Anyone got an Eberspacher diesel heater?

[gasgas]

If so will it work all night in the winter? I have recently fitted a used one, and I propose to go away this weekend. How much fuel will it use overnight? Something in the instructions alludes to it turning off after one hour. What? Surely that can't be right, you can't expect to be turning it back on every hour?
I am going to sleep in the camper tonight with the temp set to something like ten degrees and see what happens. IF I freeze and have to break down the house front door to get in, I will rip out the Eberspacher and find a used Carver convector to replace the one that some idiot removed before I bought it.

 

[RichardHelen262]

Some fitted to bt vehicles had a 1 hour timer, but otherwise they should run all night as long as your battery keeps up,
Fuel wise they use 1 litre every seven hours

 

[gasgas]

Thanks Richard, so the fuel situation is fine. I did get this second hand so I hope it's not an ex-BT one. I set it running a bit over an hour ago so I had better run outside and see if it is still working.

 

[gasgas]

Yes, it's fine. I set it to 18ºC and it is there, all up and running. I have 200AH of lithium and when I get to Goosnargh I will have travelled for over two hours so it should be fully charged. I will leave it disconnected from EHU tonight, sleep in it with the heater running and see what the battery is like in the morning. There was a fault code when I interrogated it but I will put that down to it having been used, then disconnected, then I bought it and fitted it. It was fault 52, something to do with supply voltage low, that would have been when it was disconnected.

 

[Molly 3]

Only down side to an ebber is the start up current, when the battery is low they can refuse to start should be OK with a lithium

 

[edina]

 

[nabsim]

I used to leave my Eberspacher on all the time when it got cold just turned low at night. If it is turning off it will be the installation/controller as others have said.

 

[gasgas]

Some fitted to bt vehicles had a 1 hour timer, but otherwise they should run all night as long as your battery keeps up,
Fuel wise they use 1 litre every seven hours

Ah thankfully mine does not have a 1 hr timer, it worked all night last night and I didn't wake up shivering.
I think it used about 1 litre, from what I can judge looking at the transluscent diesel tank fitted just behind the driver's seat.

What I did notice is that it takes a lot longer to warm the inside of the camper than the old Carver convetor heaters did. I am an idiot - I should have just bought and fitted a Carver gas heater. All the wiring, pipes and stuff were already there. I don't know why I didn't think of it, other than old age idiocy has caught up with me.
I think I'll have to take a 5 litre Jerry can of diesel with me, but I don't like that idea as I don't have a 'garage' to store it, it would have to sit behind the passenger seat. I have repeatedly pointed out to my best beloved that Diesel is a lady's perfume and she ought to be proud that the camper smells of it (and my clothes) but she insists that Yardley do a better job . . . . .

Second edit . . . thinks . . . I could still sell the Eberspacher for what I paid for it, and install a gas Carver . . . . maybe I will do just that . . .

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Do you mean the carver that Truma took over, if so, yes, they are the best apart from having to cut the hole in the floor.

 

[nabsim]

I have found I use approx 0.1 litres of diesel an hour but it will depend how high you have the heat. Just plumb it in to the main tank, no worry about carrying jerry cans and diesel smell then.

 

[Greengrass]

When I had a truck my heater got switch on when winter came and switch off at the end of winter just left it on tick over over the weekends the truck would stand for 48 hrs or more and I have never had a flat battery in all the years I have owned one also I had a 24v fridge running at the same time PS I didn't worry about the fuel I carried over a 1000lts

 

[Rumour]

If you are going to run it low for extended periods, make sure you give it a full blast for around half an hour every few weeks. Running on low can cause them to soot up.

 

[trevskoda]

Ah thankfully mine does not have a 1 hr timer, it worked all night last night and I didn't wake up shivering.
I think it used about 1 litre, from what I can judge looking at the transluscent diesel tank fitted just behind the driver's seat.

