Look up Exhaust heat exchanger by Polar Power. You can pipe the exhaust into the exchanger and use the hot water (or automotive coolant) to heat your interior.
hvac guy here. this is a type of product and method that could do what you want safe. trouble is to use the coolant as a heat medium the car needs to be on to take advantage. if the batteries can sustain a product like the slant fin kicker and a pump to suit, boom hydronic heating.
I remember you trying to recover diesel heater exhaust heat from your minivan build. What you are doing now has the same issues as then. Water vapor is one of the products of combustion. In cold weather, it will condense on the inside of the exhaust pipe. The exhaust pipe must have a continuous downward slope to let the water drip out the end. If too much heat is recovered off the exhaust pipe (like with a heat exchanger), the water could freeze and build up into a blockage.
100% - I ask read that it’s a good idea to have no more than 270 degrees (angle degrees) of combined bend in the exhaust for efficiency / back pressure purposes.
Had this exact problem in feb with the propane furnace at -42 to -65c. Ice buildup on the exhaust side and then the intake side is 3 inches below the exhaust port which would freeze up every 8 hours .. I ended up extending my intake 5 inches lower from the exhaust port, so far so good 👍
No joke, I nearly burnt my van down last week because I had the exhaust pipe (exhaust wrapped) bent internally to exhaust out the side. The metal shield burnt, the wooden floor is sorched and nearly ingited, and the entire van smells like smoke now. No CO issues, but DO NOT LET YOUR EXHAUST PIPE TOUCH THINGS! (Also, love your videos! I started 80-100% full timing in Edmonton area in a grand caravan this year!)
I’m glad you decided to undo it. I understand the reasoning, but there probably is a safer way to harness that extra heat. Years ago, as a potter, I learned the word thermopyresis. If wood gets too hot for too long, it can combust without a source of flame. I learned this when I installed a ceramic kiln in the basement of an old house. It never did actually combust, but I was greatly relieved when I was able to move the kiln into a dedicated studio space. So yes, it’s a concern to have a source of high heat near wood, even if it’s not directly touching it.
I couldn't find that term. Isn't it the autoignition temperature? From Wikipedia: "In chemistry, the autoignition temperature or kindling point of a substance is the lowest temperature in which it spontaneously ignites in a normal atmosphere without an external source of ignition, such as a flame or spark. This temperature is required to supply the activation energy needed for combustion. The temperature at which a chemical ignites decreases as the pressure or oxygen concentration increases. It is usually applied to a combustible fuel mixture."
I'm glad that you took it out, it's not just losing your van but rather your life thats the most concerning. You would be sleeping on top of that and if a fire broke out, well you are sleeping, fire can spread quicky..... Personally I think that getting a mini wood stove would be your best bet and installing a heat sheild around it. There is still the risk of fire but if installed correctly and with the right amount of safety precautions, the risk would be very very small. People heat entire tiny homes with one, it would do your van no problem.
Yeah, you gave me a pretty good idea that I'll explore later. Back before fuel injection & computers became popular in vehicles you'd often find a heat shield bolted to an exhaust manifold and a metal tube would run from it to the air cleaner. The idea was to use the exhaust manifold to heat air & direct it toward the carburetor in cold weather to prevent carburetor icing. I think I can fabricate an enclosure to put around the heater's exhaust pipe to capture that lost heat and duct it to a heat exchanger or additional output vent. As the systems are designed now we're losing a lot of heat out of the exhaust. Recovering even a portion of that heat would make the diesel heaters more efficient & less costly to run.
I wanna see your next video with you in it….Alive and enjoying the great outdoors you have shared with us.. stay safe.. sure there is a safe way to accomplish what you are thinking… keep looking.. God bless
Glad you undid it. All those bends will significantly affect the burn in your diesel heater. Also, remember that water is a product of combustion which will collect in any of those low spots. I also have my exhaust connection inside my van and did actually end up having an exhaust leak recently.
