Chiese diesel heater install

[Van]

Rather than drag up the previous thread here's a new one.
Almost a year ago Yoda sent me a Vevor diesel heater for xmas and after going tru an  Extensive list of upgrades to our coach I finally got it installed 22 days ago. This one, a 5kw, was mounted in the center DS generator bay in front of the generator. Having a bar in the coach seperating the galley and fron lounge is where I wanted the outlets to be mounted, one facing forward into the front lounge the other facing rearward towards the galley and  bathroom. This required quite a bit of thought as to fishing the ducting under the galley cabinets as well us under the bar with out tearing every up. That being said there was an alternative mounting location (front electrical panel) in case this duct routing could not be achieved.
Mounting it to the bay floor would be easily done but having the combustion chamber intake mounted under the coach was concerning me (think road debris/water while driving) as well as having the itsy bitsy fuel line going down thru the bay floor and up to the unit exsposed to the elements.
I know Clifford mentioned in the previous thread jokingly that he got me this think just to  torment me lol (and it did lol!) as he knows I just can't pass up a good challenge. So to work around my previously mentioned concerns I built a perch out of steel to mount the unit on off the bay floor withe cumbustion intake and fuel pump mounted to one of the perch's legs.
The 3" hot air ducting routed up through the floor to the bar, 3" fresh air intake routed into the rear (plumbing bay) with a automotive coldair intake filter (yet to be installed) to keep the dust/bugs etc. From getting sucked into the interior of the coach. Fuel line tee'd into the generator fuel supply from the Aux 60 gallon fuel tank. 12 vdc supplied from the house batteries and the remote up into the galley. The remote thermostate wiring neededed to be cut and extended 15' to get it mounted.
Now came the hard part lol! Understanding the $*@#%<! Chinese printed broken English instructions on how to program the remote! Some utube vids an and good ol intuition came in handy with this lol!
Items I had to purchased seperately (from Amazon) 16' worth of flex heat ducting, brass tee fitting with 2 3/8" barbed fittings 1 1/8" barbed fitting 1/4 NPT for fuel delivery, 2  Closeable louvers, 3" ducting  tee.
The results? This thing rocks! And gets two thumbs up on performance. I have ordered 2 additional Vevor units that are still worth the price of admission @ 100 bucs each on ebay just to have on hand for either an additional unit if needed or as replacement should the one I have installed take a nose dive.
Hope this helps someone out if thinking about adding one

[Van]

Ok 3 pix need rotating

[chessie4905]

There are a couple of excellent Facebook sites for Chinese or UK diesel furnaces. Have been following for more than a year. Lots of troubleshooting help and people with issues with theirs, lot of it being clueless on them, but overall invaluable info. Lavaner Pro seems to be the most trouble free with vendor at site frequently being helpful. Vevor is another decent one. I was enthusiastic about them, but going with propane.
BTW, the diesel heaters need to be corrected to run at high altitudes or will smoke and eventually plug up with soot.

[Iceni John]

That looks like a good clean installation.   I have two of the Warmtoo 5kW heaters (model XMZ-D2), and have installed one in the bathroom that blows hot air through the wall straight into the bedroom.   Yes, the instructions are typical Chinglish nonsense, so it's easiest to use Eberspaecher's or Webasto's information, at least for the mounting instructions.   I had to slightly remap the fuel/air ratios to get a completely clean burn at sea level and at 4000' ASL, but now it doesn't produce any carbon in the exhaust, even running on Low all night.   Just make sure the burner temperature never drops below 120C (i.e. with all six bars lit) to assure complete combustion.   So far, so good.

John

[lvmci]

 Nice Van, warm those popsicle toes for Cheryl!...

[Van]

That looks like a good clean installation.   I have two of the Warmtoo 5kW heaters (model XMZ-D2), and have installed one in the bathroom that blows hot air through the wall straight into the bedroom.   Yes, the instructions are typical Chinglish nonsense, so it's easiest to use Eberspaecher's or Webasto's information, at least for the mounting instructions.   I had to slightly remap the fuel/air ratios to get a completely clean burn at sea level and at 4000' ASL, but now it doesn't produce any carbon in the exhaust, even running on Low all night.   Just make sure the burner temperature never drops below 120C (i.e. with all six bars lit) to assure complete combustion.   So far, so good.

John

Interesting about remaping the air/fuel ratio. Albeit that we are @ 523 altitude that was a concern at first. I fired it up almost a year ago for a bench test while in Yuma and packed it back up till 22 days ago when I installed it. No smoke or signs of carbon at the tail pipe, looks like a good clean burn. Up until last night it had been in manual mode and usually ran @ 1.8 hz rate. Last night finally remember how to switch to auto mode which makes more sense for fuel economy. Still very surprised as to it's performace.  John what did you do to correct your ratio? Thnx!

