[Small but perfectley formed]

You can buy red diesel at Morrisons  , do you think farmers would use red in £250 k combine    if it damaged the engine,
We have also used it in a £27 k pressure washer for years no problem.
its the same

[wightsurf]

Spruce , have you used one of these boards ? Do you know if I could isolate this in it's own box and run wires to the webasto ?

Ks cleaning, i'm I right in thinking you usepump you'd straight back into your main tank, so it goes through the webasto and back to the tank?

[Spruce]

You can buy red diesel at Morrisons  , do you think farmers would use red in £250 k combine    if it damaged the engine,
We have also used it in a £27 k pressure washer for years no problem.
its the same

Agree. I was referring to the problems Webasto diesel heaters had running on red diesel and their tests showed the quality of diesel the Marinas were buying didn't suit the internal workings of that heater. A search of the boating forums will bring up endless threads by frustrated posters highlighting the issues they experience. They don't ever mention a problem using the same diesel in the engines though.

The issues with Webasto heaters were increased when the heater was only being used to heat the hot water tank (calorifier). The heat exchanger inside these calorifiers consists of a short length of copper pipe which doesn't allow for efficient heat transfer. So the Webasto quickly reaches is operating temp and then switches off only to have to restart a few moments later.This doesn't allow for a clean burn without fuel quality considerations.

We are on the coast and it appears that most of the guys use a local supplier who sells fuel mainly to the fishing industry. Everyone I have spoken to points me in this direction. Our closest Morrisons doesn't sell red diesel.

I would imagine that the farmers buy it in bulk, have it delivered into their own storage tanks and fill their equipment as and when.

It has been hinted that the problem is that the Wabesto is too sophisticated for that market. But the few guys on here that run diesel heaters seem to have similar coking up issues with stop start cycling.

I haven’t heard of any bad reports on the IR Hurricane heaters that are made in Canada working in the same conditions, but they maybe because there aren’t many out there. A couple of wfp suppliers are supplying these Hurricane heaters into our industry and other posters on this forum who use them haven’t had any problems with them at all.

[Spruce]

Spruce , have you used one of these boards ? Do you know if I could isolate this in it's own box and run wires to the webasto ?

Ks cleaning, i'm I right in thinking you usepump you'd straight back into your main tank, so it goes through the webasto and back to the tank?

No I haven't used one of these boards. My heater was working fine when I last tested it. Somewhere in the internet was a step by step instruction on how to remove the faulty board from its frame and replace it with a new one. I searched the other day but couldn't find it.

There is the possibility of using the heater to heat the water directly in the tank which is very simple to do. However the cost is going to be high as you are heating a large amount of water (for me 650 litres) which will take a long time and wouldn't be cost effective. This is why heating on demand is best but the heater doesn't like short runs with lots of stopping and starting.

[Spruce]

Spruce , have you used one of these boards ? Do you know if I could isolate this in it's own box and run wires to the webasto ?

Ks cleaning, i'm I right in thinking you usepump you'd straight back into your main tank, so it goes through the webasto and back to the tank?

No I haven't used one of these boards. My heater was working fine when I last tested it. Somewhere in the internet was a step by step instruction on how to remove the faulty board from its frame and replace it with a new one. I searched the other day but couldn't find it.

There is the possibility of using the heater to heat the water directly in the tank which is very simple to do. However the cost is going to be high as you are heating a large amount of water (for me 650 litres) which will take a long time and wouldn't be cost effective. This is why heating on demand is best but the heater doesn't like short runs with lots of stopping and starting.

Found it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPQDnR43tWE&feature=youtu.be

[robert mitchell]

This thread has got me really interested , especially the free water heater .

I have thought about trying this for a while and have read about a window cleaner who used a similar setup to heat his tank of water up on the way to his first job , i think he had a fairly long drive to his work.

I am struggling to work out how it produces that much hot water with the  engine switched off, must be a very efficient heat exchanger .

Sounds like it would work for window cleaners that drive between jobs but not for those that do five or six houses without moving (unless you leave engine running).

I do wonder though if taking the heat from the engine means that the engine is not staying warmed up and may result in more engine wear , lower efficiency etc or wether that would be negligible .


What do you think spruce ?

[Spruce]

This thread has got me really interested , especially the free water heater .

I have thought about trying this for a while and have read about a window cleaner who used a similar setup to heat his tank of water up on the way to his first job , i think he had a fairly long drive to his work.

I am struggling to work out how it produces that much hot water with the  engine switched off, must be a very efficient heat exchanger .

Sounds like it would work for window cleaners that drive between jobs but not for those that do five or six houses without moving (unless you leave engine running).

I do wonder though if taking the heat from the engine means that the engine is not staying warmed up and may result in more engine wear , lower efficiency etc or wether that would be negligible .


What do you think spruce ?

The problem is with modern diesel engines is that they are very efficient and don't produce much heat. Our engines don't get up to operating temperature in the winter mornings due to the short distances we travel. His demonstrator car is an old 1.6 diesel Golf.

I find that the engine looses its heat anyway being parked up, so you may as well put that heat to some use. How good it would be is questionable. He would need a pump to circulate the water from the engine, through the heat exchanger and back to the block.

