Looking for your thoughts to heat and cool a 34 foot gooseneck

[mchambers]

Long time lurker, first time poster! Not exactly building a camper but I have some of the same needs and I have seen a lot of great ideas on this board so I thought I would pose this question to you guys.
I just ordered a gooseneck trailer from Freedom Trailers through a local dealer. Dimensions are 8.5' wide by 34' long and an interior height of 7'6" with barn doors on the back. I plan to build some type of plexiglass wall and door in the back. It has a 30 amp box with 2 receptacles and 5 four foot florescent lights. I am looking for the most energy efficient and quiet way to heat and cool the trailer. I have 2 Honda 2000I generators wired in parallel and mounted on my truck. In my current trailer I use 1 generator 80% of the time and fire up the second generator when I want to run my rooftop ac or my Soleus http://www.air-n-water.com/product/LX-140.html portable central air unit for heat. At first I was going to replicate the same ac and heat setup to avoid dealing with a second fuel source like propane but after looking around here for a while I am wondering if a Platinum cat heater and a rooftop DC Airco is the way to go. I might be able to get by on one generator if I went this route. I will be using this trailer for sales so the quieter the better.
Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[JRhetts]

I would go with a hydronic furnace, such as the Espar D-4 or D-5, plus radiators. Of course that is because that is what I have and I am very pleased with it.

 

[mikelagain]

Never heard of this before. Going to have to do some research. What size area are you heating with it?

 

[mchambers]

Looks like these units use fuel from the vehicles tank. Since this is on a trailer could it still be used with it's own tank? Seems like fuel usage is very low. Anybody other systems out there?

 

[NeverEnough]

You can check out my C5500 Topkick build, in which both the trailer and the camper are independant of the truck. I have a Wave cat propane in the trailer, which is fine for it's small size for heating. The camper which is quite large, has two heating systems: electric radiant heat matts (carbon film from WarmUp), and an an Atwood forced air/ducted propane furnace. Cooling for both rigs are standard low-profile DuoTherm Penguins (ducted in the camper).

I've owned several commercial RVs, and did a lot of research on options for heating and cooling. I love radiant heat, and the electric systems works very well, is virtually maintenance free, and weighs nothing. I also have a 30amp service, 4000kw genset (equivalent to your Hondas), and an 880ah battery bank with 3000W inverter. To make the system work right, I use automatic load shedding (ALS) devices for the two radiant circuits, which shuts down those circuits for demand loads (microwave, outlets, central vac, etc.). The two circuits pull less than 18amps. The system has limitations, primarily heat output, which is a function of the amount of installed surface area. In my case, I can maintain a delta T of at least 35 degrees, so if I camp in subfreezing temps, I have to supplement with the propane furnace a bit (not much) to keep temps above 70F, without bodies inside. With five or six adults, it can get down to 25F and still stay around 70. My battery bank is big enough to keep the heat on all night without the genset.

Hydronic radian heat (using the Espar unit mentioned above) can provide more BTUs. It's a more complicated system, and adds some weight, but very efficient. The trick in a trailer is deciding how to heat the water. There's some pretty slick inline boilers that would make sense for a trailer of that size, adaptable for propane or electric. But you'd be pushing it with only a 30amp service. If you go hydronic, you could do a solar thermal panel on the roof!

I explored a lot of 12V A/C units and finally just bought the RV stuff. It's hard to justify 3-5 times the cost, and if you've got a generator, why not?