Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I don't write very many negative reviews, and I'm not quite sure how many stars to give this catalytic heater. So many people seem to be very happy with it. It made heat exactly as promised, but I don't trust it, and it didn't do the job for us. So, just consider these my opinions and observations that you might factor into your purchase decision. I really, really wanted to like this propane heater. We do a fair bit of camping in our 20-foot travel trailer. It does have a built-in propane furnace, but when running off house batteries, the furnace draws almost 7 amps of power, which is not a small drain on batteries. I wanted a safe supplemental heat source that we could use to just keep the chill out of the camper on the coldest mornings, without drawing battery power when we were not connected to an AC power source. I did not mind at all that this heater was smallish capacity for our trailer. Since it doesn’t have any thermostat control, I actually wanted the WAVE-3 to be a little small – because I wanted it sized so that it could be kept running all night without overheating the space. I had in mind to perhaps be able to just keep the trailer above 60 degrees when the outside temperature gets below 35 or 40 degrees at night in the mountains. The recommended fresh air inlet when the heater is operated in trailer is a minimum of 24 square inches of vent open area, with half of that opening at a roof vent, and the other half of the fresh air inlet at a window at the other end of the trailer. This is to encourage cross-ventilation. It only took two nights of trials to decide that this isn’t the heater-unit for us. I found that when I kept open the recommended fresh air vent area, this little heater didn’t do much to warm the inside of the trailer. The fresh air flow seemed to extract too much of the heat that this unit put out. I could change to the WAVE-6, or WAVE-8 to improve heating, but I’m also very much influenced by the carbon monoxide testing that I did at the same time. I’m NOT normally a highly risk-averse person. (I don’t wear a helmet when bicycling, and I‘ve gone SCUBA diving alone many times.) But I do take seriously the insidious and silent hazards of carbon monoxide poisoning. We have a high quality carbon monoxide test unit in our home that I installed because we use a wood stove for heat in the winter. This unit is the Defender CA6150, which isn’t cheap, and gets good reviews for accuracy. With the WAVE-3 heater set and running on the floor in the middle of the camp trailer overnight, I took the Defender CO level monitor out of the house and set it on the fold-out couch where our grand-daughter sleeps when she goes camping with us. The CO monitor was about six feet from the WAVE-3. Before lighting the WAVE-3, the CO monitor read zero ppm of CO in the air. The WAVE-3 operated on HIGH all night, with fresh air openings of about 30 square inches. I had one roof vent partly open near one end of the trailer, and one window slightly open at the end closer to the CO level monitor. In the morning the CO monitor read 35 ppm of CO in the air the travel trailer. The CA6150 also stores peak CO level, and sometime during the night, it had registered a peak reading of 43 ppm that was sustained for 48 minutes. Admittedly, these are still fairly low levels of CO, and I‘m certainly no expert on the health effects of CO, but I’ve read enough about the cumulative hazard of carbon monoxide to know that I’m not willing to take a chance and expose us, and especially children, to those elevated CO levels. I would probably never sleep restfully. A person could take extra care to be sure that a generous fresh air vent is open near the head of each sleeping area, but stuff does happen, and things get neglected, and a window can get closed by a shivering sleeper. I have to suspect that using the WAVE-6 (the unit recommended for our size of camp trailer) would probably elevate the CO levels even more. I don’t claim that my testing is scientifically rigorous, and I don’t claim to know that anyone who uses the WAVE propane heater in this way is at any health risk. But these complications were simply enough for me to conclude that this heater isn’t the solution I am hoping for. If you do choose to operate a WAVE catalytic heater in an enclosed space, it seems that a person really should, at a very minimum, rigorously adhere to the fresh air ventilation recommendations that come with the unit. Contrary to what some people seem to understand, catalytic propane heaters DO emit carbon monoxide as a reaction product. Before deciding to buy, consider reading the research study of catalytic heaters from the CPSC on this topic. Amazon rules don't allow me to post a link to that report, but you can find it by searching the internet for the phrase “CO EMISSIONS FROM A PORTABLE PROPANE CATALYTIC HEATER”. It can be downloaded as a pdf file for free. Then you will at least be more fully informed. And consider investing in a good quality CO level detector to monitor what is really happening in your sleep space.