Camco 57351 Olympian Wave-8 8000 BTU LP Gas Catalytic Heater
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Product Feature
- Adjustable from 4200 - 8000 BTU/hr allow it to be used as a primary or secondary heating source
- Wave heaters operate on low pressure gas, and can be wall mounted or used as a portable unit
- No electrial drain or battery connection make it the ideal solution for boondocking and dry camping
- Wave heaters operate silently-no fan or blower noise
- Equipped with a safety shut-off valve to help prevent accidental non-ignition fuel discharge
Product Description
The Camco Olympian RV Wave-8 LP Gas Catalytic Safety Heater is an ideal primary or secondary heating source. It produces enough heat to warm 290 square feet of space. The heater operates on low pressure gas and can be wall mounted or used as a portable unit. It is equipped with a 100% safety shut-off valve to prevent accidental non-ignitions fuel discharge. The built-in automatic Piezo electric sparker will last for 20,000 starts. There is no electrical drain or battery connection. The Wave 8 is adjustable from 4200 to 8000 BTU/hr. Catalytic heating is 99.98% efficient (flame type heaters waste up to 45% of all heat produced), resulting in a more efficient and low-cost heat.Camco 57351 Olympian Wave-8 8000 BTU LP Gas Catalytic Heater Review
I purchased the Olympian Wave 6 Catalytic Heater during the summer of 2007, for use in our 1987 Starcraft Nova Popup Camper. The camper has an 11' box, so it's a fairly large camper when opened up. I had already installed an OEM Duo-Therm forced air furnace. It worked great, but the blower fan in these forced air furnaces are noisy, use alot of 12 volt battery power, and the furnaces use quite a bit of propane. Every time that furnace turned on, it would wake us up. Then we'd lay there listening to the blower run for 10-15min. When it finally shut off, instead of being able to go back to sleep, we'd still be awake, anticipating the next cycle.The Wave 6 Heater is an amazing heat source and fits the use in this camper perfectly. I purchased the feet for it, as well as the available protective cover for storage (I highly recommend you buy the cover because you must keep the platinum catalytic mat clean). I had a 10' flexible rubber propane hose made and T'd that into the existing fitting under the fold down sink cabinet. A small brass ball valve is located at the T in order to turn off/on propane flow into the flexible hose to the heater. At the other end of the 10' hose is a propane quick coupler (purchased from [...] ) and this allows the hose to quickly be "snapped" on to the male fitting that I installed on the heater. A quick note about these propane quick couplers. There are several versions made; a low pressure and a high pressure. The Wave heaters use your low pressure system in your camper/RV/MH/TT/5er, but you can use either the low pressure quick coupler set up, or the high pressure. Some campers/RV's/etc. use these quick couplers from the factory, so if you're having trouble matching an existing coupler, it may be because you're trying to mate a low pressure with a high pressure, or vise-versa. Call the folks at mbsturgis and they can help.
When not in use, the heater stowes under the dinette seat. It takes just a few minutes to get the heater out before going to bed, and set it up. Per the manufacturer's instructions, I open the roof vent about 1/2", and the lower panel of the screen door the same amount. Sometimes I'll unzip just a few inches of the upper corner, of the side bunk windows, but not always. We never have a condensation problem.
The heater lights quickly and in about 5-10min. is fully "cooking." Set on medium, it will keep the camper 71*F inside at an outside tempurature of 51*F. I leave it run all night and it keeps us toasty warm.
A word of advice on using heaters in campers; do your homework if you're worried about carbon monoxide poisoning. By that, I mean call the manufacturer and get your information straight from their technical support, or even their engineers. That way, you have actual data, instead of all the story telling that is so common on many RV website forums.
Bottom line: This is an outstanding product that's extremely well designed and built. It's easy to use, super efficient, quiet, and just cranks out the heat!
UPDATE: Dec 2012
We're still using the Wave 6 heater after 6 seasons. Still love the thing. It still runs all night long, while we sleep. I wound up making "thumb screws" that allow me to take the feet on and off faster. I install the feet at the beginning of each camp trip, and take them off on the final day of the trip, and the heater just sits out of the way on the counter during the day. The thumb screws are just 5mm allen head "bolts" that I threaded into 5mm wing nuts. I tightend the allen head bolts really tight into the wing nuts, so the wing nuts make it easy to spin the bolts through the legs and up into the heater's threaded lugs. Hope that makes sense.
To give an idea of how little propane these heaters use, we had an 8 day camp trip this year, and only used 3.8 gallons of propane. That included about 10 days of running the refrigerator, and 8 days of cooking 2 meals per day on the 3 burner carry-out stove, and using the Wave 6 from about 8pm each night, until around 6am the next morning.
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