I didn’t see a better place for this but wanted to give some unsolicited feedback on my experience. I recently posted this on Sniper's Hide thinking there'd be at least one hunter in the group of shooters, but it has no replies after a week.
I had trouble finding much online about the Chinese diesel heaters used at hunting camp with a wall tent, so this is about using one in a wall tent.
Recently at elk camp I brought my, supposedly 8kw, Chinese diesel heater with me and we used it and loved it. In total, we had three heaters with us on this trip - wood stove, 3-burner propane stove, and the diesel heater.
In general, wood stoves work great unless you have trouble finding good dry wood; we had a little trouble at the beginning of the trip finding good dry wood (from recent train, sleet, and snow) and so the fire was inconsistent and tough to keep feed properly. We made sure, but it wasn’t really ideal the first several days.
Then we had the 3-burner natural gas stove that heated up the tent REALLY fast when we got back to camp into the tent. We generally didn’t run it on more than one burner and had temps in the wall tent well above my liking. We had 84-85 genres at one point; yah, I had a real small digital thermometer in my stuff, and YES I was in my shorts and t-shirts when it was that hot. We usually had the door partly open when it got up there.
Now, for the diesel heater. What I liked about it was that it barely moved the air around with the hot air exhaust fan, so the tent didn’t just stratify into cold air at the bottom and warm/hot air up top. What we did was we’d have either the natural gas heater going before we went to bed and would turn it off before going to bed, OR we’d have the wood stove running before bed and neck it down to last a while into the night; being the wood stove dying off, we didn’t have anything into the night besides the diesel heater. I typically was going to bed outside of my sleeping bag and usually just zipped up into my cotton sheet liner that I sewed over a decade ago to fit my mummy bag. Most nights I slept that way until probably 4am-ish where I’d feel a little cooler; some might consider it fairly cold for just a sheet but I had my feet in the actual sleeping bag and was perfectly comfortable. The temperatures in the tent crept down from the upper 60s down to the low 50s, and in the coldest outdoor night at about 20 degrees I think the tent got to about 42-43 when we woke up. That was FAR FAR FAR better and more comfortable than any other hunting trip I’ve been on. I had the diesel heater just set for 18 Celsius so we didn’t bake when the wood stove was still putting out heat. Two diesel heaters might be ideal, but they’d chew the battery that much faster.
As for fuel usage: I used less fuel than anticipated. I set the diesel heater for our 9600’ elevation at 18C, and it used about 1 gallon each night, or another way of looking at it was the most we used in the coldest night was about 1/2 tank from say 11:00 until anywhere from 5:30 to 6:00 am. Look up on Google to set your elevation, if you use one, so you burn the proper amount of fuel.
As for battery life, I don’t know the exact amount of battery life used but my solution worked great too. I built a “battery box” a few years ago using the 100 amp-hour lifepo4 battery from our camper in an insulated box which includes a low temp thermostat to turn on a small silicone heater to keep it just above its minimum temperature, the box also had a 40a mppt solar charge controller, and has an externally mounted 400w inverter. The charge controller has Bluetooth so I could monitor the usage, and did, but I don’t recall the values exactly. My solar panels total to 200w (newpowa from Amazon), I did see upwards of 180w output not even at full height of day, which I was pretty happy with. I think I went through 40-50% on the high end of the battery between solar charges, including cell phone and watch charging, 40w LED strip light, and the diesel heater running per above. I was happy with its performance after running the heater all week at night. We were also able to fully charge on days that weren’t completely sunny too, so there was extra room in the panels, as desired.
We liked the propane gas heater diesel heater combination that we may consider just bringing those two, due to the efficiency/efficacy and the space savings the two have over the wood stove. And the set it forget it of each.
Overall, I’d consider a big win, and waking up to an entirely tolerable tent Was great.
I had trouble finding much online about the Chinese diesel heaters used at hunting camp with a wall tent, so this is about using one in a wall tent.
Recently at elk camp I brought my, supposedly 8kw, Chinese diesel heater with me and we used it and loved it. In total, we had three heaters with us on this trip - wood stove, 3-burner propane stove, and the diesel heater.
In general, wood stoves work great unless you have trouble finding good dry wood; we had a little trouble at the beginning of the trip finding good dry wood (from recent train, sleet, and snow) and so the fire was inconsistent and tough to keep feed properly. We made sure, but it wasn’t really ideal the first several days.
Then we had the 3-burner natural gas stove that heated up the tent REALLY fast when we got back to camp into the tent. We generally didn’t run it on more than one burner and had temps in the wall tent well above my liking. We had 84-85 genres at one point; yah, I had a real small digital thermometer in my stuff, and YES I was in my shorts and t-shirts when it was that hot. We usually had the door partly open when it got up there.
Now, for the diesel heater. What I liked about it was that it barely moved the air around with the hot air exhaust fan, so the tent didn’t just stratify into cold air at the bottom and warm/hot air up top. What we did was we’d have either the natural gas heater going before we went to bed and would turn it off before going to bed, OR we’d have the wood stove running before bed and neck it down to last a while into the night; being the wood stove dying off, we didn’t have anything into the night besides the diesel heater. I typically was going to bed outside of my sleeping bag and usually just zipped up into my cotton sheet liner that I sewed over a decade ago to fit my mummy bag. Most nights I slept that way until probably 4am-ish where I’d feel a little cooler; some might consider it fairly cold for just a sheet but I had my feet in the actual sleeping bag and was perfectly comfortable. The temperatures in the tent crept down from the upper 60s down to the low 50s, and in the coldest outdoor night at about 20 degrees I think the tent got to about 42-43 when we woke up. That was FAR FAR FAR better and more comfortable than any other hunting trip I’ve been on. I had the diesel heater just set for 18 Celsius so we didn’t bake when the wood stove was still putting out heat. Two diesel heaters might be ideal, but they’d chew the battery that much faster.
As for fuel usage: I used less fuel than anticipated. I set the diesel heater for our 9600’ elevation at 18C, and it used about 1 gallon each night, or another way of looking at it was the most we used in the coldest night was about 1/2 tank from say 11:00 until anywhere from 5:30 to 6:00 am. Look up on Google to set your elevation, if you use one, so you burn the proper amount of fuel.
As for battery life, I don’t know the exact amount of battery life used but my solution worked great too. I built a “battery box” a few years ago using the 100 amp-hour lifepo4 battery from our camper in an insulated box which includes a low temp thermostat to turn on a small silicone heater to keep it just above its minimum temperature, the box also had a 40a mppt solar charge controller, and has an externally mounted 400w inverter. The charge controller has Bluetooth so I could monitor the usage, and did, but I don’t recall the values exactly. My solar panels total to 200w (newpowa from Amazon), I did see upwards of 180w output not even at full height of day, which I was pretty happy with. I think I went through 40-50% on the high end of the battery between solar charges, including cell phone and watch charging, 40w LED strip light, and the diesel heater running per above. I was happy with its performance after running the heater all week at night. We were also able to fully charge on days that weren’t completely sunny too, so there was extra room in the panels, as desired.
We liked the propane gas heater diesel heater combination that we may consider just bringing those two, due to the efficiency/efficacy and the space savings the two have over the wood stove. And the set it forget it of each.
Overall, I’d consider a big win, and waking up to an entirely tolerable tent Was great.
