Cool experiment! A scavenged baseboard heater or an old radiator and fan may give good results. FWIW, I have my 8KW Vevor heater exhaust plumbed into my wood stove fresh air supply on the bottom of the woodstove. The wood stove transfers a lot of heat from the diesel heater exhaust. At #3 heater setting the Vevor will warm all the steel and fir brick up nicely.
Nice experiment. Since I do have two heaters and one not being used at the moment I thought I’d play with them and do something similar. What I did different because I didn’t have much space I placed the two heaters side by side and have the house air pre heated before it goes through the actual heater and back into the house. I do not have a fuel pump connected and set the temperature sensor on the exhaust, once the sensor detects a certain temperature the fan comes on. It did increase the final output temperature into the house but once I get the final ducting and insulation I think it will be closer to your numbers. This was the easiest way for me to recover some of the lost heat out of the exhaust. Thanks for your continued experiments.
I'm not sure I know what you mean, but what I'm picturing is ... the heater that is being used as an exchanger is connected to duct work on the inlet side. The inlet air passes through the first exchanger heater before entering the inlet of the actual heater. What are you using to power the fan on your exchanger, the original ECU ? I'm asking as most won't operate if the pump is disconnected. Or perhaps the fan comes on regardless when the ECU detects the heat ? I'm curious. Thanks for sharing your comment / set up ! I love how everyone has a slightly different take on the same ideas, depending on what they have to work with and their particular situation.
@@loweredexpectations4927 yes, exactly correct with both statements. My guess is the ECU detects the heat and turns on the fan to protect itself. Both ECUs are connected to the same battery and I have a 2 amp charger on the battery.
@@helihead11 You know what ... I feel really silly for not remembering this... Any time you turn the heater on, and it's hot, it will turn the fan on till it cools off, and then try to restart.... so if it stays hot the fan stays on ... Cool, good to know, haha.
Well consider my try a fail. For about two hours I got good extra heat then it started to drop and about two hours later it really started dropping. Now with everything back to original configuration I’m about 35c below the temps I was getting before experimenting. I’m hoping I won’t need to disassemble and clean.
@@helihead11 Uh oh... That sucks.... I'm sure it sooted up in the chamber. Despite what people say, I have found that the chamber runs hotter at the mid setting or just below the top setting.... the extra air flow cools off the burn chamber. The exchanger temp will show lower, on the mid setting, but the chamber itself is slightly hotter. If you run it this way for several hours, it may clean itself out.
Great idea with the heat exchanger ☺️, but keep in mind that there will be water in the exhaust, water condenses when the air get cold enough. That might block the airflow if water can't drain out😅
Yes, this is true. I was considering drilling a little weep hole, but it seemed to take care of itself pretty efficiently. I would like to do another test to see how long it would take, with the heat exchanger standing on end, for it to totally fill up and block the exhaust path. Just of for fun. I'm thinking it would do it pretty quickly.
The condensate is also acidic with a ph around 3 (similar to lemon juice) which is why I won’t be trying to squeeze out that last bit of efficiency. Fantastic channel, keep up the great work. 👍
@@greglastname7039 Thanks for your comment ! I have heard this about condensates ... and remember when installing my furnace that they have the condensate routed so that it doesn't end up back in the exchanger. I am curious however, how much this would actually harm and aluminum exchanger over say, a few years. It may be catastrophic, but I'm not sure that ph3 would be enough to eat away at the oxide on the aluminum ... I mean... I suppose a google search would probably tell me, haha. Thanks again!
Great video, as usual, man! Sometimes I don’t have questions, but still want to leave a comment of encouragement….so yeah….sorry, no questions, just a quick comment. 😊
@@loweredexpectations4927 hoping to help the Pythagorean theorem, or quadratic formula, or RUclips algorithm….or whatever. Lol! I figure if I’m ever in Canada, and run into you, maybe you’ll share some maple syrup! 😜😁
@@ryanzanow8221 This was a stark reminder .... that I really need to keep an eye on my maple syrup inventory. I hadn't considered the possibility of American visitors !
I use an EGR cooler from a volvo/Ford part number 993062H. Have that attached to the diesel heater exhaust exiting my garage at a slight downward angle. I've attached a PC watercooling pump and a 16cm by 16cm Rad with a fan to get the heat into the room. The Radiator surface temp sits about 28-31 with the heater on max which is a good delta when the garage is about 10 to 13c. I've only just got this setup so i will prob try adding a more powerful fan and see how much more heat i can extract from the exhaust.
Ok, so I don't know if this has been commented already, but what I've wanted to do with my heater is run the exhaust through something like a heat exchanger for a swimming pool, and attach the "wet" side of the exchanger to a closed loop that's hooked up to an old cast iron radiator - or a car radiator, haha. It's on my todo list, but my garage has gotten so overrun with similar type projects that I can't get to it right away. If you're feeling like you need some of that kind of content, feel free to take my idea and run with it.
Hey Joel. Thanks for the shoutout my friend, totally made my Sunday!. It was great to see you trying another crazy experiment. It definitely answered a lot of my questions. I definitley owe you a bag of Doritos. Cheers.
Not sure what practicle purpose the test in the video would serve, but interesting test non-the-less! That said, if you get time and are looking for additional diesel heater content, I would love to see if the diesel heater could be turned into a makeshift "engine coolant heater" by blowing hot air from the diesel heater "through" an aftermarket vehicle heater core, with the heater core plumbed to a 12V coolant circulation pump and circulating into (and out of) a bucket filled with water, as proof of concept.
Thanks for the comment ! If I'm not mistaken, this may actually be how these heaters started life. You can buy coolant / water heaters like this, and I have heard many sories from old fellas whose job it was to maintain these units on old fleet vehicles, school busses, deliver trucks etc. You can get these units on Aliexpress for a few hundred dollars or the real deals for thousands. While the air to water could work, it is not nearly as efficient as having the water in contact with the exchanger. I have been considering a heater that was mostly submerged in water / coolant as a project. So many idea, so little time and money, haha.
The best system for scavenging exhaust heat is to use 1" CSST direct burial gas tubing. I use about 10' with an aluminum downspout for an outer shielding to create the draft removing 80/90% of the heat. I can hold my hand on the exit point of the pipe. 1" ID corrugated stainless steel tubing excepts the 1" OD exhaust pipe great with red rtv only. I also have an alum. external ATF transmission cooler I want to try some day. Keep up all you do.
I had a look and that stuff isn't' cheap. I'm sure I can buy 10 or 15 feet of it somewhere locally but all I could find with a quick search was 100 foot rolls, haha. I have used that before in smaller sizes ... pretty cool stuff. I can see why it would work well. I have just received about 16 feet of stainless exhaust haha... I have some tests planned.
You comment about using it as EGR and EGR does not vent the exhaust straight in. It also pulls in fresh air with it so basically what you needed to do is put a T in the intake line of the 5K W from the 2KW so the 2KW can still exhaust normally but yet when it starts pulling an intake is pulling the exhaust and fresh air together
I believe my comment was misunderstood. What I was referring to was using a EGR cooler as a makeshift heat exchanger. It would not be used to recirculate exhaust gasses, but to pull heat energy from the exhaust 👍
I am considering trying this... Funny... I was skeptical as to weather this would work well for these heaters... the last comment that I responded to was me saying I didn't think it was ideal for this type of heat source. Now I really have to test it to see how well I can get it to work. My thoughts were that it doesn't absorb heat quickly and the surface area around the pipe would not allow for quick enough heat absorption. I guess a 3m pipe is plenty of surface area ... oh... and it just clicked that that's 90 KG and not pounds ...! Edit: I have been told by someone that just a long pipe on its own is a great radiator, so I guess 🤷♂️
In the future I have plans for a solar heat collector and a thermal battery to store heat for night time release. I have a small cabin and would like to heat the crawl space and in turn have it act like radiant floor heat
@@tilly8297 Yes... so it all depends what you are looking for. My garage floor heating is the perfect example of this. I also need a Mr Heater hanging heater unit, despite having 200,000 BTU of floor heating. The floor heating is great to maintain a temp above freezing, but responds very slowly to input. If I want it to be warm, I have to know hours in advance, or the day before, and it isn't cost effective to just keep it 19C (66F) in my garage all the time. It is very easy to be wasteful with floor heating as turning the floor heat on for an hour or two basically does nothing. If I turn the heat on and then realize I have other things to do, I will never see that heat. The Mr Heater, air heater on the other hand, altho it is "only" 80,000 btu, even on a really cold day, my garage is toasty warm in 10 minutes. If I have the floor heat up to 19C (66F) and it has actually reached 19C .... it takes several hours for my garage to cool off 4-6 hours sometimes, where it gets cool fairly quickly once the Mr Heater is turned off.
@@tilly8297 Air solar or water solar ? Some time ago, when I had time to be bored, I spent a lot of time watching videos about both. Some people have very cool setups.
Cool idea. I'm experimenting with my heater . I've built an enclosed stand that mine sees on top of. The exhaust is coiled in the stand with a six foot pipe that exits out the bottom an through the wall. Plans are to run the fresh air out (hot) back through the stand and out the other side. If nothing I'll have a really nice oven.
I like this idea. Well done. If I ever get around to making a permanent set up, I think I would do something like this. I just received 16 feet of stainless exhaust and I am going to do some testing to find out for sure how much is too much, haha... then people can use this info to decide how much they want to coil up inside their heated space before venting outside.
Best idea ive had was a scrap hot water baseboard on the exhaust. Just recently, i saw a guy who tried that and had good results. I still havent found a baseboard unit at low cost.
Yeah...I have been considering this for a while and have found a few hydronic radiators on amazon but they are about $240 for one that would capture all the heat. I just can't justify the cost. Used to be able to get the old cast ones pretty cheap, but now they are sold as collectibles. I see a few on the east coast for a reasonable price.
I reclaimed alot of the exhaust heat on mine but didn't measure the exhaust temp. I ran the exhaust pipe through about a 1.5in diameter steel pipe and had the heater intake sucking through the larger pipe, it preheated the intake air which allowed me to run 0.9-1Hz fuel and could increase the fan a bit more. without the preheated air it would flame out. the heater ran on less fuel at a lower setting which was more economical and fit my needs with hea requirements. And the exhaust wasn't restricted.
You're preheating the combustion air, or heated air ? If you are preheating the combustion air these results could be deceiving. Hotter air is less dense, so it has less oxygen. Also, restricting the air inlet does the exact same thing as restricting the exhaust. Either of these things changes you effective fuel ratio and could be the reason for your results. I'm not saying this is the case, and it's an interesting experiment. If you are scavenging heat form the exhaust, that is always good.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Yeah its pre heating the combustion air, i don't think air density would be affecting much. all i know is the heater runs below its default minimum fuel setting without stalling or smoking. the air temp i was heating would have been around 2-6C
@@mickwolf1077 Yeah... I'm not saying this isn't because of the heat.... I just always question everything and try to figure out if the results could be caused by something else. If you are able to lower your fuel and still make the same heat, that says something. I have chased my tail more than once, with these heaters, thinking I had figured something out only to discover I had been totally overlooking something else. I had decent results pulling hot air into my inlet, but then a motor failure had be convinced for a while that the heat had killed my motor. Looking back I think it was a coincidence and the motor failed for other reasons.
5:14 "There is a lot going on right now" I was listning, not viewing his channel when he said "There is a lot going on right now" And I invisioned the poor lad surrounded by smoke and flames, as he is about to lose consciousness.
I would think the combustion from the first heater would use up all the oxygen leaving the second heater unable to fire off. You could hardwire the heat exchanger fan to run in the unit on the exhaust side and just use that without trying to fire the unit. I'd think you'd still get a lot of condensation in the exhaust side unit though. Pretty cool experiment
Thanks for the comment. I don't mean this in a rude way, but a literal way. I think you may have missed the point of this test. The idea isn't to have the second heater actually burn fuel. The second heater is just there as a means of capturing heat energy that would otherwise just escape out the exhaust of the first heater. I like the idea of running the exhaust into the exhaust, instead of the inlet... I think I'm going to give this a try in an upcoming video. Cheers.
