It's official Chinese diesel heater season for van life here in the uk and on Amazon's Black Friday I picked up myself something to keep me cosy on those longer, colder van life nights.
Snappily name, namely the snappily titles 8KW Diesel Heater, HBS1S Portable Diesel Air Heater with App Control, 10-Temperature Settings, 18% Boost in Burning Efficiency, Auto Start-Stop, and 240V AC 12V 24V DC, for Car, Campers, 2025 Upgraded...
Spoiler for my thoughts.. costs well and truly have been cut to an almost dangerous extent.
Positives
Nice inline fuse inside heater
Also plug has a fuse in plug
Housing construction
Yes it’s nice to have clips to get easy access to the unit but it’s a Barr minimum implementation at least. There’s to small bent wires that act as the pull down mechanism and if one was to break there’s no replacement.
Then there’s the chassis. The chassis only becomes rigid when assembled. See the housing has screws coming from the handles into the case and then protruding. When assembled these line up with holes in the chassis pulling it together and keeping it tight if you will. Taking off the case everything flops around and whilst everything is compact. It’s not without issues including the major one.
The Dangerous Diesel tank.
If theres one component you want to keep safe and secure, that would be the fuel tank so it's a bit of a shock upon disassembly to see there’s nothing keeping this in place other than the tray it rests on. Notice I says rest and not secured to or upon.
The only thing that mitigates any movement is putting the outside chassis on to marginally tighten up the overall enclosure. The only thing that's stopping side-to-side, back or forwards movement is the hole atop the case where the fuel filler cap lies.
Just rocking the entire heater gently you can hear the tank move so thank Lordy I didn't fill this up more than halfway. It might of just been my model but fuel did seem to seem out just a little from the cap.
The fuel tank is only held in place by the protruding fuel filler cap.
Given just how diabolically poor the fuel lines are this worries me. Fuel lines in these units are poor, easily crimp and don’t inspire quality. Perhaps this is why there’s a plethora of fuel line kits on Amazon, probably to make some money from low margins or initial sale ? Producers of Chinese diesel heaters have obviously listened to critics pointing out the lack of inline fuses so why not be the first to market with a decent hose system rather than the race to show how many kw of heat it can knock out.
Cables Management.
Cable management was ok on a first glance but looking close some cables were pressed up against the inlet and outlet. Now yes the cable looked like it had something. Resembling heat tube protection but I moved it out the way just in case.
The controller unit block was resting on the heater outlet plastic casing. These get warm and not something I’d want the controller to be near.
Air intake and exhaust outlet
This coming. From the unit was sealed nicely (as it should be) but. Attaching the exhaust hose was a nightmare and potentially dangerous.
See the issue comes with screws you tighten to clamp the hose to the exhaust. But it crimps back on itself leaving a gap that deadly gasses can escape from. Try as I might to get it tight the weight of the exhaust with muffler would have the exhaust detaching with minimum effort.
