Heat by your truck heater to teardrop.

[bdosborn]

Cummins recommends against excessive idle time at cold temperatures. The engine doesn't make enough heat at idle to come up to operating temperature, leading to increased engine wear. Better stick to a gasser if you want to use your engine to heat your tear...

Bruce

[John61CT]

What has that to do with heating?

Everything...taken in context with what has been discussed previously in this thread.

sorry just don't see it, above was about the propulsion engine providing waste heat, not heat via alternator electricity

run a genset to power an electric heater?

Sure in an emergency, but not for routine usage.

Or did you mean something else? is what I'm asking.

[Treeview]

why not routine useage?

Does the generator know what how its output is used?

[Cosmo]

Thanks. I am not trying to cause rancor in the village.

I was wondering about why run vehicle engine to provide heat with the alternator electric when a small Honda generator will run 3.2 to 8.1 hours on a gallon of fuel, depending on the load.

I am not criticizing anyone's ideas or decisions just trying to understand how the cost, benefit, reliability, complexity, fuel consumption and wear and tear factors compare.

I once made a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron (no steam and no starch) and it was pretty tasty. But I usually use a toaster oven.

=Cosmo

[Treeview]

I saw how a second cousin plumbed in a heater core into his camper shell about fifty years ago. Clever but nothing new. He'd run the back heater while he was driving to 'store' heat in all the gear and structure in the shell. We all get that. There would have to be a lot of mass in a tear to act as a heat sink to make this install worthwhile. Even if it were only used while driving.

[John61CT]

Generating electricity off-grid to run electric heaters (really? is that really what you're thinking!!??) is **enormously** inefficient. Might as well burn paper currency to keep warm.

If you are running your ICE anyway for other purposes, great, whether directly using the waste engine heat (as in the OP), or using electricity generated as a byproduct.

Or if you're connected to grid power, no problem, use an electric powered heater.

But otherwise, just burn the fuel directly to produce heat.

[KennethW]

As with a Nipco if you use kerosene. You won't have the fouling of the glow plug.

[tony.latham]

but he said its true they are huge battery hogs. they will run a semi shut off on 4 big batterys down in just one night..

Here's a video showing amperage usage of the Chinese-made diesel heaters.



I thought about going this direction on my next build but picked up a Propex.

Tony

[Cosmo]

Great information. THANK YOU.

=Cosmo