TheSamba.com :: View topic - Diesel Heater With Battery Pack/House Battery Build

Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:21 pm

I don't know if this is totally Vanagon related but I plan on using it in at least one of my vans so here it goes.

Just wanted to do a quick intro to a little project that I have been working on.
More details will follow as I get more done.

Many of you may have seen the the Cheap Diesel Heater thread.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=703569

Well through pure dumb luck I managed to pick up a 2kw knock off heater for just a little under $100 shipped to my door.

I then took advantage of a 15% off ebay coupon and bought a couple of Nissan Leaf battery modules.

My original idea was to build an all in one diesel heater with its own on-board battery that could be taken just about anywhere.

Naturally you're not going to go backpackin' with it but I think you get the idea.

I then had a nutty idea that I might want to take this out on some winter tent camping.
I decided to separate the heater and battery pack so they could be split between a couple of peoples sleds or sledges or pulks or whatever you call it where ever you're from.

I then realized that, with the capacity of these Leaf cells, I could likely turn this into a house battery that could be dragged along for a fair amount of juice while in the boonies.

I won't be running any microwaves or AIR CONDITIONING....
AAAAAAAAAAHH! The phrase that shall never be spoken!
I mentioned battery powered AC!
Surely the four horsemen have been summoned to lay waste to this thread and disembowel all who gaze upon it.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here!

Anyway I digress.

So no, I will not be running any big power items but I can surely run some lights and charge things and play music and maybe run a fan or two.

Obviously in the colder months I can bring the heater section along and warm the van or 4Runner or tent

I also figured, since I had some solar panels laying around, that I would drag one of those along when I had room in the van or truck.

Throw in a cheap charge controller and an inverter and I got myself a quick and dirty modular house battery set up with or without off grid charging capability.

So, where am I now?
Well, I have most of the parts for the battery pack complete with AC charging

Naturally I cheaped out on some of this stuff but I did not go full on, bottom of the barrel ebay garbage.
I found a good deal on a NIB Meanwell 500 watt 48 volt power supply that is serving as my AC to DC conversion.
That feeds into a mid price level but still generic DC/DC step down that is actually charging the batteries.
Of course there is a battery management system to balance cells and provide overcharge and over discharge protection.
I also have another DC/DC step down to turn my 16.8 volt battery into a 12.8 volt set up for my heater and any other auto thing that you might run.
The heater will plug into the SAE socket as well as an inverter when the heater is not in use.
I also added 2 USB plugs for phones and junk.
I may add another SAE plug so the heater and inverter can run at the same time.
Lastly there is a volt/amp/power meter to monitor all sorts of stuff that actually has some programmable protection as well.
I still need a fan but all of this should fit into in a cheap-ish hard case I found ebay or amazon. (Bought it a while ago and don't remember)

I have not even looked at the solar charge stuff yet but that will be a relatively simple thing to put together since all I really need is a way to plug it to my battery and will bypass all the other AC charge stuff

As far as the heater goes all I am waiting on is a case that I also found on ebay for 65 bucks.

Pretty much it holds everything and with a few mods should offer enough weather protection to keep it protected in the gnarliest weather.

I just need to source some longer flexible hose to run the heat from the heater to the inside of whatever I may be in at the time.

I just sorted out most of the wiring but I still need to get the actual wire and a handful of connectors and heat shrink to wire it all up.

I also need to lay the battery stuff out in the case and make a frame to secure everything.

Hope to make some progress over the next day or two and will update the thread accordingly.

Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:37 pm

Ooooh. I’m soooo excited. All my fav things ... cheap diesel heater, Nissan batteries, flux capacitor and nudie Picts.

What are u using to manage the battery charging? Is it a “product” or someEBayThing that you are going to MacGyver?

Carry on.

Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:38 pm

wow those leaf batteries used are affordable. I am interested in seeing how this goes.

Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:38 pm

vwhammer wrote:
I won't be running any microwaves or AIR CONDITIONING....
AAAAAAAAAAHH! The phrase that shall never be spoken!
I mentioned battery powered AC!
Surely the four horsemen have been summoned to lay waste to this thread and disembowel all who gaze upon it.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here!

