Question From the Twitter-Sphere: MyFixitUpLife, what is the best way to maintain heat in a trailer during the winter? Take into consideration that I live in Maine.”
Answer (From the Answer-Sphere?): We recommend looking into a wood-burning appliance—aka stove. Trailers don’t have the best insulation in the world and raised off the ground as they often are, they are literally wrapped in cold. And any inefficiency in Maine will be capitalized upon big time by Old Man Winter. There are a number of things to consider with a wood burning appliance—especially in a trailer, notably:
Stove. The two main (Maine) types of stove are pellet and solid wood. Pellets tend to be a littler easier to operate and arguably cleaner. Just pour pellets out of a bag like kibble into the stove hopper. They are very efficient, but, in my experience, some stoves have mechanical parts that make a noise as they feed fuel to the stove. Might get a little maddening in a small space. And the window only stays ash free for a day or so, then it turns black making the fire-watching not so much of an awesome experience. That said, there’s no wood to cut, split, stack, etc )though you do still have to put a bazillion bags of pellets somewhere) and it is a very green alternative to fossil fuels as most pellets I’m aware of are recycled.
On the other hand, splitting, cutting, stacking wood—keep in mind you can just get it delivered that way—is a good work out. Sure, logs can have dust and stuff as you bring them inside but the fire burns clean and it is a hyper green way to heat. And, in the shoulder seasons, you can have the option on some stoves to have more of a fireplace experience.
Both units need to have their combustion air brought in from the outside and all other applicable building codes must be followed. And a stove for a trailer will be small but will be a nice augment to the LP or natural gas you might already run.
Warm Floor. You might also take a totally different approach and use a warm-floor tile system. I’m not sure of all the details of using this in a trailer, but assuming it can be installed, with such a small space around it, a warm floor might take some of the teeth out of Old Man Winter’s bite by warming the space at floor level. These are not heat systems as such, but can almost certainly help__