Thanks and thanks ! Trying to keep my content a little shorter and to the point ... Still capture the important details but not so much that people lose interest.
Absolutely ! If you can find one at a reasonable price, that would be perfect. You'd need to make sure you set up a drain to get rid of the condensate. There are a few videos of people doing this. I have been wanting to buy a aluminum wall mount radiator off amazon for a few months now, but I can't justify the cost.
I appreciate the experiment. But I’m a bit surprised that we went from. “Look at all this soot, I need to be more careful with these experiments.” To “I’m going to vent this into my garage.”
Haha... yes. That's very observant. The difference being is that last year I was working in my garage and using the heater to keep the space hot... I spent more time than necessary exposing myself to these fumes. WIth these tests, I am venting the gasses inside, but I am monitoring them carefully, and other than the clips that you see filmed, I don't hang out in the garage. The waste motor oil made a LOT of particulates and I wasn't monitoring that at all last year... only monitoring CO as that's what people complain about. The truth of the matter is that TVOC is the real long term danger. These heaters, running on diesel make very little VOCs and the CO never gets to a dangerous point in my garage... even when it gets dangerous at the exhaust tip. I have also moved a bunch of my testing outside... so the initial tests are done in the garage so that I can monitor the fumes, then the rest is done outside pumping the heat into my house.👍
Interesting testing. I have seen some people run the elongated exhaust pipe through a sand mass tilted down a bit to prevent condensation of water. The sand battery will then absorb all exhaust heat and out comes cold air. The sand battery is then releasing its heat to the room. The efficiency is very high and no extra troubles as far as I know.
I have been considering making a video talking about /demonstrating why sand batteries are not all they're cracked up to be... or at least not for this type of heat source. It's not terribly quick to explain, but it has to do with exposed surface area temperature differentials, as well as the ability to absorb heat quickly.
The person who left the next comment says they have done it with 90Kg of sand, 3m of pipe and it works well. I have already ordered a bunch of pipe for experiments and so I may give it a try.
Just removing the burner wouldn't force hot air to flow against the housing. Air is forced along the housing in-between the burn tube and housing to increase heat transfer. But if you were to drill out the the back side so it basically just be the tube and flange that would work. Also i noticed on my heater that the inlet is severely restricted. Maybe porting out the intake would help stop the restriction some. Mine has a huge sholder right inside inlet that looks like it would block off about 50% of the air flow. Also shorter exhaust tubes would probably help some. The stock corrugated tubes are somewhat restricted. But if i were trying to scavenge heat i would probably just try to find a small and cheap aluminum intercooler. With the amout of surface space you probably wouldnt even need air flow across it. Just mount it flat like a top mount suburu intercooler. But what you did was a neat idea.
Yes... removing the burner would likely reduce efficiency of the exchanger. In fact, any additional flow likely would, to some extent. I agree... removing the center part from the burn chamber would likely increase the flow enough and still guide the air along the exchanger walls... A better solution, but it means chopping up a chamber. Maybe when I have a few extra I will give that a go. I have plans to try a few different methods of scavenging heat from the exhaust. I just ordered a bunch of exhaust to play with, and I have some other ideas as well. An intercooler would 100% work...
@@loweredexpectations4927 I wanted to scavenge the exhaust heat but I don't want to run the risk of getting exhaust smell in my house. If I were to try it I would get another heat exchanger and cut the end off mine and weld a second one on. Also extend the length of the burner tube. Would basically double the length of the burner and exchanger.
@@johncollinsgrove1750 I have thought of this... You'd have to remove a bunch of finned area to be able to weld the extra piece on. I have considered just a long aluminum pipe with the exhaust exiting out the end. So many idea.
I have had several people throw hate my way for simply showing the devices I got. Apparently there are a lot of fakes and I have been accused of promoting fakes and put putting people in danger. From my testing, the device I own does in fact detect CO. It is shown as a ST9700 in the ad on amazon, and appears to be a clone of the something. The item that I received from Amazon Canada, was labelled "Smart Sensor ST9700", not as pictured in the ad. I will post the Canadian Link in the description of this video.
That might work, eh. Would it though ? How do these work ? A small voltage is passed to measure resistance ... so it may go totally out of wack and throw a code ?
@loweredexpectations4927 check the resistance on the wire. A couple feet of 16ga probably wouldn't see any resistance. But the way you have it at least you could see the two combustion bodies temperatures
@@SR-gt350 I don't think I got my thought across properly. The ecu is basically a multimeter. It is trying to check the resistance of the thermocouple. If you use two multimeters at the same time, to check resistance on the same object, will that have an effect on the reading ? A multimeter sends power through the resistor (wire) and measures the drop. Depending on the drop, it knows the resistance. If you have two things sending power through the same resistor, will it show a lower resistance, or perhaps something more odd ? I may be way off with this... My brain can't put all the pieces together, haha. It would be fairly easy to check, i guess.
@loweredexpectations4927 e=i/r, yup I believe voltage created by the thermocouple would remain as voltage. Yaaa, the easiest way is to check with the voltage meter. Connect check, then disconnect check voltage. Won't hurt anything.
Thanks for the comment Yeah... I actually have one of those dc to dc converters hanging around somewhere... I just wanted to try it like this for simplicity. i plan on playing with this more in the future.
Why not use a small intercooler from a wrecked car? Make sure the exhaust part of the intercooler is pointed downstream, so any condensation can be expelled without blocking the exhaust. Intercoolers are designed for optimal heat exchange with minimal pressuredrop, so it should be very efficient
Yes... If you are able to use an intercooler, I believe it would be a better option. Fitting it would be more difficult. I have to assume that, with a fan installed, a fairly small intercooler would do the job better than this extra heater. The set up I tested, was tested because, if it works, it is very easy for the average person to do. It is a self contained unit with a built in fan, just a few hose clamps and you are done. I would prefer a hydronic heating radiator with a fan on it, but an intercooler or radiator would also work fine.
WOAH I had the random thought yesterday of, oh I wonder what would happen if you ran one heater into another, and then I just assumed it would overheat the second one.
But, hmm. I can twist the copper around the exhaust but how should i transfer the heat up to the airintake on the burner? Any idea? My exhaust pipes are about 160 right after burner and about 100 celcius where they go through my wall. I could also as i have longer exhaust put them inside a larger steeltube and fill that with sand, but transfer that heat up to the air intake... Hmm i have no smart easy idea.. At least save some of that heat even though Gretha Thunberg wont approve my diesel heater. And being -30 celcius here at the moment im writing this i all for getting as much heat stored as possible. I have even taped shut my vents now.
Another interesting thing is having a direction pointer at the end of the warm air tube takes my new heater wich are manual set from 210c burner temperature up to 232 just by having that piece of plastic mounted on the pipe to aim the hot air. Thats a lot of difference, but me watching these videos is making me play much around with the heaters. Haha
I thought about using an old car radiator. A guy could crack the drain petcock to let the condensate drain. A small Muffin fan with a cardboard shroud to move air through should suffice.
Absolutely. If you have it all running down hill there is a possibility that you can just have the water draining out the end, but draining it once a day would work fine in a large radiator.... I see one sitting in my neighbours back hard and want to ask him what's up, haha.
Dave McLuckie , and his viewers, have made a full self powered heater doing this... very cool. I'm pretty sure, also very expensive and very low power output.
Disconnect the 2nd from the controller and just wire it directly to switched power to run the fan without trying to manipulate it into thinking it's running
That might work, but the ECU is looking for a specific resistance when it does the self check. If the. fanis out of whack (two fans) or it becomes disconnected or shorts during operation, the heater will immediately shut down and throw a code. I will have to try and see what happens.
I say hook the second heater in the exhaust and have exhaust out the intake. Being your hot exhaust is hot it needs to be in the heat exchanger (burn chamber) with the heat.
I started to type "Why didn't I think of that" and then realized it's because I wanted to use the combustion fan as well, then got stuck on that thought path. Seeing as how the combustion fan is removed, it would make more sense to run it into the exhaust ... I like it... Great idea ! I will have to give this a go and see what happens. Thanks for the comment.
There’s a new 6 in 1 cheap air quality monitor on Ali site that can measure CO, CO2, PM10, PM2.5, HCOC, TVOC. One meter does it all. Put that “What happened??” 🤯smoke up moment into the intro of your videos. It’s so funny to watch 🤣🤣. 60°C won’t probably melt the centrifugal air inlet fan but I think it will melt at 80-90°C. Definitely there is a risk there but you need it to synergetically optimize the exhaust flow in the whole system to counter the total number of bends you have (whopping 450° + swirling combustion chamber design) which exceeded above the manufacturer’s recommended maximum value of 270°. Even if you remove the burn chamber, as long as the 2kW inlet air pressure is “not exactly” matched with the combined total exhaust back pressure, you risk incomplete burning of the fuel in the 2kW heater 😓. The short exhaust pipe from the 2kW to 5kW alone seems to reduce the ~190°C of the 2kW exhaust temperature to 60°C at the inlet of the 5kW. That is 68% efficiency (1 - (60°C / 190°C)) despite being a passive system! On the other hand, the 5kW even with the help of an electric fan (~20W?) seems to have only 64% efficiency 🥴at best (1 - (24°C / 68°C))! And also you have to clean the 5kW often from condensation, etc., the fumes will corrode the aluminum anyway on long term. You’re better off with a 2-3m straight exhaust pipe. I bet if you do that, the temperature at the end of it will be 25-27°C. In fact you can see videos of similar setups on Nat Dizon, andyfireblade and Jaspinder Dhillon channels.
Haha... I hadn't considered that "smoke up moment" for my intro... good idea. The exhaust is about 200C where it comes out of the pipe.... when it is not being absorbed by the heat exchanger... so that's why I was worried. I just bought 16 feet of exhaust and am planning on testing a bunch of exhaust limits / recommendations, haha. Of course, less bends is better, but I'm going to push it till we see problems. Ideally the 5kw would have a variable speed fan so that we could match can speed and neutralize exhaust pressure / vacuum. Maybe in an upcoming test. The exhaust temp at the heater was showing about 60C, but that is just because it is attached / thermally coupled to the exchanger. The exhaust temp or pipe temp just a few inches back would be closer to 200C. I wouldn't be too concerned about the corrosion, as aluminum forms a pretty durable oxide layer. I will be testing with stainless exhaust soon👍 this is a much more practical solution for most people.
Thanks for taking time to explain. In that sense it's similar to the setup where this guy coils up the exhaust in a metal box like your cooker tin can, a PC fan blows cold air into it and from another hole 50°C hot air comes out. If you could manipulate the thermocouple and fan independently, you could crank up the combustion chamber temperature to really high. David McLuckie measured it to be 1035°C!@@loweredexpectations4927
Just blow the exhaust into the room. We all have used those big jet/turbine heater units in rooms with poor ventilation and they are way worse on CO and like polutants than these little units are.
Yeah.. I have worked with the big industrial ones.... The CO is one concern (if the heater isn't working right) but more of a concern for me is the TVOC ... If you can smell or taste the fumes, then it's not good for your health. I know lots of old mechanics, including my father, who use WD40 or varsol to wash their hands and cleaned carburetors with no gloves for decades would laugh at this... but my father did die from lymphoma, so it likely caught up with him. I think it's worth the little extra effort and cost to vent outside, if possible... of course... if you need to get shit done, people often take shortcuts.
I've had the idea of running the exhaust through something as simple as a house water radiator. They've got loads of surface area, and the bungs/internal area should be more than plenty for the exhaust to run through without any back pressure to speak of.
I thought of the same thing and almost bought one... but I can't afford it at the moment. I'm confident that it would work, it's just a matter of how many or how large do you need to get all the heat out. Any is good, all is better. You also need to make sure to design it in a way that the water can run out as there will be a LOT of condensate.
I use a 55 Gallon barrel as a radiator but your comment makes me think about pouring some baking powder in the bottom to neutralize any acid. What do you Think? @@casemodder89
That's something that I really want to try. I have a few ideas on how... ideally I would like to start the heater on diesel, then use the heat from the exhaust to cook the oil and pull the fumes into the inlet. This process is supposed to involve a cooling system that pulls out moisture and heavier fractions.... but that seems like a lot of work, haha.
