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Forum Index : Other Stuff : 5KW Chinaayah Diesel heater for the house.
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| Davo99 Guru  Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
At bit of a loss with this atm. Made a mistake yesterday and shut it down on the Veg mix. It took a couple of cycles to re start it again in the afternoon and made a bit of smoke. After letting it run on Diesel for a while I checked the CO and it was way high. Ran the thing about an hour on high, checked again and it had come down but still higher than before. The controller I have does not apparently have the tuning ability but has what is called Alpine mode where the fuelling is apparently reduced to allow for thinner air at high altitude. Gave it a run in that mode and saw a couple of sparks come out the exhaust indicating carbon was being burnt off. It also drops the output temps substantially on any heat setting. Ran like that for an hour or so and the Co had come down more but still not where it was initially. I also noticed and was reminded of something from a decade back of using veg oil. When pulling the fuel pipe out of the mix to put it in the diesel, I noticed a waxy coating and Globules on the Pickup tube. Seen that many times before. It happens in winter with Diesel / oil mixes and was a reason I never blended with diesel. I remember no one really had an answer as to what this was or what caused it other than it causing trouble with crap in fuel lines and blocking filters at a rapid rate... like a day. At this point I'm in about 17 minds with the veg blend but none of them particularly favourable other than the cost saving. Maybe. I KNOW veg leaves deposits which in engines will not completely burn off unless run lean. Water injection was my saviour with this and allowed me to do a lot of things that would have killed an engine fast. WI would be different with these as any water has to go past a fan which I believe would simply spray it to the sides of the air inlet where it would condense into larger droplets again. That may or may not matter, can't say at this point. was thinking if dripping water onto the exhaust pipe I have running under the inlet atm and allowing the steam to go in but again, may just re condense on the cool inlet passages and go in as droplets and I don't know if the motors are sealed on these and if it would end up in there. May be possible to Drill and tap a small port into the combustion chamber after the fan but then there is still the problem of clagging the glow plug and and vaporiser screen on the things. All these waste oils be they Veg or engine oil leave deposits and ash, no 2 ways about that and the refined fuels, Petrol, Diesel, Kero, Turps etc do not. They will leave soot if run too rich, so will gas, but they do not leave ash which is a different thing. I am thinking that even blend will not work without cleaning these things out but to what frequency I have not the experience to guess as yet. I have seen people on the net claiming to have run them on blends of whatever they could find and get good life between cleans, even multi season which would be great. Of course there are also the predictable armchair panic merchants that have never done it but claim the world will end if you do anything but what the manufacturer says. Seen those types many times before and they are very predictable. It is possible the GP and vaporiser screen may get hot enough to clean themselves if Given runs on pure Diesel and as I am doing again atm, running the thing in lean mode. That seems double edged as although it gives excess oxygen to help burn off the carbon ( at this altitude), it also lowers chamber temps a lot which is counter productive. The deposits need about 600oC to burn off which is where I tend to run my oil burners or higher with making sure they have retained heat and they are totally self cleaning and deposit free. Not going to get near those temps with this setup. Looking at output temps last night, I was worried I had buggered something or clagged up the unit as it was running at a max output of about 154o rather than the 170 I was getting initially. It then dawned on me that I had removed both the intake screen and the output fitting to give more airflow which it certainly improved. I put them back on and the temp came straight back up to 170 - 172 so I'm at least reassured the thing is burning with the same output as before. Probably not going to achieve much with the higher temps and the output at lower temps with more airflow is the same as lower tempos with higher airflow. I'll run the thing an hour or so in lean mode then go have a look at the CO again. The temps are clearly dropping here. I ran the thing on Diesel all night on level 3 and the house or at least back room was down to 18. I believe it got down to 3 here last night but probably cooler as there is a definite difference between here and the weather station only about 3 Km away as the crow Flies at the airport. Either way, it's definitely a lot warmer than it would be otherwise and I never thought it would be up to heating the place on it's own so have to keep that in mind. The unit is running a lot of hours. Tend to fire it up at 4 PM and shut it down at 9 but I can see it going all day on cloudy wet days. ATM I'm burning about 5L of fuel a day which is a lot and adds up hence the desire to supplement the diesel with the oil. I really hate winter and trying to stay warm. |
