Cordless, lightweight, preheater?

[ragedracer1977]

After my experience in the cold, I was thinking how I could be self sufficient in preheating.  I came across this https://www.ryobitools.com/power-tools/products/details/18v-one-plus-hybrid-forced-air-propane-heater .  I paid $70 for one hour of preheat, almost enough to buy this unit.

Around 10lbs with battery and propane tank.  Says it will run 7 hours on one battery.  Get some kind of hose you could attach to the front, and feed into the cowl? 

Do you think this would provide enough heat to warm an engine in an hour or so? The only complication I can see is just how hot is it when you're done? How would you stow it quickly enough to actually start the engine before it got cold again?

Edited December 30, 2018 by ragedracer1977

[neilpilot]

9 minutes ago, ragedracer1977 said:

Get some kind of hose you could attach to the front, and feed into the cowl? 

If you restrict the exit air flow, the heater's fan may not be able to deliver much flow and heat transfer will be seriously restricted.

[Hank]

Someone posted plans here for a little gas heater in a small toolbox. Looks easy and inexpensive to build. Being inside a plastic box, it didn't get too hot itself. Search is your friend!

[ragedracer1977]

3 hours ago, Hank said:

Someone posted plans here for a little gas heater in a small toolbox. Looks easy and inexpensive to build. Being inside a plastic box, it didn't get too hot itself. Search is your friend!

That looks pretty awesome.  Thanks!

[Marauder]

After my experience in the cold, I was thinking how I could be self sufficient in preheating.  I came across this https://www.ryobitools.com/power-tools/products/details/18v-one-plus-hybrid-forced-air-propane-heater .  I paid $70 for one hour of preheat, almost enough to buy this unit.
Around 10lbs with battery and propane tank.  Says it will run 7 hours on one battery.  Get some kind of hose you could attach to the front, and feed into the cowl? 
Do you think this would provide enough heat to warm an engine in an hour or so? The only complication I can see is just how hot is it when you're done? How would you stow it quickly enough to actually start the engine before it got cold again?

If you think you’ll need pre-heating on a regular basis, I would just opt for a Reiff or Tanis system. If you check with the FBO at your destination, you may able to just need to carry a long extension cord.

A number of us dove on the Home Depot portable inverter generator sale like a pack of hungry vultures. I carry this little guy with me and just fire it up and let it run. I use a bike locking cable to lock it to the nose wheel and just let it run while I grab something to eat or getting the plane ready.

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[Marauder]

When we bought it, they were on sale for $149.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sportsman-1-000-800-Watt-Gasoline-Powered-Digital-Inverter-Generator-802085/300792167


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[ragedracer1977]

I don’t plan on being in the cold that often but it would be nice to have something for when I am.  It looks like the portable toolbox heater from the other thread is the way to go if y’all think the ryobi thing I posted wouldn’t work

[larryb]

I think the Ryobi heater will mostly work. But there is one thing I would be afraid of, and it is that propane has a low vapor pressure as it gets cold. And a 1lb dispsable tank  is very small for 15,000 BTU output. So the colder it gets, the lower your heat output will be. At some point it could stop working entirely. The larger the propane tank, the less this is a problem. The other concern is putting possibly corrosive combustion byproducts in the engine compartment. The diesel parking heater (the toolbox heater) doesn't have either of these problems. 

I have a 60K BTU propane space heater, similar construction but AC powered. It doesn't get hot, and the sheet metal constructions dissipates any heat quickly. I wouldn't worry about packing it in the plane right after shutoff. I have it for the hanger in case I need to work on the plane in the cold. It is fed by 2 x 20lb propane tanks. 

Personally, I have the Reiff and a long extension cord. If I ever can't find an outlet within 100' of the plane then I'll get a Honda EU1000 to power it. I bought one of those Sportsman generators mentioned, but it failed on it's first usage and I returned it.

[Snacks]

Interesting coincidence.  I just built a preheater exactly like this and had planned a write up.  So far, I have used it only once for test and once before a flight.  It seems to work great.  

Basically, buy this heater +/- the batteries if you want cordless.  Grab a 6" (I think?) to 4" HVAC reducer... one that will fit over the green outer tube on the heater.  In the same Home Depot isle as the HVAC reducer, get some of those small HVAC style self tapping screws.  Screw the HVAC reducer to the heater, one screw every 45 degrees.  You will see where the reducer contacts the outer heater tube best, screw in there.  Then, just use a 4" dryer line.  Get the hard stretchy solid aluminum one, not the foil one.  Stick that thing up in your cowl flap and you are good to go!

I scrapped a few bucks trying a T piece with two lines and some other experimental parts that ended up not being necessary.  Keep it simple like above.  The weak link now is the dryer tubing.  I think it would actually break after some use.  So the options are to either just replace the dryer tubing occasional because it's cheap or maybe get some 4" SCAT.

 

Edit:  I'm thinking the reducer may actually be 8" to 4".  Test it in the store when you buy the heater or measure it at home.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Snacks

[yvesg]

55 minutes ago, Snacks said:

Interesting coincidence.  I just built a preheater exactly like this and had planned a write up.  So far, I have used it only once for test and once before a flight.  It seems to work great.  

Basically, buy this heater +/- the batteries if you want cordless.  Grab a 6" (I think?) to 4" HVAC reducer... one that will fit over the green outer tube on the heater.  In the same Home Depot isle as the HVAC reducer, get some of those small HVAC style self tapping screws.  Screw the HVAC reducer to the heater, one screw every 45 degrees.  You will see where the reducer contacts the outer heater tube best, screw in there.  Then, just use a 4" dryer line.  Get the hard stretchy solid aluminum one, not the foil one.  Stick that thing up in your cowl flap and you are good to go!

