Diesel Heater

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Winterrider

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Sep 29, 2018
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North Dakota
Anyone have any experience with these type of heaters ? Good, bad, or ugly ? Thinking of purchasing for using in my shop (unheated), when doing small little projects. Big Nipco heater is noisy as heck but could have little unit blowing at me . Also using to thaw out rider snowblower this winter so don't have to bring up to the heated garage.
 
Haven’t used that style cute little guy biggest problem I’ve had with diesel is the smell, but that has been the jet engine style. Not sure the size of the shop or insulation but at 8 kw thats a little over 27k btu if I did the maths right
 
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Son has a diesel fired heater on order that has a exhaust pipe, will try to post details back when he gets it in and I help install.
 
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1 review I read on Amazon is that he tested and it ran for 36 hrs on a tank (5 L )of fuel. That's pretty efficient.
Edit: that was low setting.
 
Bluetooth/smart app controlled heater...not a chance I'd even deal with that especially if you needed it in an emergency.
 
I use those torpedo heaters have them from 50 to 150000 btu.. Since kerosene went stupid I run them on diesel. Keep them tuned and they run clean.
Just don't let them run out off fuel. One burp and it'll smoke you out before you can turn it off. LoL
 
Bluetooth/smart app controlled heater...not a chance I'd even deal with that especially if you needed it in an emergency
I have an electric one in the workshop downstairs . You can turn it on at the heater itself , but sure is nice to turn it on an hour or so before I go down there in the winter .
 
I have a torpedo type like JimSmokes. No smell on kerosene but I also run diesel. It's a small one like 75000 btu have a thermostat on the 110v cord works great but it's loud. Just run it to get shop up to 50F unless I'm painting. Ditto on the cloud of smoke if it runs out of fuel.

RG
 
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No experience with that model or any of the air warmers.
I have an Espar coolant heater for my Dodge/Cummins. IIRC it consumed about a liter / hr.
Plan to us #1 diesel and lots of apple juice (Howe's). The small fuel lines wax (gel) easily. If you can source 100% diesel (no soybean juice) better yet.
Note they are not odorless if you're thinking to not vent the exhaust outside.
I don't think you can run any longer exhaust vent than what comes in the box, either.

I have an LP torpedo heater from Menards. Not as noisy as a Knipco (have one of those, too) but it thaws things off pretty quick.
 
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Yep, I know they need to be vented . Got 150,000 torpedo that I run off #1 diesel but is so damn noisy.
Bluetooth/smart app controlled heater...not a chance I'd even deal with that especially if you needed it in an emergency.
It does have its own control panel also.
 
I have a torpedo type like JimSmokes. No smell on kerosene but I also run diesel. It's a small one like 75000 btu have a thermostat on the 110v cord works great but it's loud. Just run it to get shop up to 50F unless I'm painting. Ditto on the cloud of smoke if it runs out of fuel.

RG
Use to freak some people out me spraying lacquer primer and watching the heater sucking fumes in and spraying out. LoL
 
No experience with that unit, but I heat my shop/barn kitchen with a 132,000 BTU fire breathing dragon I run on diesel.

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No input , but when I worked as a mechanic , the furnace in the garage ran off drain oil .
Make ya sick .
Waste oil heater many use to get rid of the oil they have drained doing oil changes.
 
Personally I use the loud kerosene bullet heater to heat up the garage then a very quiet convection heater to keep it warm. In very curious how the diesel one will work.
 
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Have you thought about a small pellet heater?
Was just thinkIng of a small heat source to move around in the shop to area where I was working to blow a little heat without all the noise from torpedo. 36x60 uninsulated so not trying to heat the whole thing. 150,000 Btu won't even do that.
 
They're taking the van life and RVs by storm. They work well and are reliable and economic. They go tick, tick,tick,tick and it's annoying. You either get used to it or you replace the fuel pump with a quiet one. Don't burn used oil or kitchen oil in them as it builds up a lot of carbon and renders the heater useless. I use the vevor brand and recommend the quiet kit on Amazon. Be careful when you install it.then you'll forget it's there. The biggest problem with mine is it generates too much heat even on low.
 
Was just thinkIng of a small heat source to move around in the shop to area where I was working to blow a little heat without all the noise from torpedo. 36x60 uninsulated so not trying to heat the whole thing. 150,000 Btu won't even do that.
Yeah, it's all my 132,000 BTU torpedo wants to heat my shop/kitchen when it gets really cold. I'm only heating an uninsulated space of, give or take, a 12x40 foot with a 10 foot ceiling. It does heat it well enough that it gets too hot in here if it were run full time.

Mine does have a thermostat, but at one setting it ain't quite warm enough, and the next is too hot. I have a switched outlet I manually control it from.
 
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