You can buy the webasto 5kw heater for about 1000 but you need a cabinet to put it in really and drill holes through the vehicle floor for air inlet and exhaust,far easier to get it all installed properly imo and then learn how it all works so you can maintain things yourself. There is no cheap way to do it if your not good at DIY but well worth the money if anyone chooses a professionally installed one.
5kw would be overkill for a Custom or Dispatch which is what I have. And at around £1k a van not worth it. I'm prepared to pay up to about £600 each I think. I wouldn't fit it myself although it looks pretty straightforward because I'd want it to feed from the fuel tank rather than a seperate one.
Mmmm. That 5kw is what the unit produces. It also includes the heat that goes out of the exhaust. I have a Eberspacher Airtronic 5kw in my Citroen Relay swb van. And that exhaust pipe gets hot. I have a full steel bulkhead dividing the driver's cabin from the rest of the cargo area. The heater is in the cargo area on the driver's side but it draws air from the driver's cabin and pumps hot air back into the the drivers cabin between the driver's and passenger's seats. I also have a T on the hot air side and can also bleed a little heat into the cargo area if needed.
It takes quite a while to warm a frozen driver's cabin up. I'm honestly in 2 minds about taking it out and transferring it to my new van. But if you bare with it, it does eventually make the drivers cabin nice and warm. It does make a great retreat to get into a warm van to thaw out for a bit when out working in freezing weather.
I also have a Webasto 5kw Thermo Top C and I'm considering fitting that to my next van. At least that will also keep the engine warm as well as the driver's cabin.
But if I didn't have a bulkhead I doubt that this heater would warm the whole van. I appreciate that a motor home is built on a lwb van, but I've seen a few complaints from motor home owners saying that an Airtronic unit like I have isn't sufficiently powerful enough the heat their motor home. And their motorhome is much better insulated than my van is.
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