You have to say it three times Hammer, its ok.

It's "battery powered heater" you can only say once.

Ooops... gotta go... "Honey, round up the kids"

Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:49 pm

rmcd wrote: Ooooh. I’m soooo excited. All my fav things ... cheap diesel heater, Nissan batteries, flux capacitor and nudie Picts.

What are u using to manage the battery charging? Is it a “product” or someEBayThing that you are going to MacGyver?

Carry on.

Well I bought an ebay BMS that has a charge level cut off and I will be programming an over voltage cut off into the monitor that I also bought from ebay for extra protection.

The DC/DC step down (the square black box between the cells and the open power supply on the far left in the pic above) supplies the proper voltage and limits current to charge the batteries.
It will not offer the perfect charge profile for lithium batteries but it will be good enough for this system.

Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:03 pm

Surprisingly my heater case showed up today.

It's smaller than I thought it would be and, even with my smaller 2kw heater, it was a real trick to stuff everything inside.

So the actual heater and gas tank fit but you really have to think to get the fuel pump and filter and the air filter and wiring to fit.

I suppose the air filter could be on the outside of the box but there is not really anywhere to route it out but there does appear to be a place to run the intake hose up into the case so that's what I did.

Probably better anyway since this will be outside most of the time when in use.

I did have to hack the air filter to actually make it fit and I added a little better filtering since it could be a little dusty in some of the places I go.
So I started with this.

And this is essentially the "filter"

There is this piece of foam but all it does is hold the screen in place over the hole.

So I cut a little piece of scrubby pad and dropped it in the filter first.

Then the screen when in.

Then you drop the foam in and put the camp back on and you get this.

Then I cut the weird bit off at the top and end up with a much smaller filter.

It fits in this space

Stuffed the fuel filter in here.

then did a bunch of looping so I could route the lines to the pump, tank and to the actual heater.

I had to shave the pump mount so it would physically fit between the wall of the case and the tank.
It's still tight.

Had to drill a new hole to get the fuel line to route back outside the case to the inlet of the heater.

The quick and dirty slap together looks a little like this.

I will be fabbing a bracket to hold the exhaust and build a turnout/extension to keep water out of the exhaust and direct exhaust away from the tent.

On the left you will see the wires that will attach to the 12v source to make it run.
On the right is the control panel.

Both will feed into the space you intend to heat.
Obviously the 12v wires will connect to my battery pack or another 12v source.
Naturally you will have the control panel in the van for... well.. control.

The fan cover on the back will come off so a heater intake hose can be routed from the heater intake.

I still need to track down some longer hose to function as the heater intake and outlet hoses that will be routed into the van.

I also need to get some grommets in a couple of holes and get some adhesive wire routing tabs to tidy everything up inside.

I am also going to get some velcro to mount the control panel to the outside for storage and transport.

Probably also whip up some way to stow the wires onbaord so they are not dragging along everywhere.

So that about does it for the heater.
More or less I slapped it together to make sure everything fit and functioned.
I will refine it a bit a little later once I get the battery pack up and running.

Speaking of battery pack I am having some issues there as far as the solar charging is concerned.

It turns out that its not easy finding a solar charge controller for a battery of this particular voltage.
In most situations a 12 volt charge controller would charge to 14.4 volts or something like that based on lead acid or LiFePO4 batteries max charge.
I am using a different lithium ion chemistry where the max charge is 16.8 volts.
My battery would never fully charge.

I did manage to find one pretty clever charge controller where you can set all the parameters to charge any battery chemistry you would like but it costs more than my whole battery pack project.
It's also not expected to ship until May.

I suppose I don't really need it right away and I am not opposed to spending money on a proper quality product.
This charge controller also has expansion capability to be used for much more powerful systems.

I may just pull the trigger to get one on the way (in May) and deal without solar charging for this pack for now.

As soon as my fan and couple other miscellaneous parts show up I will wire this whole mess up and give everything a test run.

Until then...

Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:49 pm

Seeing things like this make me wish I was better at doing stuff.

