Let the Home Fires Burn

It was the little glass window that drew me in. The fact that you could actually see the fire in the “fireplace”. That along with the vintage-inspired stainless steel construction and brass control nobs, and I was sold.

Like many people who have built tiny houses and many who will build tiny houses after me, I spent a while looking at tiny house pictures on the internet. Those wonderful little heaters were a tiny house detail that I kept seeing over and over, and that I knew I had to have in my tiny house. I was absolutely enchanted with them.

The very first thing I purchased for my tiny house was the heater- from someone who was sailing their boat to the Caribbean and didn’t need a heater- before I had even bought the trailer or finalized my design.

Let me back up and review in case you’re not familiar:The Dickinson Newport comes in two models: The P-9000 and the P-12000, putting out 9,000 and 12,000 BTU’s respectively. I opted for the larger model, knowing that my tiny house was going to be on the larger side (210 square feet including the loft), and that I would be weathering the cold, Northern Vermont winters.

Now, fast forward to today, and I can officially say that winter is over. The ground is basically all mud and the temperatures are in the 40’s-the 60’s day and night. After spending a winter in my tiny house with the Dickinson Newport heater, I can also officially say that I am no longer enchanted.

As not to disparage a perfectly fine product, I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t think this heater was right for me, and how you can determine that for yourself.

About My House

First, let me give you an idea of how I live in my tiny house and in what environment. In Northern Vermont, it starts dipping below-freezing temperatures in late October and stays consistently cold (below freezing) by mid-late November.

My tiny house is built with 2×4 construction in the floors, walls, and roof, and features 3” of closed cell spray foam (at about R21) everywhere. I have all low-E efficient windows, and a true, weather-stripped front door. My tiny house is the opposite of drafty. The house is so tight that I have an air exchange system that brings in fresh air from the outside to maintain the air quality in the living space.

As far as living in the house, my girlfriend works outside of the home, and I work for myself. So, I’m home a lot of the time, but I also like to change up my work location frequently. I work in Cafes, co-working spaces, other people’s offices, etc. What I’m saying is, I’m not always home.

We also like to travel a good deal. Whether it’s a full day away to do some skiing, or a weekend away to visit family, it’s not uncommon for me to leave the house for 8, 24, or 48 hours at a time.

If you’re familiar with the Newport heater, then you already may have spotted the problems. If not, I’ll go on.

Manual Light Only

The first reason that the heater has not worked out well for me is that it’s manual light only. What does this mean? There’s no thermostat, electric ignition, or timer. To turn the heater ‘on’, you turn on the gas valve and hold it in to bypass the solenoid and light a match. I use a welding spark tool. You continue to hold down the knob for about 10 seconds while the burner warms up, at which point you shut the door and turn on the fan. While the heater is in operation, you have a choice of ‘High’ or ‘Low’ and can also control the fan speed.

This has proved inconvenient for several reasons. First, as you can imagine, when I leave the house for more than 2 or 3 hours in the winter, I’m faced with a choice: turn off the heater and return to a [very] cold house, or leave it running and return to a sauna.

I face this same choice each night before going to bed. Leaving the heater on will guarantee waking up in an uncomfortably warm loft, but turning it off means getting out of bed to a room that’s around 50 degrees. Now, I don’t mind (and do prefer) sleeping in a cold room, but I’ve noticed that keeping the tiny house at temperature is easy, but warming a 45-degree room up to 70 degrees takes a lot of time and energy.

Of course, the other consideration is Plumbing. Leaving the house for more than 8 hours without a heat source is simply not an option, because my plumbing would freeze. Though I do use PEX pipes, which are much less susceptible to bursting, frozen plumbing is still very bad.

Fresh Air Issues

One of the features that drew me to the Dickinson Newport was the fact that it draws its combustion air from the outside of your house. That way, you’re not depleting the oxygen inside your house to feed the fire. It does this using a double-walled pipe- it’s really like a smaller pipe inside a larger one. The smaller inner pipe is the exhaust, while the larger outer pipe is the fresh air intake. According to the user manual, the heater can be installed with a 90-degree bend in the pipe, so that it vents out the wall, or straight up through the roof. The unit is designed primarily for a boat, where it would vent straight up through the deck.

I opted to install my unit with the vent out the wall because I did not want to puncture my metal roof if I didn’t have to. This has turned out to be a big headache.

The basic problem is that as the inner exhaust pipe heats up, it creates a ’hot spot’ in the outer pipe, near the 90-degree bend. This hot spot essentially chokes off the air supply for the heater. So, instead of a nice, clean burning blue flame with yellow tips, I get a wild yellow-orange flame that leaves soot all over the glass and on the inside of the unit.

After numerous hours of troubleshooting with Newport (they are very helpful on the phone), and even sending the unit back to have it checked out and overhauled, the problem remains. Though I have tried re-mounting the unit numerous times to get the bend in the pipe “just right”, I have been unsuccessful. Given that I’ve connected with other tiny house dwellers who have similar issues with the stove when it’s installed like mine, I’m not too hopeful.

How I’ve Dealt With It

The way I’ve dealt with almost all of these issues is by relying primarily on electric heat. I purchased a Delonghi radiant panel heater and mounted it on the wall in my tiny house. It can keep the house comfortable on all but the most freezing days (Anything below -20 and it really struggles to keep up). It has a thermostat, so I can just set it on medium and leave for however long I want, knowing that the house will be maintained at about 60 degrees.

However cheap the electric heater was, electricity is NOT cheap. Once I switched to the electric heat, my bill jumped from about $20 per month to a high of $150. There’s something that just hurts about an electricity bill of $150 in a 200-square-foot house! Adding insult to injury is that propane is so much more efficient and powerful, and I’ve spent over $1000 on my propane heater.

What’s It Good For?

Despite my troubles with it (and plans to replace it), I do think that the Dickinson Newport is good for certain applications:

If you plan to keep your tiny house in a location where the temperatures do not regularly go down below freezing, then it’s still the most attractive and easy-to-install unit around. Think of the Pacific Northwest and the Southern United States as ideal locations for this heater.

If you plan to only use your tiny house as a vacation home or temporary use, then you’ll be there the whole time to babysit the heater. Then when you leave, you’ll shut the whole cabin down.

Finally, for any of the above applications, I’d highly recommend installing the Dickinson Newport with the chimney pipe straight through the roof. This does add complexity to the installation because you’ll have to puncture your metal roof and make sure that it is properly flashed and water-sealed, but having a heater that doesn’t burn properly is way more of an issue than installing the chimney through your roof.

In these applications, the heater will be both ornamental and functional. Unfortunately, in freezing environments, the unit is way more ornamental than functional.

I still see people putting them in the majority of new tiny houses, and just hope that the builders of those tiny houses have taken into account how the dwellers plan to live and where.

Ethan Waldman is a tiny house builder, dweller, and soon-to-be author of Tiny House Decisions.  You can find more pictures of his house at thetinyhouse.net or on Facebook.

Written by: Ethan Waldman for Issue 17 of the Tiny House Magazine