Making my ProHeat more Efficient

[captain ron]

My ProHeat works great, the bus stays toasty and my showers are nice and hot. But at 3 gallons plus a day it is not very cheap to run when full timing. I would like to get it to be more efficient to the tune of 1 1/2 gallons a day. I turn it off completely when the temps are above 45 degrees during the day but my dog has to stay covered up and that's not really a good way to treat my best friend. I would like to make a heat exchanger for the exhaust to help keep the costs down. I'm sure the heat is too intense to cycle that water through the PH but wonder if there is a way to harness that energy and deliver it to the PH before it has to cycle again cutting the cycles in half? Maybe another separate loop with a flat plate heat exchanger to keep the water in the other loop hot for a longer period of time. A few things I need to know is how hot can I keep water safely in a closed loop or a loop open to atmosphere? Is there a way to control the exchange like using Aquastats and zone valves? Am I crazy? Wow my bus burns 100 gallons a month and doesn't move.

[Ncbob]

Oh Ron, you poor baby. My heart pump pure purple .... for you.  What you really need to do is to harness some of that hot air you've directed at some of us and stay comfortable!  Hehehe, you know I'm kidding....like always......

How about a good old wood burning stove? I know a place up in NC where you could cut, buck and split all the firewood you'd need for the whole winter....problem is that you'd have to go there before the snow flies.....hehehe

Have a Merry Christmas, m'friend, and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Jackie & Bob

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Ron,

Tomorrow will be 2 weeks since my trip to Cabella in Hamberg, PA when I topped off my tank on the way home.

Today I drove to my favorite filling station and topped off again. Pump said 18.3 gallons. [then I washed the bus... so it was 45 deg. out today]

Ok, now thats 13 days, 18.3 gallons, and My bus stays at 72 deg.'s all the time!  Don't forget, I'm about 30 miles further north then you..

The one thing I'm at a disadvantage with is that I don't live in my bus.. But everything else is electric anyway..

Maybe you need someone to do an efficency test on your system.??

Nick-

[prevost82]

I have a electric heating element in my Hydro-Hot (110V) it's good until 32F then I turn the diesel on. Is there any where you can add a 4 gal HWT with a elec element to the system.
Ron

[JackConrad]

Charley,
    Not sure if this is important or not, but what is the GPM of the coolant pump you installed in your system to replace the ProHeat coolant pump?  My ProHeat coolant pump is rated at 8 GPM @ 4.9' head.
    My Proheat pump also was not working. I installed a 12 volt magnetic drive coolant pump I had in my shop that is only about 4 GPM. I have not needed the ProHeat yet and have only ran it for testing purposes. End of exhaust pipe was about 300 degrees, but not sure how to save this heat.
    I did find a ProHeat distributor that had the coolant pump rebuild kit ($98).  I will rebuild the ProHeat pump  when the kit arrives (probably after our rally).  I will let you know if the flow rate makes any difference.   Jack

[captain ron]

Nick, How do you do an efficiency test?

[NewbeeMC9]

If you have it mounted High enough,  an idea would be build a tank full of tubes and run the exhaust thru it (a  heat exchanger), make sure the tubes point down so you let the condensation out,  circulate your antifreeze on the outside of the tubes.  If you have the hydro side of this tank right before the proheat it will sense the temp and cycle the burner.  Make sure the tubes are big enough and plentiful enough to not cause too much backpressure on the gas side. 


just a thought

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hay Ron,

It's not too hard... First, we would gather all your parimaters like, sq ft, insulation value, window exposure, heat gain and loss,

calculate that to find how many btu's you will need to maintain 70 deg. at 10 deg. out door ambiant temp. Then we can actually

tell you what is needed to heat your bus.

Or, we can simply do an effecincy test on your ProHeat to see what btu's the thing is actually putting out. Maybe you are running rich

and don't know it. Maybe you are loosing lot's of btu's somewhere like, your lines or your storage tank, etc.

Maybe even like Jack has said, the pump maybe putting out less then 8gpm.  Don't know until I get my eyes on the set-up.