Too many comments to read every one. Why not hook up two similar heaters, use the combustion fan on the secondary to suck air trough the first that burns fuel, the exterior fan used on both to flow the heat from the chambers, that way, might have to use some 1:1 pwn magic for using two fan motors...but that should be it.
That is a good idea and I may try something like that in the future... I'm not very clever when it comes to electronics and want to try to do it as simple as possible. It may be possible to run both fans off of one ECU... if that works it would be really simple. I don't have two heaters that I can use at the moment. If the fan speeds were matched, the pressure should be equalized... it should work quite well. The concern then is if the 5kw would make enough exhaust heat to damage the secondary heaters combustion fan.
@@autojohn-pu1vf I suppose.... what are most old metal radiators made of ? I never even thought of that. New or performance ones are aluminum... old ones had some copper ?
@@loweredexpectations4927 I got to get working 1st... Requested refund from ebay seller when it didn't power up, and noticed voltage drop to 11V on remote 1.6volts lower then actual(Multimeter) So w charger on engine start it powered up fine and worked PERFECT X 2 days then quit w blinking error code and I'm stumped. I was suppose to reply to sellers offer to replace remote by the 6th to qualify for refund... I did not, that was the day it worked... perty sure I'll get f'd on refund thats how they roll, looking at 30$ Motherboard/controller combo (saw your compatability issues) This was 70$ and has cheezy on/off button no controller
Yes... I think I will have to do that... a few more tests are needed. The one issue that this could cause, is a huge drop in efficiency as the chamber guides the air along the exchanger walls. We shall see.
Variable fan on the unit used as heat exchanger is best best, but how do you then regulate the speed for minimum CO. ? Sounds like a lot of expensive sensor and controller rigging for little gain. But hey, nothing to be gained without the experiment. ! Yep it grieves me to see wasted heat going to heat the planet when it can be utilised. And yes I do run a diesel heater in my greenhouse for frost protection. :)
I'm not sure what the question is, exactly. The exchanger heater only has air passing over the outside of it and the exhaust is fed using the fan from the heater. Controlling / reducing CO may be achievable if the exchanger heater had an adjustable fan and had the combustion air fan installed. A person could manually tune the fan speed so that the pressure was neutral in the exhaust (not causing back pressure and not a vacuum) and that could take care of the CO issue. I overlooked looking at the 2kw heater to see what the effects on it were, and I can say for sure that it was running rich and there is soot in the exhaust. This is evidence that the air flow was too restrictive and that is what caused the CO.
Makes sense, but what I was getting at was monitoring the co to regulate the fan. Neutral pressure would indeed offer a form of control. I understand the settings dilemma having worked on 3 fuel burners (gas, oil and heavy oil, industrial) before retiring@@loweredexpectations4927
Uh, why would you exhaust inside your garage to check the air quality??? You most certainly would want to exhaust to the outside and test the air quality that way. Test the quality inside (because you can get an exhaust leak, so that is a valid test). If you want to test the particulates in the exhaust, you exhaust to an enclosure... outside. EDIT: The overall idea is a good one... but you probably want to gut the 2nd heater. A slight amount of back pressure, but not much. Do have anything on the 2nd heater on aside from the outer fan. So, a broken fan would be quite useful for this. No need for anything intelligent in the 2nd heater. The entire housing will absorb heat and the fan will exchange it.
Thanks for your comment. If I run the exhaust outside, it is almost impossible to get a reading on the exhaust fumes. They dilute very quickly into the air. In order to get an accurate reading of the toxicity you need no wind and ideally an enclosed space. If I vent the exhaust outside, and test the air in the garage, that won't tell me anything about what's happening with the heater. The amount of CO and TVOC coming out of your exhaust is directly related to how good or bad your heater is working, and if it is going to carbon up or not. A person could build an enclosure outside, to test the exhaust, but it's much easier to test inside. There are better and safer ways to go about doing this, and this is how I choose to do it. I balance the risk with the need to actually get things done. Quite honestly, a person gets more exposure to fumes if you have spilled diesel on yourself while filling your tank.... and the CO I'm being exposed to is absolutely harmless.
I have thought of this ... it could work, but it may throw a fault code. The ECU checks the resistance of the fan, fuel pump and other components when you power it up. If they are out of spec, the heater will not start. WIth two fans connected it would likely not start.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I thought you were just using the second as a heat exchanger that would not need powering up, just a fan running to push air over chamber, are you going to power second, why?
@@ArhipDroid You are correct. The reason I did it this way is to keep it simple. If you just run 12V power to the fan, it will likely run at 6000 rpm non stop. It wouldn't be healthy for the fan and quite noisy. The ECU vaies voltage to the fan to control the speed and doesn't really send it 12V It turns out that it is a LOT easier than I make it ... If the heat sensor is connected where I had it on the exhaust, the heater does not need to be running. WIth power to the ECU, it will sense the heat and turn the fan on = Problem solved I hope this makes sense.
Not enough oxygen or heat. The exchanger is doing a excellent job of pulling out all the heat. Ideally, all of the combustion would be done in the first heater, and the clean exhaust gasses would pass through the second heater and lose most of their energy.
😂👌 cool okay I think you can run both heaters on one computer. min one pump min one glow plug . so the last heater only runs its fans 😏 Groet Gilbert Nederlands 🔥👍
This is possible.... it depends if the ECU freaks out when it sees the extra load from the extra fan. Some of these ECUs are stupid and won't care (probably) but some ECUs are too smart and will see the change in resistance as a fault and shut down.
@@loweredexpectations4927of course you are right about that. but just like you, I am known for blowing up equipment just out of curiosity 🤭. I'm crossing my fingers 🤞and thinking that these ECUs aren't that smart. I ordered Vevo myself and want to try to connect it to an old electric oil radiator, first remove the oil and remove the glow element. and then weld above the inlet and below the outlet. o and a drain nipple for condensation 🤭 that will be my project. good luck with your cool idea I want to watch, greetings Gilbert
@@gilbertgilberts1767 I had the same thought about the oil radiators, as they are much more common now, and a person can find a used or broken one free or cheap. Good stuff.
@@loweredexpectations4927 lol... I figure if nothing else it drives engagement... I saw a video earlier where the fella found that water was causing his burn chamber to soot up due to an upward bend in the exhaust... I remember last year your chamber was having similar looking issues (to what I watched in his video) and if I remember, you were venting in an upward pointing swing into your shop ventilation... Could have been causing issues you were completely unaware of... I believe this guy only used diesel.
@@tilly8297 Yeah...I had lots of issues, but I'm fairly certain never because of water. For starters, I had that pipe off sometimes 3-4 times a day and never once saw water. More obvious to me, however, was the fact that I monitored the temp of the exhaust and vent duct carefully and it was never below 50C in the duct and well over 100C on the exhaust. I ordered a bunch of exhaust that should show up tomorrow or Tuesday, so that I can do a bunch of exhaust tests. How long can it be before condensate becomes an issue, what happens if you run it straight up, how much heat can you scavenge with just a lot of exhaust tubing, and if I have enough, how much before it becomes too restrictive... I may have to order more.
@@tilly8297 Thanks. Sometimes, the best way to learn is to push things past their limits. It can answer a lot of questions that would otherwise just remain guesses.
Okay running the first diesel heater is fine should the burner be taken out of the second heater so that their room for the exhaust to go right on through as it heats up the chamber in the second diesel heater
That could work, however, this may drastically reduce the efficiency of the second heater. (it may not remove much heat) The chamber guides the flow along the exchanger aiding in heat transfer. If it was removed, the flow could go in one port and right out the other. I believe the best setup would be a modified chamber that had the centre removed so the air would still be guided, but not as restricted.
Hi,thanks for share with us all your work,i sow your video but now i have a problem on my heater, i have fluctuations fan speed up and down sometimes but it worked a while but now i have e06 wich means fan short or temp sensor short and heater stops. I start it again works about one hour and stops again. what do you think about it? what i have to check or replace?thanks man. cheers
Hello. Sorry to hear you are having troubles. Based on what you are telling me, it sounds like your motor overheated and the brushes are sticking. You may just have a bad connection at the connector on the ECU, so you can check that first, but it sounds like sticky brushes. I had the same thing happen to my heater last year and made a video about replacing the motor. You can buy just the motor, or for a few more dollars, you can purchase the whole fan assembly with both fans and motor already installed. This is the easy way. If it is an emergency, you may be able to take your motor apart and get to to work for a while. I was able to keep mine working till I got a new motor a week later. I hope this helps.
That might work, but the ECU is looking for a specific resistance when it does the self check. If the. fanis out of whack (two fans) or it becomes disconnected or shorts during operation, the heater will immediately shut down and throw a code. I will have to try and see what happens.
There are a few good reasons. I personally like the idea, with a 4 foot long aluminum pipe... Cast aluminum sucks to weld and I'm guessing this isn't the best quality. You want this to be perfectly sealed and strong, so that could be an issue. I'm sure I could make it happen with a few hours of struggle. The exchanger is finned and this would be impossible to weld air tight, so you would have to machine or grind off a bunch of the fins. to attach your new piece... Not a big deal if you are adding another few feet, but fins are what makes this a good exchanger. You would also have to block off the original exhaust port and make a new one near the end of the chamber so the heat would travel the length of the new piece.... Unless you also extend the burn tube, in which case the heater may refuse to work at all... it may work fine 🤷♂️ Part of the desirability of these heaters is the compact nature and the ability to direct air flow, or use duct work to move it to a specific area. If you extend the exchanger and want to retain these properties, you also have to extend the case somehow. After all of this is done, there is a chance that it won't work well due to changing the geometry of the burn area. These things can be VERY particular and any change in flow can mess things up. It may work fine... but it may be a lot of work for a total failure. I would like to build one, like I said at the top, that was just a long aluminum tube with the burn chamber in one end and the exhaust out the other ... not sure if this would work and it would be fair cost in time and money to find out, haha.
You have to move a large quantity of air asto not choke out the Diesel Heater. If the Heater does not run correctly, you could have all sorts of issues.
A small car radiator as long as it's all metal and has enough flow, then yes, that would work great. The 12V radiator would collect some, but very little as the surface area is too small to transfer the heat. You would need a fairly large unit for this to work effectively.
@@loweredexpectations4927 condensation wouldn't be an issue since they have the petcock on them where it could be drained if need be, otherwise a heater core w small fan blowing in it maybe a small computer fan
@@gooey83 Condensation builds up very quickly when you are cooling your exhaust. You could end up with several litres in 6-8 hours. It would probably be fine, but you may need to have something that drained automatically... You can get little duckbill things that let water out but don't allow air to flow. They use them on airboxes of of road vehicles.
havent finished video but it i was gonna scavvage heat i wouldnt have the second one burning fuel. id just have a fan running across the coil to remove heat from the exhaust
@@loweredexpectations4927 the next test if i was doing it would be exhaust warp to second unit to get temps up. im planning on doing this also for my camper to help heat the front of it. also gonna build a stand for it with prob a 5 gallon gravity feed system.
@@redneckdrennan745 🤔 why would you want the temps up ? The idea is to get the heat out so it is heating your living space. If it is really efficient, the heat will go into the air, and the exchanger will be close to room temp.
Thats pretty cool. Now how does it affect the burn chamber in the 2kw heater? Does the fan in the 5kw heater get things moving along well enough that we can finally get the holy grail of 24/7/365 waste oil burn? What about an EGR setup like on cars?
Thanks for the comment. Based on the CO, and the color of the exhaust, it didn't do the 2kw heater any good. As I said in the video, this is likely because it is a little too restrictive. This could be remedied by using a variable fan speed on the 5kw heater. I don't think this is the answer to the waste oil question. It could help, however, as the secondary heater could be used to dial in air flow. I have a few tests planned before we get to that.
@@memadmax69 I've driven through Montana a few times in the last year... Megan's parents were in Vegas, camping, and the engine went in their truck. I drove down and got them in early May, and then dropped them off when it was repaired in late June. Long but beautiful drive. Cheeers !
