Bunk Heaters save tons of money

Like I have said too many times to count, my solution is not for everyone.
Batteries are brand new, well June of last year. Issues so far? Nope. But if anyone can argue that fully charged batteries are not better than partially charged batteries, I'd love to hear that one. I can sit for quite a few days at a time sometimes. KNOWING my batteries are fully charged is a little piece of mind for me.
I can only dream of 7mpg hauling what I do, so again, it's a non issue for some.
Either way, do something to save fuel!

Martin

 

But I like buying fuel. And I get points and showers.

 

What actually failed? Not questioning this, but curious to what the failure was (after "getting to know" my Espar from a few tear-downs LOL). The only thing I could imagine doing this would either be the burner exhaust port breaking off right at the burn chamber (inside the case where inside air passes over it), or a cracked fuel line spraying fuel on the outside of the burn chamber.

 

leftlane, I have saw your posts on how you id your apu system. and it brought a thought to mind, you stated you had 3000 dollars in your system, and that was the materials, generator etc. if you were going to make one of these systems to sell and install on a truck, considering your time , tools and etc, what would you charge for it? 4500 or 5000 maybe?

frankly you have a nice system, but fact is most folks don't have access to the tools or skills to do what you did. here at mercer, we have guys that have put on generators and done heat/ac in a variety of ways. the common denominator is they all work for that individual. if you do anything to save yourself money, no matter how, youre doing the right thing.

I myself have the shop, welders, etc to make about anything I want. I just went the route of a store bought apu, it was quick and easy , in an out in 7 hours for 8500 bucks. over the course of the last two years I have had 3 problems with the unit, all were under warranty. the key is I perform regular maintenance on my unit, keep it clean etc.

that's the key to any system of any sort, you have to maintain it or you are toast.

I can say my unit paid for itself in a little over a year. I was one who said for a long time I couldn't justify the 8500 bucks, but I was dead wrong.

we are beating each other up over this, it doesn't matter what you do to stop idling, just do something.

but a bunk heater only solves half the problem. and my apu has a dometic a/c heating unit it does a very good job of cooling my truck

 

Don't know what happened to it Red. I just had it yanked it out and a new one installed. At the time I thought it must have been the exhaust port like you say but I thought it was strange that the smoke was black.....you don't see black smoke from the exhaust. Maybe it was spraying fuel like you said.