ive Often thought if there's a way of using the heat from the coolant in the vans engine, but I've always then thought that maybe it's keeping the heat consisitant.
Although in the truck mount carpet machines they have a small 5 litre or so metal box called a hot box that is in fact possibly a way to go.
After running the machine I know from experience this water is literally just under boiling point, so maybe could be controlled via a thermostat or something along those lines.
As these units were mainly air cooled heat was generated rapidly and was a natural by product.
This with some research is a possible way of harnessing the heat from your engine and making use of it, albeit a lot of research needed.
One of the carpet guys was talking about this last week on here, may of been Mike Halliday.
Mr B
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.
There are numerous diesel vehicles out there that have to use additional diesel heaters to keep the cabin warm as the engines don't generate enough heat to do the job.
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. Here's a fellow who tried to sell these kits years ago. He would need a pump to circulate the water from the engine, through the heat exchanger and back to the block.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUBTk3Lj-vshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3VAR4iiBuU&t=3s His demonstrator car is an old 1.6 diesel Golf so his sytem is based on rather old diesel technology. I would doubt there are many window cleaner running vehicles pre common rail technology. 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.) Its against the law to leave a vehicle idling unattended in the street.
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.
Its relatively simple to fit - 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.
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