Diesel hot water/van heating

[Riverlander]

Hi. Second question for the night. Has anyone installed a diesel hot water system with a cabin heater. Was told they are good but quite noisy and use a lot more power to run than a straight diesel cabin heater.
Cheers John

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Would like to know myself have looked at them a couple of times

[Peter and Sandra]

We have a Webasto Thermotop in the Oka which heats the hot water and also heat the camper interior.
It has a coolant circuit just like the main vehicle engine which passes through a coil of pipe inside the hot water tank and then through the small heater cores which need a fan turned on the blow air through them to heat the interior. It does make a bit more noise than the straight air heaters but that can be solved by a better muffler on the exhaust.
I doubt whether it uses much more power than the air heaters as the basic diesel burner is very similar and you still require a fan to force the air through a heat exchanger to provide hot air.
I've installed a few Webasto Airtop's in friends rv's and they work well and are a bit quicker to startup and make less noise than the Thermotop but of course they don't heat the water. There is a but more involved in the combined units with the glycol cooling system, header tank an plumbing to the heaters.

[bagmaker]

Hi John
As Peter mentions, water systems are a bit more complex so it depends on what suits you and your rig
We run a 9kw Chwebasto into a heat exchanger using glycol mix. This exchanger is also heated from the engine when running and allows cab heating through the existing demister or fan-assisted heater cores within the bus (not fitted any yet but the plumbing needs to be considered).
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 62849.html
The heat exchanger has fresh water on its other side and this feeds into our normal electric storage HWS. Although the two thermosyphon it takes too long to heat up the 50 litre storage so a little recirculation pump will be put in line for when the diesel heater is running.
They are pretty quiet, my folks have a 2kw air to air diesel heater that makes the same noises but not as loud as our 9kw unit. A bit of sound engineering will shut it up if required, certainly its not offensive. Power usage is insignificant although any diesel heater draws a bit on startup. Fuel usage is also insignifican compared to the comfort gained.

[Riverlander]

As the gas hot water system is very old in the caravan and needs replacing and as I intended to fit a heater as well I thought a diesel unit may do both jobs. Looking through the net I came across this system. Don't know anything about them so I thought I would ask and learn. The business phoned me and he seems very helpful and not at all pushy. Will do a lot more research into this and other brands.http://www.dieselheat.com.au/genesis-di ... in-heater/
Thanks John

[bagmaker]

Thats about the same system as we run.......
You could buy it for that price or make it up for a saving, the fellow has a good name on the net forums though.