Mr. Heater Portable Buddy Heater - 9000 BTU Propane Heater with Foldable Handle, Piezo Ignition, Safety Features, and Convenient Portability - Perfect Heating Solution - Red-Black

Nice bit of kit, works really well and when used with the refillable Mr Heater Fuel Keg, it becomes very cost effective once you get over the initial cost of setup. As a side note,,the Fuel kegs are better being imported from amazon.com as the cost from amazon uk is a rip off. There is also a brand called Flame King which, sell the 1lb propane cylinders and many other sizes too, also from amazon.com. Alvin all a good purchase and well worth it.

I've been looking at getting one of these for a long time and didn't think I could justify the price. After going through 3 cheaper ones I took the dive. So far it's far far superior to the basic ones. It looks good, well made and heats up amazingly well. For a small space you only really need it on the lowest setting. I am trying to source the Mr Heater fan to go on top. Lots of heat goes straight up. But I have to get someone to buy it from america and post it for me in the uk. You can use a stove top fan but the official one can stay on while moving and isn't bulky. Great purchase, does burn through gas pretty quick (pun intended) so either get a refillable bottle and a big bottle or find somewhere with a good deal on.

This is a well built, sturdy and easy to use. Once I figured you keep screwing the bottle in to make connection it lights first time every time. It is heating a large room and makes it comfortably warm. I like the glow of the panel too- it reminds me of a child hood heater but modern.

Everything about it seems good, good value, I have only fitted the gas canister and a 2 minute burn . The heater was ordered to replace my dead central heating boiler but arrived too late to use , boiler repaired sooner than expected.

Absolutely fantastic. Love the portability of it. Soon heats a room up and also great for toasting a marshmallow in front of it. Arrived in reasonable time and in excellent condition

Excellent heater, very sturdy and useful in the freezing cold weather. Ideal for cabins, outhouses. Sheds etc provided you have good airflow you won’t go wrong with this Heater.

A solid effective piece of kit, well worth the money

Great heater, easy to use straight away. Perfect for the back of the van. Came with an adapter to use EN417 gas cannisters, wish I'd known as I brought one at the same time. Happy with the product though.

I’ve been using these things since the ‘70s. I kept one in my VW Camper to keep warm in the winter nights. I’ve used them camping. They are simple and durable with no liquid fuel to worry about. Propane doesn’t spill and stinks if it leaks. Portable Buddy This is the second Portable I’ve purchased. The first was for my aforementioned ‘76 VW camper. This one is for our family inflatable 200sqft Koala 7 canvas tent. Yes, this little gem keeps things toasty in the evenings and overnight. I get about 100hours out of a 20lb tank. Good for about 4 days running on low 24hrs/day or 10 days just evenings and overnight for 10hrs/day. We do have a wood burning stove that we’ll use during the day should we have to if we’re in camp. But normally the days aren’t very cold where we camp in the winter, usually in the mid southeast. The wood stove is a nice ambiance, but the smoke is a problem if the air pressure outside is higher than the heated air inside. Hot air is less dense (it’s how hot air balloons float) and so lower air pressure per volume. If your stove draft isn’t strong enough to overpower the difference, you get a “back wash” of smoke. Cough, cough…. Big Buddy This has two ceramic elements, each is the same size as the portable buddy. Growing up in the northeast, we used the Big Buddy. With two elements, working independently (one lit is for Low and Medium settings and both for the high setting.) you get the benefit of the two units. If you need the heat of the portable Buddy, just use the Big guy on low and medium. If the temp is going to drop well below freezing, set it on high with both tiles glowing, for those times. The high setting flexibility is good to have, while the fuel and heat efficiency of the Portable Buddy “single” is the first option. Hoping your Buddy proves to be a good friend….

