Blue View - Blanche’s New Heater
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One of the things we added to Blanche before departing to Alaska was a diesel heater. On our past road trips, we relied on a small electric heater to warm the chilly interior on cold nights, but using it depended on having electricity available. That meant finding campgrounds that had electrical hookups, or if it was really cold, finding a room for the night.
On this trip, we’ll be spending a lot of time in remote areas of Alaska and Canada, and we won’t have the luxury of having electrical hookups nearly as often as on our previous trips. Thus, adding a diesel heater, which has been on the to-do list since we bought Blanche, finally made it to the top of the list.
Blanche is gas powered… why a diesel heater? - why not a gas heater? - you might ask. There are several reasons:
First, diesel heaters are less complicated, safer, and more efficient than gas heaters. A gallon of diesel will produce about 10% more BTUs than a gallon of gasoline. More importantly, diesel is far less volatile and is less likely to ignite and/or cause an explosion than gas. If you toss a match into a puddle of diesel, it will extinguish the match - not so with a puddle of gas.
Secondly, diesel heaters that are safe enough to use in an enclosed living space are much less expensive than an equivalent gas heater - if you can find one at all. There are dozens of diesel heaters on Amazon - all made in China, ranging in price from $80 - $160, while the only gas heater I could find that I could install in Blanche’s living space was $900, and had a six week lead time.
Finally, there are literally dozens of YouTubes, blogs and forums related to installing, maintaining and repairing diesel heaters. Almost every forum on DIY van upfitting has a section devoted to them. I was sure that any problem I encountered was already solved by someone else.
When we bought Blanche, included with the sale was a cardboard box containing all the parts to a diesel heater. Unfortunately, it was an 8kw heater, much too large for Blanche’s small interior and physically too large to fit in the planned space. We searched through Amazon’s offerings and found the perfect heater, a 2kw version. Even better, most of the parts of both heaters were interchangeable, so I now had lots of spares.
When building the sink cabinet, I left space under the cabinet’s false floor for a small water pump as well as the heater. The heater sits on the van’s floor, and the connections for the combustion air intake, exhaust and fuel come up from under the van through holes in the floor. Drilling the holes was easy enough, once I triple checked that I wasn’t drilling into something important like a wire harness or brake line. The combustion air intake has a filter on the end to keep most dust, dirt and water out, and was attached to the underside of the chassis in a protected, relatively dry spot. The exhaust pipe gets quite hot, so it needs to be routed well away from anything that might be damaged by the heat - like the plastic fuel line, for example. It should also extend out from under the van to prevent exhaust carbon monoxide making its way into the interior. Without a muffler, the exhaust sounds like a jet taking off. The kit comes with one, but it was only moderately effective. I found a better one online, and combined the two mufflers in series, which reduced the noise level from quite annoying to more than acceptable.
The fuel system consists of a small fuel tank, fuel filter, fuel pump and the hoses and clamps that interconnect them all. Where to locate the fuel tank was the biggest dilemma. I didn’t want to mount it inside the van. The tank has to be vented, and venting it inside the van would generate an ongoing diesel smell inside. Also, filling the tank inside the van would inevitably result in spills, and once diesel gets spilled inside, it is very hard to remove - it stinks for a long time. I know this from experience… it was a frequent problem during our eighteen years aboard Nine of Cups.
I found both a short term and a long term solution on the Promaster forum. For the short term solution, there is just enough space in the engine compartment to mount a small, one gallon tank. Several people had done this, using various methods of securing the tank in place. My brother, Paul, volunteered to take this task on, and did a great job. He wrapped the tank in a thermal blanket, which served to insulate the tank from the engine heat as well as help prevent chafe, and then secured it in place with webbing. Finally, he added a shut-off valve, so that the tank could be easily removed if necessary. While I’m optimistic that this solution will do well for our road trip to Alaska, there are a few downsides to this solution. The tank is smaller than I’d like, it is a little tricky to fill, and it blocks access to the fuse box. A better long term solution, assuming we like the heater well enough to keep it, will be to mount a larger tank under the chassis with a more accessible fill spout. Next winter’s project.
While Paul was working on the tank, I was under the van mounting the fuel pump and filter, and routing and connecting the fuel lines. The heater kit provided a wiring harness with a cable and connector for the pump, which I also routed and connected. The last steps were to mount the controller, route the wiring harness to it, and make the 12v power connections. To test it, I decanted some diesel into the tank, primed the pump and fuel lines, then turned it on. The heater started right up and within minutes was pumping out heat.
As I write this, it’s day seventeen of our road trip, and we’ve used the heater ten of those nights. It’s been great. On the couple of relatively cold nights when outside temperatures dipped into the mid 30’s, our little diesel heater really cranked out the heat and brought the inside temperature up to a comfortable level in just a few minutes, then switched to an idle mode that kept us comfy all night. Mostly, however, we’ve used it to take the chill off in the evenings and mornings, and we’ve kept it shut off during the night. Fuel consumption has been minimal. We refilled the tank just a few days ago, and it took only 1/3 of a gallon for the entire time we’ve been using it.
The heater is not totally without issues, though. The control panel is not the least intuitive, and the operator/installation manual is so poorly translated from Chinese that it is mostly incomprehensible. That said, there were no shortage of helpful online blogs and videos, and with a little help from my friends, I was eventually able to figure everything out.
All in all, in the short time we’ve had it, our new heater has been a most welcome addition, and we’re quite happy with it. Hopefully, we’ll feel the same about it after our road trip.
Next week, I’ll be talking about battery problems. Stay tuned…