Living on the edge baby; toasty warm! Get the heater where it will make toast for ya! Lol. Great idea! Anyone who burns down their van, Foresty is not responsible for you not knowing what your doing. Foresty is the alpha male of heaters and meals.
I disabled my RU-vid for a week - but had to sign back in this evening mainly because I needed to check if you'd posted because it felt like a while since you had ..... so was relieved when your post today was the first video in my recommended 🤩 I can now switch off again for a while.. keep safe, winter, rain, ice and snow etc.
In addition to the obvious safety issues another important consideration is exhaust back pressure. The simplistic combustion of these heaters is very sensitive to exhaust back pressure and/or restriction. For the most part the cleanest and most efficient combustion will occur with a free flowing exhaust, so introducing any additional restriction(curves, etc.) will possibly degrade combustion efficiency.
One of my favourite videos, lots of personality showing. Excited to share with the wife as I keep telling her that’s 7”, she’ll be stoked that it’s actually 9”!
The original VW Bugs had an air chamber around the exhaust. When the car was moving air was scooped to flow to window and floor vents to heat and defrost windows. In later models they added a fan. The system worked well as long as the exhaust was in good condition.
One thing you need to do is get some thermal lined and quilted fabric to cover the doors in the back and the door on the side. You can make the with sewn in magnets to stick to the frame. If you cut off those 2 heat loss points, you will be more comfortable and efficient. Take care. Thanks
Love the idea! But yeah, for now, it is better to operate it the original way like you said you were going to do...but, you'll definitely have plenty of time to think of, or come up with many design ideas, for a way to actually reuse the excess heat to your advantage. If it hasn't been done, or thought of yet, a good engineering mind like yours, could be the first to come up with something someday that would actually be safe and effective. Always experiment and learn from failures. It's the only human way to go, the sky is the limit! Keep doing these videos, no matter how short they are, we love watching ANYTHING you have to entertain us with ForestyForest!! 🤙🤜🤛
Buy a stainless steel egr cooler (tube-in-shell heat exchanger) and run the exhaust thru that. You could have a small coolant reservoir and pump and aluminum heat exchanger to dump the heat into the van.
If your worried about wood being close to the heater, why are you not using steel studs or furring bar in 25 or 20 gauge. They are not expensive and can be purchased at a drywall suppliers or Home Depot. Steel studs can be cut with pair of metal snips and fastened to other steel with tek/self tapping screws. You can also use cement board to protect an area from combustible material. We have a seven foot high trailer. We protected the plywood by fastening furring bar over the plywood. we then placed cement board one inch up from the floor and went up six feet and placed cement board on top of our cage to protect the plywood in the ceiling. Since hot air rises, this created a chimney effect which also cooled off the plywood.
Hellooo Foresty you need a stainless pipe within a pipe outer pipe filled with water and insulated with a inlet and outlet to a water filled radiator. I made one for Cadburys Chocolate to keep chocky melted in the pipe, any questions just ask its just a heater exchange safely outside the van 👍👍🖖
Dude...bad idea. Glad you are re-installing it correctly. Not worth dying to save a few bucks! I don't recommend doing videos like this because someone will try it and probably die. I do appreciate your videos.
They have specialized ports for ships. Goes through the bulkhead designed for this. Put a long pipe, end exit with an elbow...right through the outer skin.
Wow 😮 seems like a good idea.. that’s not a good thing🔥🔥🚀 Glad you decided to rethink it.. life is beautiful IF YOU ARE LIVING IT 😂 Back in the day my grandma would heat big River rocks & cast iron skillets.. before bed she sat them on a trivets (rocks in the skillets) around the room we slept in and that kept the room semi warm all night long. Years later I remember her having bricks she wrapped in aluminum foil &/ she put those in her cast iron skillets.. 2 or 3 bricks per skillet. Those things put off some major heat!! She said she couldn’t afford to leave the heater running all night so she improvised. I remember it being warm and nostalgic 🤗💯✨. My mom still does this for heat at night to save money.
