Yeah, because in the winter the family doesn’t really come winter camping. So I rock the GFC in bunk mode. It works great! Yeah I pipe it in from there. I do have a long enough hose to make it from the ground. I found in the winter the case gets too hot and it sinks in the snow.
I have piped it into both spots using a ‘T’ and that works great too. I do find you lose some heat through the long pipe compared to just piping it in on the lower. In the winter I don’t usually run the heater all night because it can be a hog on the battery. The low sun in our short days doesn’t restore the battery to full charge, so to capitalize on power I generally turn it off. I rock a -40 bag so even at —37 (which I did around last Christmas) was cozy.
For winter use in the north, I found it essential to add a DC to DC charger to help top up the house battery.
That’s true, that’s a thing that happens. I think the most amount of snow I’ve woken up to so far was about 8” on the tailgate. I was not complaining as it translated to about 18” in the alpine
There is a picture on one of the diesel heater threads that show what I did to cut mine and install a port… can’t find it currently but it is somewhere
Anyone mount theirs to the side of the gfc using the mounting company mounting plate? I’ve seen the expensive one that is permanently mounted but if you use one of these mounting plates you can easily remove it and not have to drive down the road with it sticking out. VIDEOS – The Mounting Company
My heater is usually on my rigid ultraswing camp table - with a strap, or it’s on the ground by the passenger rear wheel well. We pipe the heat in via this custom bracket through the trailer vents on the side panel. This allows heat from below & I did not cut holes in my tundra. I think tacos have more options for customizing without big holes in the bed, but we did almost route an intake through our truck bed. It seems like a fair option. I just love that my panels are $300 to replace if I made a mistake vs permanent truck mod.
Did you experience any issues with your battery at those temps? Did you have the battery inside the truck?
I’m new to diesel heaters and I have no idea where I should keep my battery when I’m running it (inside the truck vs. outside the truck) or even how long I can expect a 12v marine (lead acid) battery to even power a diesel heater before it dies.
it is powered either with my EcoFlow Delta 2 OR secondary battery under the hood (with alligator clips). The under the hood AGM battery is 68ah and the Ecoflow is equivalent to ~85ah.
On start up, the diesel heater will pull 125-150w so having the outlet/plug rated for 10-15a is a good idea or it will turn off on start up. You want to avoid either losing power or pulling power supply on start up AND cool down. It’s very hard on the heaters. Once it starts up, it will pull on average (from what my ecoflow shows) 10-18w all night, which is very little.
On the ecoflow, it will drain it from 100% to ~75% after a solid 10-12hrs of usage, which means it’s using ~21-25ah of power as an estimate.
I can run it off that AGM/under the hood battery with the alligator clamps but it does bring my voltage down close to 12.2-12.4v, which I don’t like doing from a longevity standpoint.
My battery is in the bed of the truck. I’m running lithium which is fine to discharge in cold temps but not ok to charge below freezing. The size of the battery will determine how long you can power the heater for. In my experience my 2kw heater draws around 6 - 8 amps firs the first 5 - 10 minutes when starting up then it drops down to 1-2 amps so not much power draw at all.
I went with a permanent install as well, but mine is a Planar/Autoterm 4kw gasoline heater. Zero setup was my main reason to not go with a portable unit. I also wanted to avoid the problems of ducting into the camper from outside.
While it was a PITA to drop my tank to add the standpipe for the pump, I would for sure do it again. There’s no separate tank to deal with, or risk of having diesel smell inside. And I just open a side canopy door and tap a button to start it.
I think a big consideration for permanent vs portable that often gets overlooked is whether you want to set it up once, or every time you use it. But, this is also assuming you even have a suitable location for permanent install.
Thank you for that! I have a Jackery and was told by the heater manufacturer (Planar) to not use anything other than a 12v marine deep cycle battery as a power bank like a Jackery won’t have enough power to start the heater… And I didn’t want to void any warranties.
I guess my best bet really is to just run it for a couple days and test my battery’s voltage to see how much power has been taken over the course of those two days. Perhaps I could charge my deep cycle battery using power from the Jackery, actually…
I feel like some people are using jackerys. I think the biggest issue is that those power bank style batteries like goal zero and jackery have a low limit on amp draw and when the glow plugs for the heater kick on for the first 5 minutes or so that you are running the heater it might be drawing more than they allow. I don’t think it can hurt to try it and see what happens.