EGR wouldn't be good if you mean by re- introducing the exhaust back into the inlet, this would increase the carbon monoxide and might lower the flame temperature,, the, same. as it does in motor vehicles. 😢
@@stevengrenville9600 I think what he means, and several people have done, is using the egr cooler as a heat exchanger. You can run the exhaust through the coolant passages, and blow a fan through the exhaust part, of the egr cooler.
Your thoughts on this. If you run fluid through the intake and exhaust, heat the outside of the unit in a fire pit or burn barrel, do you believe the heat would transfer in and be usable in a radiant heat source indoors?
I'm not 100% sure that I know what you mean exactly, but transferring heat from a outdoor heat source (fire pit) inside to a radiator is totally doable. You need to make sure that you are not using a sealed system on your fluid so that the pressure is able to vent, otherwise you are making a bomb. You most likely need to be able to flow the fluid...... OH... I think I get what you are saying. Remove all of the parts and use the heater body as a means of absorbing heat into water. That would work, but you would need to make sure that you don't' get it too hot, and it may be a good idea to shield it from the direct flame to avoid the fins melting... You'd need to keep a high flow rate and make sure that your radiator, indoors, was large enough to disperse the heat quickly.... if the fluid in the heater gets hot enough to boil, it very quickly loses it's ability to absorb heat and could possibly melt.
I'm not sure I understand. You mean it is a lot of smoke because two heaters are running ? Only one heater is burning fuel.... The 2kw heater is burning fuel and the 5kw is just acting like a heat exchanger. That's the point of this video / test. Using a heater as an exchanger to scavenge heat from the exhaust.
@loweredexpectations4927 I modified my burn chamber last year, so the tube was removable, and I ground the tube weld flush so I could remove it easily and clean when burning used oil (no longer) . Now, I think the hose clamp may be restricting the burn exhaust port. I'll try rotating the screw of the hose clamp so it doesn't restrict the exhaust port. It seems that with the esso deisel more prevalent on poor combustion
@@SR-gt350 Ah yes... I had a hose clamp on mine as well, and had to clock it off to one side to avoid blocking the port. By fluke I found the sweet spot. I may have also used a dremel on the fins around the port, can't recall.
@loweredexpectations4927 yes I'll try rotating. Also, I think the screen in the burn chamber is a bit crusty. May be an issue with deisel wicking properly thru it. Did you remove the burn chamber screen and just left the little glow plug screen?
Not all 2 kw heaters are the same. This 2kw heater is smaller than most 5/8kw units. It is over an inch shorter, about an inch narrower and has an outlet size of 60mm instead of 75mm. The reason for using a 2kw into the 5kw, is because restricting the exhaust can cause problems. I will be trying at 5kw into a 5 kw or my new larger 8kw at some point 👍
Hey would you be interested in doing a collab on an install of a heater into a truck cab? I have the heater cant find any how to videos and forums im on cant find any as well. Im located in alberta as well
Hey, I'd love to help, but I'm not in a great situation at the moment. I'm going through a separation and may have to sell my house any day. What sort of truck is it ? Perhaps I can offer some advice.
Sorry to hear that. If your up for a drive to gp you could film it in my shop, haha. It's a 99 dodge 3500 Dually, I also have the vevor air compressor I'm wanting to install as well pm me if you want to talk further
Not going to lie this was painful to watch good idea really bad setup. The whole point is to heat up the second heater as much as possible, You need to have a 5kw feeding a 2kw or maybe a 5kw feeding a 5kw depends how much heat is made when this test is done right. put them side by side with the exhaust as short as you can to push as much heat into the second as possible other wise you just losing heat. You really could just gut the inside of the second one enough where it still seals but allows exhaust to flow then just hook 12v or whatever voltage the intake fan takes the two wires just hang there under the fan but that would turn it on and it would blow air over the housing. As for the condensation a small hole in the right spot would fix a lot of that. I probably could draw something up that would make more sense if anyone still doesn't understand.
Come on man... Your comment doesn't inspire me to want to be nice, but I'll try. You are making a whole bunch of assumptions and statements as though page 23 paragraph 4 has instructions on how to do this properly ? What... The point of this test was 1. To amuse my audience, and 99% of them will never do this. 2. See if the restriction would be too much or if the heater would run at all. 3. Check the temp drop / if the exhaust exiting the 2nd heater would be hot or cool 4. Would the build up of condensation be a huge problem. ETC. If the idea is to collect as much eat as possible (and it is) then you want as large of a heat exchanger as possible. Running the 2kw into the 5 is the best case scenario as the demands on the 5kw are less than they would be if it was a 5kw into a 5kw. I do not have an unlimited budget, and I don't' have two 5kw units that I can use for this at the moment... but I did clearly say in this video that I wanted to test that. If you watched the video, you may have noticed that the 5kw was a substantial restriction for the 2kw heater, and caused it to make a lot of CO... If the 5kw was run into the 2kw, this situation would be way worse. "Short exhaust otherwise you are losing heat".... yes, into my garage. This is only a problem if the heaters are outdoors and you are blowing the hot air in. These are all good / interesting ideas, but I'm not sure why you couldn't just say "hey, I have some interesting ideas or things I'd like to see you try" I'm not sure if you are just having a bad day or something, I hope you are well.. This sort of approach is not going to make people react well.
@@loweredexpectations4927 You don’t want a large heat exchanger it spreads the heat out too much the diesel heater idea keeps the unit small and allows the air blowing off the housing to be hotter with the stock fan on the unit being utilized. By applying the voltage necessary to make the air intake motor run takes out all the other electronic issues. You really only had buildup because it couldn’t flow good but like you said they’re spare or junk heaters so take out what you don’t need that still allows it to seal and having a bigger unit pushing exhaust into a smaller one won’t be an issue as long as it flows exhaust good with that stuff taken out plus take out the combustion fan so it’s not pushing the exhaust out with the intake air fan is running without restriction and a shorter exhaust pipe it should flow itself and heat the second unit up. Dealing with the condensation really wouldn’t be an issue to much when set up with the unit at the right angle and maybe a pin hole in the right spot. As for the tone, I only meant it as like I feel like some of those issues should’ve been common sense but either or doesn’t matter much respect for ya. Have a good day.
@@MRCHRISLONG14 I think you are making a common mistake and confusing heat energy with temperature. You want a large exchanger and for the temperature differential to be large. This is the only way to be efficient, especially when you get down to the last few percent. If the air coming off of the heat exchanger is hot, then the exchanger is to small and you aren't getting all of the energy out of it. If your exchanger is sized froefficency, the temperature will be close to room temperature. If you are truly capturing all of the heat energy, then your exchanger will the the same temperature as the air going into the heater. If the air coming out of your exchanger is warmer than the air you are trying to heat, this will heat the air. Yes, applying voltage directly to the exchanger fan would make more sense. A variable power supply would be nice so that you can speed the fan up if your exchanger starts getting hot. I assume you mean carbon monoxide when you say "build up", or maybe you're talking about the water ? Removing the innards is probably a good idea, but it might also cause a large loss in efficiency. The burn chamber guides the exhaust along the exchanger allowing more time and more surface area for the heat to transfer. WIth the burn tube removed, the exhaust is very close to the inlet, and much of the hot exhaust might just exit. Cutting a hole in the existing chamber would work well, but that means ruining a chamber... Maybe in the future 👍 I agree..It's pretty easy to take care of condensation with a little hole and the right angle. Cheers ! Thanks for responding. Hope you have a great day.
I did it because someone asked about it and because some people have broken heaters laying around. If you have a broken or spare heater, you can scavenge some of the heat that would normally be lost and save $ or stay warmer. But more importantly, it was fun... Most of what I do is not at all practical. My last video was burning paint thinner.... twice the cost of diesel.
ruclips.net/video/96kA_Cwye04/видео.htmlsi=P6TOy2D-OxvXfO5T No, I have over 20 cats on my property that I feed, and no mice. Good trade. Cat as in catalytic to clean your indoor air during your experiments.
@@tjhouston4916 Oh, haha... Yes, that is one thing that I want to try. I did an experiment with waste oil and a weed trimmer cat, but it was more or less to try and trap heat.... and just to see what would happen. I think the problem with putting a cat in the heater is that you have to preheat it.... as shown in the video (cool video by the way) I don't believe the 200C from the exhaust would be enough to start the reaction ?
If you can find one with metal end caps, then yes... cheaper. My neighbor has one sitting in his yard and I almost asked him what he's doing with it. The radiator doesn't have the agility to he disassembled to be cleaned out, if necessary, so that could eventually be a concern. It also takes up more space and doesn't have a good / easy way to direct the captured air. The second heater is compact and self contained. None of the things I mentioned would effect me, but perhaps some people.
.... that just gave me a great idea.... I can use the drip feed to meter fuel, to hell with all that electronic nonsense, then I can use the second heater as forced induction... and make this thing roll major coal ! I wonder if it will melt.
Cool experiment! A scavenged baseboard heater or an old radiator and fan may give good results. FWIW, I have my 8KW Vevor heater exhaust plumbed into my wood stove fresh air supply on the bottom of the woodstove. The wood stove transfers a lot of heat from the diesel heater exhaust. At #3 heater setting the Vevor will warm all the steel and fir brick up nicely.
That's neat ... You are probably the 3rd or 4th person I have heard of doing this . Well done.
Nice experiment. Since I do have two heaters and one not being used at the moment I thought I’d play with them and do something similar. What I did different because I didn’t have much space I placed the two heaters side by side and have the house air pre heated before it goes through the actual heater and back into the house. I do not have a fuel pump connected and set the temperature sensor on the exhaust, once the sensor detects a certain temperature the fan comes on. It did increase the final output temperature into the house but once I get the final ducting and insulation I think it will be closer to your numbers. This was the easiest way for me to recover some of the lost heat out of the exhaust. Thanks for your continued experiments.
I'm not sure I know what you mean, but what I'm picturing is ... the heater that is being used as an exchanger is connected to duct work on the inlet side. The inlet air passes through the first exchanger heater before entering the inlet of the actual heater.
What are you using to power the fan on your exchanger, the original ECU ? I'm asking as most won't operate if the pump is disconnected. Or perhaps the fan comes on regardless when the ECU detects the heat ? I'm curious.
Thanks for sharing your comment / set up ! I love how everyone has a slightly different take on the same ideas, depending on what they have to work with and their particular situation.
@@loweredexpectations4927 yes, exactly correct with both statements. My guess is the ECU detects the heat and turns on the fan to protect itself. Both ECUs are connected to the same battery and I have a 2 amp charger on the battery.
@@helihead11 You know what ... I feel really silly for not remembering this... Any time you turn the heater on, and it's hot, it will turn the fan on till it cools off, and then try to restart.... so if it stays hot the fan stays on ... Cool, good to know, haha.
Well consider my try a fail. For about two hours I got good extra heat then it started to drop and about two hours later it really started dropping. Now with everything back to original configuration I’m about 35c below the temps I was getting before experimenting. I’m hoping I won’t need to disassemble and clean.
@@helihead11 Uh oh... That sucks.... I'm sure it sooted up in the chamber. Despite what people say, I have found that the chamber runs hotter at the mid setting or just below the top setting.... the extra air flow cools off the burn chamber.
The exchanger temp will show lower, on the mid setting, but the chamber itself is slightly hotter. If you run it this way for several hours, it may clean itself out.
Great idea with the heat exchanger ☺️, but keep in mind that there will be water in the exhaust, water condenses when the air get cold enough. That might block the airflow if water can't drain out😅
Yes, this is true. I was considering drilling a little weep hole, but it seemed to take care of itself pretty efficiently.
I would like to do another test to see how long it would take, with the heat exchanger standing on end, for it to totally fill up and block the exhaust path. Just of for fun. I'm thinking it would do it pretty quickly.
The condensate is also acidic with a ph around 3 (similar to lemon juice) which is why I won’t be trying to squeeze out that last bit of efficiency. Fantastic channel, keep up the great work. 👍
@@greglastname7039 Thanks for your comment !
I have heard this about condensates ... and remember when installing my furnace that they have the condensate routed so that it doesn't end up back in the exchanger. I am curious however, how much this would actually harm and aluminum exchanger over say, a few years. It may be catastrophic, but I'm not sure that ph3 would be enough to eat away at the oxide on the aluminum ... I mean... I suppose a google search would probably tell me, haha.
