ES - Stay Warm at War, Eh - Tehcnical, Long

[Wilim Penbras]

Greetings,
    Timothy might say I could make this another scroll article but I thought I'd throw a little research and experience camping in extreme cold.  The experience comes from 14 years of Camping with the Boy Scouts in Canada.  Worst/Best Record was a camp that was -19F weather in a plastic lean-to.  I've got nothing to prove about standing the cold so I've learned a bit about staying warm. 

     Propane is great for portability.  It's absolutely lousey in extreme cold.  It works as a gas and the extreme cold makes it really want to be a liquid and stay that way.  I've just notice problems with propane that weren't there with White Gas/Naptha/Coleman Camp Fuel.  Also as Propane tanks get used the BTU's they can throw out decreases.  A 100 Pound tank when it's full can put out several 100,000 BTU's in the right heater but when that tank reaches 50# it's going to be putting out about 60,000 BTUs..

     Still the temperature we deal with at war won't be down in the teens and certainly not in the negative teens.  (Which we did survice with the right sleeping precautions and bed linens and NO heater.)  Let's get to the important stuff.  Math is the language of the universe.
Find the area of the room to be heated (I Assume an 8 foot ceiling).  Multiple that by 12.5 for NO insulation in the room.  Increase the total by 25% for every two or so feet over 8ft.

     For our 16ft Pavilion that 3.14*8*8*12.5*1.50=3768 And being Canadian I like it a little chilly so the 2 1500watt heaters we had were cosy.  But our 1500Watt heaters are electric and we'll need propane at the War.  Well, to convert our measurements into BTUs we multiply the Watts by 3.412 to 12846.416 BTUs.  That's the BTUs we need in our Propane heater.  Get a few of them that add up to the total to help distribute the heat and about 1.5 times as many tanks as the documents for the heaters recommend.

Sorry to have rambled on so much.

In Service,
     Wilim Penbras
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