In the kit he shows an auxillary pump. On the video on the beach he shows a small pump in the water tank at the back, but that's not it. This point isn't very clear. What ever the case is, in a window cleaning application we would need a 12v circulation pump as we couldn't leave the engine running. (Your internal heater matrix is a water to air heat exchanger. If you switch the engine off but leave the circulation fan running, it doesn't take long before the air coming out gets cold.)

The water circulating through the engine will be treated with antifreeze so there wouldn't be a problem there. However, the water in the second circuit of the heat exchanger will be pure water. Any water in there will freeze and damage the heat exchanger. Even with antifreeze, our washer bottle always seems to freeze at some point during winter.  Even if the heat exchanger was drained down, the passages in the heat exchanger are very small and I doubt you will get every drop of water out. That would be a big negative for me.

The reason I put the link up was to show how a water to water plate heater exchanger works TBH.

[wightsurf]

So how does the webasto stop from freezing ? does it run at night on  a timer ?
Also how much do these cost to run , say for 7 hours.

But with all the info you have supplied ,it now makes sense ,cheers.

[Spruce]

So how does the webasto stop from freezing ? does it run at night on  a timer ?
Also how much do these cost to run , say for 7 hours.

But with all the info you have supplied ,it now makes sense ,cheers.

I think the PureFreedom ones are able to be programmed so the boiler kicks in at low temperatures. With the photo I included on this thread, the heating circuit, half of the heat exchanger and the header tank will be treated with anti freeze. Having a small frost heater inside the van to stop your equipment freezing up is still the best solution.

By using the diesel heater to prevent freezing equipment, you run the risk of the heater starting and stopping many times through the night and draining your battery. They can also be quite noisey so if this feature is used, it would be very important to have the silencer fitted so as not to disturb the neighbours.

According to Webasto, fuel consumption is about 1/2 a litre an hour on full power.

[hasti]

You may find this interesting.

http://www.thefreeheater.co.uk/index.html

I'm not sure it would work for us, but there are a couple of 'interesting' application videos. they show a water to water plate heat exchanger working.

I am very impressed with this kit Spruce.
Thanks for sharing and for that price, I am sure, some one will come up with a way of fitting it to suite water fed poles system.

[Spruce]

You may find this interesting.

http://www.thefreeheater.co.uk/index.html

I'm not sure it would work for us, but there are a couple of 'interesting' application videos. they show a water to water plate heat exchanger working.

I am very impressed with this kit Spruce.
Thanks for sharing and for that price, I am sure, some one will come up with a way of fitting it to suite water fed poles system.

Its simple really - just fit it the same way he did it with his Golf and the shower. The only thing you would need to be aware of is which way the coolant water flows through the heat exchanger when driven by the engines water pump. You then need to mount the auxillary pump so when it works it pumps the water in the same direction.

[hasti]

You may find this interesting.

http://www.thefreeheater.co.uk/index.html

I'm not sure it would work for us, but there are a couple of 'interesting' application videos. they show a water to water plate heat exchanger working.

I am very impressed with this kit Spruce.
Thanks for sharing and for that price, I am sure, some one will come up with a way of fitting it to suite water fed poles system.

Its simple really - just fit it the same way he did it with his Golf and the shower. The only thing you would need to be aware of is which way the coolant water flows through the heat exchanger when driven by the engines water pump. You then need to mount the auxillary pump so when it works it pumps the water in the same direction.

Thats amazing, well the wobasto guys going to have to drop their prices 

[KS Cleaning]

So how does the webasto stop from freezing ? does it run at night on  a timer ?
Also how much do these cost to run , say for 7 hours.

But with all the info you have supplied ,it now makes sense ,cheers.

The heater will fire up when the temperature nears freezing, this will not protect your RO or hoses tho so I still use an oil filled radiator. I run mine for about 2-3 hours then I have a tank of hot water, if it's a really cold day I  heat it up again at lunch time, half an hour does this as the water is already hot.
I have twin pumps, going to outside ports, between pump 1 and port 1 I have a stop valve, so the water can go directly into the tank without going to outside port. I run radiator hose from port 2 back into the tank.

[wightsurf]

KS Cleaning
Did you fit your own webasto ? Also what unit do you have?

[KS Cleaning]

KS Cleaning
Did you fit your own webasto ? Also what unit do you have?

No purefreedom fitted it, I have the thermo 90 ST

[Avo]

Can you not just use 1000 watts inverter 12v to 240v and plugin a garage, greenhouse tube heater they run on very low 50 watts power..
Surely this is possible no?!?!?

[Small but perfectley formed]

It wouldn't be sufficient to keep the van warm on sub zero temps

[wightsurf]

It would seem in the boating world some people are finding the webasto to run a lot better by mixing diesel mix with kerosen50/50

Spruce do you know anything of this ?

[Rayleigh Window Cleaning Services]

ok, thanks I now understand that bit.

Now is there different size heat exchangers and is there a min spec I should look for ? And how  do you control the temp of water as you wfp pump is set at your own flow rate?

Yes. This is what PureFreedom use.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WEBASTO-or-EBERSPACHER-Instant-Hot-Water-Heat-Exchanger-with-Mixer-Valve-/271200647299?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CommercialVehicleParts_SM&hash=item3f24d17883#ht_1017wt_1141

Spruce

Could this mixer valve be fitted to a webasto heat exchanger already fitted to a system?

Steve

[robert mitchell]

Here is the hurricane heater , supposed to run on red diesel  etc with no problems and be for for intermittent use .


http://www.dieselheating.com