I scrapped a few bucks trying a T piece with two lines and some other experimental parts that ended up not being necessary.  Keep it simple like above.  The weak link now is the dryer tubing.  I think it would actually break after some use.  So the options are to either just replace the dryer tubing occasional because it's cheap or maybe get some 4" SCAT.

 

Edit:  I'm thinking the reducer may actually be 8" to 4".  Test it in the store when you buy the heater or measure it at home.

I have been using a 35000 BTU propane heater for years. When I built this, only 120V AC fans were available on these so I replaced the device motor by a 12 V and a portable battery pack made the trick. As a backup, I can use the car battery because I made the 12 V wires long enough. The coldest I used this was around -30 C. It then took about 30 minutes to warm up the engine.

If I would start over I would use an integrated battery one but would still need the high BTUs.

Yves

P.S. I hate winters!

[carusoam]

Welcome aboard, Snacks.

When you get a chance... add some data to your avatar area...

Best regards,

-a-

[EricJ]

On 12/30/2018 at 4:22 PM, Marauder said:

When we bought it, they were on sale for $149.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sportsman-1-000-800-Watt-Gasoline-Powered-Digital-Inverter-Generator-802085/300792167
 

I bought one of these on sale at Harbor Freight for $88.    The actual reason for the timing that we bought it was because the gas cap, coincidentally, will fit on a PA-28.   Not that that was ever actually done in a pinch on a weekend when nobody had one and one got left off during a refueling stop, of course. 

https://www.harborfreight.com/engines-generators/gas-engine-generators/900-max-starting700-running-watts-2-hp-63cc-2-cycle-gas-generator-epacarb-63025.html

We've used it at our mine and the cabin a couple times and it's actually a nice little unit and not noisy at all.   I thought it was going to be noisy since it's a 2-stroke, but it's not.

 

Edited January 6, 2019 by EricJ

[Hector]

Homemade and it worked well until I moved to another hangar were several hangars share the same circuit breaker. Now if my neighbors are preheating at the same time we can trip the circuit breaker. Thankfully, I’m in north Florida so the number of times I have to use this is very limited


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[Aviationinfo]

Can somebody post a link to that portable toolbox heater mentioned earlier?  Am not finding it with the search function.  Thx.

[Deb]

Is it this one? 

 

[steingar]

The thought of carrying in my cockpit a container full of highly flammable liquid built as cheaply as possible by some factory in China gives me the screaming willies.  Do what you want, but in the cockpit fire is not our friend.  That, and standing outside in winter holding my torch to the engine sounds like a total pain.

I have a little plug-in heater doodle thing that cost me a few hundred bucks.  If I'm going to stay awhile I carry an extension cord and a pair of cowl plugs.  I've yet to land an airport where I couldn't plug the thing in.  Maybe things are just more civilized in the East, I dunno, but I've never seen an airport without an electrical outlet.

Besides, I thought folks moved to the Zone because it was so warm 'n all.

[ragedracer1977]

I wasn't aware that diesel was highly flammable.  I suppose you don't fly with your cell phone either.  

[Hank]

36 minutes ago, ragedracer1977 said:

I wasn't aware that diesel was highly flammable.  I suppose you don't fly with your cell phone either.  

It's certainly not as combustible as all that blue liquid in the wings. And to think that some people put planes filled with 10s of gallons of that stuff inside enclosed hangars!  

[EricJ]

2 hours ago, Hank said:

It's certainly not as combustible as all that blue liquid in the wings. And to think that some people put planes filled with 10s of gallons of that stuff inside enclosed hangars!  

In the early Mooneys there was a fuel tank under the rear seat, too.

 

[steingar]

4 hours ago, ragedracer1977 said:

I wasn't aware that diesel was highly flammable.  I suppose you don't fly with your cell phone either.  

If it ain't flammable how does it burn?  Last I checked they run trucks and jets and stuff with it.  Heck, I even have a camp stove that'll burn it.  Sorry, carrying it in a cheap plastic made-in-China bottle sounds dicey.  My little heater never gets so hot I can't hold it in my hand, and will keep the engine warm on the coldest day.  I suspect this Ohio boy knows more about dealing with cold unpleasant weather than anyone from the Zone.

Edited January 8, 2019 by steingar

[neilpilot]

37 minutes ago, steingar said:

If it ain't flammable how does it burn?

Gasoline is flammable, not combustible.  Diesel is combustible, not flammable.  For liquids, the criteria for each category isn't arbitrary, but defined by the DOT and based on flash point.

BTW remember when there were newspapers?  They were also combustible, but not flammable.

[Warren]

Sams club and Home Depot both have the Sportsman Generators on sale (Sam's club only until March 29, 2019) if anyone missed the last rush at Home Depot.

[81X]

I made my own “northern companion” copycat preheater and used it a bunch on my Cherokee.  Rarely need a preheat in a hangar in SC!  

MSR XGK stove that I already had and use for backpacking , a 6-4” reducer(I think) and some ducting. Worked well but as with all flames, not to be left unattended. 

Not as powerful as other options, but probably one of the most flexible being lightweight, small and requiring no electricity.

Bonus it can run 100ll and you can dump it back in the tank if you don’t like fuel in the cockpit. 

Edited March 27, 2019 by 81X