Poop cooker (heating black/grey water)

[FatBoySTL]

I know they make electric pads to warm grey/black water tanks, but has anybody tried running a heat exchanger (or just an air/air manifold) off their genset or diesel air heater exhaust? If it's cold enough to need the heater, warming the tanks would be a nice side-benefit instead of draining batteries.

[Oscar1]

Originally Posted by FatBoySTL

I know they make electric pads to warm grey/black water tanks, but has anybody tried running a heat exchanger (or just an air/air manifold) off their genset or diesel air heater exhaust? If it's cold enough to need the heater, warming the tanks would be a nice side-benefit instead of draining batteries.

Great idea for the real cold stuff. If you're living full time in the cold zone maybe a dedicated heater like the Espar or Chinese knock offs could be built in specific for that purpose (they are very economical to run). I would think the hydronic ones running a heat exchanger would better than the forced air.

[turf]

i've lived through 2 winters in my bus and have my tank set up with warming pads.

1 set of pads runs off of 12v. they don't consume a lot of juice. i could plug them in without worrying about the battery for a few hours. i ran my generator every evening to keep the charge up over night.

the other warmer is 110v heat tape. its wrapped around the tank so i can just plug into any 15A shore outlet and start thawing.


the down side of this set up was extreme cold, like below 0 temps. heat or not, the cold would overpower the thaw. the slug in the tank may thaw enough so that the bottom surface would melt, but then the ice chunk is no longer in contact with the heater on the bottom surface, and thawing would stop. at one point, during an extended cold snap, i had to drive south to thaw out.

if daytime temps were above freezing, the winter was easy. long periods of freezing temp would probably require boxing the tanks with their own heat.

i used a lot of ice melt, rv antifreeze inside the tank as well, just to keep things flowing.

[JackE]

If it's that cold, it's time to find some better weather! My philosophy is if I had to turn on the heat to make it through the night, I'm packing it in the next morning and finding better weather! My retirement plan is to chase the sun!