Mr Heater MH18B Portable "Big Buddy" Heater
by Mr. Heater
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Mr Heater MH18B Portable "Big Buddy" Heater
Customer Review: This Buddy is no friend of mine!
Summary: 1 Stars
You can't count on this Buddy to keep you warm! This heater has been a huge disapointment! If it is cold it will not run on one disposable or one 20lb tank. It keeps shutting down. Customer service has been terrible. You are lucky if they call you back a week later. First they told me I need to buy the filters which was very hard to find. They will not help this problem I can gaurantee. Then they told me to buy yet another $28 hose and hook both 20lb tanks up. That seemed to work but have not tested it in real cold weather. I use it to heat an ice fishing trailer in Minnesota and it gets cold here. I called them back and told them that idea sucks because I have to worry about always having two full 20lb tanks available otherwise it will shut down. They told me for all my hassle they would send me a quick connect hose for free and that would cure all of the problems of it shutting down because using the quick connect bypasses the 20lb of minimum pressure required to keep the safety valve open in the heater. I waited for two weeks and it never came. I called and they told me to stop using the heater because there is a safety concern and they wont know anymore untill Feb.1st. That is all they would tell me and they never sent the hose. I spent over $80 dollars in hoses and filters for this worthless heater you can definitely NOT count on to keep you warm. As far as the fire hazard talked about in other reviews it did act weird quite a few times with real small explosions. Avoid the headache and buy two of the small ones if you need the extra heat. I have never had a problem with the little buddy.Customer Review: Mr. Heater is the MAN!
Summary: 5 Stars
IMO, nobody does small heaters better than Mr.Heater.I live in a total electric house in rural West Virginia. In the effort of being prepared for a power outage, I have decided to go with propane as my back up heat sorce. Since buying the Big Buddy, I have not suffered a power outage. Though I do turn my thermostat down as I leave my home for the day. In the evenings when I get back I usually fire up the Big Buddy between 4,000 to 9,000 BTU while the furnace is trying to warm up the house. It makes a huge difference in taking the work load off of my electric furnace in trying to get the temperature to an acceptable level in the house. I have a larger 20,000 BTU ventless space heater, and think that the Big Buddy is almost as effective. Between the two propane heaters I have no worries that my home will stay nice and warm even when the electricity is out.
I don't think that I would run the Big Buddy on 18,000 BTUs to long with out a protective mat to keep some of the heat off my linoleum. 9,000 gets it pretty warm. I bought the power adapter so I wouldn't have to keep batteries on hand. The fan does help move the air into the heated area, but I think it is almost as effective without it. I also bought the EZ Fill Propane Coupler. I have about 15 1 lb bottles. I decided it would be best for me to refill small bottles instead of hooking the heater to a 20lb cylinder.
The Buddy Heaters are the way to go, if you are looking for something compact, but effective. I have used lesser BTU rated heaters, and seem to get way more fumes, with less fuel efficiency.
Customer Review: Broken control knob
Summary: 4 Stars
I have a Big Buddy model. Bought in 2006. Used it once before in Jan. 2009 then tried to use it a second time last week; control knob broke; can't heat shop. Heater works fine, the knobs are cheap and flimsy. You have to press down and turn to click the electronic igniter. Pressed and turned 3 times, knob broke. It was about 30 deg. in the shop at the time. The plastic gets cold, gets brittle, then breaks easily. When else would you use the heater, when it's warm and the knob wouldn't break? Out of service and cold shop for two weeks. Ordered replacement knobs from their website, half of the knobs were the wrong ones, called customer support, they said the part number had changed (where do you find that?). They are sending replacements. In the meantime, I got a 1/2" hose clamp, tightened it slightly around the good replacement knob shaft for strengthening, and coated liberally with epoxy. Maybe this will hold.
One interesting sidelight; there was a flier in the box when I opened it asking you to go to their website and fill out a customer satisfaction survey. I don't usually fill out surveys but I did in this case. I checked "extremely dissatisfied" on overall quality and service. The next day, I received a phone call from customer service following up on my comments and I told them the problems (order screw up and cheap, flimsy knobs). They said they would pass my comments on to engineering and the order departments, and send out additional knobs. I will now have 6 knobs for future breakage.
Customer Review: Good heater, but kind of finicky.
Summary: 3 Stars
I don't agree with some of the reviews. I don't see that it's a fire hazard at all. My Big Buddy was delivered last week. Here's what I found:
My elevation in Virginia, About 800 feet
Ambient temperature, 72.8 (in my house). Outside temp 29.0
1. Running on high on ONE Disposable Cylinder caused unit shutdown after 50 minutes. (Pilot started to flicker, cut out and then gas shut down). Single bottle was covered with ice (I assume that's bad...)
2. Running on TWO Disposable Cylinders got me the balance of three hours smoothly and well.
3. No fumes observed at all. Some moisture, but cracking the window an inch kept it under control.
4. A lot of heat. Too much for my wood floor. I had to put it on my brick mantle. This might scorch tile.
5. It kept my upstairs (1000 square feet) at 72.5. Only a loss of 0.3 degrees over three hours. Better than expected.
Suggestion: If you are trying to run on high with disposables, use two of them. This is not in the manual.
I don't know how it works with tanks, or whether you need to feed one or both inputs.
My unit did not come with the AC adapter. The batteries work.
If you bump it gently, it shuts off.
Conclusion:
For 139 bucks, it fits the bill well enough. It appears to be very well made, but the safety features make it tempermental. For my use as an emergency heat source, it's adequate.
Customer Review: kilosam
Summary: 1 Stars
I can't really reccomend the big buddy for use if youneed more than just a couple of hours. I needed heat in my garage for a weekend project more than six hours to heat a °30 garage to a comfortable temprature. It Puts out about the same Btu's as my old kerosene heater so i bought it. I didn't even bother with the 1lb canisters because i needed more than three hours and throw aways tanks are expensive and i think ecologically a dumb idea so i got the filter and the hose and a 20lb refillable. the manual dosent state which side to hook it to so i just chose one. the big buddy has two ceramic tiles in the front on low and medium only one of these ignite the second tile only comes on on the high setting, at least thats how mine worked. Low and medium worked just fine but the high setting worked for about two minutes then both tiles started to flutter. i shut it down checked all my connections made sure the tank was open and tried again, Same thing never could get it to work on high.
From some of these reviews i get the feeling i could have corrected the problem by getting another tank, and hose, and filter and hooking up both sides. but then i would have invested in two $15. hoses, two $35. tanks and two $9. filters in addition to the cost of the heater, plus the hoses have to be ran outside to the tanks because your not supposed to have the tanks inside the building meaning you have to keep a door or window open or drill holes in your walls to run the hoses.
no thanks, I took it all back.