[Van]

Nice Van, warm those popsicle toes for Cheryl!...

Ha it's not her any more, now it's me Tom lol!

[Iceni John]

Interesting about remaping the air/fuel ratio. Albeit that we are @ 523 altitude that was a concern at first. I fired it up almost a year ago for a bench test while in Yuma and packed it back up till 22 days ago when I installed it. No smoke or signs of carbon at the tail pipe, looks like a good clean burn. Up until last night it had been in manual mode and usually ran @ 1.8 hz rate. Last night finally remember how to switch to auto mode which makes more sense for fuel economy. Still very surprised as to it's performace.  John what did you do to correct your ratio? Thnx!

I don't think you need to worry about compensating for reduced air at only 500' elevation!

Here's a useful video explaining how to access the Advanced Settings code 1688:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pnGccNOay4   
When I first ran my heater there was a slight rhythmic pulsing and some barely-visible smoke from the exhaust, and the second red bar wasn't always lit when on Low.   I increased the minimum fan speed from 1450 to 1750 and increased the minimum fuel pump Hz from 1.4 to 1.5, so now it burns completely cleanly.   A lot of the folk on the Facebook CDH Troubleshooting forum use altitude compensating charts that reduce the fuel by 4% per 1000' elevation, but if you do that the burn chamber won't ever be hot enough for complete combustion.   (Theoretically, at 25,000' there would be no fuel at all!)   I think that increasing the fan speed is a better solution:  if the air is thinning, then push in more air to compensate, just like turbocharging an engine at altitude.   I argued this point with one of the moderators there, but to no avail.   Diesel air heaters are like furnaces and diesel engines and jet engines  -  they aren't stoichiometric, and any unused oxygen just goes out the exhaust, so I prefer to run my heaters with more air than is needed.   Keeping at least 120C burn chamber temperature is critical, otherwise soot will accumulate inside it, and that's adjusted by the fuel pump's Hz.   I don't care if my tweaking "follows the rules" or not:  my heater burns clean, with no measurable CO according to my CO alarm, and the burn chamber's minimum temperature is 131C.   If I'm ever higher than 4000' I'll probably bump my fan speed up some more, but I have no intention of reducing fuel Hz.

John 

[Van]

I don't think you need to worry about compensating for reduced air at only 500' elevation!

Here's a useful video explaining how to access the Advanced Settings code 1688:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pnGccNOay4   
When I first ran my heater there was a slight rhythmic pulsing and some barely-visible smoke from the exhaust, and the second red bar wasn't always lit when on Low.   I increased the minimum fan speed from 1450 to 1750 and increased the minimum fuel pump Hz from 1.4 to 1.5, so now it burns completely cleanly.   A lot of the folk on the Facebook CDH Troubleshooting forum use altitude compensating charts that reduce the fuel by 4% per 1000' elevation, but if you do that the burn chamber won't ever be hot enough for complete combustion.   (Theoretically, at 25,000' there would be no fuel at all!)   I think that increasing the fan speed is a better solution:  if the air is thinning, then push in more air to compensate, just like turbocharging an engine at altitude.   I argued this point with one of the moderators there, but to no avail.   Diesel air heaters are like furnaces and diesel engines and jet engines  -  they aren't stoichiometric, and any unused oxygen just goes out the exhaust, so I prefer to run my heaters with more air than is needed.   Keeping at least 120C burn chamber temperature is critical, otherwise soot will accumulate inside it, and that's adjusted by the fuel pump's Hz.   I don't care if my tweaking "follows the rules" or not:  my heater burns clean, with no measurable CO according to my CO alarm, and the burn chamber's minimum temperature is 131C.   If I'm ever higher than 4000' I'll probably bump my fan speed up some more, but I have no intention of reducing fuel Hz.

John

That is interesting about yours coming originally set at 1.4 hz, mine came set at 1.8 and max at 5.5. I've seen the video a few times and haven't gotten into the advance settings yet but will. At the min 1.8 the cumbustion chamber sets at about 140C. I'll have to try the code to check the fan rpm's as it would be nice to speed the fan up a bit. thanx for the info!