Nicely done.

Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:46 pm

elizer wrote: Seeing things like this make me wish I was better at doing stuff.

Nicely done.

Honestly, with the internet, you can find almost any info for any idea that you can dream of.
You may have to piece things together and perhaps you have to be "better at doing stuff" to sort that out but I use this method a lot.

I do have a mechanical engineering background (never actually graduated by the way) and have been working in product development for the last 10 years but, to be honest I struggle a lot with some of these electrical things.

I just do a lot of research.
My wife likes to call it "playing on the internet" but little does she know it's primarily the reason I know more about things than she does.
Boom!
Wife burn!
It's ok.
The net is the one place that she will never find me?
I hope. :shock:

There I go rambling again.

As I stated, the info is out there you just have to pick away at it until you find what you need.

As far as finding some things that I need, I made the call and determined that the fancy charge controller that I mentioned in my last post was the thing I need and decided to buy one.

However, I went to the kickstarter page and it turns out that Jan 1st was the last day of the campaign.
I am going to try to email the gentleman and see if I might be able to get in on this one but I am not going to hold my breath.

This leaves me to explore other options.
There may be a couple of things that I can try but none will be as effiecient as finding a proper charge controller.

I am going to speak with a couple of my electrical engineering friends at work and see if my ideas are sound and possibly carry on with those

I should point out that most of the things that I build are done with off the shelf parts.
I am not trying to get into the PCB design business.

Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:04 pm

This thread is more fun than three barrels of monkeys and more interesting than three of my Vanagon threads put together. Except for the one where I proposed battery powered a/c. That one was a hit. :D

Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:49 pm

HA!
A new era is upon us.
Mark my words.
BATTERY POWERED AC IS COMING!

Don't even pretend that I am trying to run AC on this set up but it is coming.

What's even more funny is that it is already out there and people still don't believe it is possible.

I don't really want to clutter this thread with all that talk but it's so hard not to touch on it when it comes up.

Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:55 pm

OOOOOOOOO!
Just got word from the fancy solar charger guy and I can get one but it will likely not ship until June.

Hmmm. :-k
I kind of need it before then but perhaps I can get away with my Appalachian engineered solution until then.
I mean it is only a month difference.

Sun Jan 13, 2019 9:27 pm

Well I did it.
I bought one of the fancy charge controllers and holy smokes whudda deal.
I totally did not realize that the feller is one of our maple syrup guzzlin' brothers to the north. (AKA he's canadian. Was that statement offensive?)
There is a an approximate 22% discount right off the bat because of the USD/CAD exchange rate.
VIVA LA.... 'MERICA!!!

So I am another $202 USD short on this months bills but this should cover all of my solar charging needs for the foreseeable future, including solar/battery powered AC.

For anyone that cares the charge controller is from this fellow.
http://electrodacus.com/

Also a version of this unit was used to build a lithium battery/solar set up that runs.. Guess what? A solar powered AC system.
I think it is covered in a couple of vids from this couple on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC76GYXW3j9z5g3OdW--Sf5g/videos

Lastly, since I am on the topic, this is the AC system that I might run for my battery powered AC set up.
https://www.forestair.ca/en/serie-mini-anglais

I may cheap out a little bit and cobble together some other set up but this portable mini split set up is pretty tempting, even if it is nearly 9 hundo USD.

I said Battery powered AC (crap was that three times?)was possible.
I didn't say that it was cheap.

Mon Jan 14, 2019 7:55 am

vwhammer wrote: OOOOOOOOO!
Just got word from the fancy solar charger guy and I can get one but it will likely not ship until June.

I have had horrible experiences with kickstarter projects and will never buy into one again. None have shipped even close to the date (months delays) and one went belly up and took everyone's money. I hope your experience is better.

Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:32 am

I also am generally not a kickstarter kinda guy.
I have purchased from one in the past and it worked out pretty well.

This particular campaign is this guys 4th one I believe.
He has had three previous versions of this charge controller that were all successful on kickstarter and everyone received their parts.

In general everyone is pretty excited about these controllers and have had little issue with them or the guy selling them.

