Dry Heat WITHOUT Propane - Webasto Gas/Diesel Heater Installation in RV

i've been looking for a more comfortable way to heat the rv when we're out dry camping and just living off of our batteries we have an onboard propane furnace and we've used the little buddy and the big buddy heaters as well and you know i've looked at other propane options what i ultimately uh decided to install was a different kind of heater what basto is the name of the company they're a german company that makes these for all kinds of different vehicles you'll see them a lot in semi trucks that run off of diesel they provide plenty of heat but they run off of your diesel fuel tank now i've uh found one that's that's gonna actually run off of gas or petrol since our rv is a gas coach and the nice thing about this heater is that it really sips gasoline and unlike a propane heater it doesn't create any excess humidity inside the inside the rv it's very dry heat and i can run it through the night and there's really no concern about fumes or anything like that that you might you know be thinking of when you talk about installing some sort of extra propane heater it's certainly different than uh you know than a than a propane heater because it runs off of gasoline so i gotta tap into a fuel source and i need to run an exhaust line i've got this set up and tested here inside before i take it out to the rv i'll show you where i'm gonna install it and i'm gonna drill a hole through the floor to get this guy installed in the rv and get it all hooked up [Music] well it turns out that these webasto heaters are not that easy to find here in the us without going directly to a distributor and having them install it and all that but uh when i was doing my research a lot of the folks seem to be referencing this heatso website and i found them and they had a lot of different heaters like this but they're based in the uk so i got a little uh a little impatient and found uh an entire kit that had everything i needed including this newer nicer control unit that i wanted and i i ended up ordering it on amazon i was hoping to sit down and go through the book and read everything but all i could do is look at the pictures which is typically what i do anyway but the instructions were all in russian i found an english version in a pdf that i was able to download and print out so that wasn't a big deal there's a few things that i still needed that didn't come with my kit this y connector for the ducting because i was going to run two different uh two different vents i ended up ordering some additional ducting it's kind of an oddball size it's like a two and a half inch duct and i still needed to adapt it to this three inch vent that's in my cabinet i also ordered a wabasto muffler did not come with the original kit but it's an optional item and i've been working on this uh this exhaust hanger setup and figuring out where exactly i'm going to mount that but yeah it makes it nice and super quiet i also picked up some extra exhaust tubing because i'm going to run it a little further than the one meter of uh of nice stainless exhaust uh tubing that it came with so that was extra tube but i think i have everything i need now and i was able to put it all together test it here and i think i'm pretty much ready to uh to take what i've got set up and install it in the rv so this is where i plan to to mount the heater right here i took out all the work that was already here the intake will come in this way and the uh vent or the out the hot air can go out here where uh the two output vents are gonna be so it's gonna work out really well i'm gonna drill a four inch hole right here through the bottom right down the center here and it's about a two inch gap or so to get through the floor [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so so it is now day two of this project i got a bit of a late start yesterday so i wasn't able to get as much done as i had hoped and by the time i was hooking everything up underneath the rv it started to get dark on me so i was still able to get most of it done yeah with a little headlamp on in the dark until my headlamp battery started running low and that was pretty much it but let me show you how far i've gotten and how it's all set up i went ahead and just mounted a piece of a piece of plywood here and i painted it with some undercoating spray paint and mine on here so that made it a lot easier to uh to to secure the fuel filter and the fuel pump and everything in this spot and keep it keep it fairly protected there's a there's a metal piece here that runs over the drivetrain and all that stuff so it keeps most of the road debris out of this area all right so i was able to actually tap into the the fuel line from the fuel tank so my main fuel tank is actually back there but this is the line that actually went to my generator now uh for if you're familiar with some of my past videos i removed my generator but i left the fuel line so i basically just cut it and i hooked it into this uh this this valve in case i ever want to just turn off the heater so it transitions to this smaller fuel line here this is now going to go into my fuel filter and the fuel pump and from there the fuel pump is powered up into here on the other side of this this uh floor here is the is the heater and you can see here's the the intake here so the combustion intake is here and then the exhaust comes out here now since all of the uh the connections actually are way up in this hole there's about a two to two and a half inch gap between this point and the floor where the heater is mounted now i know i wouldn't be able to get in there and actually fasten most of those most of those clamps and stuff in there so i hooked everything up ahead of time before inserting it on and mounting it onto the floor so everything's pretty much connected before i uh i put it in place and another thing i did was to uh put some heat shield here just around the inside since there is that that gap in there of about two two and a half inches of styrofoam and some wood i just wanted to make sure that it was nice and protected against this exhaust line here well i'm going to finish routing the exhaust line here and get that all mounted and then i'll head back inside and finish up the wiring and the duct work inside the cabinet hey stick my head in the door i thought you were in there oh working on your toilet or what no installing a a new heater not totally hooked up yet but it's functional hear that noise yeah the heater's running so i just fired it up uh just a few minutes ago and it's actually already raised the temperature in here about five degrees so that's pretty impressive i think it's going to work out perfectly and it's pretty much running at 100 right now it's pulling about 2.2 to 2.4 amps right now so that's pretty darn good now instead of running the power cables all the way back to the dc distribution panel what i ended up doing is just splicing into the the power coming into the the propane furnace that's already pretty close to this location so that worked out it was a lot easier to do that and i don't think i had enough uh cable anyway i would have had to add some more and then just running all that cable through the cabinets is always just a pain in the butt well this uh little control unit here is nice and compact so it fit nicely in this uh in this panel here but you know running that cable through this uh cabinet to this spot was a bit of a challenge thanks to my new little boroscope that uh that actually made that possible it was really complicated without it so so so i ended up splitting the output of the heater to go to two separate vents and i just picked up a uh a y connector that's hooked up back here and it just sends the heat in this direction and also back in this direction i also replaced the vent here that was already installed with one that actually has a valve on the front that i can close now my plan is to be able to close this one at night and then just use this one that's kind of pointed towards the sleeping area while we're sleeping at night so i'll just set the the temperature on low and hopefully that'll make it really comfortable at night i'm still trying to get the temperature dialed in but i think i've got it it's really close because the uh the temperature sensor itself is actually on the intake of the heater and not here so you'll notice when it first fires up it just pulls in a little bit of air to sense the temperature and then sets up the heater accordingly and then it just slowly ramps up to the to the speed of the fan and that's actually a nice feature that i think is going to be a game changer for this heater is that it's constantly adjusting the speed of the fan and the temperature to uh to regulate the heat so when it's at uh when it's blowing in a lot of heat you know it's at max and then once it gets close to the the target temperature it slows the fan speed down and it's just kind of maintaining that temperature so i'm really looking forward to uh to using it and experimenting with that so far i'm liking what i'm seeing because the the original lp heater it's got one giant fan in there that blows at full speed it's like you know like super hot and then it gets cold and then blows more super hot air so i'm not gonna miss that much at all now i hope uh you got something out of this project and you like this uh this this mod let me know i look forward to hearing your uh thoughts and suggestions and questions in the comments section and i'll also uh link to all of the extra uh parts and stuff that i had to pick up for this project and i'll put those in the description as well so i look forward to seeing you in the next video if you are subscriber to the channel and if not you know hit that subscribe button if you want to see more videos like this so take care and i will see you in the next one

Channel: RV with Tito DIY

Views: 189,641

Rating: 4.9516573 out of 5

Keywords: Diesel heater installation, Diesel heater installation in camper, winter camping, rv upgrades, how to stay warm in rv

Id: CGalqQvmYx8

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020