Run the engine all night during cold nights? | 4WDTalk - Overlanding and offroad Forum
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Run the engine all night during cold nights?

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Pig Pen

Active member
We recently bought our first van, it's a 2022 Mercedes Sprinter van and at this point its just a gutted doesn't have anything in the back. We are looking at getting a portable battery and already ordered a mattress for it. We want to camp in it for a little bit before we loss it to who ever we decide to convert it for us. Which I've been told could take upwards of 4 months to complete.

Now that you know our situation, when camping in cold weather, is it OK to keep the motor running with the heat on all night?
 
Buy a portable diesel heater. That exact situation is what their designed for.
You could buy a permanent mount propane or diesel, or like most of us, it sits outside and you duct the warm air inside.
If you go that route, be careful on the sizing. The sizes run from 2k-8k (that's output not price) 3k-5k will be good for what your doing.
 
+1 diesel heater is the way to go. You might want to reach out to a builder in your area, adding diesel heater is easy and you future proof your investment vs portable heater. Which IS a good idea. But if you plan on building this out, building one in will insure you can use the same heater
 
If you don't want to go down the path of diesel, you can always add one of those EcoFlow Wave II heater/ AC units. That is 6100 BTU heater and would work great for that van. You will need a decent battery set up, but you will want that regardless.
 
Giovanni said:
If you don't want to go down the path of diesel, you can always add one of those EcoFlow Wave II heater/ AC units. That is 6100 BTU heater and would work great for that van. You will need a decent battery set up, but you will want that regardless.
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The heater isn't energy efficient though. I think diesel heater will be better option.
 
Most of my group run Vevor 5k. When you look at any heater, try to get the most features. The latest generation has blue tooth. This is especially important if you run the "all in one".
My group is split between the all in one and taking the bare bones unit and mounting it in a Pelican case. Mine has a control panel that I mount inside. Controlling it is nice. If you don't have a way to control it from inside your sleeping area, your going outside to do this.
The all in one units are nice because everything is together including the fuel tank. The down side is some leak fuel while transporting on rough roads. Don't transport it with fuel. Your also limited to the built in fuel tank capacity.
A few of us have external tanks. Mine is a 3 gallon

If you search, you find diffrent box's people put them in like mine. Which ever way you go, make sure you look at all the options.
 
But why use a case if you have a van with space you can mount concealed under a bench or kitchen set up?
 
I have the impression they want something to use until the van gets built. After that something permanently mounted would be best.
 
I would figure out where you might have this installed in the future so you don't need to buy two of these heaters. At some point you will want to have the heater concealed after your build. If you can figure that part out now, you can save some $$ from buying a second heater.
 
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