Are Diesel heaters any good?

[FawnaFox]

I am coming to the point that I need heat in the bus, I have a few options that I want to use.

I don't want to deal with propane heating, it is a concern of mine.

I have heard Diesel heaters are pretty safe, but i don't know much about them, so I'd like some advice on using and installing them.
My other options was a small electric heater or a wood stove.. but I don't know if my insurance would like the wood stove idea. So I am basically down to the electric and diesel. I can't use a high wattage space heater.. I only have a 3k Watt inverter so a 1500 watt heater would be way too much, which is why i turned to a diesel heater.

Any help is useful! Please let me know any experience, tips or anything about them!

 

[nikitis]

There are several videos on YouTube on how to install a diesel heater.

They are pretty safe and offer good heat for their size.

A reliable heater can cost $1200 that won't malfunction on you mid winter.

There are many Chinese ones that heat just as well but often have quirks that can make them go out and need a lot of tinkering to keep going for $200-$400. They use cheaper thermal meters and they shut off when they malfunction. Malfunctions don't usually equate to your bus being on fire but it just stops working when you need it most.

Install takes a small line into a diesel tank, either separate or into your buses tank. If you do a bus tank don't insert the tube to the bottom or you could burn up all your diesel and be stranded. Keep it like 20% height mark if using the buses tank. And the two holes will need to be drilled through the floor of your bus with vents outward to the sides to vent and that's basically it, plug it in and you get heat out of a vent. They heat decently well that sometimes you gotta turn them off.

 

[Mr P]

A year ago I bought a Vevor diesel heater. I did so based on a video on Deboss Garage where he took two of them apart to show how they were made. It has worked as intended the few times I used it. I gave about $125 for it. Buy two of them if you're scared of a "mid winter" failure.

 

[FawnaFox]

There are several videos on YouTube on how to install a diesel heater.

They are pretty safe and offer good heat for their size.

A reliable heater can cost $1200 that won't malfunction on you mid winter.

There are many Chinese ones that heat just as well but often have quirks that can make them go out and need a lot of tinkering to keep going for $200-$400. They use cheaper thermal meters and they shut off when they malfunction. Malfunctions don't usually equate to your bus being on fire but it just stops working when you need it most.

Install takes a small line into a diesel tank, either separate or into your buses tank. If you do a bus tank don't insert the tube to the bottom or you could burn up all your diesel and be stranded. Keep it like 20% height mark if using the buses tank. And the two holes will need to be drilled through the floor of your bus with vents outward to the sides to vent and that's basically it, plug it in and you get heat out of a vent. They heat decently well that sometimes you gotta turn them off.

Oh they're not that hard! I'll probably use one of these instead.

 

[s2mikon]

I have 2 of them in our bus, one in the rear and one in the front. I bought the cheapest ones available on ebay and have used them for about 5 years now. The fuel filters that come with them have been the only failures. Both started leaking. I use a separate 5 gallon day tank for each one because I add 2 stroke oil to my fuel tank and don't want to burn it in my heater. I also installed 2 of them in an out building here on the place and they work just fine. They don't stink and are very cost effective.

 

[Rucker]

I have one diesel heater in the bus, one in the garage, and one in the studio (not completely installed yet, but yeah).

 

[WLDNWALT]

This sounds like a good option for Heat.

 

[explorerman02]

I put two in my bus. One in the front and one in the back. I put a selector switch on each one and wired them so my engine battery bank is one side and the solar battery bank is the other. I did it that way because diesel heaters need a stable power supply and my bus is off grid so I can’t have the solar panels on when using the solar battery bank or using a battery charger so when my solar battery bank gets low I can use the engine battery bank to run the heaters off of while I recharge the solar battery bank and recharge the engine battery bank while I use the solar battery bank. They work great and put out lots of heat.

 

[WRS_Mark]

Diesel heaters are great so long as you follow recommended installation procedures and let them really work once in a while. Primary one in my bus is the LF Bros S Pro. It's higher end Chinese. Thermostat control, which is great out here in below zero conditions on the frozen prairies. I usually open the vents and windows every couple of weeks and run it for a few hours on full tilt to clean out the combustion chamber. Otherwise it'll get clogged up after a few weeks of start and stop work. Pump is very quiet compared to the cheaper units.

 

[Beeb2]

Diesel heaters are awesome. I highly recommend. I recommend getting a Vevor diesel heater with the bluetooth controller (you can turn bluetooth off if you aren't into that sort of thing), and also get a Bureck thermostat. The built-in thermostats that come with the heaters aren't super great, but Bureck makes a thermostat that works very well with the Vevor heaters. I set the temp I want and forget about it. It runs on high all the time so it doesn't build up carbon. Works amazing.

