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fish house heaters?????

hunterfisher

By hunterfisher
in Ice Fishing

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hunterfisher Contributor

hunterfisher

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I am looking at replacing my Atwood forced air heater with a wall mount ventfree. I keep seeing that you must run these on a 100LB tank?? why is that? I thought the pressure in a 20lb and 100lb are the same?? what do you guy's recommend or use? I have a 7x14 house, I would like to stick to the smaller 20lb tanks. With the atwood I was able to get by with a 1-2 20lb tanks for the weekend.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

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Hawg Grand Master

Hawg

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You don't need a 100 lb tank, a 20 # will work fine. BUT-get a vented heater. vent free will have water dripping from the ceiling and you won't be able to see out your windows for the moisture. I bought a 20,000 BTU Orbis on line for $250.

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Hawg Grand Master

Hawg

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Mines only 6x8 and I use a 15,000BTU. I always use a 100# tank on a hanger and straps just so I don't need to screw with it and I can leave the heat on when I want to. Sorry but I can't answer the 20# question.

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Hawg Grand Master

Hawg

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Fleet used to sell Orbis so lot's of friends have them. I don't know of any failures and they are about 6-7 years old. I would question the efficiency of all the direct vented wall mounts though, it seems you need 1 size bigger than makes sense. Although it may be because the door opens and shuts so often you get a huge air exchange of extreemely cold air.

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ChuckN Veteran

ChuckN

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I have an Orbis Calorama too. It worked fine until I made a trip far up north and it failed upon arrival. It's now in a box and unrepairable because I can't find parts since these are not manufactured anymore. Tough heater to repair too.

I replaced it with an (Empire) Housewarmer 8K BTU vented. Bought at Menards for under $400, far cheaper than anything else I've seen and works much better than the Orbis ever did. My shack is about 6x14'

I ran a few days of steady heat off a 20lb tank, but once the tank is less than 1/4 full, and cold temps, it won't have the tank pressure to run the heater anymore.

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hunterfisher Contributor

hunterfisher

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The forced air has been acting up the past couple of years, I have replaced the electrode, clean all ducts, cleaned sail switch, etc....

I have tried a couple of the tricks that I have seen posted on here... covering the exhaust/intake port for a minute or two til it warms up. It will start right up , run for 10-15 min, the fan will continue to run and then when you try to restart it the ignitor will click and try to fire and then the fan will just run without the burner ever starting. In the past year while it would go through the igniting stages I would slightly cover the intake/exhaust port and it would fire and run fine as long as I held my hand over it for a minute or two. Then it would run all by itself all weekend long without any issues. The next time this happens I am going to jumper the limit switch to see if that is my problem. I started it last night and it ran all by itself, without me covering anything for a 1/2 hour with out any issues. I seem to have these issues when its colder out. in the past I have tried to preheat the house with my mr heater and after a while of screwing around with the forced air I always seem to get it to work. I am just getting tired of wasting time with this on the lake every time I go fishing when I should be spending that time actually fishing. And one of these times I just might not be able to get it going. So i figured i'd get a wall unit as back up. I sure do like how that forced air unit dries out the floor. I figured worst case i would run the fan for circulation and the wall unit for heat.

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ChuckN Veteran

ChuckN

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I can't edit my post, but I have an 18K BTU heater, not the 8K.

I have a forced air furnace in a camper, and strange things happen like that once in awhile too. It's frustrating when you need heat!

I'd rather have a dead quiet, no electricity, no fuss direct vent heater in a fishhouse. Fans optional.

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Hawg Grand Master

Hawg

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I agree with noisy fans being terrible. On my Orbis I bought the fan unit and the noise drove me nuts. This year I put a rheostat on it and turned it down just a little. HUGE difference and still gets the heat off the exchanger just fine.

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Crow Hunter Proficient

Crow Hunter

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ChuckN-I also have an Orbis Calorama and have bought parts for it recently from a company called asapheat, google them, they appear to still be offering parts. What issue does your heater have?

Edit: I actually have the comfortview I believe, the one with the viewing window in front of the burner. Asapheat appears to still carry parts for both.

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ChuckN Veteran

ChuckN

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Thanks, I'll have to check that out. I'm not in a rush anymore since I bought a new one and it's installed.

As far as the issue, it won't get any gas to the pilot, etc. In the process of attempting to find the problem (in a blizzard, on the ice, hundreds of miles from home) some small brass orfice was damaged also....probably need an entirely new regulator assembly? I tried to find parts last February to try to fix it, but gave up. I'll have to dig into it again.

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