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renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
You just love stuffing around with things Dave. You might find this video interesting. Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
These bloody heaters use this bloody tick pump. Vid Shows the inside of a pump. Now why the hell don't they put some kind of a rubber gasket at the front? I know it would wear out but replacing a new $25 pump each year is better than listening to the tick tick bloody tic all friggin night (I use mine in a caravan). Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
vid Shows clogged up clean out. Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Well in this case I'm trying not st stuff around with it al all. What I'm trying to do is avoid pulling it to pieces by getting the fuelling right with the veg. Thanks for the link though. I have seen all his Vids and conversed with him many times about them. David is a subscriber of mine from way back and it was me that motivated him to do the water injection test. That failed but I am of the opinion that it needs to be done for many hours and more or less constantly to have any benefit. That vid did remind me of something I forgot. I was watching that very vid a few weeks back looking at the operation of these heaters and it came to me that I could build a veg burner much the same way. The trick is retained heat with burning veg and being a reversing gas flow setup in the heaters, would work. I could easily put the burn chamber in a larger blind pipe so the heat cam back out the other side to keep the temp up and then sink all that in another pipe which would be the water jacket and use the outer case of the burn chamber as the HE like in the heaters. The brainwave came to me late one night and I thought that's the solution and it occurred to me to write it down so I didn't forget but I thought, no, I have got it... sure enough in the morning.... IT's tough being stupid. I built a design like that years ago but ran it the other direction. It was a very powerful and compact heater but a bastard of a thing to Light because the flame chamber was enclosed. I used to light it with LPG and even if I stuck a sparker or something burning in there when I hit the gas, it always went off with a Whump. Not that it worried me much long as the thing fired. I'd preheat with the gas a bit then change over to oil and off she went. That was a down firing design and I melted copper and eventually iron with that.... In open air! Anyway I wrote it in my burner design, notes and songbook now so I'll start looking at materials and refining the design. Unlike the diesel heater I'll have the flame coming out at an angle to get some rotation in the exhaust gas and hopefully better heat transfer through breaking up the boundary layer gasses a bit. I need to get back on to doing a veg oil heater because there is nothing else that' really going to be able to supply all my winter heating needs at anywhere near the price which is basically free. At least I know now my initial estimate of 1000L reserve of oil is pretty right. I don't think it I would need quite that much but easy to get it and rather have left over than not enough. Then again, this winter has been pretty late coming and I'm only running about half the power I'd like and am looking at 500L so 1000L might be pretty close. If I estimate 1000 Being me I'd have at least 1200 anyway. I was looking to try and find something on the heat transmission ability and surface area of steel pipe so I could work out how much area the thing would have to have, Ie, length and diameter of pipe to transfer a given amount of thermal energy but I never did find a calculator for that. Although the heaters are heavily finned, they are still quite small for the power they produce so I imagine the size and length of plain pipe would not be that much. Not going to worry me if it's 4ft long and 12" in overall diameter. The heater unit I have is obviously a new Design as there is very little of them on the net so far. I was only standing out there yesterday afternoon and noticed the tick of the pump. Noticed it because I don't normally hear it. I looked at the thing and could see it had air in it where I transferred the pickup to another tank and as soon as the air went through, it was silent. I have it in the rubber mount tek screwed to the side of the frame the heater is sitting on and it is pretty much silent when running at any speed. Perhaps they have upgraded the pumps as well and put a rubber seat in the things? Might be worth looking at getting a new pump if yours is noisy and insulating it in some foam if you can still hear it. