Rear heater—to keep or not to keep?

[hallucygoose]

Hi, so I’m new here and new to “Skoolie life” as I’m sure a lot are. My partner and I recently bought a 01 international Thomas 3800 dt466 (midsize) w/ wheelchair lift. We have taken out seats and back half of floor. We are kinda at a stand still on what to do with the rear heater. We live in Ohio and it gets cold and rainy a lot of the year to say the least. So any suggestions on what we should do with it would be appreciated. if we did remove it, what would be an alternative for heat and defrost in the back of the bus? How to go about building around it if we keep it in tact?

I can add photos of the inside of bus the next time we go out to work on it, hopefully today.
Thank you in advance 😊

[musigenesis]

Your heater uses the engine coolant, so it will only put out heat while you're driving. You can install a Webasto to heat the coolant while the engine is not running and so use your vehicle heaters for heat while parked, but they're expensive and a bit of work to plumb. Most likely, you will find that the driver's heater and the heater by the door will put out sufficient heat to keep the back of the bus at least moderately warm while driving, especially if you've added insulation everywhere. So you might find it easier to just delete the rear heater.

[hallucygoose]

Gotcha, I was leaning towards removing it but like I said didn’t know if enough from the front heater would defrost enough while driving. I have been looking up as much as I can about removing it on here and YouTube of course. The main consensus seems to be cutting the hoses up to the drivers seat and connecting with bent plumping pipes and hose clamps, which seems easy enough but I can’t seem to find the hose connecting to the rear heater in my bus. I just took some pics of underneath and hoses inside so maybe you ( or someone ) can walk me thru this?

(Also, the pic of underneath shows wires and a smaller hose I traced those to the wheelchair lift.)

[dbsoundman]

I'm also in Ohio with a 35' bus that came with a Webasto setup. I'm keeping all three of my heaters just because I don't feel like dealing with the re-plumbing, and it won't hurt to have the heaters available when I want/need them. We're going to stash them inside some cabinets and line the cabinets with sheet metal to direct the heat out some vents we'll place in the cabinets.

[hallucygoose]

I just wanted to clarify I did find the hoses that connect to the rear heater, they were underneath some flaps that go straight across the back of the bus. That is a good idea dbsoundman I just feel like cutting the hoses maybe easier than building around it and as you can tell we have a lot of rust and a hole underneath where the hoses are inside, so we’ll prob have to take it up anyway to fix that but still thinking on it! Thanks for the input!

[musigenesis]

For your rust situation, you're also going to want to remove your interior wall panels, especially on the back wall. It looks like you had water pooling in the back (which is common) and you will possibly/probably need to do some repair work on the outer rear panels. Removing the interior walls will give you the proper access and will reveal the sources of your leaks (my bus had literal rivers of rust showing me where the problems were).

[dbsoundman]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

For your rust situation, you're also going to want to remove your interior wall panels, especially on the back wall. It looks like you had water pooling in the back (which is common) and you will possibly/probably need to do some repair work on the outer rear panels. Removing the interior walls will give you the proper access and will reveal the sources of your leaks (my bus had literal rivers of rust showing me where the problems were).

I’m not nearly as experienced as this guy yet, but in my bus, I can see the leaks without removing the wall panels; just look for bad/loose seals on the back door and cracked or missing sealant on seams around the windows. I’d say all of my leaks come from these two issues. Removing lower wall panels can be very difficult in some buses so make sure you assess the best way for you before you go tearing into the walls.

[hallucygoose]

Absolutely, the floor is daunting in itself with the rust but I have a good idea of where the problems areas will be underneath the wall panels. But thanks you two on the tips!