Diesel"parking heaters"(meant for vehices)

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cfz2882

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recently discovered these small forced air heaters and bought a few-originally developed by German makers,there are now Chinese knock-offs avalible real cheap(~120-150$) and a couple Russian made brands as well.The heaters consist of a finned cast aluminum heat exchanger with the diesel burner inside,a motor driving a radial air circulation fan on one end,burner forced draft fan on the other,a pulsed solenoid fuel pump regulates the fuel flow.An ECU controls everthing.These are rated in KW of heat output-I bought a couple Chinese Vevor 5kw heaters and a Russian made "Autoterm" 4 KW. The Russian one was $725 and shipped from Latvia:very nicely made with mostly Russian parts and a BLDC motor,this will be installed in telescope shack soon but one of the Vevors is serving in there now-runs about 16 hrs on a tank of fuel.They operate on 12v DC.
 
Also known as overnight cab heaters

These are usually fitted in any truck cab with a bed in it, Meant to keep it at a certain temp in cold weather also helps prevent frost on the windscreen. Vented to outside to avoid any smell and fumes.

Austin
 
venting

forgot to mention the exhaust situation: the burner exhaust is through a bendable convoluted SS pipe about 1" in diameter with a muffler included to reduce the hissing sound.A shorter plastic pipe is the burner air supply.The cheapie Vevor 5kw has ignited reliably in -10*F :) Current draw on the battery is low:under 2 amps after ignition.
 
Fascinating device.

How is the venting accomplished? Does a hole have to be made in the body or can the pipe go out through a window with packing stuffed around it or a plexiglass or metal piece with a suitable hole, like those temporary dryer venting kits be fitted to go above or beside a partially opened window? What is the size of the heater? I am wondering if it could be used in a car for survival in winter weather disasters.
 
could be installed in many cars or especially cargo type vans-the Vevor all in one is especially suited to install in a van since the burner intake and exhaust pipes come out the bottom-just make two !" holes,secure to floor and hook up 12v power :)Other units come asakit with the heater,fuel tank and fuel pump separated.The exhaust pipe(about 2.5' long) gets hot enough to scorch wood,but does not glow red.Units are delightfully small to mount in a lot of places: typical 5kw about 15" long,5.5-6" square flex duct fitting on each end.Piccies to come soon :)
 
Heater

I use one of the cheep Chinese 8kw venison in the garage. The controller and other components reflect the price, the Webasto heater is way better in quality but it’s not cheap.
I run it on a blend of kerosene, diesel and drain oil. Seems that after about 20 hours of use it needs to be cleaned because of the drain oil.
The one big thing with them is the exhaust pipe temp... it gets really hot real quick, I didn’t like this and also felt it was a waste of heat. The brain got the best of a fella so I set out on a dig in the junk piles and found a heat exchanger from an old rv furnace that I welded up to the heater with some random blower and other scrap. It’s been temporarily hooked up from the start fall. It makes a huge difference in heat loss, exhaust is 90% quieter. Come spring time I’m going to do a better job at making the exhaust exchanger permanent to the heater. [this post was last edited: 1/3/2022-01:59]
 
reply #8

very cool :) I have heard these heaters gunk up if too much waste oil is in the mix.I think Webasto is one of the original German made units.
 
Back when I was in the Army, the tank I drove was equipped with a diesel heater. It was shaped like a ten inch diameter cylinder, two feet or so long with a control box mounted to one side, and sat in the forward right side of the hull in front of fifteen rounds of main gun ammunition. It worked really well most of the time, but every now and then another crew would steal a part off of it and we'd be out of luck until I managed to steal the missing parts from yet another tank. That was actually pretty funny. The same number of tanks in my battalion had working heaters on any given day, but which ones they were could change over night. That's when whoever got stuck on guard duty at the motor pool would steal the missing parts he needed for his tanks heater. But none of us really thought of it as stealing, since the parts involved still belonged to the U.S. Army regardless of which tank they were on.

[this post was last edited: 1/3/2022-16:51]
 
Reply #10

That they do around the wire mesh by the nozzle. The good thing about them is you can over ride the settings to change the burn, that is a must when running drain oil in them.
 

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