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Noticed this morning when I went out to shut it off after running it in Alpine mode longer than I intended (forgot about it doing things up the yard) that there was an amount of small chunks of carbon sitting on the heater and on the verandah that had obviously blown out the exhaust. I had seen some sparks coming out yesterday but probably a lot more coming out that weren't burning or I wasn't there to see. Seems to point at the veg fouling the thing up and the lean burn mode doing what I hoped in cleaning it out. Not promising though. I think I'll cut back to 25% veg and see what sort of impression I get to the heater handling that. I might also look at engine oil. That stuff burns with a ton of ash but from memory does not burn the same as Veg which tends to leave a more tar like residue unless it is heated right up and turned to ash. Seems a lot of people on the net are running WMO with acceptable success at least so might be worth a try. I spose I do need to be stuffing around with the thing and opening it up to see how each blend goes but don't want to do that at least till I have another heater as a spare or the veg burner is up and running. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Before lighting up yesterday afternoon I raided the Cupboard and stole some of the Mrs Alfoil. I made a very haphazard Shroud around the exhaust for the burner intake and another one further along for the room air intake. Very flimsy ( asked the Mrs to get more Robust foil next time!!) but it certainly did the job! Temps were way up, little too high at first. When I fired the burner up the foil sucked in and restricted the intake. Saw it going too high and Pulled the foil back. Did not realise how hard it drew the air in. Even with about 95% of the air going straight in the intake, all the heat radiating from the 600mm of pipe I was confident was going back in the burner. Lot of heat left in the exhaust gas but even the 10% or so I might have captured Obviously made a big Difference. I cut the Veg oil back to 25% but was still getting higher temps than I was before on straight diesel. If I could rig up a Decent HE, I think there is like 15% extra power to be gained as that's basically the inefficiency of these heaters. That would be useful. It would also more than compensate for the extra load of brining the cold air back in rather than recirculating. I'm happy with the fresh air intake though. It seems to be well worth it in the comfort levels and the way the heat seems to be going through the house. I ran the heater at a higher setting but in lean mode last night. The back area was quite warm this morning even though outside it got down to 4o. Still using the little fan heater up in the bedroom for a bit before bed and at the opposite end in the lounge where the Mrs sits but I think we are still making more power than we are using ATM which is great. Able to put some away for the literal rainy day rather than using more than we are making at the best times. Winter solar Sucks. I'm making about 4.5Kwh out of the new 1.9KW west array I put up the other day or less than 2.5x. In summer that would be 5-6x panel rating at least. |
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Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 583 |
Thanks Mark, for posting this. I always wanted to know how they work but am not at all keen to cut mine open. That other vid about quietening the pump is also interesting. I have the pump for my caravan diesel heater mounted under the floor and I cannot hear it inside the van. Its located directly under where the heater is, the heater itself is under the settee. The pump has the rubber jacketed mounting clamp to hold it to the chassis rail , this was supplied with my Chinese heater. |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
My wife complains about the pump clicking, my hearing from all the gunfire from the army and recreational hunting combined with machinery has buggered my hearing (particularly on the right) so I don't notice it. Anyway, happy wife happy life (and hopefully more boob and general "fun times"), so I found a super quiet pump that is made in latvia, not cheap @$175 or so, but hell if that keeps the wife happy that is cheap as hell. BUT F me, no stock anywhere, and the sons of bitches mutha fk ers don't mail here because they have an agent here (that is out of stock) so option B, some had claimed the new green cap pumps were next gen and very quiet. So I bought one and just fitted it today!!!! 1/4 or less of the noise !!!!! I needed to put my finger on it to feel the pulses, it's that quiet. Keep in mind my hearing is pretty bad, but the old pump I could clearly hear when I opened the front toolbox lid. And it was $27!!! link Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
You Jinxed me mate!! I noticed this afternoon mine has started ticking now. Was dead silent before and it's not my imagination either. Even the cat walked past and was looking for the sound where he never took any notice at all of the thing before. Not going to worry me. The thing is outside and I can't hear it so would have to get pretty loud to bother me. For $172, I'd be buying the Mrs a lifetime supply of ear Plugs and a new pair of shoes to keep her happy rather than pay that for a tiny little fuel Pump!. Nothing changed today. Ran the heater last night and this morning on alpine ( lean) mode and just went back to normal this morning for a bit as it felt a bit Chilly. Been though about 25L of fuel now so a drum isn't going to last a week. Unfortunately. Wouldn't be cheap to run like this if I hadn't scored the Diesel and won't last forever but it's still half the cost of power for the same heat output. Spose the next thing to try would be a 20% oil/ petrol mix. Have my reservations but nothing ventured, Nothing gained. I can see why these things have become so popular. Could camp out in snow and be totally warm. Same as in a van. have to ask my Neighbour if his new $80K luxury townhouse on wheels has one. Be surprised if it didn't. It has AC but he does a lot of free camping so the diesel heater would be ideal.... If there is anywhere left to put one. |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
