Anyone else struggling to keep a small cabin warm without going through propane too fast?

Been there with my garden office setup — propane burn rate in winter was genuinely shocking until I sorted a few things.

Biggest wins for me, in rough order of impact:

1. Insulation first, always. No heating system fixes a leaky envelope. I added 100mm PIR to the walls and the difference was night and day.
2. Thermal mass where possible — even a few slabs of concrete or brick against an interior wall helps buffer temperature swings overnight.
3. Infrared panels on a thermostat — I run a couple of 600W panels off my Victron/Fogstar lithium setup and they're surprisingly effective for a smallish space. Radiant heat just feels warmer than blown air at the same temperature.

The propane issue is almost always an insulation problem masquerading as a heating problem, if I'm being blunt about it. You can throw a more efficient heater at it but you're just slowing the bleed.

That said — what size is your cabin roughly, and what's the construction? Timber frame loses heat completely differently to SIP panels or a converted shepherd's hut, so the advice changes a fair bit depending on specifics.

Also worth considering a small wood burner if your build allows it. Mine has a tiny 4kW unit and it's the backbone of heat on really cold nights, with electric just topping up during the day.

What's everyone else running? Curious whether anyone's had decent results with air source heat pumps at small scale — I've been tempted but the upfront cost puts me off.

@VoltWill solid list. Thermal mass helped me a lot in my static caravan — even just a few big stone tiles on the floor hold heat surprisingly well once the space warms up.

Also worth looking at a small wood pellet stove if propane costs are killing you. Mine runs incredibly efficiently and pellets are pretty reasonable to buy in bulk from UK suppliers.

One thing people overlook — door and window seals. I replaced the rubber seals on my van windows for about £15 total and noticed an immediate difference. Dead easy job.

@VoltWill @FellLover — worth adding a monitoring angle here. I run a Victron Cerbo GX across my whole setup and having proper temperature logging alongside energy consumption data was genuinely revelatory. You quickly spot that propane burn spikes correlate with specific weather patterns rather than just ambient temp — wind chill on poorly sealed door frames being the main culprit in my case.

Also, if you've got any solar storage, a small DC heating element (even 150–200W) running overnight from excess battery capacity can take the edge off pre-dawn temperatures meaningfully. Doesn't replace your primary heat source but reduces the demand on it.

The thermal mass point is solid — I've got a couple of filled water containers doing similar duty. Cheap and effective.

@CrafterConvert that monitoring point is underrated honestly. On my narrowboat I noticed the propane was disappearing fastest on days I thought the stove was barely ticking over — turned out I'd developed a habit of bumping the thermostat after morning coffee and forgetting about it.

What actually fixed my burn rate though was a wood-burning stove as primary heat, propane strictly for backup and cooking. The canal cuts through some decent woodland so fallen timber is basically free. Propane now lasts the whole shoulder season rather than a fortnight.

Worth looking at Dickinsons or a compact Morso if you've got the flue clearance — both sized sensibly for small spaces. The upfront cost stings but the running cost maths sorts itself out pretty quickly once you're not filling bottles every other week.

@MountainChild that narrowboat observation really resonates — I had exactly the same mystery propane drain on my van conversion before I realised the thermostat was cycling the heater far more than needed because the walls were losing heat faster than the sensor could register it. Sorted a 25mm Celotex board behind the cladding and the cycle frequency dropped dramatically.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: draughtproofing around penetrations. Propane flue exits, cable glands, even the floor-to-chassis gaps on a van or static — these are silent efficiency killers. I used expanding foam and fire-rated collars on mine. Cheap fix, measurable difference on the Cerbo monitoring @CrafterConvert mentioned.

Also worth checking your regulator and hose condition if the bottle seems to drain faster than expected — a weeping connection wastes a surprising amount over a Welsh winter.