Definitely smart to undo the experiment. I would also advise buying some flameproof material for that area. Would also look into using a secondary pipe. Or exhaust wrap around the exhaust to help with possible leak issues and put detector closer to the heater.
I had my CO2 detector go off one night in my bus, and I got to looking at what was going on. The exhaust fumes were coming up through the floor because the plate wasn’t sealed very good and the heater was blowing exhaust into my bus. I think having the exhaust inside the bus is very dangerous since it isn’t sealed very good. If it was welded that would be one thing but that worm clamp can’t seal that exhaust pipe off good enough to keep fumes out of your van. You’re playing with fire bud. 🤗
"Foresty Forest was laid to rest today, inside his van, it appears that he has passed away do to overconsumption of good ideas that catch fire, literally."
You can fit a larger size flexible electrical conduit over the exhaust pipe and still get the heat inside but with better protection. It will also be much more solid where it penetrates through the floor and exhausts.
Foresty you are on the right track, just gotta think differently! Google how air cooled VW heat exchangers work and there is your solution to capturing the heated exhaust pipe and using the air it heats to help heat your van. It helps avoid the CO2 problem because you are feeding fresh air into the system. Perfect? No, but 1000 times better than just running the exhaust pipe inside the van. The hard part of this is building the heat exchanger as you’ll need thin sheets steel and welding capability. I could design the heat exchanger in about 30 minutes, it’s not hard. Add in a 12v blower and flex hose rated for high temp and your set!
If there is that much heat being lost to the outside, the manufacturer should have made the heat exchanger larger to capture more of the heat before exhausting the fumes. That being said, if one were to attach a well made after market heat exchanger with adequate clearance and an auxiliary blower, then exhaust the fumes outside............ Thanks for sharing.
Never comment on YT but you need to switch it back to how it was before, just install another heater if you want more heat! That low point on your exhaust is going to build up with condensation that would be able to make it out, creating an eventual clog, and causing CO to be emitted inside your vehicle.
Some of that foil backed insulation or aluminum tape in the box where the heater is would protect the wood from the direct heat, or id move the heater in more and make a separate box insulated from the heater grab another 2 feet of the exhaust pipe and make a nice coil next to it then down and out.
A grid of interconnected solid pipes the length of the bed will absorb every drop of heat then exit the bottom of the van. The solid pipes will act as a radiator and disperse heat evenly avoiding concentration or build up of heat as a hazard.
Seeing the heater setup with the fresh air intake hose drawing air from outside confirms one of my theories regarding your humidity issues. It is not consuming air from in the van (a good thing! - more energy efficient and no negative pressure to temp CO fumes to waft back in). BUT that means you really need to consider a separate system for drawing fresh dry air in and venting moist air out.
Forest , Like the short vids , you are very smart , place some 16 gauge metal under and over the pipe , at the distance in the crawl space you will get some raidant heat , get one a few chevy g series vans heater cores and build a peks glycol system and heat the floor
Good idea. How about use solid tubing and run it thru several closely spaced aluminum plates (heat sink) to disperse the heat over a larger surface area. Maybe 'weave' the tubing thru the heat sink a couple times to give the heat more room to dissipate - and then run the solid tubing thru the floor to the flex pipe connection. Maybe glue some reflective thinsulate to the wood surfaces. If it still got too hot - install a little computer fan with a limit switch (thermo) Also, have you considered buying a muffler from one of the high dollar heater brands to run on your knockoff? - I've heard they're a lot quieter (can't see straight thru them).
This ended well. I think the block heater idea is pretty good one. Maybe a secondary heating loop going to a heat exchanger in the main engine coolant circuit
That’s a very good idea in fact and why waste all that heat after all.. Maybe it could be linked to a heat exchanger before going out, I know it runs with water but maybe it’d be worth testing. Or put heat refractory bricks next to the tube outside and put them back at your feet at night !
It's actually an interesting idea to use the heat. If it can be done safely. Because it really is just wasted, and surely someone has come up with a radiator design that is safe.
