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Old 11-23-2005, 11:24 AM   #1
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electrical power consumption

I will be converting a mini-bird this year as a hunting camper and was wondering if the reason RV manufacters dont use electric hotwater heaters was because they(hotwater heater) uses too much power.Most travel trailers if not all of them, use A 30 AMP OR 50 RATING on their power requirements and propane hot water heaters. I would like to make this one all electric if possible but dont want to overload anything either. Thanks for any help on this matter.

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Old 11-23-2005, 12:46 PM   #2
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IF you have access to 30 or 50 amps of electricity all the time, then i would choose electric over propane. Especially if the electricity is free (like when you stay at a campground) In this case, i'd also use electric for heating the air inside the bus.

The problem is that if you wnat to park somewhere that doesn't have electricity, then 30 amps of 110 volt current is a lot of juice! Running a generator would be less than desireable, and unless you have a huge battery bank you can't run 3000 watts off of an inverter for very long.
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Old 11-23-2005, 04:22 PM   #3
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In addition, 6 gallons of hot water does not go far and the propane has a way way quicker response time than the electric...
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Old 11-24-2005, 01:07 AM   #4
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My neighbor has a propane water heater, but he modified it to run on electric, too. They sell a kit for it at the RV store. The drain valve at the bottom of the tank is removed, and replaced with a heating element sized to fit the drain. The kit comes with thermostats, and he also added a timer.

I have a marine water heater in my bus. It is electric, but has an internal heat exchanger that could be hooked up to the engine coolant system on boat when not at shore -- or to a solar collector when used in a bus! (Still gotta get around to building one, though.)

Look at the Rheem marine water heaters.
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