[dtcerrato]

Prior to our latest Alaska Road trip we installed two 8kw CDHs.
As Fred mentioned they DO ROCK. We used them so much that we only consumed two 30 lb LP cylinders on the whole 5 month journey! In Tok AK even in the summer - heat is needed on most nights. The two CDHs  burned through 50 gal of diesel inover 3 months. Tok's elevation @ 1760' asl the heaters ran  flawlessly. We swear by them - the only catch 22 now is diesel costs more than propane. Go figure!
Redundancy is your friend.
45kbtu LP, 16kbtu diesel, 3kw 120V

[luvrbus]

What is the true fuel consumption on those heaters, manufactures lie a lot,Aqua/Hot says my unit will burn a 1/2 gal a hr it may do that, but it will burn 6 to 7 gals a day in cold weather that is 30 to 40 bucks a day to run a heating system in a RV.My propane fired boilers in my Primus system in the Eagle would use 1 gal of propane every 12 hours in -20 in WY and Idaho, Aqua/Hot has a propane system now too never saw it yet or spoke with anybody with one     

[dtcerrato]

On average each heater which has each their own "day tank" @ 3+ gal. each were burning less than a gal. a 24 hr day. Whats really unique about the CDH is they don't cycle on and off, they throttle down as target temp is reached. Once they throttle down they burn very little. I think something that's helped conserve fuel is both heaters get their frest air from the heated cabin.

[Iceni John]

What is the true fuel consumption on those heaters, manufactures lie a lot,Aqua/Hot says my unit will burn a 1/2 gal a hr it may do that, but it will burn 6 to 7 gals a day in cold weather that is 30 to 40 bucks a day to run a heating system in a RV.My propane fired boilers in my Primus system in the Eagle would use 1 gal of propane every 12 hours in -20 in WY and Idaho, Aqua/Hot has a propane system now too never saw it yet or spoke with anybody with one   

The 5kW heaters (sometimes advertised as "8kW") have a fuel metering pump that pushes 0.022ml per click to the heater.   If you multiply that rate times the pump's Hertz, times 60 gives you the fuel consumption per minute, times another 60 gives you the fuel consumption per hour.   The smaller 2kW heaters' pumps usually push 0.016ml per click.

My heater on Low (1.5 Hz) all night uses just over a quart of fuel in ten hours, or just under three quarts per 24-hour day.   If the pump's working at twice this speed, i.e. at 3.0 Hz, it will burn twice as much.   Low (1.5 Hz) is plenty warm enough for a bedroom at night, and at 3.0 Hz it's giving out lots of heat.

I think these heaters are a very good value, and they certainly do what they claim.   Most people are getting many years of reliable use from them, and spare parts are available for very reasonable prices.   They may not be perfect, but for the money they're very effective.   Even if you spend ten times or more for a genuine Eberspaecher or Webasto heater, where are they all now made?   (Hint  -  it's not Germany!)   The better-grade CDHs like the VVKB or Lavaner are essentially no different than the German ones, yet still a small fraction of their prices.

To match the heat output of an AquaHot would require several CDHs, but I think they would still be using less fuel than an AquaHot.     

John

[Sebulba]

Hello,

We have 2 5kw units.  We built a platform to put the fridge on and both units are under in the cabinet.  It is directly above the bay that used to house the AC evaporator, so they are plumbed down through the floor into that bay for exhaust and air intake.  I have a 30 gallon plastic barrel in the bay in front of that one for fuel.

We use one unit to heat the back bedroom and bath area, and the other to heat the front of the bus.  With a common cold air return above the heaters in the aforementioned platform. We also have a 20 x 20 washable furnace filter in the cold air return.

For hot air ducting, we used aluminum downspout along the walls.  Then when we added 2 inches of foamboard insulation to the walls it brought the wall out to the same distance as the ducting and the finished wall covered up the ducting with strategically placed vents throughout.

For the front hot air ducts, since we removed the ramp and leveled the floor in front, I could use the same downspout to route the ducting to the passenger side and have ducts there. And of course I ran ducting under the bed in the very back, so there is a vent on each side of the bed and even one in the small toilet room on the passenger side.

As I right this it is 24 degrees outside.  The back unit is on and we are plenty warm.  The front unit is off and in front of the bus it is probably below 60 degrees, but that's fine.

We are very happy with these units.

Hope that offers some useful information

Seb

[luvrbus]

My Aqua/Hot -2 is 65,000 BTU,I understand it takes more to heat water than air,I like the system, but they cost 100 bucks a year ($300 if Llyod does it)  to service just on parts and mine burns clean but uses a lot of fuel IMO lol it uses more than the 1-4 gals a day Aqua/Hot says it does.I do like the on demand hot water though ,when you take showers it never cycles off.My Webasto unit inside the Aqua/Hot is German made fwiw