Thanks again!
Great video, as usual, man!
Sometimes I don’t have questions, but still want to leave a comment of encouragement….so yeah….sorry, no questions, just a quick comment. 😊
Hey... I really appreciate the comment. Always welcome here.
@@loweredexpectations4927 hoping to help the Pythagorean theorem, or quadratic formula, or RUclips algorithm….or whatever. Lol!
I figure if I’m ever in Canada, and run into you, maybe you’ll share some maple syrup! 😜😁
@@ryanzanow8221 This was a stark reminder .... that I really need to keep an eye on my maple syrup inventory. I hadn't considered the possibility of American visitors !
@@loweredexpectations4927 😂😂
I use an EGR cooler from a volvo/Ford part number 993062H. Have that attached to the diesel heater exhaust exiting my garage at a slight downward angle. I've attached a PC watercooling pump and a 16cm by 16cm Rad with a fan to get the heat into the room. The Radiator surface temp sits about 28-31 with the heater on max which is a good delta when the garage is about 10 to 13c. I've only just got this setup so i will prob try adding a more powerful fan and see how much more heat i can extract from the exhaust.
Very cool. I have wanted to do this for a long time... so many projects, so little time !!
Ok, so I don't know if this has been commented already, but what I've wanted to do with my heater is run the exhaust through something like a heat exchanger for a swimming pool, and attach the "wet" side of the exchanger to a closed loop that's hooked up to an old cast iron radiator - or a car radiator, haha. It's on my todo list, but my garage has gotten so overrun with similar type projects that I can't get to it right away. If you're feeling like you need some of that kind of content, feel free to take my idea and run with it.
I have also wanted to do this !! I almost bought a EGR cooler to do this... I have a LONG and foolish list of things I would love to do, haha.
Hey Joel.
Thanks for the shoutout my friend, totally made my Sunday!. It was great to see you trying another crazy experiment. It definitely answered a lot of my questions.
I definitley owe you a bag of Doritos. Cheers.
Two bags ? I like to eat them too.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Two bags it is.
@@PUBHEAD1 Haha... one for burning, one for eating. They do have a lot of stored energy !
Not sure what practicle purpose the test in the video would serve, but interesting test non-the-less! That said, if you get time and are looking for additional diesel heater content, I would love to see if the diesel heater could be turned into a makeshift "engine coolant heater" by blowing hot air from the diesel heater "through" an aftermarket vehicle heater core, with the heater core plumbed to a 12V coolant circulation pump and circulating into (and out of) a bucket filled with water, as proof of concept.
Thanks for the comment !
If I'm not mistaken, this may actually be how these heaters started life. You can buy coolant / water heaters like this, and I have heard many sories from old fellas whose job it was to maintain these units on old fleet vehicles, school busses, deliver trucks etc.
You can get these units on Aliexpress for a few hundred dollars or the real deals for thousands.
While the air to water could work, it is not nearly as efficient as having the water in contact with the exchanger. I have been considering a heater that was mostly submerged in water / coolant as a project. So many idea, so little time and money, haha.
The best system for scavenging exhaust heat is to use 1" CSST direct burial gas tubing. I use about 10' with an aluminum downspout for an outer shielding to create the draft removing 80/90% of the heat. I can hold my hand on the exit point of the pipe. 1" ID corrugated stainless steel tubing excepts the 1" OD exhaust pipe great with red rtv only. I also have an alum. external ATF transmission cooler I want to try some day. Keep up all you do.
I had a look and that stuff isn't' cheap. I'm sure I can buy 10 or 15 feet of it somewhere locally but all I could find with a quick search was 100 foot rolls, haha.
I have used that before in smaller sizes ... pretty cool stuff. I can see why it would work well. I have just received about 16 feet of stainless exhaust haha... I have some tests planned.
You comment about using it as EGR and EGR does not vent the exhaust straight in. It also pulls in fresh air with it so basically what you needed to do is put a T in the intake line of the 5K W from the 2KW so the 2KW can still exhaust normally but yet when it starts pulling an intake is pulling the exhaust and fresh air together
I believe my comment was misunderstood.
What I was referring to was using a EGR cooler as a makeshift heat exchanger. It would not be used to recirculate exhaust gasses, but to pull heat energy from the exhaust 👍
I turned my exhaust into sand battery :) 3m long running through metal bin with 90kg of sand...works great! Was also cheap investment so bonus
I am considering trying this... Funny... I was skeptical as to weather this would work well for these heaters... the last comment that I responded to was me saying I didn't think it was ideal for this type of heat source.
Now I really have to test it to see how well I can get it to work. My thoughts were that it doesn't absorb heat quickly and the surface area around the pipe would not allow for quick enough heat absorption.
I guess a 3m pipe is plenty of surface area ... oh... and it just clicked that that's 90 KG and not pounds ...!
Edit: I have been told by someone that just a long pipe on its own is a great radiator, so I guess 🤷♂️
The greater the thermal mass (your heart sink) the longer it takes to "feel" warm... But it takes longer to get cold also.
In the future I have plans for a solar heat collector and a thermal battery to store heat for night time release. I have a small cabin and would like to heat the crawl space and in turn have it act like radiant floor heat
@@tilly8297 Yes... so it all depends what you are looking for. My garage floor heating is the perfect example of this. I also need a Mr Heater hanging heater unit, despite having 200,000 BTU of floor heating.
The floor heating is great to maintain a temp above freezing, but responds very slowly to input. If I want it to be warm, I have to know hours in advance, or the day before, and it isn't cost effective to just keep it 19C (66F) in my garage all the time.
It is very easy to be wasteful with floor heating as turning the floor heat on for an hour or two basically does nothing. If I turn the heat on and then realize I have other things to do, I will never see that heat. The Mr Heater, air heater on the other hand, altho it is "only" 80,000 btu, even on a really cold day, my garage is toasty warm in 10 minutes.
If I have the floor heat up to 19C (66F) and it has actually reached 19C .... it takes several hours for my garage to cool off 4-6 hours sometimes, where it gets cool fairly quickly once the Mr Heater is turned off.
@@tilly8297 Air solar or water solar ? Some time ago, when I had time to be bored, I spent a lot of time watching videos about both. Some people have very cool setups.
Cool idea. I'm experimenting with my heater . I've built an enclosed stand that mine sees on top of. The exhaust is coiled in the stand with a six foot pipe that exits out the bottom an through the wall. Plans are to run the fresh air out (hot) back through the stand and out the other side. If nothing I'll have a really nice oven.
I like this idea. Well done. If I ever get around to making a permanent set up, I think I would do something like this.
I just received 16 feet of stainless exhaust and I am going to do some testing to find out for sure how much is too much, haha... then people can use this info to decide how much they want to coil up inside their heated space before venting outside.
Best idea ive had was a scrap hot water baseboard on the exhaust. Just recently, i saw a guy who tried that and had good results. I still havent found a baseboard unit at low cost.
Yeah...I have been considering this for a while and have found a few hydronic radiators on amazon but they are about $240 for one that would capture all the heat. I just can't justify the cost.
Used to be able to get the old cast ones pretty cheap, but now they are sold as collectibles. I see a few on the east coast for a reasonable price.
I reclaimed alot of the exhaust heat on mine but didn't measure the exhaust temp. I ran the exhaust pipe through about a 1.5in diameter steel pipe and had the heater intake sucking through the larger pipe, it preheated the intake air which allowed me to run 0.9-1Hz fuel and could increase the fan a bit more. without the preheated air it would flame out. the heater ran on less fuel at a lower setting which was more economical and fit my needs with hea requirements. And the exhaust wasn't restricted.
You're preheating the combustion air, or heated air ?
If you are preheating the combustion air these results could be deceiving. Hotter air is less dense, so it has less oxygen. Also, restricting the air inlet does the exact same thing as restricting the exhaust. Either of these things changes you effective fuel ratio and could be the reason for your results.
I'm not saying this is the case, and it's an interesting experiment. If you are scavenging heat form the exhaust, that is always good.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Yeah its pre heating the combustion air, i don't think air density would be affecting much.
all i know is the heater runs below its default minimum fuel setting without stalling or smoking. the air temp i was heating would have been around 2-6C
@@mickwolf1077 Yeah... I'm not saying this isn't because of the heat.... I just always question everything and try to figure out if the results could be caused by something else. If you are able to lower your fuel and still make the same heat, that says something.
I have chased my tail more than once, with these heaters, thinking I had figured something out only to discover I had been totally overlooking something else. I had decent results pulling hot air into my inlet, but then a motor failure had be convinced for a while that the heat had killed my motor. Looking back I think it was a coincidence and the motor failed for other reasons.
5:14
"There is a lot going on right now"
I was listning, not viewing his channel when he said "There is a lot going on right now"
And I invisioned the poor lad surrounded by smoke and flames, as he is about to lose consciousness.
🤣🤣🤣 I love this. Fortunately, not this time. A little smoke and fumes perhaps, but no alarms going off.
I would think the combustion from the first heater would use up all the oxygen leaving the second heater unable to fire off. You could hardwire the heat exchanger fan to run in the unit on the exhaust side and just use that without trying to fire the unit. I'd think you'd still get a lot of condensation in the exhaust side unit though.
Pretty cool experiment
Thanks for the comment.
I don't mean this in a rude way, but a literal way. I think you may have missed the point of this test. The idea isn't to have the second heater actually burn fuel. The second heater is just there as a means of capturing heat energy that would otherwise just escape out the exhaust of the first heater.
I like the idea of running the exhaust into the exhaust, instead of the inlet... I think I'm going to give this a try in an upcoming video.
Cheers.
Cool video, I really enjoy watching your heater experiments. Also congratulations on all of the new subscribers.
Thanks and thanks ! Trying to keep my content a little shorter and to the point ... Still capture the important details but not so much that people lose interest.
Pretty cool experiment, I wonder if an old cast iron radiator would work better.
Absolutely ! If you can find one at a reasonable price, that would be perfect. You'd need to make sure you set up a drain to get rid of the condensate. There are a few videos of people doing this.
I have been wanting to buy a aluminum wall mount radiator off amazon for a few months now, but I can't justify the cost.
I appreciate the experiment. But I’m a bit surprised that we went from. “Look at all this soot, I need to be more careful with these experiments.” To “I’m going to vent this into my garage.”
Haha... yes. That's very observant. The difference being is that last year I was working in my garage and using the heater to keep the space hot... I spent more time than necessary exposing myself to these fumes.
WIth these tests, I am venting the gasses inside, but I am monitoring them carefully, and other than the clips that you see filmed, I don't hang out in the garage.
The waste motor oil made a LOT of particulates and I wasn't monitoring that at all last year... only monitoring CO as that's what people complain about. The truth of the matter is that TVOC is the real long term danger. These heaters, running on diesel make very little VOCs and the CO never gets to a dangerous point in my garage... even when it gets dangerous at the exhaust tip.
I have also moved a bunch of my testing outside... so the initial tests are done in the garage so that I can monitor the fumes, then the rest is done outside pumping the heat into my house.👍
Im gonna try mounting it on an oilfill radiator and run the exaust thru it and put the exit tube on the bottom and a car radiator fan/shroud behind it
Right on... will you be making any video ? I'd like to see that.
Interesting testing. I have seen some people run the elongated exhaust pipe through a sand mass tilted down a bit to prevent condensation of water. The sand battery will then absorb all exhaust heat and out comes cold air. The sand battery is then releasing its heat to the room. The efficiency is very high and no extra troubles as far as I know.
I have been considering making a video talking about /demonstrating why sand batteries are not all they're cracked up to be... or at least not for this type of heat source.
It's not terribly quick to explain, but it has to do with exposed surface area temperature differentials, as well as the ability to absorb heat quickly.
The person who left the next comment says they have done it with 90Kg of sand, 3m of pipe and it works well. I have already ordered a bunch of pipe for experiments and so I may give it a try.
No
@@TexasStormChaser No ? What is this in response to ?
@@loweredexpectations4927 no such thing as a sand battery.
