Diesel Heater Advice

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by DefinitelyMe

) the fuel pump is mounted closer to the heater than the tank. .

Ok I would be willing to bet the problem is your pump mounting .
The pump should be as close to the tank as practical and at an approximate 45° up bubble.
( pumping a bit uphill)

[DefinitelyMe]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

I can totally understand that it would be. If it is a situation where you think the unit is a write off, tear it down to the bones and see if there is anything you can see and fix. Or choose a different vendor and buy a new unit. Amazon prime will have it there is a couple days and you and your family units can be toasty warm. As far as finding a torch, a lot of welding shops, mechanics, and plumbers will have different torch options so you might be able to get someone to help cook your unit.

- AT

If I was in the US yes, but by the time it gets here it'll be at least a couple of weeks, and after duty and shipping the landed cost of the last one was triple the actual price on Amazon. On the plus side it's not anywhere the temperature that you guys get down to. It's about 15 degrees Celsius, which is cold for us. We aren't really comfortable until it gets up above 24. :-)

[DefinitelyMe]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Ok I would be willing to bet the problem is your pump mounting .
The pump should be as close to the tank as practical and at an approximate 45° up bubble.
( pumping a bit uphill)

Possibly, but the pump, although 4 or 5 feet away from the tank, is actually about 4" below the top of the tank so it doesn't have to pull at all. If I pull the hose off the pump diesel runs freely out of the end by syphon. I positioned it so that it only has to squirt the diesel up about 5" to the level of the burner, maximising the injection velocity, which is something that the Aussie guy talked about as being important (although he achieves it by minimising hose expansion and bore size).

Still, you've given me something more to try.

In the meantime I did actually 'cheat' it into running, but had to shut it down again to seal up the exhaust. I mentioned earlier that the burner lights but then the fuel pump stops and the flame eventually goes out from lack of fuel. Well, by setting the minimum pulse rate to be super-high (2.8Hz) I was able to get it to basically pump excess fuel into the chamber. When the pump stopped there was enough residual fuel to keep the flame alive through the next startup cycle, so that when the pump started again (after the glow plug sequence) it was already lit. I'm going to try it again this evening, once the exhaust sealant has cured, and if it works I will leave the damned thing running until the weather gets warmer or it dies completely. Not exactly proper practice, but.........

[laird]

If it's one of the Chinese heaters ,there have been problems with air getting into the fuel line a lot of the guys on the fb group change the fuel line to a more robust type

[Windpilot]

Also my Chinese heater came with some detailed requirements for fuel line length and pump position as well as correct connections. My pump is below the fuel tank and it's a pretty long length with correct elevations throughout.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by laird

If it's one of the Chinese heaters ,there have been problems with air getting into the fuel line a lot of the guys on the fb group change the fuel line to a more robust type

Perhaps they should actually do a proper instalation of the fuel lines.
99% of all issues are due to improper installation.

[Atcowboy]

I found a fuel line kit on Amazon that made the fuel line part easy, no need to source individual parts.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08P4...b_b_asin_title

My fuel filter also drew an enormous amount of air in operation. It was two pieces and I could not get it to seal. This one piece seam welded unit worked the treat.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B013S...b_b_asin_title

My runs are quite short. The dedicated tank is about 3 feet away, 1-2' rise. As I suspected, once there are NO air leaks in the system, there are NO bubbles. Zero. None. So while the Aussie clearly showed the heaters could run with bubbles in the line, if all leaks are eliminated then there will be none. I can only surmise that some of the pumps have a small air leak in them that doesn't compromise performance but does introduce air into the line.

-AT

[Three Sisters]

This photo is the controller that was packaged with our diesel heater. To start it the on-off button is pushed until the status light lights up. If we hold the on-off button down beyond this point, the heater will cycle with the pump starting and then it shuts off, holding down the on-off button too long also causes the status light to blink. So we just cut the power if the status light starts blinking during start-up. Power it up again, push the on-off button and let it go immediately when the staus light lights. The only other buttons we've used are the up/down arrows that range from about two to five and a half(turbo mode). It is set at five and stays there while running or it is shut off. This setting is because of what we read about multiple service calls on one of the more expensive units and the advice was to just run it on high to lessen sooting.


Our day tank is an old re-purposed 6 gallon outboard motor tank.


The power for the heater is supplied by a 1U computer power supply on the 12 volt leg. This 12v leg also powers a fuel pump with water seperator filter to refill the day tank.


But the starting and shortly thereafter shutting off of your heater is the same that we experienced with this controller.


Maybe our long winded reply will help.


Oh...The hours that I've spent reading up on these heaters before purchase has never revealed an exhaust length beyond six feet. This must be something new.