I guess we will see how it goes.
Worst case scenario I lose my money.
Then I will take all the layout and program files that he posts up for free and have one made myself.
Of course building one or two at a time would likely cost more but at least I would have one.

Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:53 am

I too have been watching the electrodacus sbms closely. It looks to be a great product.

My concerns were:
The product is not mppt, and given our limited solar real estate, efficiency matters

I really wish they kept the sbms60 in the lineup. The sbms40 can only take 8awg wiring and is single input. Sbms60 could take 6awg and had dual inputs - (solar and alternator/shore charger). Sbms120 is way overkill for a westy

I still don’t understand whether the sbms can actually cut power if the battery pack is over/under charged or if it can only trigger other things to disconnect

Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:41 pm

elizer wrote: Seeing things like this make me wish I was better at doing stuff.

OMG If I was drinking milk when I read this it'd be coming out my nose!!!

Tue Jan 15, 2019 10:14 pm

Ok another bonehead question that’s bothered me for a while.

can just a 120w solar panels charge a big ass battery (say Nissan Leaf cell) long enough and with enough voltage to take the battery through its full charge stages? Ie. bulk to float?

Won’t it get dark outside before the cycle will be completed? Won’t the occasional cloud screw with the cycle? Seems like solar alone will never top off a diesel heater battery without require 110v mains power at some point or the battery will never get fully charged?

Wed Jan 16, 2019 12:56 pm

Well it depends on how big of a battery you are talking about.
Conservatively my battery is approximately 800watt hours. (16.8 volts x 50 amp hrs)
If everything was perfect then a 120 watt panel would charge my battery in 7 hours or so.

Of course there are some losses all over the place and the occasional cloud will slow it down even more.

You would likely struggle to charge my battery from dead to full in a day.
However my heater will not kill my battery in a day.
As a matter of fact it should be able to run for at least 50 hours if not longer on a full battery.

With that in mind, if you were only charging half the battery or less you could likely get away with a 120w panel and have a full battery at the end of the day depending on usage.

I have a 295 watt panel so it could theoretically charge my battery from dead to full in about 3 hours.
I hope to have no issues keeping it topped off when I need it.

In other news I ordered another charge controller that should be better suited for this build.
It's small and adjustable and more importantly MPPT capable.
Oh and it was also cheap as chips.

Depending on what my wife drags me into tonight, I hope to finish up with bench testing of my whole battery/charging system. (minus the solar bits of course)

Still waiting on some better crimpers and some miscelaneous bits to fit it all up proper in its case.

Heck maybe I will get a heater test run in this weekend.
Supposed to get to the teens and single digits this weekend so I might need this heater to supplement my 8kw unit that runs in the garage now.

Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:54 pm

I assume you will have this outside of your tent with the heat outlet coming in? Is your setup weather proof? You're probably going to need a turn down on your exhaust to keep if from filling with H2O. Very creative using off the shelf stuff.

Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:10 pm

MarkWard wrote: I assume you will have this outside of your tent with the heat outlet coming in? Is your setup weather proof? You're probably going to need a turn down on your exhaust to keep if from filling with H2O. Very creative using off the shelf stuff.

Yeah the heater will be outside and the controls, battery and heater inlet and outlet will be inside.

As of right now it is not weather proof at all.
I was thinking about just whipping up a simple tyvek cover that would cover it up
Then the whole thing could be serviced without breaking any sealed joints or anything like that.
A small piece of tyvek cut to the right shape and held in place with some magnets would probably be the simplest route to truly keeping it dry and serviceable.
I would have to pay close attention to how the inlet and outlet hoses are routed so water does not run down the outer surfaces of the hose and into the heater or tent/van.
Of course special attention must be paid to the exhaust and keeping any of my cover material away from there as well.

As far as the exhaust goes...
Arguably the answer for that was pretty easy to miss.
vwhammer wrote:
The quick and dirty slap together looks a little like this.

I will be fabbing a bracket to hold the exhaust and build a turnout/extension to keep water out of the exhaust and direct exhaust away from the tent or van.