Nick-

[JohnEd]

Charlie,

I had a propane furnace that didn't put out much heat.  The flame seemed to roar loudly to me and i compared it to others.  Sighting through the window I could see that a lot of the flame was mostly out and the rest was standing way above the burner.  My exhaust was not all that hot.  I restricted the air flow and the flame character improved but I only got a little more heat.  Now, i did have enough heat but it was slow to warm the coach when starting flat footed from cold.  I removed and replaced the main jet and learned that it was smaller than called for.  New jet and opened up the air flow and "Holy Crap" did that puppy put out the heat.  50,000 BTU!  Holy crap was that exhaust HOT!  I know that it couldn't have been as efficient as when it was sippin propane.  Cut back on the jet size and let the heat stay in the boiler a little longer with less air flow and it will be more efficient.  Nice if it had two or three "modes" of operation with fuel flow and air flow being altered in a preset.....  You are sure spending a lot of money for heating.  I think you have a problem with that.

$300/month for heat while in a Park?  Holy bat crap Batman.

My thoughts,

John

[donnreeves]

Charlie,
Mine uses about 1 gallon per day, give or take depending on outside temp and thermostat setting. You are definitly useing too much fuel. With all the talk latley of surge tanks, I decided to add a 5 gal tank to my system and it added almost 4 minutes of burn time an hour. I took it back out and am back to around 10 min/hr thermostat at 70 os temp 29. The only problem I have is that the PH has to cycle twice to satisfy the thermostat. That would seem to indicate I need more heat transfer. However it is very comfy the way it is. If I were to add another kick heater it might raise the temp too fast and it would produce a cold hot cycle like the old hot air systems used to have. I will probably add another kick anyway and leave the fan off unless it's rally cold.
Donn

[JackConrad]

Ron,
  Do you have the ProHeat Trouble shooting guide?  Here is a link to a website with all the ProHeat X45 manuals. http://www.teleflexpower.com/s_truck_pro.php#x45
   When I first fired up mine and got a coolant flow error LED, I checked the manual (turned out to be a bad pump) but one of possibilities in the manual was less than 3 gallon of fluid in the system. Our system had about 2 1/4 gallon.  We added a tank that I got from Jerry Leibler. This increased our capacity to 5 1/4 gallon.  I won't know the final outcome until I receive and install the coolant pump rebuild kit.  We also installed individual switches on each fan, in addition to the aquastat that is a master switch for all the fans.
    If you are pumping the fluid too fast (more than 8 GPM), maybe the water is not in the boiler long enough to absorb the heat, causing the boiler to run more in an attempt to get the water to 180 degrees. What is the GPM rating of the coolant pump you installed? 
    Can you hear the boiler when it kicks on? How many minutes per hour is the boiler running?  If the boiler run time is similar to the other post, you probably have a fuel problem.  If your boiler is running much longer than the others, you probably have a heat transfer problem.  Hope this helps, Jack

[makemineatwostroke]

Ron, i have a Hurricane unit in my bus the same as the proheat xl45 we spent 3 days at Flagstaff with the 3 grandkids and we used 3.8 gals of fuel every 24 hrs for hot water, heat and with the engine heat loop on. My manual says it uses .46 gal per hr . I had a Aqua Hot in my last bus it also used about the same amount of fuel ,as Aqua Hot will tell you it will use 1-3 gal per day.The more heat exchangers and base board heat the more fuel you will use just my way of thinking FWIW

[captain ron]

When Ross returns from New Hampshire for Christmas with his family we are going to build a stainless steel air to water heat exchanger for my proheat exhaust and tie it into the PH loop. I have fears that the water may be too hot to go directly into the PH loop. How hot of water can be safely contained the way we have our PH systems set up? I have not checked for myself but was told the PH exhaust is about 600 degrees. How much of that temp will actually transfer to the water circulating in my heating system? I am hoping to make the proheat cycle less and hope to consume 1/2 to 2 thirds less fuel with this new setup.

[NewbeeMC9]

Charley,

Just a thought, put the tank inline right before the proheat on the fluid side and it will cut off flame at 185 degrees water temp(i think that is the set point)


another way would be to run the exhaust through vw beetle exhaust heat exchangers and circulation fan the air back into the bus.  That would be kinda instant heat too.
http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/Product/tf-Browse/s-10101/Pr-p_Product.CATENTRY_ID:2002914/showCustom-0/p-2002914/N-111+10201+600002305/c-10101

the same would work for genny exaust.

my old vw heat would burn you if you weren't careful

you could cicrulate the hot air into the bays and heat up all that thermal mass and help keep the bus warmer.  you can circulate the hot air around the tank tha youve already built to help keep it warm.

take pics and give feedback so i can do mine too

[gmbusguy1]

Guys, I just checked my exhaust temp with the proheat running and it was 252 degrees

chris