Just removing the burner wouldn't force hot air to flow against the housing. Air is forced along the housing in-between the burn tube and housing to increase heat transfer. But if you were to drill out the the back side so it basically just be the tube and flange that would work. Also i noticed on my heater that the inlet is severely restricted. Maybe porting out the intake would help stop the restriction some. Mine has a huge sholder right inside inlet that looks like it would block off about 50% of the air flow. Also shorter exhaust tubes would probably help some. The stock corrugated tubes are somewhat restricted. But if i were trying to scavenge heat i would probably just try to find a small and cheap aluminum intercooler. With the amout of surface space you probably wouldnt even need air flow across it. Just mount it flat like a top mount suburu intercooler. But what you did was a neat idea.
Yes... removing the burner would likely reduce efficiency of the exchanger. In fact, any additional flow likely would, to some extent.
I agree... removing the center part from the burn chamber would likely increase the flow enough and still guide the air along the exchanger walls... A better solution, but it means chopping up a chamber. Maybe when I have a few extra I will give that a go.
I have plans to try a few different methods of scavenging heat from the exhaust. I just ordered a bunch of exhaust to play with, and I have some other ideas as well. An intercooler would 100% work...
@@loweredexpectations4927 I wanted to scavenge the exhaust heat but I don't want to run the risk of getting exhaust smell in my house. If I were to try it I would get another heat exchanger and cut the end off mine and weld a second one on. Also extend the length of the burner tube. Would basically double the length of the burner and exchanger.
@@johncollinsgrove1750 I have thought of this... You'd have to remove a bunch of finned area to be able to weld the extra piece on. I have considered just a long aluminum pipe with the exhaust exiting out the end. So many idea.
Thanks for doing all these tests. Great videos! 🤟🏻👑🤟🏻🤟🏻
Oh yea and.....garaaage🤣
I love performing these experiments in my garaaaaage ! It's all nice and garaaagie .
Thanks for the comment !
@@loweredexpectations4927 🤣🤣👍🏻
Like the video, I’ve been thinking about ways to recover exhaust heat. Could you post a link to the CO detector you use.
I have had several people throw hate my way for simply showing the devices I got. Apparently there are a lot of fakes and I have been accused of promoting fakes and put putting people in danger.
From my testing, the device I own does in fact detect CO. It is shown as a ST9700 in the ad on amazon, and appears to be a clone of the something. The item that I received from Amazon Canada, was labelled "Smart Sensor ST9700", not as pictured in the ad. I will post the Canadian Link in the description of this video.
jumper wire the thermocouple from the fuel supported heat to both ecu's then the ecu's on both see the same combustion temp
That might work, eh. Would it though ? How do these work ? A small voltage is passed to measure resistance ... so it may go totally out of wack and throw a code ?
@loweredexpectations4927 check the resistance on the wire. A couple feet of 16ga probably wouldn't see any resistance. But the way you have it at least you could see the two combustion bodies temperatures
@@SR-gt350 I don't think I got my thought across properly.
The ecu is basically a multimeter. It is trying to check the resistance of the thermocouple. If you use two multimeters at the same time, to check resistance on the same object, will that have an effect on the reading ?
A multimeter sends power through the resistor (wire) and measures the drop. Depending on the drop, it knows the resistance. If you have two things sending power through the same resistor, will it show a lower resistance, or perhaps something more odd ? I may be way off with this... My brain can't put all the pieces together, haha. It would be fairly easy to check, i guess.
@loweredexpectations4927 e=i/r, yup I believe voltage created by the thermocouple would remain as voltage. Yaaa, the easiest way is to check with the voltage meter. Connect check, then disconnect check voltage. Won't hurt anything.
You should use an adjustable buck converter for the fan speed and maybe a tachometer to get actual rpm’s.
Thanks for the comment
Yeah... I actually have one of those dc to dc converters hanging around somewhere... I just wanted to try it like this for simplicity. i plan on playing with this more in the future.
Why not use a small intercooler from a wrecked car? Make sure the exhaust part of the intercooler is pointed downstream, so any condensation can be expelled without blocking the exhaust. Intercoolers are designed for optimal heat exchange with minimal pressuredrop, so it should be very efficient
Yes... If you are able to use an intercooler, I believe it would be a better option. Fitting it would be more difficult. I have to assume that, with a fan installed, a fairly small intercooler would do the job better than this extra heater.
The set up I tested, was tested because, if it works, it is very easy for the average person to do. It is a self contained unit with a built in fan, just a few hose clamps and you are done.
I would prefer a hydronic heating radiator with a fan on it, but an intercooler or radiator would also work fine.
WOAH I had the random thought yesterday of, oh I wonder what would happen if you ran one heater into another, and then I just assumed it would overheat the second one.
Haha... great minds think alike.
@@loweredexpectations4927 😀
I use the exhaust gas to heat the main air inlet, by using a copper pipe, it definitely makes a difference.
Right on... I have thought about trying this. I have a few upcoming exhaust experiments to see what's possible.
That was a great idea and I do have some copper brake lines laying here.
@@RimjobHimself Copper is an amazing heat conductor...
But, hmm. I can twist the copper around the exhaust but how should i transfer the heat up to the airintake on the burner? Any idea? My exhaust pipes are about 160 right after burner and about 100 celcius where they go through my wall. I could also as i have longer exhaust put them inside a larger steeltube and fill that with sand, but transfer that heat up to the air intake... Hmm i have no smart easy idea.. At least save some of that heat even though Gretha Thunberg wont approve my diesel heater. And being -30 celcius here at the moment im writing this i all for getting as much heat stored as possible. I have even taped shut my vents now.
Another interesting thing is having a direction pointer at the end of the warm air tube takes my new heater wich are manual set from 210c burner temperature up to 232 just by having that piece of plastic mounted on the pipe to aim the hot air.
Thats a lot of difference, but me watching these videos is making me play much around with the heaters. Haha
I thought about using an old car radiator. A guy could crack the drain petcock to let the condensate drain. A small Muffin fan with a cardboard shroud to move air through should suffice.
Absolutely. If you have it all running down hill there is a possibility that you can just have the water draining out the end, but draining it once a day would work fine in a large radiator.... I see one sitting in my neighbours back hard and want to ask him what's up, haha.
I've always thought that using some TEGs to get electricity to power the fan would be a good idea.
Dave McLuckie , and his viewers, have made a full self powered heater doing this... very cool. I'm pretty sure, also very expensive and very low power output.
Disconnect the 2nd from the controller and just wire it directly to switched power to run the fan without trying to manipulate it into thinking it's running
That might work, but the ECU is looking for a specific resistance when it does the self check. If the. fanis out of whack (two fans) or it becomes disconnected or shorts during operation, the heater will immediately shut down and throw a code.
I will have to try and see what happens.
I say hook the second heater in the exhaust and have exhaust out the intake. Being your hot exhaust is hot it needs to be in the heat exchanger (burn chamber) with the heat.
I started to type "Why didn't I think of that" and then realized it's because I wanted to use the combustion fan as well, then got stuck on that thought path.
Seeing as how the combustion fan is removed, it would make more sense to run it into the exhaust ... I like it... Great idea ! I will have to give this a go and see what happens. Thanks for the comment.
There’s a new 6 in 1 cheap air quality monitor on Ali site that can measure CO, CO2, PM10, PM2.5, HCOC, TVOC. One meter does it all. Put that “What happened??” 🤯smoke up moment into the intro of your videos. It’s so funny to watch 🤣🤣.
60°C won’t probably melt the centrifugal air inlet fan but I think it will melt at 80-90°C. Definitely there is a risk there but you need it to synergetically optimize the exhaust flow in the whole system to counter the total number of bends you have (whopping 450° + swirling combustion chamber design) which exceeded above the manufacturer’s recommended maximum value of 270°. Even if you remove the burn chamber, as long as the 2kW inlet air pressure is “not exactly” matched with the combined total exhaust back pressure, you risk incomplete burning of the fuel in the 2kW heater 😓.
The short exhaust pipe from the 2kW to 5kW alone seems to reduce the ~190°C of the 2kW exhaust temperature to 60°C at the inlet of the 5kW. That is 68% efficiency (1 - (60°C / 190°C)) despite being a passive system! On the other hand, the 5kW even with the help of an electric fan (~20W?) seems to have only 64% efficiency 🥴at best (1 - (24°C / 68°C))! And also you have to clean the 5kW often from condensation, etc., the fumes will corrode the aluminum anyway on long term. You’re better off with a 2-3m straight exhaust pipe. I bet if you do that, the temperature at the end of it will be 25-27°C. In fact you can see videos of similar setups on Nat Dizon, andyfireblade and Jaspinder Dhillon channels.
Haha... I hadn't considered that "smoke up moment" for my intro... good idea.
The exhaust is about 200C where it comes out of the pipe.... when it is not being absorbed by the heat exchanger... so that's why I was worried.
I just bought 16 feet of exhaust and am planning on testing a bunch of exhaust limits / recommendations, haha. Of course, less bends is better, but I'm going to push it till we see problems.
Ideally the 5kw would have a variable speed fan so that we could match can speed and neutralize exhaust pressure / vacuum. Maybe in an upcoming test.
The exhaust temp at the heater was showing about 60C, but that is just because it is attached / thermally coupled to the exchanger. The exhaust temp or pipe temp just a few inches back would be closer to 200C.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the corrosion, as aluminum forms a pretty durable oxide layer. I will be testing with stainless exhaust soon👍 this is a much more practical solution for most people.
Thanks for taking time to explain. In that sense it's similar to the setup where this guy coils up the exhaust in a metal box like your cooker tin can, a PC fan blows cold air into it and from another hole 50°C hot air comes out. If you could manipulate the thermocouple and fan independently, you could crank up the combustion chamber temperature to really high. David McLuckie measured it to be 1035°C!@@loweredexpectations4927
Just blow the exhaust into the room. We all have used those big jet/turbine heater units in rooms with poor ventilation and they are way worse on CO and like polutants than these little units are.
Yeah.. I have worked with the big industrial ones.... The CO is one concern (if the heater isn't working right) but more of a concern for me is the TVOC ... If you can smell or taste the fumes, then it's not good for your health.
I know lots of old mechanics, including my father, who use WD40 or varsol to wash their hands and cleaned carburetors with no gloves for decades would laugh at this... but my father did die from lymphoma, so it likely caught up with him.
I think it's worth the little extra effort and cost to vent outside, if possible... of course... if you need to get shit done, people often take shortcuts.
I've had the idea of running the exhaust through something as simple as a house water radiator. They've got loads of surface area, and the bungs/internal area should be more than plenty for the exhaust to run through without any back pressure to speak of.
diesel exhaust builds acidic condensate and will rott the water radiator in no time.
you'd need stainless steel 316 grade.
I thought of the same thing and almost bought one... but I can't afford it at the moment. I'm confident that it would work, it's just a matter of how many or how large do you need to get all the heat out. Any is good, all is better.
You also need to make sure to design it in a way that the water can run out as there will be a LOT of condensate.
I use a 55 gallon drum for a radiator which I picked up for $10 , works great!@@loweredexpectations4927
I use a 55 Gallon barrel as a radiator but your comment makes me think about pouring some baking powder in the bottom to neutralize any acid. What do you Think? @@casemodder89
Okay you said that right after I texted
Haha... yeah... I plan on testing it to see what happens.
.
I have no idea what I'm talking about but for some odd reason the word gasification comes to mind
That's something that I really want to try. I have a few ideas on how... ideally I would like to start the heater on diesel, then use the heat from the exhaust to cook the oil and pull the fumes into the inlet.
This process is supposed to involve a cooling system that pulls out moisture and heavier fractions.... but that seems like a lot of work, haha.
Too many comments to read every one.
Why not hook up two similar heaters, use the combustion fan on the secondary to suck air trough the first that burns fuel, the exterior fan used on both to flow the heat from the chambers, that way, might have to use some 1:1 pwn magic for using two fan motors...but that should be it.
That is a good idea and I may try something like that in the future...
I'm not very clever when it comes to electronics and want to try to do it as simple as possible. It may be possible to run both fans off of one ECU... if that works it would be really simple.
