Coleman 5053A751 ProCat Perfectemp Catalytic Propane Heater with Instastart Technology

I went camping with my family up in Big Bear Ca and this heater worked great! I used one bottle of gas before I left the house to get rid of the burning smell. I love it and wouldnt go camping without it. Easy to use.

I used this for the first time and was impressed. It got so warm that my family asked that I turn it off. It was approximately 48 degrees outside of the tent. I was happy to know how well this heater works. No mountain camping trip will be without it now.

I just bought this heater for camping and emergency purposes. Out of the box it is nice, compact and lightweight. Has a nice handle and base. When first trying to start it I had a hard time getting the "insta-light" to work. The owners manual says 10 clicks it took me more than 40. It did smoke a little and smelled alot but I burned it outdoors for 30 min like the manual said to and now there is no smoke or odor after lighting for the 3rd time. It is still hard to light but I am going to leave it on for a min or two and let the gas build up and see if that works better. It gives off really good heat! It has no up or down so it is hot all the time, but for what I need it for that is ok. I have a VW Pop Top Camper that it warms up quite nicely in about 3-5 min. The heater really needs a good case to protect it. I bought the soft-sided case that Coleman has for it but was not impressed. It will do but...it is too big for the heater. There is 2 propane bottle holders inside but the heater is not snug inside therefore the bottles may actually damage the heater. Also the base does not have a holder so it just goes in the bag and may also get damaged by the heavy bottles. If you are going to use the carry bag I would suggest packing it all in nicely with cardboard and packing material of some kind like bubble wrap so it all fits better. Coleman should have made a hard sided case for this heater.

I've owned one of these for more than five years. It is dependable, tough and a good value for the price.

This Catalytic heater is intended to keep you warm in your duck blind, not your tent. During operation the face of the heater is a hot metal screen that will melt Nylon/Rayon/Dacron tent/sail material upon contact - it's not likely to set the material on fire, but melting a big hole in your tent is decidedly a bad idea (and, the residue on the heater would be difficult to remove). The heater works well in unheated camper shells, houseboats, cabins, small watercraft, and as an emergency home backup if you have a power failure.

The prior reviews state "ball of fire" and "smell" - well, there is an ignition flash over the face of the catalytic material when you start the heater. You have to expect to have a little flash when starting one of these devices. The starting mechanism is a piezoelectric sparker and the spark generated by pushing the red plunger eventually ignites the propane in the presence of atmospheric O2. Once the thermal flash takes place the oxidation of the propane (burning) occurs within the catalyst (a grey, fibrous mat behind the screen) and, the only combustion products are H2O and CO2 - that's the beauty of a "catalytic" heater. Obviously, do not start one of these in an atmosphere that could ignite and, keep it away from your car, boat, atv gas tank!

Several reviews remark about the smell - and I am aware of two sources of "smell" that are given off by this device:

(1) When the device is new the metal screen and other parts that become hot "gas out" or "burn off" manufacturing residue. Oils, varnishes, lubricants - the very thin remnants of the processes of shaping, forming and assembling the device will aerosolize with the first 10-20 hours of use. If it is a concern (and, it should be if you aren't using the device in a "well ventilated" area (such as a duck blind)) then, set it up in your yard, drive or on a deck and run three or four whole bottles of propane through it at full temp WITHOUT using the fan. In a day or two you will have a perfectly broken-in heater with no smell from heater parts.

(2) The second smell that you may experience is the result of an odorant (a mercaptan) added to the colorless, odorless, tasteless Propane as a safety measure to allow a human to "smell" a Propane leak. The odorant smell is quite noticeable at the ignition stage (because not all of the Propane released is ignited when you start the heater - you may have waited longer than necessary before depressing the plunger or it is just the amount of Propane that escapes prior to normal ignition). The odorant is essentially consumed at the catalyst - but some bottles of Propane seem to have slightly different amounts of odorant and an odd, but minor smell from burned odorant can be detected. Pay attention to the brand of Propane that you buy and buy a case or two of the bottles that you perceive as having the least odor.

That said, I've used the device for well over a thousand hours with excellent results - including leaving it running in a home without power due to an ice storm - placing it in the basement kept pipes from freezing until power was restored.

One additional note about the fan feature - there is a (somewhat noisy) 3-volt fan in this heater. It does run on two "D" cell batteries - but there is a 1/8" phono-plug socket located next to the fan permitting the addition of an accessory power source. For a few bucks you can purchase a two-conductor phono-plug and a battery case at any electronics shop. Wire your power brick with eight or ten "D" cells in two parallel blocks to give 3 volts and you have a week's power for the fan (yes, you can use rechargeable batteries). Folks with a little electronics experience can buy a small 6-volt gel-cell and use a simple voltage divider circuit to drop the output to 3-volts (or, use a voltage regulator and zener diode to drop the voltage and prolong the life of the gel-cell's charge - a divider does draw current the regulator is a more efficient circuit).

OR, you could just use it without the fan.....

I've had this heater for about two years, and just got back from a tent camping trip in the upper Midwest. We were camping in a Eureka! 8 person three season tent. Temps during the days reached the mid 50s, and nighttime temps were in the low 40s to upper 30s. We could see our breaths in the air before we went to bed.

There was a recent event in our area where a family died in their travel trailer due to CO poisoning. Hence, my wife was a little bit scared when I told her that we would be bringing the heater for this trip. We've used the heater several times before without incident.

Due to the CO concerns, I purchased a battery operated CO detector from Kidde and brought along a temperature sensor we had at home. The detector would ensure that we would be alerted in case of any unsafe CO levels.

Our tent was vented by leaving some of the flaps partially open, the "always open" vents in the top of the Eureka! tent, and by having a tent fan hung from the center top of the tent running. Please read any safety manuals from your tent or heater manufacture before deciding to run a heater in a tent.

Here's some of the results and observations from the recent trip:

-We observed temperatures in the tent from about 57 to 63 degrees in tent when we went to bed, went to the bathroom during the night, or when we woke up in the morning. Temps out side were predicted to be in the low 40s or high 30s, but we did not have a temperature gauge outside to measure. We slept in average sleeping bags with an extra blanket, and everyone slept well and was warm enough.

-Start the heater about 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. It takes a little while for the heater to raise the temp in the tent, and its nicer to go to sleep in an already warm tent instead of one that is cold and slowly warming up.

-A propane cylinder will probably not last for a full 8 hours of sleep, especially if you start the heater before you go to bed. Have spare cylinders and batteries available. I started a cylinder 30-60 min before the kids went to sleep, then put in a fresh cylinder when I went to bed, and changed cylinders when invariably one of us had to get up in the early morning hours to go to the bathroom.

-The propane cylinder iced up on the bottom after several hours of operation. Have some gloves handy or be prepared to deal with the ice while changing a cylinder.

-The CO detector never alarmed during our trip. The maximum CO level detected was 11 PPM, which is apparently well below any harmful levels.