Skotl's diesel heater garage install thread

[Newlands]

It is £55.25 whatever happened to cheap bunker oil?

Fuel Box Red Diesel 20 Litres

Red Diesel FuelBox is a U.N approved pre-filled 20 litres bag-in-box fuelling system.

www.travisperkins.co.uk

£55??? I definitely didn’t pay that much for it at the time, more like £20. I’ve still got a few litres left in the box, have to lock it up now. Like @addjunkie says, cheaper to buy white for us mere mortals who don’t have access to farm or marine red.

 

[northwest]

Cheaper to just buy white at the garage.

By a considerable margin too!

 

[Kayos]

Red diesel is about to get more expensive and harder to get

In a move to "clean up construction" (not my words) the tax relief on it will be stopped, doesn't affect farms though

However the kit to replace the diesel burning plant either doesn't exist or is prohibitively expensive

Some of my sites now have electric powered plant so instead of 4 or 5 engines running we now have 4 or 5 generators running with leads all over the place......

 

[northwest]

Red diesel is about to get more expensive and harder to get

In a move to "clean up construction" (not my words) the tax relief on it will be stopped, doesn't affect farms though

Yes, pretty soon too, my cousin was down today to see me and at present he is holding 3000 gallons of the stuff, he is also a farmer and not slow on the uptake, you can bet he will have thought it through.

 

[Jan-DIY]

This is what I got today.
Because I got about 2000Liters of diesel (or kerosene don’t know what the heating stuff called in English) and using nearly nothing I will feed it into this unit. I change over to woodchips for my prison..

Exited to feel the difference in my garage but as usual it will generally took some months to install such things. But maybe….

 

[gaz1]

Red diesel is about to get more expensive and harder to get

In a move to "clean up construction" (not my words) the tax relief on it will be stopped, doesn't affect farms though

However the kit to replace the diesel burning plant either doesn't exist or is prohibitively expensive

Some of my sites now have electric powered plant so instead of 4 or 5 engines running we now have 4 or 5 generators running with leads all over the place......

I can see whats going to happen farms are going to be hit hard for stealing red diesel

all for sites and those that still drive with red diesel

 

[skotl]

This is what I got today.
Because I got about 2000Liters of diesel (or kerosene don’t know what the heating stuff called in English) and using nearly nothing I will feed it into this unit. I change over to woodchips for my prison..

Exited to feel the difference in my garage but as usual it will generally took some months to install such things. But maybe….

View attachment 325406

At first I thought you'd mounted it vertically and was going to respond with a "Ummmm.... will that work?".
Then I spotted the shoe

 

[addjunkie]

I can see whats going to happen farms are going to be hit hard for stealing red diesel

all for sites and those that still drive with red diesel

Its already not uncommon, nor is folk getting their heating oil tanks emptied on a dark night!

 

[Newlands]

Got mine installed this afternoon, put a piece of scaffold tube through the wall (thermalite cavity wall, 250mm). As it turned out the hole happened to end up right on a mortar joint, and, just to test my arm muscles out, of course there was a wall tie right in the way - the drill won and my arm lost!
Slightly concerned that the insulation in the cavity is polystyrene, but I’m hoping that the 24mm exhaust floating about in the 50mm scaffold tube is not going to give me problems. Ran the heater up this evening for about 15 minutes and it seems alright.

 

[tom2207]

I‘ve got mine running. Still bits to sort out, but content that it does what it says - even if the heat output is not as claimed in the advertising hype.

But if the air recirculates and gets hotter every time it goes round , you may be surprised at how well it works ,,, unless all the heat leaks out of course

 

[Jan-DIY]

It is running.
Need to call the big boy to hammer these wall.

 

[skotl]

Stage 3. Having moved the fuel tank I've fitted a tap and also given the fuel line some protection as it crosses the back wall, as I normally stand medium-lengths of wood and metal against that wall.

^^^ going to put some rubber sealant in there to centre the fuel line so it's not touching the edge of the pipe.


...or disconnect from the tap and fit the rubber grommet I forgot to fit at that end... VVV

 

[blackolive (Ste)]

I'm looking at putting underfloor heating in my yet to be built small workshop, I'm thinking of using a Webasto Thermo Top V, mounted outside in it's own enclosure. I can tweak the temperature parameters with the Webasto software, so the output drops to the 2.5kW output with an external input from a thermostat, has anyone any experience of running these for hours on end? typically they only operate in vehicles for up to 60 minutes.

Dont know if anyone replied but they run for 30 minutes then shut down. Id sold one to a boatyard chap and when I delivered it we had a good natter about them . I asked him how they get around this issue on the bosts and he said they use either the webasto timer or the 7day chinese timers (link below) and set a number of on/off periods per day

Pardon our interruption...

 

[Ubique]

Cheers for that, you can programme the timer for a max. of 60 mins. or use a 'K bus' controller which is how they are controlled on the vehicle, which has no max, run time.

 

[blackolive (Ste)]

Cheers for that, you can programme the timer for a max. of 60 mins. or use a 'K bus' controller which is how they are controlled on the vehicle, which has no max, run time.

Ah right, every day is a school day

 

[Ubique]

Ah right, every day is a school day

TBH, if they're fitting them on boats, I would've thought they would know that. You can get Webasto standalone ones but I plan to use a microPC with a pair of USB thermistors and the Webasto software to make it think it's fitted to a vehicle and run as required, I may well add a remote interface for a pre-heat - but only because i have a 'spare' kit kicking around .
The PC will be able to do 'normal' stuff as well so it won't be wasted just running a heater!

 

[m_c]

I note both yourself and m_c speak of thermistors for temperature control. I would expect these transducers to be thermocouples, not thermistors, but have not checked myself. Are you confident they are thermistors?

Why would you use a sensor that covers a relatively huge temperature range and have to base readings on millivolt differences for the useable range you need, when you can use a sensor that provides several k-ohm variation over the range you need?

 

[Newlands]

I‘ve run mine for about four hours total so far over the last week or so. A bit of a whiff of diesel this morning, so I took the cover off to find that fuel had been leaking out of the tank supply fitting. Emptied the tank and mopped up the mess and discovered the fitting was hardly even hand tight.
While I had the cover off I re-routed the fuel line and fitted a grommet where it passes through a razor sharp hole in the tin work. Refitted the cover to find that half the self-tappers had been overtightened and had stripped their threads.
These things really are built down to a price.

 

[Nomad]

I fitted one of these diesel heaters for a friend a couple of months to heat the kitchen of their stone built cottage just above Yorkshire (lovely place but cold and bleak in winter), it's installed in the back porch and ducting takes the heated air into the house.

Message from her today "It's a game changer - has been running almost continuous for 2 months, used very little fuel, the kitchen is now the heart of the house and the pets are a lot happier". Impressive results for something costing under £100

 

[Newlands]

And a quick update - after fitting the cover I connected up the power supply, or tried to, as the negative terminal fell apart - more fixings that were only hand tight. Cover off yet again, and I now have to find some decent self-tappers as all but two have stripped now. But at least it doesn’t leak diesel anymore. I’m tempted to change the power supply cables, as the ones supplied look a bit thin to me.