[Martin S]

Hi guys,

Anyone use inline heaters for their porties?  Are they any good and do they actually produce proper consistent heat at the wand?

The one below is £395 +vat  Are they worth it?

Your views appreciated

http://www.amtechuk.biz/msds/Port-A-Heat_DeluxeHR3.pdf

[Mike Halliday]

no matter what anyone says about constant heat you cannot ignore the laws of physics, all electric inline heaters will have a 13amp fuse carrying a maximum of 3kw.

a 3kw heater will never heat a constant flow of water to an acceptable temperature, it might produce a quick burst of steam but never....never....never a constant flow.

if you put hot water into the watertank it might give  a slight rise in temp but if you are cleaning carpets with a normal flow wand (02-02-02 jets) it will not keep up. It might produce hot water with a 1 jet upholstery tool but thats it.

[nevil]

That is a 3 kw heater. When I lived in portyland I used a 1.8 kw heater. That was pretty effective.

I would think that one should be good providing you don't have a very large flow of water at the wand jets. As Mike says you won't get piping hot water. But heat does clean better in my experience. So I would say some is better than none.

I would say it would be very near the top of the list of things you need. However others will tell you that if you use the £60 per gallon holy water method coupled with half a day of hard aggitation, cold water will suffice.  

Tin hat at the ready :

[stu_thomson]

Martin I have that heater strapped on the back of my cfr machine and its been fine, as others has said you wont get a constant flow of hot water but it certainly works well for me.

Now using the cfr as back up to truckmount which does produce hot water all the time!

stu

[Martin S]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Stu, how have you strapped it to your machine?  Any pics?

[M.Acorn]

I have the Prochem heat and run,you gotta be carefull with them though,the connection on the bottom,one knock and it`s buggered.Also have to hold onto it when you empty,or it falls off the mount into the bucket !
If you do plenty of dry passes it does keep pretty hot constantly,don`t like putting anything other than luke warm water in though,don`t want to bust the pupm

[Glynn]

You might as well have a 3Kw element in your tank.
Mike's right.

[Joe H]

Glynn
I would have thought 3kw in tank heater would more then likely mean 3 power cables to the machine, that is if its a twin vac and a pump of a decent size.
This is one reason why the Scorpion does not have an in tank heater, nothing to do with cold water cleaning.
Someone probably say Im wrong on the first point - and maybe I am .

[Martin S]

Glynn I know what you mean and Mike (as usual  ) is right, but my machine doesn't have a built in heater nor the facility to add one.

[JandS]

Or a 3kw in tank and a built in Steamate as in the Ninja.
Water's piping hot at the wand.

John

[nevil]

Sorry guys but the in tank heater is completely different and a poor alternative to an in line  heater. Because it's trying to heat up the whole of your water tank in one go. With an in line heater the heat is instant.

Also with a bit of thought you can make the in line heater perform both functions. Firstly heat up the water in the tank as much as possible while you are doing your prep work, then when you are ready to extract use it to boost the water temp up further.

What I used to do was get the porty out first, get it filling up with a hose. All the time it was filling the in line heater would be on and the pump so that water was flow out the tank through the heater and back into the tank.

If you run a porty and you believe heat is the way forward, then an in line heater is a very worth while piece of kit. 

[Ken Wainwright]

My view is that a heater should be placed as close to the wand as possible to avoid excessive heat loss on longer hose runs.

I've used an in tank heater with 80c plus temps in the past. Trouble with this is that pumps are more reliable with cold water. In machine in-line heaters will save your pump but you will still have greater heat loss on longer hose runs.

Safe and happy cleaning
The Ken

[stu_thomson]

How close is close though my inline heater on my cfr is 33 ft away and does a fine job.
 Trouble is if you have it too close say 20 ft then surely you would be moving it around with you all the time which is a pain.

note to self: invent a inline heater which you can strap to your wand must be light and idealy run on batteries so no leads to get in the way

this time next year.....

stu

[Martin S]

Thanks again guys for your comments.  What difference would higher psi make, I presume the more psi the less heat??? so more heat at 300 psi than say 600 

Stu I was thinking the same, put a heater from the machine if using the 33'hose run or if using the extra 25' heater would go in the middle i.e 33' from the wand.

How did you strap this to your machine?   

[Ken Wainwright]

Martin

The general concensus is that the heater should be on the final 25ft for optimum convenience/performance.  33ft would be OK too.

The pump pressure does not necessarily affect the temperature at the wand. But flow does. The slower the flow, the greater the temp. So, for example, a Wonderwand with 3 x 01 jets would have a lower flow/lesser flush but hotter rinse than if it were fitted with the 015 or 02 options. Ditto for other wands.

Safe and happy cleaning
The Ken

[Steve Birch]

Nevil

I like the idea of yours about pre heating the water in your tank.I have an inline heater  that I use.I had it with my CFR pro 400. (Now have the airflex turbo )


Just having a problem with how's its done


I take it you have a solution hose out from the pump, switched on, into the inline heater also switched on, then another solution hose back from the inline heater,where does that go? I know its got to go back into the tank, but how?


Maybe I am being a bit thick?


Regards

Steve

[nevil]

Just a short pipe. One end with a fitting that goes to the output of the heater. The other end is just open pipe. I used to put a weight on the end so that it wouldn't come out of the tank.

[Steve Birch]

 

Brilliant,simples!

Cheers for that

Steve

[carpetcleaning4u]

What's wrong with an old fashioned heater bucket 
Fill up - switch on and before you have unpacked very hot water 
Hard to acquire now - many old ones still have them 

[Martin S]

Martin

The general concensus is that the heater should be on the final 25ft for optimum convenience/performance.  33ft would be OK too.

The pump pressure does not necessarily affect the temperature at the wand. But flow does. The slower the flow, the greater the temp. So, for example, a Wonderwand with 3 x 01 jets would have a lower flow/lesser flush but hotter rinse than if it were fitted with the 015 or 02 options. Ditto for other wands.

Safe and happy cleaning
The Ken

Ken, valuable information from you as always so thank you for that.  Not forgetting Nev of course, thanks to you too.