 

[AlphaHare]

Here's an interesting comparison of two quality levels of knock-off Chinese diesel heaters.

IMO one thing to look for is automatic altitude compensation, a feature on the original Webasto heaters.

 

[Jackula-SKO]

There’s two types of diesel heaters, diesel air heaters and diesel coolant heaters. It looks like everyone here is talking about the air heaters, which are simpler, they just blow hot air through a duct into the bus. Many people including myself have a diesel coolant heater, it heats the bus coolant and then hot air comes out of the same heater blowers you use while you’re driving, and you can also preheat the engine in winter since it’s all on the same loop. You can also get water heaters that have a heat exchanger to make hot water using heat from the coolant, so you can get hot water while driving or by running the coolant heater which uses way less power than an all electric water heater. I have an eberspacher (espar) coolant heater and it is extremely nice, there is a website called heatso that sells them and other brands of coolant and air heaters. Webasto is also good. I would never buy a Chinese knockoff of anything.

 

[Mr P]

Chinese parts are in "new" "American made" automobiles, FWIW. I wish it were not so...

 

[Beeb2]

The chinese diesel heaters are extremely inexpensive and very reliable. You can get one at Vevor.com for roughly $80, and it'll easily last a couple of years. They're also very easy to get parts for and fix yourself, but I usually just replace if I need to because they're so cheap. An Espar or Webasto costs over 10x the cost for what is essentially the same thing. The Chinese heaters are widely used by people all over the world, and everyone has the same basic review: they work very well if installed correctly. If you get an error code, you probably have something wrong with your installation. Combined with the Bureck thermostat, which reduces carbon buildup, you should be able to run a chinese heater for many years without issue. Between my multiple rigs, I own and run 4 of them on a daily basis. I have no issues and don't do any maintenance.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Off topic , but, why do you add two stroke oil to your fuel tank? And, how much per gallon of fuel?

 

[LargeMarge-TC]

...Buy two of them if you're scared of a "mid winter" failure.

.
Two is the way we roll.
Although we use only one while keeping the other as a handy back-up for impromptu shiver-sessions, we've two Wave 3 catalytic heaters, each with a dedicated hose and a dedicated [off-topic, involves a petroleum product in a five-gallon bottle].
.
Over two decades full-time live-aboard, zero issues.

 

[s2mikon]

I add the 2 stroke oil for added lubrication for the injectors and pump. I use 1-2 oz per gallon depending on the fuel. Low emission diesel gets 2 oz per gallon and regular gets 1 oz per gallon. I have no idea what 2 stroke oil would do to the diesel heaters so I keep it away. One of the additives in 2 stroke oil is a carbon dispersant to keep the ports on 2 strokes clean. That may be good for these heaters and it may not I don't know. I'v been using it in my diesels since the early 1990"s when I lived in Californicate and they came out with low emission diesel. It was recommended to me by a Bosch pump technician that saw all of the carnage caused by low emission diesel. He was originally from Alaska and they ran a lot of #1 diesel and it was hard on pumps and injectors so this was the cure. 2 oz per gallon with winter fuel.

 

[nikitis]

Hrm.. I've never considered this but it does make perfect sense.

Old school diesel had a lot of sulfur, and if you've ever had sulfur in your water before you'll realize it's softens so much on your skin it feels like you can't even wash it off. Because sulfur is a lubricant.

So all the pumps that say "Low Sulfur Diesel" means it's been mostly removed. Adding 2 stroke oil to diesel works for chainsaws for lubrication, so I guess it would be fine to mix with diesel. Interesting.

I love this idea actually. Thanks for the tip @s2mikon !

 

[desrtdog]

Adding 2 stroke oil to diesel works for chainsaws for lubrication

Huh?…diesel powered chainsaw??

 

[s2mikon]

The sulfur is attached to the paraffin so when they remove the sulfur it removes a lot of the paraffin too. Paraffin is a lubricant and so is sulfur. Sulfur is good at lubricating the injector pintles and barrels. If you want to add back the sulfur you can add some jet A and 2 stroke oil. I have an injector tester that you pump by hand to measure pop off pressure and spray pattern on Bosch type injectors, and you can see the difference in spray pattern with 2 stroke oil 1 oz to the gallon. They even sound different when they spray. And it makes your diesel blue!