I bought the biggest Jackery and use a regular small room heater 3 settings, fan or not, rotates and has a cooling fan for summer. as long as there as there is sunshine or a plug-in somewhere I'm good to go -40. Please be safe. I'm sure you have alarms to warn you of smoke and CO2
Interesting idea. -Think I'll agree with your risk assessment though. - it's also vital you have the exhaust as straight as possible, with as less bends as possible for the efficient evacuation of emissions, otherwise you'll get a heat back-up.
Foresty cautioning us not to attempt this diesel heater experiment, reminds me of a skit from The Kids In The Hall (on RU-vid) titled "Ian Crossland, Never Put Salt In Your Eyes" NEVER put salt in your eyes, don’t put… don’t… put salt… put salt in your eyes. Always put salt in your eyes! Ahhhhhhh!
Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism.- Albert Einstein Mistakes are the portals of discovery. -- James Joyce Wisdom is -- You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run” ― Kenny Rogers :-)
Just use a larger pipe to pull the exhaust pipe through away from the heater or move the heater away from the bed. It's a great idea just think it out a little more.
wrap metal coolant pipe around the exhaust and use a small expansion tank and a small bike radiator. Put the radiator back inside with a little computer van. As the exhaust heats up the water in the radiator heats up and the fan blows the heat out.
I can see the logic behind the idea, after all reclaiming that wasted heat is why wood stoves are usually installed with a fairly thin single walled stove pipe between the stove and the actual chimney. But of course there are clearance requirements for the stove pipe, it can't be within a certain distance of any combustibles. Also stove pipes have a draft pulling the combustion gasses so leaks are less of an issue. It was an interesting experiment but if I were to do something like that it would be with better clearance from combustibles and a protective shield, and a thicker rigid exhaust tubing (that cheap flex pipe is asking for leaks).
Dude you need to take the end of the exhaust hose and vent at the foot of the bed blowing on feet under blanket . Keeps ya toasty and warm and will also help you sleep. Caution sleep might be permanent but you will be oh so warm
After taking the framing out, I'd tear/cut out the plastic walls in that van and spray foam insulate 2" thick. Then do cedar walls. And, get a tiny wood stove.
If you blocked off the back of your van where your fatbike is, the heater would have to heat less volume. Although any increase in weight lowers fuel efficiency. Plexi glass maybe?
You could pick up an automotive egr cooler/heat exchanger but you'd still need the pump, plumbing and radiator/fan to make it all work just to chase another 10% efficiency, maybe....
I really believe the problem is the air flow you may need proper ducts which allow the air to flow properly with semi rounded channels, don’t block it off or it will not flow out
How about having a big pipe running from the floor to the roof with outside air circulating through. The diesel heater could be mounted inside the pipe or connected via a short hose. It would be like a chimney/woodstove where the hot fumes rise naturally with no resistans out on top. The possability to effectively dry clothes sounds great! Downside would be trying to sleep with a big vertical pipe through the matress. But that problem could be worked around by flattening it. The exhaust hose inside the pipe should also be really long spiraling upwards with the end on top so that the surface area to exchange the heat is maximised.
Foresty, run the exhaust line through a piece of metal conduit. That will shield the exhaust tube from direct contact and the conduit will absorb and transfer all of the extra heat nicely.
Put that exhaust tubing inside some small diameter stove pipe. Will heat up the pipe but maybe not to the point of a flash fire due to heat. 1m piece of 4” stovepipe and an elbow for the vehicle pipe exit, probably pretty cheap.
I like your way of thinking. That heat is just going to waste. Just need to work out how to harness it in a safe way. A heat exchanger is one way but ends up a bit complicated.
glad you chose safety over squeezing some extra heat out of your heater exhaust. Sleep is important! Lying awake on a cold night wondering whether/when you bed might catch on fire... don't do that! ;-) Meanwhile, maybe you could rig up some kind of heat exchanger to wrap around the pipe and then bring that heat inside the van?
