Diesel Heater / CO ....a review

[RoyB]

Received my Diesel all in one heater from AMAZON yesterday. As most thing I get from China via AMAZON it was a bit beat up. Terrible packaging for such a journey. But all fixable as it was all just bent sheetmetal.





Link to 5kw Diesel Heater

I put all the pieces together, and I filled it up with K1 Kerosene that I purchased at the hardware store.

Pushed the "power" button and let it go through its warm up as I saw on YouTube. After about 4 minutes it fired right up and started to heat my 144sq ft garage. Raised the temperature 5C in just a few minutes. This thing blows huge amounts of heat.

A few comments:
The LCD control is incredibly complicated....AND THERE ARE NO INSTRUCTIONS FOR IT!!!! The instructions that came with it are for a different controller and are written in Chinglish.....(Thank God for YouTUbe)

The fuel pump is very loud while in the warmup stage. It is a pulse type pump and the "clicking" is quite loud.
Once unit is running you can't hear the pump but the heater itself is loud....even with the optional muffler.

Most of the noise is simple combustion and air intake and output. The exhaust is relatively quiet with the optional muffler.

I bought a CO detector and held it about 3 feet from the exhaust output and it never alarmed. Strange as I thought these things put out a sizable amount of CO.



Few Improvements I'll be making:
The spring clips that hold everything together are drilled for 1/8" pop rivets. but are not riveted. They fall out when you open the unit and could easily be lost. Easily rectified with a few Pop-Rivets

Need to figure out how to silence the combustion air intake. Even with the included filter it is noisy.

 

[smritte]

I will be picking up one of these for my new trailer build. I have been watching them for a few years. I haven't decided if I will buy the contained one like yours or the smaller separate unit and build my own housing. Either way I will not mount it permanently.
I have yet to see one in person and have the impression the noise is the same as the heater I had in my old motorhome. It was a "kind of" blast furnace. The sound was an air rushing, whooshing sound.
I have read that these do a good job of combusting and the emissions are minimal. I'm looking forward to your long term review.

 

[RoyB]

Yes, very similar sound to the furnace in my travel trailer. Not too bad, but you know it is there.

 

[smritte]

Longer air intake/exhaust tube? That was my possible solution based on never owning one.

 

[Dilldog]

When I was working on Esbar heaters a lot I always thought it would be cool to have one for camping. It's cool to see affordable self contained copies, they are mechanically very simple and really crank out some heat. I will be interested to see what long term quality is like on these.

 

[Dilldog]

Longer air intake/exhaust tube? That was my possible solution based on never owning one.

If these are anything like an Esbar the intake and exhaust tubes are " tuned" so changing the length of them can cause problems.