The thing to know about this heater is it throws off a lot of infrared radiation, which is the primary mode of heating. It is like having a little portable Sun with you. Like if you go outside and it is cold and cloudy, you will feel cold. But at the same outdoor temperature and the Sun beating down on you on a clear winter day (if you have clear winter days were you live), you will feel a lot warmer. A fun little thing to do if you have security cameras with night vision, light this up in view of one of these security camera's at night. It is brilliantly bright and everything in the line of sight of the hot plate on it nearby is brilliantly lit up. With the naked eye at night, you will just see a dim red glow, but the security cameras will see a blindly bright light as it is in IR night vision mode and the black body radiation is primarily in the infrared spectrum. This means when you are outside, basically regardless of conditions, as long as the conditions are good enough for this to work, it will be heating you up. You can even say leave this outside your tent and as long as you are setup to let the infrared light in, it will warm up the inside of your tent and any infrared light hitting you from this will warm you up, say you are laying there in your sleeping bag. It is almost like magic as most people are used to thinking about heating in convection terms while this primarily operates in black body radiative terms. I am not saying sit out there butt naked in the snow with this being your only device to keep you warm, but it is a greet supplemental heat source to help you keep warm when you are doing something sedentary outside in the cold. The one gripe I have about this is the flame is unstable and noisy on the low setting. This works best at the high setting anyway, so probably what you want to do and just forget about the low setting. If you use this with a larger tank with a hose, you may want to plan to shut the main valve off on the larger external tank a couple to a few minutes before you are done using the heater so that there is time for a pressurized hose to purge. As this only lasts a few hours on a 1 lb tank, you can quickly end up getting into using larger tanks with this.

A recent camping trip in northern Ontario put this heater to its first test. Temperatures fell to about 4 degrees C at night and it ran for about 5 hours on low burn to keep us warm and cozy for a good sleep. (Reviews have said it will run much longer but it is possible our tank was not completely full.) Tank switched over early morning and warmed the large tent up quickly. Safety features are all tested. The slightest change of level, and the flame went out and gas went off. Make sure to give it lots of free space around all sides and clearly, nothing that could drop on it as there is an open flame (well protected by a grate, but still a flame). Very sturdy in construction. Good design with easy carrying feature. Installation of gas bottle was very easy (sold separately). Would highly recommend.

Right out of box had it running in a couple minutes. Very handy, easy to store and cranks the heat out. The tip over shut off I tested worked, can't test the O2 sensor. I noticed no odor when starting or turning off. I plan on using it in an RV for spot heating so I dont' have to fill up the main tank. I will leave a vent cracked just in case. Two wishes, a timer and a remote off switch. It would be perfect then. EDITED TO ADD SOME INFORMATION I had ordered this early knowing I was going to need it within a month or so. After checking it out and making sure I knew how to use it, I shut it down, remove the tank and stored the heater in my little RV on a kitchen shelf. Last Friday night I was in the area I was having to overnight for an early morning call. I buttoned the RV up, pulled out the heater, installed the can, hit the pilot button and after 30 second released it. It shut off. So I did it again, then again and then again. I got a spare new tank out and put it on and tried it again and again. Long story short I spent the night in a 17 degree RV because the heater with a total run time of 10 minutes would not work. Today I finally got in touch with Mr. Heater and after dealing with their awful phone system left a message asking someone to call. About an hour later Kyle called and I explained what had happened. I told him I had cleaned the pilot light as they suggest and nothing worked. While speaking with him he asked how I had stored the heater. I replied on it's back on a shelf. Bingo, there's the problem. He tells me how to take the back off and disconnect two wires from the tipover sensor, jump them together with a paperclip and then I was able to immediatley start the heater and it worked as it should . Apparently storing them on their back may cause the tipover to stick and not release when the heater is put upright. He i sending me a new sensor which I may or may not put in. So 2 important things, don't store this on it's back and if your pilot lights well but the unit itself won't work, open up the back, remove the wires from the little black part mounted to the bottom, jump them with a paperclip and see if it will start. Bet it does.

We had a VW Bus Club Camp Out in October on the shores of Lake Erie. Needless to say the nights get pretty chilly. The Buddy heater made so much heat on Low we had to turn it off several times. Then overnight the Auto Shut Off function activated when the propane bottle ran out. So had to change out the bottle at 4am on the coldest night. However, it warmed the camper up within about 3 minutes once relit. Easy to move around, Easy to use, Good Quality and an overall great value. I was going to install a parking heater in the VW Camper, now I don't think I'll need to.