Chinese (5kw )air heater

benchmark said:
Mine is still working perfectly . The eBay Chinese heater Facebook group started a poll a few days ago which showed a ratio of 10:1 in favor of satisfied users of the heater.
In the group there are pics of installations, test setups , and solutions to problems.
The truth of the matter is that at the price that they Chinese heaters are selling, I will not complain over a few niggles with it taking into account that a spare fan for my Eberspächer D4 plus can buy a couple of Chinese ones.
Click to expand...
Let’s see what they say in a years time. That will be the real test. A 10% failure rate after a few weeks is nothing to shout about. I have had a less than 1% failure rate in three years with Planar.
 
owen-cox said:
Let’s see what they say in a years time. That will be the real test. A 10% failure rate after a few weeks is nothing to shout about. I have had a less than 1% failure rate in three years with Planar.
Click to expand...

But Benchmark refers to 10 to 1 satisfaction rate not 10 to 1 failure Satisfaction could include postage time, instructions and a load of minor quibbles.
 
Most of the users who post on the FB groups are not at all technical and many of the reported failures or problems are as a result of users not understanding the system, not reading the instructions or just being stupid.
I've had one for some time now and its in my workshop pumping out heat day after day. I've had a few problems with air bubbles and overheating due to a restriction on the outlet pipe and in the early days it coked up, but nothing that I never had before on my Webasto and was easily resolved. For the last three weeks since I started running on Kerosene it's worked faultlessly.
My feeling on these heaters is that providing it arrives undamaged are perfectly functional and do work very well. Certainly for what I bought it for its doing the job and running it on Kerosene at 70p litre it costs very little to run.
The controls are not as sophisticated as my Webasto and the lack of a remote temperature sensor / thermostat would stop me installing one on my boat. I'm guessing the controls will become more sophisticated in the next year.
I hope the introduction of these shake up the heater industry because I think the major players have been ripping us off for far too long. I paid more than the cost of this heater for a fuel pump for my Webasto alone some years ago and the pump looks identical to what I have on this one. At the very least it will provide a source of low cost spares.
 
Last edited:
Finally got mine fitted in the van, just waiting to run the tank down sufficiently to drop and fit the fuel tap in and connect up, having had it fired up on the bench its not nearly as noisy as i was lead to believe, my impressions are they are more than good enough for the £170 quid i paid (never got hit with customs charges or duty). Changes i made were to the exhaust system which on these is quite frankly *****, so went and bought 2m of eber pipe £30 an eber muffler £25 & two exhaust clamps £10 so in all its cost me £235 not bad in my estimation even if i get a couple of years out of it:

EDIT: tried uploading a picture and it hasn't worked, will try again later.
 
Last edited:
I hope the introduction of these shake up the heater industry because I think the major players have been ripping us off for far too long. I paid more than the cost of this heater for a fuel pump for my Webasto alone some years ago and the pump looks identical to what I have on this one. At the very least it will provide a source of low cost spares.
Click to expand...

This is a classic demonstration of price versus volume. Eber/Webasto etc have assumed a limited market and so have to price per unit to recover their development, research, testing and fixed overheads accordingly.
The Chinese have reduced or eliminated a lot of that by copying someone else's design, but have also worked out that if you price them low and stack 'em high they will sell in huge quantities enabling them to amortise the production fixed costs over many many more units sold.
Eber/Webasto must have paid off their (original) development costs many times over by now, and could easily afford (I suspect) to be more competitive!
 
skyflyer said:
This is a classic demonstration of price versus volume. Eber/Webasto etc have assumed a limited market and so have to price per unit to recover their development, research, testing and fixed overheads accordingly.
The Chinese have reduced or eliminated a lot of that by copying someone else's design, but have also worked out that if you price them low and stack 'em high they will sell in huge quantities enabling them to amortise the production fixed costs over many many more units sold.
Eber/Webasto must have paid off their (original) development costs many times over by now, and could easily afford (I suspect) to be more competitive!
Click to expand...

But this is the marine industry fella, its a shake down all the way until the music stops, only when orders fall to critical levels because of the likes of gearbest, alibaba banggood etc will these greed merchants finally cotton on but in the meantime its all about skinning as many people for as long as possible.

A song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DqvweTYTI0

Ta tar
 
Do we really want a race to the bottom though? I like the idea that I can buy a quality unit such as Eber, weba etc and am happy to pay the extra for the quality, and warranty. I have an Eber in my boat.

I also like the fact that there are cheaper alternatives out there, albeit at a bit of a gamble. Would I put a Chinese one on my boat? No I would not.

I have, however ordered one for a different application, one that I would never have paid Eber, Weba prices for, and one where the risk is much lower and the fallout insignificant if it fails.

The fact that I have already been waiting three weeks for delivery is the first price I am paying for that cheapness. I am sure there will be others.
 
CLB said:
Do we really want a race to the bottom though? I like the idea that I can buy a quality unit such as Eber, weba etc and am happy to pay the extra for the quality, and warranty. I have an Eber in my boat.