I don't have two heaters that I can use at the moment. If the fan speeds were matched, the pressure should be equalized... it should work quite well. The concern then is if the 5kw would make enough exhaust heat to damage the secondary heaters combustion fan.
run the heater pipes the other way around so the heat gets into the burn chamber first then out the inlet
That's two votes for doing this... not sure why I hadn't thought of it.
should work better@@loweredexpectations4927
Brazing some copper sheets with heat sink fins to the exhaust would work well.
That would work well. I have some interesting exhaust tests planned for the near future. Some practical and some pushing the limits / experimental.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I'm thinking automotive radiators would be perfect but they rot out w/o antifreeze🙄🤦
@@autojohn-pu1vf I suppose.... what are most old metal radiators made of ? I never even thought of that. New or performance ones are aluminum... old ones had some copper ?
@@loweredexpectations4927 I got to get working 1st... Requested refund from ebay seller when it didn't power up, and noticed voltage drop to 11V on remote 1.6volts lower then actual(Multimeter) So w charger on engine start it powered up fine and worked PERFECT X 2 days then quit w blinking error code and I'm stumped. I was suppose to reply to sellers offer to replace remote by the 6th to qualify for refund... I did not, that was the day it worked... perty sure I'll get f'd on refund thats how they roll, looking at 30$ Motherboard/controller combo (saw your compatability issues)
This was 70$ and has cheezy on/off button no controller
Try it with the burn chamber removed so no restrictions there
Yes... I think I will have to do that... a few more tests are needed. The one issue that this could cause, is a huge drop in efficiency as the chamber guides the air along the exchanger walls. We shall see.
Variable fan on the unit used as heat exchanger is best best, but how do you then regulate the speed for minimum CO. ? Sounds like a lot of expensive sensor and controller rigging for little gain. But hey, nothing to be gained without the experiment. ! Yep it grieves me to see wasted heat going to heat the planet when it can be utilised. And yes I do run a diesel heater in my greenhouse for frost protection. :)
I'm not sure what the question is, exactly.
The exchanger heater only has air passing over the outside of it and the exhaust is fed using the fan from the heater.
Controlling / reducing CO may be achievable if the exchanger heater had an adjustable fan and had the combustion air fan installed. A person could manually tune the fan speed so that the pressure was neutral in the exhaust (not causing back pressure and not a vacuum) and that could take care of the CO issue.
I overlooked looking at the 2kw heater to see what the effects on it were, and I can say for sure that it was running rich and there is soot in the exhaust. This is evidence that the air flow was too restrictive and that is what caused the CO.
Makes sense, but what I was getting at was monitoring the co to regulate the fan. Neutral pressure would indeed offer a form of control. I understand the settings dilemma having worked on 3 fuel burners (gas, oil and heavy oil, industrial) before retiring@@loweredexpectations4927
Uh, why would you exhaust inside your garage to check the air quality??? You most certainly would want to exhaust to the outside and test the air quality that way. Test the quality inside (because you can get an exhaust leak, so that is a valid test). If you want to test the particulates in the exhaust, you exhaust to an enclosure... outside.
EDIT: The overall idea is a good one... but you probably want to gut the 2nd heater. A slight amount of back pressure, but not much. Do have anything on the 2nd heater on aside from the outer fan. So, a broken fan would be quite useful for this. No need for anything intelligent in the 2nd heater. The entire housing will absorb heat and the fan will exchange it.
Thanks for your comment.
If I run the exhaust outside, it is almost impossible to get a reading on the exhaust fumes. They dilute very quickly into the air. In order to get an accurate reading of the toxicity you need no wind and ideally an enclosed space.
If I vent the exhaust outside, and test the air in the garage, that won't tell me anything about what's happening with the heater. The amount of CO and TVOC coming out of your exhaust is directly related to how good or bad your heater is working, and if it is going to carbon up or not.
A person could build an enclosure outside, to test the exhaust, but it's much easier to test inside. There are better and safer ways to go about doing this, and this is how I choose to do it. I balance the risk with the need to actually get things done. Quite honestly, a person gets more exposure to fumes if you have spilled diesel on yourself while filling your tank.... and the CO I'm being exposed to is absolutely harmless.
No need to run second heater, just connect fan on second heater to electrics with variable control, have the exhause go downward 2nd heater below,
I have thought of this ... it could work, but it may throw a fault code.
The ECU checks the resistance of the fan, fuel pump and other components when you power it up. If they are out of spec, the heater will not start. WIth two fans connected it would likely not start.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I thought you were just using the second as a heat exchanger that would not need powering up, just a fan running to push air over chamber, are you going to power second, why?
@@ArhipDroid You are correct. The reason I did it this way is to keep it simple. If you just run 12V power to the fan, it will likely run at 6000 rpm non stop. It wouldn't be healthy for the fan and quite noisy. The ECU vaies voltage to the fan to control the speed and doesn't really send it 12V
It turns out that it is a LOT easier than I make it ... If the heat sensor is connected where I had it on the exhaust, the heater does not need to be running. WIth power to the ECU, it will sense the heat and turn the fan on = Problem solved
I hope this makes sense.
I’m guessing not enough oxygen in the exhaust gases to combust in the second heater?
Not enough oxygen or heat. The exchanger is doing a excellent job of pulling out all the heat. Ideally, all of the combustion would be done in the first heater, and the clean exhaust gasses would pass through the second heater and lose most of their energy.
😂👌 cool
okay I think you can run both heaters on one computer.
min one pump min one glow plug .
so the last heater only runs its fans 😏
Groet Gilbert Nederlands 🔥👍
This is possible.... it depends if the ECU freaks out when it sees the extra load from the extra fan. Some of these ECUs are stupid and won't care (probably) but some ECUs are too smart and will see the change in resistance as a fault and shut down.
@@loweredexpectations4927of course you are right about that.
but just like you, I am known for blowing up equipment just out of curiosity 🤭.
I'm crossing my fingers 🤞and thinking that these ECUs aren't that smart.
I ordered Vevo myself and want to try to connect it to an old electric oil radiator, first remove the oil and remove the glow element. and then weld above the inlet and below the outlet. o and a drain nipple for condensation 🤭 that will be my project.
good luck with your cool idea
I want to watch, greetings Gilbert
@@gilbertgilberts1767 I had the same thought about the oil radiators, as they are much more common now, and a person can find a used or broken one free or cheap. Good stuff.
My guess: it works, but could benefit from greater airflow (assuming you nix the fan from the 2nd unit)
I think you were the only person to guess... so it took me a minute to process why you were guessing, haha.
@@loweredexpectations4927 lol... I figure if nothing else it drives engagement... I saw a video earlier where the fella found that water was causing his burn chamber to soot up due to an upward bend in the exhaust... I remember last year your chamber was having similar looking issues (to what I watched in his video) and if I remember, you were venting in an upward pointing swing into your shop ventilation... Could have been causing issues you were completely unaware of... I believe this guy only used diesel.
@@tilly8297 Yeah...I had lots of issues, but I'm fairly certain never because of water. For starters, I had that pipe off sometimes 3-4 times a day and never once saw water. More obvious to me, however, was the fact that I monitored the temp of the exhaust and vent duct carefully and it was never below 50C in the duct and well over 100C on the exhaust.
I ordered a bunch of exhaust that should show up tomorrow or Tuesday, so that I can do a bunch of exhaust tests. How long can it be before condensate becomes an issue, what happens if you run it straight up, how much heat can you scavenge with just a lot of exhaust tubing, and if I have enough, how much before it becomes too restrictive... I may have to order more.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I like your style... And yeah, kinda hard to have water condensate at or above 100c
@@tilly8297 Thanks. Sometimes, the best way to learn is to push things past their limits. It can answer a lot of questions that would otherwise just remain guesses.
If I suggest a jetski build ….
What's a "Jet Ski" ...🤔 never heard of it. Sounds cool.
Okay running the first diesel heater is fine should the burner be taken out of the second heater so that their room for the exhaust to go right on through as it heats up the chamber in the second diesel heater
That could work, however, this may drastically reduce the efficiency of the second heater. (it may not remove much heat) The chamber guides the flow along the exchanger aiding in heat transfer. If it was removed, the flow could go in one port and right out the other.
I believe the best setup would be a modified chamber that had the centre removed so the air would still be guided, but not as restricted.
Hi,thanks for share with us all your work,i sow your video but now i have a problem on my heater, i have fluctuations fan speed up and down sometimes but it worked a while but now i have e06 wich means fan short or temp sensor short and heater stops. I start it again works about one hour and stops again. what do you think about it? what i have to check or replace?thanks man. cheers
Hello. Sorry to hear you are having troubles. Based on what you are telling me, it sounds like your motor overheated and the brushes are sticking.
You may just have a bad connection at the connector on the ECU, so you can check that first, but it sounds like sticky brushes. I had the same thing happen to my heater last year and made a video about replacing the motor.
You can buy just the motor, or for a few more dollars, you can purchase the whole fan assembly with both fans and motor already installed. This is the easy way.
If it is an emergency, you may be able to take your motor apart and get to to work for a while. I was able to keep mine working till I got a new motor a week later.
I hope this helps.
very nice very nice!
Thanks !
what if you just hot wire the fan on the second heater to the fan on the first so the fan rates match on heat exchanger?
That might work, but the ECU is looking for a specific resistance when it does the self check. If the. fanis out of whack (two fans) or it becomes disconnected or shorts during operation, the heater will immediately shut down and throw a code.
I will have to try and see what happens.
Why not extend the original design of the Diesel heater?
There are a few good reasons. I personally like the idea, with a 4 foot long aluminum pipe...
Cast aluminum sucks to weld and I'm guessing this isn't the best quality. You want this to be perfectly sealed and strong, so that could be an issue. I'm sure I could make it happen with a few hours of struggle.
The exchanger is finned and this would be impossible to weld air tight, so you would have to machine or grind off a bunch of the fins. to attach your new piece... Not a big deal if you are adding another few feet, but fins are what makes this a good exchanger.
You would also have to block off the original exhaust port and make a new one near the end of the chamber so the heat would travel the length of the new piece.... Unless you also extend the burn tube, in which case the heater may refuse to work at all... it may work fine 🤷♂️
Part of the desirability of these heaters is the compact nature and the ability to direct air flow, or use duct work to move it to a specific area. If you extend the exchanger and want to retain these properties, you also have to extend the case somehow.
After all of this is done, there is a chance that it won't work well due to changing the geometry of the burn area. These things can be VERY particular and any change in flow can mess things up. It may work fine... but it may be a lot of work for a total failure.
I would like to build one, like I said at the top, that was just a long aluminum tube with the burn chamber in one end and the exhaust out the other ... not sure if this would work and it would be fair cost in time and money to find out, haha.
Im curious If you could run the exhaust through a small car radiator and run the 12v radiator fans to recollect some of the lost heat from the exhaust
You have to move a large quantity of air asto not choke out the Diesel Heater.
If the Heater does not run correctly, you could have all sorts of issues.
A small car radiator as long as it's all metal and has enough flow, then yes, that would work great. The 12V radiator would collect some, but very little as the surface area is too small to transfer the heat. You would need a fairly large unit for this to work effectively.
Very true. This little 2kw unit is having CO issues as is, running through the 5kw unit.
@@loweredexpectations4927 condensation wouldn't be an issue since they have the petcock on them where it could be drained if need be, otherwise a heater core w small fan blowing in it maybe a small computer fan
@@gooey83 Condensation builds up very quickly when you are cooling your exhaust. You could end up with several litres in 6-8 hours. It would probably be fine, but you may need to have something that drained automatically... You can get little duckbill things that let water out but don't allow air to flow. They use them on airboxes of of road vehicles.
99.999% Insanity ❤
Thanks ! haha. Wait till you see my Sunday video.
havent finished video but it i was gonna scavvage heat i wouldnt have the second one burning fuel. id just have a fan running across the coil to remove heat from the exhaust
Yeah, the second one isn't burning any fuel.... Just moving air with the fans.
@@loweredexpectations4927 oh ok my bad.
@@loweredexpectations4927 the next test if i was doing it would be exhaust warp to second unit to get temps up. im planning on doing this also for my camper to help heat the front of it. also gonna build a stand for it with prob a 5 gallon gravity feed system.
@@redneckdrennan745 No worries !