I'm not surprised yours is starting to click with all the crap you have put through it. The poor bloody thing is crying out in pain. It's machine talk for "Help someone sent me to bloody Dave's place and he's doing experiments on me" Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Well Yours is Clicking louder than mine apparently. What have you been putting through yours pump to make it click? ? :0) Given the near Non Lubricity factor of low Sulphur Diesel these days, I get more concerned about running anything straight without at least some oil in it. Try to avoid it all costs in my engines. Seen tests that show even 2% Veg, Bio, 2stroke increase the Lubricity of diesel off the charts, literally. Modern diesel is like trying to lubricate something with water.... but not as good or effective. |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
Well, mine doesn't click loudly now with the new greencap pump. I'm not sure if the old pump got worse over time, probably but it was always noisy, I did have to stuff around with it to make it acceptable for the wife, but it was never fantastic. These new pumps are clearly much better made and 1/4 of the noise. It is around 8 years old, way way before they were even available on ebay etc. I got it from a factory directly in China and paid about $450 for it at the time. I showed it to various people and no one had ever heard of them even caravan service people, they were all gob smacked by the small size and the pissant diesel consumption. I don't know why but many caravan people are utter cheapskates, they never want to spend more than $2 on anything bunch of turds. Many are retired on sh*t pensions I suppose, but compared to the cost of some vans 30,000-50,000 that I come across it makes me wonder why the hell they don't fit a diesel heater. I remember one detecting trip on queens birthday weekend many years ago my face was so cold it was stinging, then I thought, fk this I have to find a way to heat this bloody thing without a generator, something quiet and doesn't cost a bomb. These are perfect. Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
I got told many years ago to put 50ml of 2 stroke mineral in my Ranger per tank. Dunno if it helps, but you can hear the motor actually runs quieter when you do it. Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
I have seen great ignorance with this amounting to if not specifically " I aint putting no 2 stroke in my fuel tank, just good, clean Diesel!" as if someone is asking them to put battery acid in the thing. The ignorance is frightening in some. Seen it a lot with the 4WD crowd. No way I'm putting that in my tank!... But I'll happily take the thing out on the weekend, crash it over rocks and every obstacle I can find, put it through the deepest and biggest bog holes around and then make out the thing is a Submarine and drive it through water till the thing floats momentarily. From tests I have seen there are VERY few additives as good as Veg, Bio and 2 stroke. Trans Fluid used to be popular but I have read conflicting reports about it's current formulation. Dextron has been around 40 years literally if not more so I doubt it's been changed much as one example. To me comes down to this, It won't hurt and it's so cheap that even if it does not help, it's worth the chance it will. Heater has been running over 24 Hours non stop now. Was a cloudy day today with some rain which meant no heat input for the house from the sun. Have had the heater running the greater part of the day in lean mode and just put it back to normal fuelling on the 20% I think it actually is, veg mix. Seems fine on that. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
The little heater is working well. Been feeding it a diet of 25% WVO during the evenings then change over to straight Diesel at night. The lean mode cuts the fuel and the output temps back a lot for a given fan speed but I'm still yet to determine the equivalent heat outputs. Might be that Full lean is the same as the normal 2 level. Hard to tell. the lean setting pushes a lot more air but at a lower temp. I'm not sure if that is an advantage heating or not. I feel it may be helpful in pushing the air around the place but also thinking maybe less but hotter air may have advantages in itself. I have burned through 50L of diesel already Plus the oil, maybe 20L or so. The heat is good but not cheap to run these the way I am on bought fuel but then again, not killing the power bill either. The warmth is very good, not warming the place as such but rather stopping it turning into an ice box which is good enough. |