I also like the fact that there are cheaper alternatives out there, albeit at a bit of a gamble. Would I put a Chinese one on my boat? No I would not.

I have, however ordered one for a different application, one that I would never have paid Eber, Weba prices for, and one where the risk is much lower and the fallout insignificant if it fails.

The fact that I have already been waiting three weeks for delivery is the first price I am paying for that cheapness. I am sure there will be others.
Click to expand...
Eber, quality? Hmm, ask the owners of the D2s that had the controllers go kaput! And had to pay full wack for replacements, look at the questions on here about them and the commonest fault used to be the Eber supplied inline ceramic fuse with an aluminium strip that used to corrode.
 
Not sure if anyone else has posted: there is a Facebook group ‘Chinese diesel vehicle air heaters’ who are also discussing these very items, including quite a number of concerns. Over to you chaps.
 
langstonelayabout said:
Not sure if anyone else has posted: there is a Facebook group ‘Chinese diesel vehicle air heaters’ who are also discussing these very items, including quite a number of concerns. Over to you chaps.
Click to expand...

Yes it has been posted before. It's an interesting group to watch. Certainly there has been many problems, but there are also many happy punters. The problems seem to be: long delivery, damaged upon arrival, wrong kit sent (different to what was ordered) and finally, running problems. The running problems are often glow plug related. Many of the reliability issues will almost certainly be down to poor installation. Even with a eberasto you need a pukka installation to avoid reliability issues.

I would say, summing up, that assuming you get what you ordered, in a timely and undamaged way, and you install it properly, you appear to be more likely to be happy with what you get. All in all its a bit of a gamble, as the back up and support appears to be almost non-existant, with stories of an offer of a £20 or so refund for heaters that turn up damaged or incorrectly spec'd. Buying on eBay with Paypal should mean that you have comeback if things go terribly wrong. What happens if the unit fails after a few months though, is that you are simply stuck with it. Maybe sell if for spares to others with problems will get you some of your money back.

I have taken the gamble but am stuck at the long delivery stage!
 
skipper_stu said:
Eber, quality? Hmm, ask the owners of the D2s that had the controllers go kaput! And had to pay full wack for replacements, look at the questions on here about them and the commonest fault used to be the Eber supplied inline ceramic fuse with an aluminium strip that used to corrode.
Click to expand...

Each to their own. I have had Ebers on my last two boats, D2 and now D4, and never had a breakdown or failure. If it did, I had a warranty to fall back on initially, then a good, reliable (if expensive) source of spares after that. That is quality in my book, compared to the Chinese offerings and almost zero support and spares.

I have no particular axe to grind here. I have an Eber in my boat and have ordered one of the Chinese ones. Just saying it as I see it. Sometimes it is worth paying more, other times, maybe not.
 
I just took a punt at one of the 5kw ones to fit into our van (driving down to Aegina to drop off some stuff to Revolution in December).
I've only test run it to date so we'll see how it faires.
We've got a Wallas on Revolution, it rattles, has cost a small fortune in repairs that didn't fix the problem and well, how many Chinese heaters can you buy for the price of a Wallas? I could have had a new one every year for the last decade!
Lets see.....
 
Do you have it on all night while anchored?

If you are sailing you’re going to have to keep a layer on down below.

________________________
 
simonfraser said:
I’d be seriously pissed if my heater stopped (caught fire) at 3am on a cold night whilst anchoring / sailing.
Paying extra for more reliability seems a no brainer. It’s supposed to be ‘fun’

In a Van, well at least i could step out, call a taxi to a hotel.
Click to expand...

I'm not aware of any evidence that they actually are any less reliable or less safe than the big brand alternatives.

Anyway, inn my case it was 'have a cheap heater' or 'have no heater'. A no brainer.
 
The one in my vans been working since January with no problems and the one in the workshops been up and running since Thursday with no problems, got two more on order one for my Centaur and one for spare parts.

FWIW if they last a year or two then end up in the skip i'm fine with that especially at £130 a unit when compared to the hourly rate of an eber agent with no gaurantee of actually solving the fault!

With regard to reliability - sure theres going to be a few that crap out from the get go but if you look at how some are being installed i.e, bolted to the underside of vans with little to no protection, enclosed inside with no ventilation or the loom being extended 10 foot with wire thinner than a human hair then problems are to be expected.

Plus these heaters are designed to be run on diesel and what with many choosing Veg oil/ bio oil again its no wonder you're gonna get problems.

The other common whinge on the FB page is people moaning the supplier forgot a part normally a muffler, exhuast pipe, duct pipe (fill in the blank) basically a parts missing and i'm thinking you've just paid £100 odd quid for a heater that a few years ago would've cost you over a grand and seeing as theres plenty of parts suppliers on the interwebs go spend a £10 - 20 on the bits that didn't arrive, its still a fraction of the cost of an eber/web/muku.

Just my opinion of course...........................
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top