@@redneckdrennan745 🤔 why would you want the temps up ? The idea is to get the heat out so it is heating your living space. If it is really efficient, the heat will go into the air, and the exchanger will be close to room temp.
Thats pretty cool.
Now how does it affect the burn chamber in the 2kw heater? Does the fan in the 5kw heater get things moving along well enough that we can finally get the holy grail of 24/7/365 waste oil burn?
What about an EGR setup like on cars?
Thanks for the comment.
Based on the CO, and the color of the exhaust, it didn't do the 2kw heater any good. As I said in the video, this is likely because it is a little too restrictive. This could be remedied by using a variable fan speed on the 5kw heater.
I don't think this is the answer to the waste oil question. It could help, however, as the secondary heater could be used to dial in air flow. I have a few tests planned before we get to that.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Thanks for the reply. Looking forward to more great vids! Also greets from your neighbor in montana lol
@@memadmax69 I've driven through Montana a few times in the last year... Megan's parents were in Vegas, camping, and the engine went in their truck. I drove down and got them in early May, and then dropped them off when it was repaired in late June. Long but beautiful drive.
Cheeers !
EGR wouldn't be good if you mean by re- introducing the exhaust back into the inlet, this would increase the carbon monoxide and might lower the flame temperature,, the, same. as it does in motor vehicles. 😢
@@stevengrenville9600 I think what he means, and several people have done, is using the egr cooler as a heat exchanger. You can run the exhaust through the coolant passages, and blow a fan through the exhaust part, of the egr cooler.
lol, a Rube Godlberg heat exchanger.
Haha... Hey, if it works, it works.
Your thoughts on this. If you run fluid through the intake and exhaust, heat the outside of the unit in a fire pit or burn barrel, do you believe the heat would transfer in and be usable in a radiant heat source indoors?
I'm not 100% sure that I know what you mean exactly, but transferring heat from a outdoor heat source (fire pit) inside to a radiator is totally doable.
You need to make sure that you are not using a sealed system on your fluid so that the pressure is able to vent, otherwise you are making a bomb. You most likely need to be able to flow the fluid......
OH... I think I get what you are saying. Remove all of the parts and use the heater body as a means of absorbing heat into water.
That would work, but you would need to make sure that you don't' get it too hot, and it may be a good idea to shield it from the direct flame to avoid the fins melting... You'd need to keep a high flow rate and make sure that your radiator, indoors, was large enough to disperse the heat quickly.... if the fluid in the heater gets hot enough to boil, it very quickly loses it's ability to absorb heat and could possibly melt.
Good
Great.
At min 10 : its Not much smoke because its the smoke of two
I'm not sure I understand. You mean it is a lot of smoke because two heaters are running ?
Only one heater is burning fuel.... The 2kw heater is burning fuel and the 5kw is just acting like a heat exchanger. That's the point of this video / test. Using a heater as an exchanger to scavenge heat from the exhaust.
Where do you buy your deisel from? President’s Choice (esso) is horrible! Lots of soot. I found shell was much cleaner.
Lol... Really !? I get it from my corner gas station... I think it might be GP ? ... I just call it "Tuckers"
@loweredexpectations4927 I modified my burn chamber last year, so the tube was removable, and I ground the tube weld flush so I could remove it easily and clean when burning used oil (no longer) . Now, I think the hose clamp may be restricting the burn exhaust port. I'll try rotating the screw of the hose clamp so it doesn't restrict the exhaust port. It seems that with the esso deisel more prevalent on poor combustion
@@SR-gt350 Ah yes... I had a hose clamp on mine as well, and had to clock it off to one side to avoid blocking the port. By fluke I found the sweet spot. I may have also used a dremel on the fins around the port, can't recall.
@loweredexpectations4927 yes I'll try rotating. Also, I think the screen in the burn chamber is a bit crusty. May be an issue with deisel wicking properly thru it. Did you remove the burn chamber screen and just left the little glow plug screen?
@@SR-gt350 Yeah, I removed my mesh and didn't notice any difference in performance. Seemed to run fine on diesel.
Try A wood gasifier
I really want to try to make a gasifier but use waste oil in it, and see what happens.
What is a gerage?
🤣 Sort of like a garage, but those who are East coast Canada impaired.
just gave you a ys thumbs up and it says zero. guess i've got to wait til the end of the video, huh, youtube?
Thanks ! Yes... RUclips can be odd like that... it sometimes just doesn't show up, especially on a new video.
...and of cause try IT again with two 5/8kw maschines. The 2kw is bullshit. Its 5kw without balls
Not all 2 kw heaters are the same. This 2kw heater is smaller than most 5/8kw units. It is over an inch shorter, about an inch narrower and has an outlet size of 60mm instead of 75mm.
The reason for using a 2kw into the 5kw, is because restricting the exhaust can cause problems. I will be trying at 5kw into a 5 kw or my new larger 8kw at some point 👍
Hey would you be interested in doing a collab on an install of a heater into a truck cab? I have the heater cant find any how to videos and forums im on cant find any as well. Im located in alberta as well
Hey, I'd love to help, but I'm not in a great situation at the moment. I'm going through a separation and may have to sell my house any day.
What sort of truck is it ? Perhaps I can offer some advice.
Sorry to hear that. If your up for a drive to gp you could film it in my shop, haha. It's a 99 dodge 3500 Dually, I also have the vevor air compressor I'm wanting to install as well pm me if you want to talk further
@@jks821 I will keep it in mind, but it looks like I will be very busy for the next few months, at least.
This is going to be interesting.... 😂
Haha... it's always interesting. Not always sensible, but interesting, yes.
Not going to lie this was painful to watch good idea really bad setup. The whole point is to heat up the second heater as much as possible, You need to have a 5kw feeding a 2kw or maybe a 5kw feeding a 5kw depends how much heat is made when this test is done right. put them side by side with the exhaust as short as you can to push as much heat into the second as possible other wise you just losing heat. You really could just gut the inside of the second one enough where it still seals but allows exhaust to flow then just hook 12v or whatever voltage the intake fan takes the two wires just hang there under the fan but that would turn it on and it would blow air over the housing. As for the condensation a small hole in the right spot would fix a lot of that. I probably could draw something up that would make more sense if anyone still doesn't understand.
Come on man... Your comment doesn't inspire me to want to be nice, but I'll try.
You are making a whole bunch of assumptions and statements as though page 23 paragraph 4 has instructions on how to do this properly ? What...
The point of this test was
1. To amuse my audience, and 99% of them will never do this.
2. See if the restriction would be too much or if the heater would run at all.
3. Check the temp drop / if the exhaust exiting the 2nd heater would be hot or cool
4. Would the build up of condensation be a huge problem. ETC.
If the idea is to collect as much eat as possible (and it is) then you want as large of a heat exchanger as possible. Running the 2kw into the 5 is the best case scenario as the demands on the 5kw are less than they would be if it was a 5kw into a 5kw.
I do not have an unlimited budget, and I don't' have two 5kw units that I can use for this at the moment... but I did clearly say in this video that I wanted to test that.
If you watched the video, you may have noticed that the 5kw was a substantial restriction for the 2kw heater, and caused it to make a lot of CO... If the 5kw was run into the 2kw, this situation would be way worse.
"Short exhaust otherwise you are losing heat".... yes, into my garage. This is only a problem if the heaters are outdoors and you are blowing the hot air in.
These are all good / interesting ideas, but I'm not sure why you couldn't just say "hey, I have some interesting ideas or things I'd like to see you try"
I'm not sure if you are just having a bad day or something, I hope you are well.. This sort of approach is not going to make people react well.
@@loweredexpectations4927 You don’t want a large heat exchanger it spreads the heat out too much the diesel heater idea keeps the unit small and allows the air blowing off the housing to be hotter with the stock fan on the unit being utilized.
By applying the voltage necessary to make the air intake motor run takes out all the other electronic issues.
You really only had buildup because it couldn’t flow good but like you said they’re spare or junk heaters so take out what you don’t need that still allows it to seal and having a bigger unit pushing exhaust into a smaller one won’t be an issue as long as it flows exhaust good with that stuff taken out plus take out the combustion fan so it’s not pushing the exhaust out with the intake air fan is running without restriction and a shorter exhaust pipe it should flow itself and heat the second unit up.
Dealing with the condensation really wouldn’t be an issue to much when set up with the unit at the right angle and maybe a pin hole in the right spot.
As for the tone, I only meant it as like I feel like some of those issues should’ve been common sense but either or doesn’t matter much respect for ya. Have a good day.
@@MRCHRISLONG14 I think you are making a common mistake and confusing heat energy with temperature. You want a large exchanger and for the temperature differential to be large. This is the only way to be efficient, especially when you get down to the last few percent. If the air coming off of the heat exchanger is hot, then the exchanger is to small and you aren't getting all of the energy out of it.
If your exchanger is sized froefficency, the temperature will be close to room temperature. If you are truly capturing all of the heat energy, then your exchanger will the the same temperature as the air going into the heater. If the air coming out of your exchanger is warmer than the air you are trying to heat, this will heat the air.
Yes, applying voltage directly to the exchanger fan would make more sense. A variable power supply would be nice so that you can speed the fan up if your exchanger starts getting hot.
I assume you mean carbon monoxide when you say "build up", or maybe you're talking about the water ? Removing the innards is probably a good idea, but it might also cause a large loss in efficiency. The burn chamber guides the exhaust along the exchanger allowing more time and more surface area for the heat to transfer. WIth the burn tube removed, the exhaust is very close to the inlet, and much of the hot exhaust might just exit. Cutting a hole in the existing chamber would work well, but that means ruining a chamber... Maybe in the future 👍
I agree..It's pretty easy to take care of condensation with a little hole and the right angle.
Cheers ! Thanks for responding. Hope you have a great day.
Why would you even do this. No one would run the heater in this way.
I did it because someone asked about it and because some people have broken heaters laying around. If you have a broken or spare heater, you can scavenge some of the heat that would normally be lost and save $ or stay warmer.
But more importantly, it was fun... Most of what I do is not at all practical. My last video was burning paint thinner.... twice the cost of diesel.
I heard there was going to be chips .. lol
Haha... I'm just as disappointed as you !
Error: E8. Hangry!!!
@@Joe-hj6pg Haha... I didn't know that was a thing with heaters.
There's a thing with these Vevor Heaters for sure ... Lol I just went ahead and named mine " Bender " from Futurama... Lol
@@Joe-hj6pg Haha... did you stick some googly eyes on it ?
Catman, nananana, Catman....😂
🤣 Uh on.... Am I being labeled as a cat man? I guess that's ok.
ruclips.net/video/96kA_Cwye04/видео.htmlsi=P6TOy2D-OxvXfO5T
No, I have over 20 cats on my property that I feed, and no mice. Good trade.
Cat as in catalytic to clean your indoor air during your experiments.
@@tjhouston4916 Oh, haha... Yes, that is one thing that I want to try. I did an experiment with waste oil and a weed trimmer cat, but it was more or less to try and trap heat.... and just to see what would happen.
I think the problem with putting a cat in the heater is that you have to preheat it.... as shown in the video (cool video by the way) I don't believe the 200C from the exhaust would be enough to start the reaction ?
Love your videos, keep up the good work.
@@tjhouston4916 Thanks !
better just to use a old radiator
If you can find one with metal end caps, then yes... cheaper. My neighbor has one sitting in his yard and I almost asked him what he's doing with it.
The radiator doesn't have the agility to he disassembled to be cleaned out, if necessary, so that could eventually be a concern. It also takes up more space and doesn't have a good / easy way to direct the captured air. The second heater is compact and self contained.
None of the things I mentioned would effect me, but perhaps some people.
Turbo it
.... that just gave me a great idea....
I can use the drip feed to meter fuel, to hell with all that electronic nonsense, then I can use the second heater as forced induction... and make this thing roll major coal !
I wonder if it will melt.
Dude are you abscessed with these heaters or have you lost it lol Dont be a one trick pony .
Haha... I like tinkering with stuff, and these videos tend to do fairly well. It also comes with the benefit of making heat, and I like heat.
Why are you speak? Really good English we’re not using Fahrenheit.
I have no idea what this comment means.