What I did notice is that it takes a lot longer to warm the inside of the camper than the old Carver convetor heaters did. I am an idiot - I should have just bought and fitted a Carver gas heater. All the wiring, pipes and stuff were already there. I don't know why I didn't think of it, other than old age idiocy has caught up with me.
I think I'll have to take a 5 litre Jerry can of diesel with me, but I don't like that idea as I don't have a 'garage' to store it, it would have to sit behind the passenger seat. I have repeatedly pointed out to my best beloved that Diesel is a lady's perfume and she ought to be proud that the camper smells of it (and my clothes) but she insists that Yardley do a better job . . . . .

Second edit . . . thinks . . . I could still sell the Eberspacher for what I paid for it, and install a gas Carver . . . . maybe I will do just that . . .

If you have a we tank rather than running of the main fuel tank then you can run it on 28 sec central heating oil which is a lot cheaper.

 

[gasgas]

Hmmm but I can't buy 10 litres of central heating oil. If I had oil central heating that would be no problem. Anyway I have just spent the last 4 days away, in varying degrees of cold and the heater has been on 24 hrs a day, obviously varying the temperature according to our needs. So far as I can tell it has used 6 litres of diesel ( a bit more than half the transluscent tank) and behaved perfectly. It wasn't at all noisy at night, I couldn't tell it was on - but it was keeping us at 17 degrees.
I can also report on the capacity of two 100 Ah lithium batteries and my wife's night -breathing machine (though I am not sure of its wattage). The batteries and the 2000W Renogy inverter powered her breathing machine through the night, the diesel heater for 15 hours, boiled two kettles of water, and fried four rashers of bacon before it went beep beep I give up.

 

[gasgas]

@Pudsey Bear yes that's the one. However now I have bought the Eberspacher and fitted it, and used it for four cold days I think I'll stick with it. We'll see next Spring, I might change my mind and revert to a Carver / Truma. the original fitting hole is still there, along with the wiring and gas supply. However, before that I need to find out why my fridge didn't ignite on gas. I checked the jet / injector / igniter and no gas was coming down the pipe so I think the gas valve behind the operation knob has gone kaputt.

 

[Caz]

The Eberspacher in my Trooper ran quite happily for 4 nights at New Year a few years ago and cost a lot less to run than the Truma/Carver gas heater I'd had in the previous van
If I'd had a bigger better battery it would have happily run for the whole 5 nights of the meet.
The gas heater used to go through a 6kg gas bottle in a weekend.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

@Pudsey Bear yes that's the one. However now I have bought the Eberspacher and fitted it, and used it for four cold days I think I'll stick with it. We'll see next Spring, I might change my mind and revert to a Carver / Truma. the original fitting hole is still there, along with the wiring and gas supply. However, before that I need to find out why my fridge didn't ignite on gas. I checked the jet / injector / igniter and no gas was coming down the pipe so I think the gas valve behind the operation knob has gone kaputt.

Thermocouple? Universal ones seem to fit and work ok.

 

[gasgas]

Thermocouple? Universal ones seem to fit and work ok.

It's not the thermocouple, the gas doesn't light when the knob is pushed in - there is no gas at the igniter end.

 

[Greengrass]

Hmmm but I can't buy 10 litres of central heating oil. If I had oil central heating that would be no problem. Anyway I have just spent the last 4 days away, in varying degrees of cold and the heater has been on 24 hrs a day, obviously varying the temperature according to our needs. So far as I can tell it has used 6 litres of diesel ( a bit more than half the transluscent tank) and behaved perfectly. It wasn't at all noisy at night, I couldn't tell it was on - but it was keeping us at 17 degrees.
I can also report on the capacity of two 100 Ah lithium batteries and my wife's night -breathing machine (though I am not sure of its wattage). The batteries and the 2000W Renogy inverter powered her breathing machine through the night, the diesel heater for 15 hours, boiled two kettles of water, and fried four rashers of bacon before it went beep beep I give up.

What Cpap machine has your wife got

 

[gasgas]

It's a CPAP Resmed. Doesn't appear to have a model number but it runs on 24v and 2.71A. So that's 65W. A significant draw on the leisure batteries, probably the same as all the habitation lighting on at once.