a bad idea to me. I may be OK with a catalytic heater, but some of the guys I travel with will swear their life on the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning and how easy it is to induce that, so I have tended to be skeptical of propane heaters in closed environments. No personal experience though.
