Planning to live in it through winter somewhere that gets to about minus 10C at night. Diesel heater is more up front and needs a tank tap or a separate tank, propane is simpler to install but I'd be swapping bottles and I'm nervous about combustion inside. Electrical budget is 400Ah lithium and 600W of solar which does very little in December. Which way do full timers actually go?
Bottle swapping in winter is worse than people expect. In sustained cold you'll go through a lot more than you plan for, and finding an open exchange on a Sunday in a small town in January is its own hobby. Diesel you top up wherever you fill the van.
Whichever you pick, and I do mean whichever: carbon monoxide alarm, mounted at head height near where you sleep, with a replaceable battery and a test button you actually press monthly. This is the one thing in a van build where being cheap is genuinely dangerous, and it costs about 25.
Two of them, in different places. They have a five to seven year lifespan and then they're decorations, so write the replacement date on the case in marker.
Also fit a propane detector low down if you carry any propane at all for cooking, since it pools at floor level rather than rising.
Insulate before you size the heater. At minus 10 in a poorly insulated six metre van a 2kW unit runs flat out and still loses; in a well insulated one it idles on the lowest setting and you're too warm. The heater is the last decision, not the first.
Slight counterpoint on installation: a diesel heater install is a fuel line, a tank pickup, a hole in the floor and an exhaust routed properly. If you're not confident doing that yourself, factor in a few hundred for someone who is. Done badly it's a fire under your bed rather than an inconvenience.
Fair. I'd planned to do it myself but I'll get the fuel line and exhaust checked by someone before first use.
@drainfield_dave · 7mo ago · 3 replies
Diesel, for winter full timing, fairly decisively.
The deciding factor is water. A vented diesel heater draws combustion air from outside and exhausts outside, so the only thing entering your living space is dry warm air. Any unvented propane heater dumps roughly a litre of water vapour into the van for every litre of fuel burned, and at minus 10 with condensation already a fight, that's a losing battle. A vented propane furnace avoids this but then you've lost the simplicity argument.
Running costs at minus 10, roughly: a 2kW diesel unit on low burns about 0.1-0.2 litres an hour, so call it 2-4 litres a night, and it draws 1-2A once it's running past the glow plug stage. That's very manageable on 400Ah.
Things people underestimate: fuel gels in extreme cold so use winter diesel, mount the exhaust so it can't blow back under the van, and budget for one servicing session a year to clean carbon out of the burner if you run it on low a lot.
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@printbed_gremlin · 7mo ago
Running on low constantly is what carbons up the burner. Once a week give it twenty minutes on full to burn the deposits off — mine's gone three winters without a strip down doing that.
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@parquet_pile · 7mo ago
The water vapour maths settles it. I'd been treating heating and condensation as separate problems.
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