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by Three Sisters

Oh...The hours that I've spent reading up on these heaters before purchase has never revealed an exhaust length beyond six feet. This must be something new.

No, not new. These are truck heaters and are only designed and built with a fan powerful enough for a short exhaust. In a road vehicle that is all that is needed.

Units designed for boats are capable of longer exhausts typically.

A truck type unit will very often not work well with a longer exhaust.

On a sailboat though it is not usually a real problem. Just install the heater aft so the exhaust run to the transom is short.

[Three Sisters]

mitiempo, very good to know

[DefinitelyMe]

Interesting. I got it started and ran it for about a week straight as I didn't trust it to start again if I stopped it. I changed the fuel to a 50:50 mix of diesel and kerosene to try to cut down on sooting while maintaining lubricity. Eventually it developed a fault and shut itself down. I opened it up again and found it completely sooted up. The exhaust port was probably 60% blocked. Cleaned it out by blasting it liberally with carb cleaner, re-assembled and it started up again. I increased minimum fan speed and decreased minimum pump speed to try to get a leaner burn. One day later I shut it down and no re-start.

Exhaust run is only 1m, with 270D total bends.

I'm currently in Covid lockdown, not allowed to leave the boat except on Mondays and Thursdays to buy groceries, but I hope to get to the UK in the next month or two. I'll buy a whole new unit as well as a better fuel filter and some of the skinny hard fuel hose. I'll also get a smaller tank to be right by the heater and set up a fuel transfer from the bigger tank through a water-separating filter as described above.

By the time that's done it'll be ready for next winter, I hope.

Any more suggestions for how I could improve the setup?

[Atcowboy]

Have you been able to clean the atomizing screen?

I also wonder if your current location has "diesel" and "kerosene". I've read about trouble finding the fuel oils we expect (or more specifically what the design engineer expected) while traveling, it's a long shot but maybe this is a contributing factor? Maybe there's a fellow cruiser nearby that will sell you some "USA" diesel you can test?

I haven't really read anyone having trouble with any of the types of thermostats, but this is the one that came with my unit and it's working well.



- AT

[Cpt Mark]

You need to use the supplied plastic fuel line. Rubber fuel line will not work correctly with these pulse fuel pumps.

Mine keeps shutting off again if the pulse rate is too low. Looking at the fuel line instead of a bunch of tiny bubbles which are no big deal and normal, I have large air bubbles and when the unit shuts off instead of having a fuel line full of fuel I have nada. Fuel pump is bad. Have a new one to install. As far as sooting goes. When I turn mine off I run it at Max pulse rate which I increased from the preset specs. Watch UK Preppers on how to access these programs. I'll run it like for 30 minutes and no longer have sooting issues. You can also do it on shut down if you like and when I run it 24 hours a day, I just increase the pulse rate once a day for 30 minutes to burn all that stuff out.

[DefinitelyMe]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

Have you been able to clean the atomizing screen?

I also wonder if your current location has "diesel" and "kerosene". I've read about trouble finding the fuel oils we expect (or more specifically what the design engineer expected) while traveling, it's a long shot but maybe this is a contributing factor? Maybe there's a fellow cruiser nearby that will sell you some "USA" diesel you can test?

I haven't really read anyone having trouble with any of the types of thermostats, but this is the one that came with my unit and it's working well.



- AT

The startup atomizing screen yes. The main atomizing screen is trickier because it's inside the burner which is welded together, but yes. I blasted enough carb cleaner into there to blow out a lot of carbon and it made enough of a difference that it would light up again on the next start. Once.

Yes we have diesel and kerosene. The diesel isn't great quality here but it's not terrible either. Could be a contributing factor though.

Yes I have the same controller. It seems to do what it's supposed to so I don't think the problem is there.

Does anyone know if there's a way to identify the fuel pump? I wonder if my 2Kw unit has actually got the pump for a 5Kw unit and that's why it soots up despite my best efforts.

[hpeer]

I don’t think this will be much help but perhaps worth passing along.

One year we had trouble finding kerosene in Florida. For our Taylors cooker. We found a Walmart that had it so we bought some jugs. Good storage size, very convenient. We did not need it right away, when the tank got a little low we put some in. Latter we put in more. You get the picture, the concentration of the new kero went up over some time.

We started having w with our stove. Kero was perfect from the tank, to the stove, but was brown in the line to the burner. The burner itself would build up little volcano piles of soot or gunk around the jet which would eventually mess with the flame.

Dumped out all that hood Walmart kero and got some from a gas station and haven't had a lick of trouble since. I have heard of others with the same problem but it is rare. Probably most kero is not burned or burned in wick type devices. But for us this was junk.

No clue why the kero was problematic but it surely was. Kero is a lot like diesel. Maybe, just maybe, you got some klunker diesel?

Good luck.