Chinese Eber style heaters - good bad or ugly

superheat6k

superheat6k

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It's been about 18 months since the first wave of the Chinese blower heaters arrived en masse.

So anyone here installed one ?

Who are the reliable suppliers on EBay ?

Any horror stories, boats caught fire, etc ?
 
they do seem ridiculously cheap, i guess one issue would be spare parts i know from owners of more expensive models that nozzles can cause problems . i too would be interested if anyone has any experience of them .
 
I installed one in the spring- cost £150 for a 5kw model. Not had a lot of use yet but so far very pleased. I haven't figured out how to make it work thermostatically, so have just used it in on/off mode, setting the power level manually.
The Facebook group is very good. Your initial impression of it might be that people are having lots of problems with their heaters, but whenever a poll is taken it shows that the vast majority of people are very happy with them. Of course the people who encounter problems are the ones who need to post for advice, so that is what you tend to see- it's not representative of the average experience.

One fairly common problem is with glowplugs, but replacements can apparently be sourced from Alibaba for about £20. You do also hear of people getting stung by customs charges, or delivery times measured in months, or items not quite matching photos/descriptions- e.g. shorter length of ducting supplied, different controller, etc.
 
The ebay suppliers seem much of a muchness, just look at their feedback. A few horror stories, but there don't seem to be any first hand accounts on the facebook group. My feeling is that the power output claims are overstated, my 5KW certainly doesn't push as much air as the D4 but it does work every time unlike the D4... No idea on spare parts availability, I would suspect it's sketchy (barring glow pins) but for the price of them, probably cheaper and easier to just replace and keep a donor unit.Not had mine for long, but certainly can't complain so far, it's worked faultlessly.
 
Forgot to add... Construction is a bit flimsy compared to the eber, cables are all thinner and connecting plugs are a lot more fragile internally. But, again, for the price...
 
Murv said:
Forgot to add... Construction is a bit flimsy compared to the eber, cables are all thinner and connecting plugs are a lot more fragile internally. But, again, for the price...
Click to expand...
Did yours come with all the expected parts ? Who was your seller ? Did you get clobbered for Customs (you may want to plea the 5th on this one !) ?
 
superheat6k said:
Did yours come with all the expected parts ? Who was your seller ? Did you get clobbered for Customs (you may want to plea the 5th on this one !) ?
Click to expand...

I actually bought off a guy in the UK. He'd bought two as he was expecting one not to work or be incomplete, but they were both A1 so he sold one.
He didn't have to pay any customs charges.
 
I was the same- bought from a bloke who had admitted to himself that he was never going to get around to fitting it to his van. I didn't save a lot of money but I was in a hurry and it meant I got the heater in three days rather than three months. He hadn't had any problems or customs charges.
 
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