Diesel heaters?

[iveofione]

Anybody using them? I have thought about one for years but the irritating click-click-click of the fuel pump always made them a non starter to me. I simply could never get to sleep with that incessant pump noise. The good ones, like Webasto, were prohibitively expensive and still are. In the meantime cheap Chinese heaters emerged in the $100-$200 price range and were as crappy and noisy as you might expect for 1/10th the price of a Webasto. Fast forward a few years and the Chinese are now graduating about 1.5 million engineers per year-about 7X as many as the US. That engineering prowess has been put to work on almost all Chinese products and diesel heaters have certainly benefited from it. They have gone from primitive noisy units with external fuel tanks into sophisticated all in one packages that no longer ape the design of the expensive heaters and have made substantial improvements on the original design. And most are quiet with some making no pump noise at all, just the fan which is more like white noise. Price has risen along with quality and performance but is still modest at or below $300. Burn times are longer with some units running almost 70 hours on a single fill. They require very little power once started up, about 6 or 7 watts on low and probably around 30-35 watts on high.

I no longer need one as other heat sources for my truck canopy have also progressed recently. The Casa living area is 96" x 65" wide and 50" high, much of which is taken up by custom cabinets, the bed and built in gear. Quite commodious for one and easy to heat or cool. I have the latest Naturehike butane heater now, a Kovea Cupid heater, an Iwatani butane stove and a 12v electric blanket plus 2 new sleeping bags scaled to the size of the Casa. Not much chance of getting cold anymore.

But if you hunt or fish early and late season the use of a new diesel might be the long awaited answer to keeping you snug with a minimum of effort. Don't buy the old technology, get a model with side exhaust and an integral fuel tank and a silent fuel pump. A good night's sleep makes the next day so much better!

 

[Guy Gregory]

Well, Ive, as you know I installed a Cheap Chinese Diesel Heater unit now three years ago in the Candyvan. I did what I could do to quiet the fuel pump, putting it on a flex mounting and such. It really doesn't bother us much. The fan is a bit noisy but as you say it's kinda white noise. Installation concerns include the fuel system: keeping it outside to avoid everything smelling like diesel, and keeping the heater unit inside but getting combustion air outside, and properly getting the exhaust outside as well. I cured that largely by giving up some space just behind the drivers seat in a E-series and building a low, level, snazzy box top to cover it. The old controller along with its Chinglish instruction manual leaves much to be desired.

I haven't researched the new units, fuel delivery being central to the function of the basic design of these heaters, but it seems an advantage of them is the ability to set them up to push heat inside, leaving the unit outside. Fuel capacity looks to be a problem, but small and easy to overcome. I suspect the burner and such are very similar, this design hasn't changed much in years and doesn't really need to if you operate it properly. I don't see many 5KW units, most are 8KW, and frankly 5KW is plenty for the interior of a van or camper setup like yours.

Overall I highly recommend the products as economical and efficient providing dry heat to small interior spaces. There's quirks, but hell it's camping. Also, this campervan craze has led to the development of several additional types of heaters that if I was building now I'd very much ressearch. But heat has extended my season allowing us to camp in comfort in early spring and well into late fall on the Colorado Plateau and in the northern Rockies. Way more important than these stupid air conditioning units. The only time I ever wanted an AC unit was in Death Valley on a 104F night. Other than that my powered vent fan works wonderfully.

 

[Walove]

I sleep in an older suburban in the parking lot at mt baker. Cheap heater set outside, with hot air plumbed into the car. I only need to run it 30 minutes before going to sleep, another 30 minutes when you wake up. It came with a remote to turn it on/off from inside.

 

[goinoregon]

have one in my sprinter/winnebago. it makes a little noise, but not a big problem.