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| Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 583 |
Well, they are made for small volume areas (caravan, boat, mobile home) after all, not for a house size room. I use diesel heater in the caravan about 5 days each month and the 10 liter tank lasts at least 2 trips with the heater being on in the mornings and evenings. If it runs all night I use about 3 liter/night. |
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Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 961 |
The Diesel heater arrived today, "HCalory 8KW 12V Voice Diesel Air Heater" Instruction book is a bit off, its meant to cover other models, be nice if it covered the model it was shipped with.  Give it a little test run trying to work out the the button combination on the colour LCD, no idea about the 4 digit password or what its for. Anyway started off with some smoke out the exhaust pipe, twice over a few minuets, temp settings were incorrect and with some adjustment away it went, turned it up to setting 10 to burn some stink out of the system, Oh My  that puts out some heat.Turned it back down setting 2 and run ok for some time then had to shut it down, the little birds arrived for feeding time, don't want then pressing buttons or getting burnt feet. The the exhaust pipe was quite hot as well. Need to set it up at one of the windows then wait for a cold day/night to test. Have been using some 2 Stroke oil in the fuel for all Diesel engines for over 20 years now, you can smell it a little sometimes. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Exactly but thing is, it's keeping the chill off most of a decent size house atm not just a couple of connecting large rooms. Maybe I am jumping the gun a bit here. Like an idiot, I only just realised this is the end of Autumn. I thought we were already into winter. Highly wishful thinking I suppose. Guess I have another 6 weeks to see how this goes when it's really cold. How depressing! I haven't checked the power Consumption yet. haven't used the AC at all and the heater fans I don't thinks are beyond what I am generating, Might be ahead so really, this was the goal, offset the power usage so the solar can keep up. I usually put up a ground mount for winter, couple of KW or so to help give some extra power but haven't got that far yet so still some potential left to help things along. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
The 8 Kw and the 5Kw are the same heater, they just have the fueling turned up on the 8 kw version into over drive which kicks out the heat but tendsto shorten the life of the unit when run to full power. Same as mine. The instructions I got are some of the worst indecipherable Chinglish I have ever seen with so many totally nonsensical words and descriptions. The " fuels Giving device" was quite a creative way of saying " Fuel Pump" but mthat one I could work out. Took a lot of digging on the net to work out other things because mine apparently is anew upgraded model that seems not many have come across yet. The password which is 1688 lets you get into the settings like Fuel delivery rate and fan speed. Very useful for setting the things up properly. I bought a CO meter to set mine up but it does not have that ability which I am less than elated about. If you look at the links above or look up " David Luckie" On YT, he goes into a lot of detail about how to set up the pump pulse rate and the fan speed. From what I have read, You want to set the max fan speed to 4000 RPM. this preserves the motor life. Fuel delivery is highly variable from unit to unit and depends on altitude etc. I have also found with China engines that whatever fuel they set them up on is WAAAAY different to what we get in Oz because No china engine I ever got ( and I have had a lot now!) is ever set within a bulls roar of being right. It's more like they set them for most rapid self destruction. If you are going to use this a bit or on Higher settings I'd spend the $30 or so on a CO meter. You can set the thing for max fuel efficiency so you are neither over burning fuel or setting it too lean and blowing more cold air though then you need to. I wanted to use this to set mine to use veg fuels but I'll either have to get another main board and controller or another heater. Mine always starts with a little smoke. Makes sense the way the operate. I did the same thing with the first couple of fire ups. Ran the thing flat out outside to get the stink out. Mine was more plastic than anything. The the exhaust pipe was quite hot as well. The exhast on mine gets to around 300 C. I put some foil around it to duct some of the heat back into the intake for the burner and the room air as a pre heat. I want to work on that more to harness more of the waste heat which is about 20% of what the burner produces or on the % Kw version, 1 Kw is waste heat, 4 KW is useful. That's how they rate them, burner power not delivered. Of course. They are Chinese. Wonder they don't call them 5 Million KW they BS way they rate things. Like veg oil Surprising how little o f that you need to make a doughnut or fish and chip aroma. |
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