Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to spend a cold night proving you have one. That, roughly, is what happened here.
We have had the Dethleffs for a while now, and the heating works well enough. It will warm the van up eventually. The trouble is eventually. When I am using the van for work every day back home in Milton Keynes, I do not want to sit around in my coat for an hour and a half waiting for the wet system to reach temperature. That simply is not practical. So I had been thinking about a diesel blow heater for some time. I booked in with Autoterm, just over the border into North Wales, to have one fitted. If you are still weighing up whether one is worth it, we cover the costs and the trade-offs properly in our diesel heater guide.
The night before the appointment, I pulled onto a CL site about two minutes up the road. It was very basic, with no facilities to speak of, but there was fresh water, a couple of pitches, and it was exactly what I needed. It was also a solo night, which meant heating up a leftover HelloFresh on my own with no microwave. I ended up tipping the whole lot into a heatproof glass dish and shoving it in the oven, which took about 40 minutes. I am getting a microwave. That is a firm decision now.
Harry had cooked that HelloFresh the night before, by the way, for Millie’s birthday, and had dressed up in a suit for the occasion. The whole works. I will not lie, I was proud of the boy. He is clearly a romantic, and clearly takes after his dad.
Anyway, it dropped to 3 degrees overnight, and I ran the electric heating off the batteries to stay warm, which took them down to 23%. That is the problem in a nutshell: batteries and electric heating will keep you warm, but it is not the right tool for the job, and nowhere near efficient enough.
The install itself was brilliant. Jack and Owen at Autoterm clearly know what they are doing. The unit goes up into the chassis in a neat little box, they tapped into the diesel tank through an existing access point (no drilling, which matters for warranty reasons), and the ducting runs to two vents inside, one at each end of the van. Within a few minutes of switching it on, warm air is coming through. That is the whole point: not an hour and a half, but minutes.
Owen also showed me something new they are about to launch: a system that uses a diesel heater to heat your water and circulate warm air through blowers or underfloor heating, all from one unit. They ran a full 125-litre water tank through the prototype, and it still came out hot enough for a shower at the end. That is a properly clever bit of kit, especially if you are doing a van build from scratch and want one solution for everything. Details are on their website at autoterm.store, and our code RR10 gets you 10% off the heater and the install.
One thing Owen did mention: run it for 30 minutes every month even when you do not need it. Diesel can go stagnant in the pipe, and if it sits there all summer you will get diesel bug building up, which will clog the pump the moment you fire it up in September. The unit actually tells you when 30 days is up, which is helpful, because I would absolutely forget otherwise.
Owen also took me out to lunch in a 1950 MG YA with suicide doors and no seat belts, which was quite an experience. We ended up at the Boat Inn on the River Dee for a Welsh Angus steak, medium rare. A cracking afternoon. That’s the job, that is.
We have had the heater for about a week now, and it has worked out exactly as I had hoped. The existing gas and electric system stays in as backup, and the air con is there too if needed, so we now have three sources of heat going into the summer. The diesel heater will be the primary from October onwards, no question.
If you have been thinking about getting one fitted, do not wait until the cold snap hits and everyone else has the same idea. Get in touch now, get your quote in, and have it done while the diary is quiet. The link is in the description on the video.
Go and watch the full install below, and we will see you on the next one.
Watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B861zYkjChg