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

Been through exactly this with my static caravan on the Welsh borders. Propane was haemorrhaging money — genuinely shocking how fast a 47kg cylinder disappears when you're relying on it for everything.

What actually shifted the equation for me was layering the approach rather than relying on one heat source.

What I ended up with:

• A small wood-burning stove as the primary heat source (Charnwood Cub if anyone's curious — compact but punchy)
• A Victron-powered 12v electric blanket for overnight without firing up anything
• Rigid PIR board insulation stuffed into every cavity I could access under the floor and around the skirt

The propane now exists almost purely as backup and for cooking. Usage dropped dramatically — we're talking one 47kg cylinder lasting through most of winter rather than six weeks.

The insulation work is unglamorous and nobody wants to spend a Saturday crawling under a caravan in November, but it's where the real gains are. Draught-proofing windows and doors made a noticeable difference almost immediately.

Curious whether others are dealing with similar setups — particularly anyone in a tiny house or shepherd's hut where the thermal mass is basically nothing. Do you lean into the wood stove approach or have you found electric heating viable if your solar/battery bank is substantial enough? My setup isn't big enough to run resistance heating overnight without flattening batteries, but I imagine with a decent battery bank it's doable.

What's everyone's propane consumption looking like this winter compared to last?

@BordersNomad — van background here rather than static caravan, but the principle's identical.

The game-changer for me was treating thermal mass and insulation as the primary heating system, with propane as backup only. Once I'd properly addressed air infiltration (the silent killer — more heat loss than you'd think), my gas consumption dropped dramatically.

Worth investigating Truma or Webasto diesel heating as a propane alternative — diesel is far more energy-dense per pound spent, and a Webasto Air Top 2000 STC sips roughly 0.1–0.18L/hr at low output. Pair that with a decent Victron battery bank running a ceramic panel heater during shoulder seasons and you're barely touching combustion fuels at all.

Also — Welsh Borders specifically — ground-level cold air pooling is brutal. Underfloor insulation is chronically underrated and usually the biggest single improvement you can make.

@BordersNomad ugh yes, lived this nightmare on the boat. Propane just vanishes in winter, it's criminal.

Biggest thing that helped me — properly sorting the insulation first before throwing heating solutions at it. Obvious maybe but I kept buying better heaters when the heat was just leaking straight out 🙄

Also switched a lot of my "always on" stuff to 12v/electric off the Victron/Fogstar setup so the propane isn't doing double duty anymore. Saves more than you'd think.

Thermal mass too if you can manage it — even water containers inside hold heat surprisingly well overnight on a boat, probably works in a static caravan too?

Still grumpy about how long it took me to figure all this out tbh

@BordersNomad the static caravan situation is rough because you're fighting poor factory insulation and thermal bridging through the steel chassis simultaneously.

What actually moved the needle on the narrowboat was attacking infiltration before anything else — draught-proofing every penetration point properly. You can throw a diesel Webasto at it all day but if cold air is cycling through gaps around cable entries and vents you're just heating the Welsh countryside.

Worth getting a cheap IR thermometer (£15 on Amazon) and methodically scanning your walls and floor void on a cold night. The cold spots you find will likely horrify you. Closed-cell spray foam in the floor void made a measurable difference here before I'd touched the heating system at all.

Separately — have you looked at a proper Dickinson or Morso solid-fuel option as a base load? Propane then becomes top-up rather than primary, which transforms your consumption figures completely.

@BordersNomad static caravan on the Welsh borders in winter — you're basically heating the outdoors with those paper-thin walls. Same issue on my narrowboat, propane just evaporates.

What actually shifted things for me was being brutal about where the heat was going before throwing more gas at it. Skirting sorted? That void underneath a static is basically a wind tunnel robbing you of everything.

Also — are you running any electric heating at all? Even a small oil-filled radiator overnight on cheap-rate electric takes serious load off the propane. Depends what your setup looks like power-wise obviously.

What size solar/battery are you running? If you've got decent capacity there's probably more you can do electrically than you realise.