Cost of heating with an Eberspacher

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pcatterall

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Just surprised myself so I should check my maths and the forum is a good place for that!!My D4 will produce 3.5 kw on high and uses 0.38L per hour or say 4.56 over 12 hours. Assuming I can get red diesel for 0.70p per Litre that is around £3 for the 12 hours.My electricity costs 14p per KWHour so 3.5x 14p x 12 hours = nearly £6 per hour!!! What have I done wrong?It was always in my mind that when in a marina using my mains fan heater was cheaper!!
 
Electricity is always going to be an expensive way of generating heat. Convenient, yes but expensive.

Not as expensive as your calculation. Try multiplying by 14 pennies instead of £14.:D
 
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Your case favors diesel heating, (at least on simple fuel used calcs) a shift in the price of either can easily reverse the situation. Diesel costs are quite low at the moment so it does come out a bit cheaper in many cases for the time being, a couple of years ago it was an entirely different story.
 
Your figures are OK IMO. My Wallas burns paraffin @£1.50 / litre and uses 0.1 l/kWhr, so it's about the same as mains leccy.
Obviously, red diesel @ 70p /l gives cheaper heat.
 
We have a D4 and livaboard in the UK. I'd say your figures for running the D4 are a tad light. But we can heat our boat more than toasty on around half power and I know from three winters use that at the current price of red diesel (for heating) it costs us around 55p / hr. Bargain in my view and much cheaper than marina priced leccy. (We pay 14p / unit too, although I think that your leccy consumption calcs are a tad high) The only way a fan heater is cheaper is if the leccy is included in the, market rate mooring fee.
 
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£3 a day is more than it costs to heat my house, but I suppose a boat at anchor might have a nicer view from the windows.
 
The Eberspaecher calculation gets even better if you arrange to run it on kerosene as I do. It runs hotter and cleaner and the fuel is currently c. 27p/l.
Same goes for my Taylors 079D; cleaner, hotter bunsen-blue flame, clear viewing window and no soot on deck.
 
Remember that the Ebber may be capable of kicking out 3.5KW but once up to temp this would cycle down to a much lower output and therefore fuel use.

But the same would be said for a fan heater I suppose, assuming it's on a thermostat.

Fan heater is more difficult at anchor though.
 
pcatterall said:
Just surprised myself so I should check my maths and the forum is a good place for that!!My D4 will produce 3.5 kw on high and uses 0.38L per hour or say 4.56 over 12 hours. Assuming I can get red diesel for 0.70p per Litre that is around £3 for the 12 hours.My electricity costs 14p per KWHour so 3.5x 14p x 12 hours = nearly £6 per hour!!! What have I done wrong?It was always in my mind that when in a marina using my mains fan heater was cheaper!!
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Your electric heating costs £5.88 - nearly £6 as you say = but for 12 hours, not per hour. So, twice the price of using your Eber - expensive, but not as bad as you thought!!
 
Steve_N said:
The Eberspaecher calculation gets even better if you arrange to run it on kerosene as I do. It runs hotter and cleaner and the fuel is currently c. 27p/l.
Same goes for my Taylors 079D; cleaner, hotter bunsen-blue flame, clear viewing window and no soot on deck.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise that kero could be bought so cheaply. So in my example 27p x 0.38 x 12 = £1.23 . I assume this is kero in bulk and not in a little can from my hardware store!
That sort of cost approaches that of mains gas!
 
pcatterall said:
I didn't realise that kero could be bought so cheaply. So in my example 27p x 0.38 x 12 = £1.23 . I assume this is kero in bulk and not in a little can from my hardware store!
That sort of cost approaches that of mains gas!
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I always get the central heating oil delivery driver to fill a few 20L jerrycans for me so, yes, that is the bulk rate (26.85p last week) but most oil depots/merchants will be happy to fill cans if you take them along - I've done this at Scottish Fuels in the past. I don't think that the rate varies that much by quantity and the quoted figure includes the cost of a tanker delivery after all.

Yes, at the moment I think it's cheaper to heat a house with oil than mains gas but it isn't often that way around!
 
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Steve_N said:
The Eberspaecher calculation gets even better if you arrange to run it on kerosene as I do. It runs hotter and cleaner and the fuel is currently c. 27p/l.
Same goes for my Taylors 079D; cleaner, hotter bunsen-blue flame, clear viewing window and no soot on deck.
Click to expand...
You got it!
S
 
Kerro is great stuff for running the earlier heaters (Wallas aside) , especially if the fuel to air ratio is adjusted to suit. I would counsel against it in the latest heaters with boost feature as it could lead to overheating. These heaters are basically the same as earlier ones but have a setting that shoves more air and fuel in, even on normal diesel fuel (EN590) this operation is ECU limited to 1 hour at start up.
 
Because a % of electricity in the grid is from renewables nowadays (increasing all the time) we use electricity while in the marina rather than blatantly burning diesel but that's just our choice. A decent webasto or Eber should also ways be well cheaper providing it is running efficiently. I doubt my webasto does to be honest.
 
What about using reverse cycle airconditioning?

You get about 3x the KW heat out than the KW of leccy you put in.

If you power that from an onboard generator, and use the cooling circuit of the generator to heat the water going into the airconditioning unit you should increase efficiency still further. Your average generator is about 25% efficient. The other 75% is mostly heat - a lot of which you can recover.
 
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